The beach will be next to the the new Palazzo Versace hotel which is being built in Dubai where summer temperatures average 40C and can reach 50C.
The beach will have a network of pipes beneath the sand containing a coolant that will absorb heat from the surface.
The swimming pool will be refrigerated and there are also proposals to install giant blowers to waft a gentle breeze over the beach.
Soheil Abedian, founder and president of Palazzo Versace, said he believed it is possible to design a refrigerated beach and make it sustainable. “We will suck the heat out of the sand to keep it cool enough to lie on,” he said. “This is the kind of luxury that top people want.”
Hyder Consulting, a British construction consultancy, is overseeing the engineering on the project. The hotel will be marketed strongly in the UK where Dubai is a popular tourist destination, attracting about 800,000 Britons a year.
Abedian’s firm began its association with Versace a decade ago with the idea of creating the first chain of luxury fashion-branded lifestyle resorts.
The first Palazzo Versace is already operating on Australia’s Gold Coast – where Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, the actors, have stayed – and the Dubai hotel will be the second when it opens late next year or early 2010. The 10-storey hotel will have 213 rooms, several with their own internal swimming pools, plus 169 apartments. Fifteen more such hotels are planned.
Competition to serve the world’s rich is getting intense, especially in Dubai. The city already boasts the world’s first seven-star hotel, the Burj Al Arab, while Armani, a competitor with Versace, is building a similarly branded Dubai hotel.
The refrigerated beach is designed to give Versace the edge in this battle of luxury lifestyles. The system will be controlled by thermostats linked to computers.
Source: Times Online
JERUSALEM – Pope Benedict XVI called for the establishment of an independent Palestinian homeland immediately after he arrived in Israel Monday, a stance that could put him at odds with his hosts on a trip aimed at improving ties between the Vatican and Jews.
The pope also took on the delicate issue of the Holocaust, pledging to "honor the memory" of the 6 million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide at the start of his five-day visit to Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Benedict touched down in Israel on the second leg of a weeklong pilgrimage to the Holy Land, after spending three days in neighboring Jordan. He is using the tour to reach out to both Muslims and Jews.
In his first public comments upon arriving, Benedict urged Israelis and Palestinians to "explore every possible avenue" to resolve their differences.
"The hopes of countless men, women and children for a more secure and stable future depend on the outcome of negotiations for peace," he told a welcoming ceremony at Israel's international airport. "In union with people of goodwill everywhere, I plead with all those responsible to explore every possible avenue in the search for a just resolution of the outstanding difficulties, so that both peoples may live in peace in a homeland of their own within secure and internationally recognized borders."
While Benedict has spoken in favor of a Palestinian homeland in the past, the timing and location of his comments were noteworthy.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the audience, has pointedly refused to endorse the two-state solution since his election. But he is expected to come under pressure to do so when he travels to Washington next week. Netanyahu did not speak at the ceremony, then flew to Egypt for talks on regional issues with President Hosni Mubarak.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor played down the pope's comments, saying he was voicing a long-standing position shared by the U.S. and European countries.
"At any rate, discussing this is not the purpose of the visit," he said.
Parliament speaker Reuven Rivlin conspicuously skipped the airport ceremony, though his office said he would join the pope at Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.
The pope has tried to improve interfaith relations throughout his four-year papacy, and as a cardinal, had a long record of promoting dialogue with other faiths. But Benedict has had to tread carefully on his Middle East visit because of past gaffes.
Benedict angered many in the Muslim world three years ago when he quoted a medieval text that characterized some of Islam's Prophet Muhammad's teachings as "evil and inhuman," particularly "his command to spread by the sword the faith." He later expressed regret that his comments offended Muslims.
Before leaving Jordan, he said he had a "deep respect" for Islam.
The Vatican has also been widely accused over the years of not doing enough to stop the Holocaust — a charge it rejects. And the German-born pope himself has faced questions for his involvement in the Hitler Youth corps during the war. Benedict says he was coerced.
The pope outraged Jews earlier this year when he revoked the excommunication of a British bishop who denies the Holocaust. Ties were further strained when a senior Vatican official said during Israel's recent military campaign in Gaza that the territory resembled a "big concentration camp."
Later Monday, Benedict was scheduled to lay a wreath at Yad Vashem.
"It is right and fitting that, during my stay in Israel, I will have the opportunity to honor the memory of the 6 million Jewish victims of the shoah," he said, using the Hebrew word for the Holocaust. He said he would "pray that humanity will never again witness a crime of such magnitude."
Israel and the Vatican are also at odds over the legacy of World War II pontiff Pius XII, a candidate for sainthood. At Yad Vashem, Benedict will not visit the main part of the museum, where a photo caption says Pius did not protest the Nazi genocide of Jews and maintained a largely "neutral position."
Dignitaries and religious leaders greeted the pontiff at a red-carpet ceremony at the Tel Aviv airport. Yellow and white Vatican flags fluttered alongside blue and white Israeli banners as an honor guard played in the background.
The pope smiled as he walked along the carpet, flanked by Israeli President Shimon Peres on one side and Netanyahu on the other. Other political leaders, along with black-robed Christian clergymen and Muslim religious leaders, stood in line to shake his hand.
"Your visit here brings a blessed understanding between religions and spreads peace near and far. Historic Israel and the renewed Israel together welcome your arrival as paving the great road to peace," Peres said.
Later, the pope flew by helicopter to Jerusalem for another red-carpet ceremony. Mayor Nir Barkat handed Benedict an ancient map of the world, with Jerusalem in the center and dozens of children from three schools — Christian, Jewish and Muslim — welcomed him. The children waved Israeli and Vatican flags and red carnations, and many wore T-shirts that read, "I'm with the pope in Jerusalem."
"He loves us and wants peace," said David Sahagian, a 10-year-old from a Christian school in east Jerusalem. "I want there to be peace in Jerusalem and I want him to give us his blessing."
In the Gaza Strip, Palestinians were angry that the pope planned to meet with the family of an Israeli soldier held by militants in Gaza for nearly three years but would not meet with relatives of any of the 11,000 Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israel.
Israeli police shut down a media center for the pope's visit that the Palestinian Authority had set up at an east Jerusalem hotel. Israeli authorities object to any attempt by the Palestinians to use east Jerusalem for official business because that would suggest Palestinian sovereignty there. Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war and the Palestinians claim it as capital of a future state.
Dr Pepper Artifact May Reveal Soft Drink's Secret RecipeMonday , May 04, 2009 (AP)
DALLAS — Poking through antiques stores while traveling through the Texas Panhandle, Bill Waters stumbled across a tattered old ledger book filled with formulas.
He bought it for $200, suspecting he could resell it for five times that. Turns out, his inkling about the book's value was more spot on than he knew. The Tulsa, Okla., man eventually discovered the book came from the Waco, Texas, drugstore where Dr Pepper was invented and includes a recipe titled "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters."
"I began feeling like I had a national treasure," said Waters, 59.
Dr Pepper's manufacturer says the recipe is not the secret formula for the modern day soft drink, but the 8 1/2-by-15 1/2 inch book is expected to sell between $50,000 to $75,000 when it goes up for auction at Dallas-based Heritage Auction Galleries on May 13.
"It probably has specks of the original concoction on its pages," Waters said.
Waters discovered the book, its yellowed pages stained brown on the edges, underneath a wooden medicine bottle crate in a Shamrock antiques store last summer. A couple months after buying it, he took a closer look as he prepared to sell it on eBay.
He noticed there were several sheets with letterheads hinting at its past, like a page from a prescription pad from a Waco store titled "W.B. Morrison & Co. Old Corner Drug Store." An Internet search revealed Dr Pepper, first served in 1885, was invented at the Old Corner Drug Store in Waco by a pharmacist named Charles Alderton. Wade Morrison was a store owner.
Faded letters on the book's fraying brown cover say "Castles Formulas." John Castles was a partner of Morrison's for a time and was a druggist at that location as early as 1880, said Mary Beth Webster, collections manager at the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute in Waco.
As he gathered more information, Waters took a slower turn through the book's more than 360 pages, which are filled with formulas for everything from piano polish to a hair restorer to a cough syrup. He eventually spotted the "D Peppers Pepsin Bitters" formula.
"It took three or four days before I actually realized what I had there," Waters said.
The recipe written in cursive in the ledger book is hard to make out, but ingredients seem to include mandrake root, sweet flag root and syrup.
It isn't a recipe for a soft drink, says Greg Artkop, a spokesman for the Plano-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. He said it's likely instead a recipe for a bitter digestive that bears the Dr Pepper name.
He said the recipe certainly bears no resemblance to any Dr Pepper recipes the company knows of. The drink's 23-flavor blend is a closely guarded secret, only known by three Dr Pepper employees, he said.
Michael Riley, chief cataloger and historian for Heritage Auction Galleries, said they think it's an early recipe for Dr Pepper.
"We just feel like it's the earliest version of it," he said.
He hasn't, however, tested that theory by trying to mix up a batch. Neither has Waters; he's thought about it but would need to find someone to decipher all the handwriting.
Jack McKinney, executive director of the Waco museum, surmised that Alderton might have been giving customers something for their stomachs and added some Dr Pepper syrup to make it taste better.
"I don't guess there's any definitive answer. It's got to be the only one of its kind," Riley said.
McKinney said the ledger book was bound to be popular with Dr Pepper collectors because it's from the time the drink was invented.
Riley said the book was probably started around 1880 and used through the 1890s. It's not known who wrote the Dr Pepper recipe in the book, but they don't think it was the handwriting of Alderton or Morrison. Some of the formulas have Alderton's name after them.
At first, Alderton's drink inspired by the smells in the drugstore was called "a Waco." "People would come in and say, 'Shoot me a Waco,'" Riley said.
Soon renamed Dr Pepper, the drink caught on and other stores in town began selling it. Eventually, Alderton got out of the Dr Pepper business and Morrison and a man named Robert Lazenby started a bottling company in 1891.
Flipping through the pages of the ledger book takes one back to a time when drugstores were neighborhood hubs, selling everything from health remedies to beauty products mixed up by the stores' chemists. And among the formulas being mixed up in drugstores were treats for the soda fountain. A two-page spread in Waters' book has recipes for "Soda Water Syrups," including pineapple, lemon and strawberry.
"There were very few national brands," Riley said. "Their lifeblood was all their formulas."
What A Sad State Of "Affairs"
(From my blog - for you Facebookers!) Some people have no conviction whatsoever, while others have the wrong convictions. Read the below article and see how our nation is filled with politicians who are inept and people who are immoral. But should we expect anything different than this? (I'm still fuming about the politician at the end who voted "for" gay marriage (which cannot exist because marriage references a union between a man and woman...I guess Webster did not know our enlightened views at the time!!!) even though he is philosophically against it.)
Vermont legalizes gay marriage with veto override (AP)
MONTPELIER, Vt. – Vermont on Tuesday became the fourth state to legalize gay marriage — and the first to do so with a legislature's vote.
The House recorded a dramatic 100-49 vote, the minimum needed, to override Gov. Jim Douglas' veto. Its vote followed a much easier override vote in the Senate, which rebuffed the Republican governor with a vote of 23-5.
Vermont was the first state to legalize civil unions for same-sex couples and joins Connecticut, Massachusetts and Iowa in giving gays the right to marry. Their approval of gay marriage came from the courts.
Tuesday morning's legislative action came less than a day after Douglas issued a veto message saying the bill would not improve the lot of gay and lesbian couples because it still would not provide them rights under federal and other states' laws.
Douglas called override "not unexpected." He had called the issue of gay marriage a distraction during a time when economic and budget issues were more important.
"What really disappoints me is that we have spent some time on an issue during which another thousand Vermonters have lost their jobs," the governor said Tuesday. "We need to turn out attention to balancing a budget without raising taxes, growing the economy, putting more people to work."
House Speaker Shap Smith's announcement of the vote brought an outburst of jubilation from some of the hundreds packed into the gallery and the lobby outside the House chamber, despite the speaker's admonishment against such displays.
Among the celebrants in the lobby were former Rep. Robert Dostis, D-Waterbury, and his longtime partner, Chuck Kletecka. Dostis recalled efforts to expand gay rights dating to an anti-discrimination law passed in 1992.
"It's been a very long battle. It's been almost 20 years to get to this point," Dostis said. "I think finally, most people in Vermont understand that we're a couple like any other couple. We're as good and as bad as any other group of people. And now I think we have a chance to prove ourselves here on forward that we're good members of our community."
Dostis said he and Kletecka will celebrate their 25th year together in September.
"Is that a proposal?" Kletecka asked.
"Yeah," Dostis replied. "Twenty-five years together, I think it's time we finally got married."
Craig Bensen, a gay marriage opponent who had lobbied unsuccessfully for a nonbinding referendum on the question, said he was disappointed but believed gay marriage opponents were outspent by supporters by a 20-1 margin.
"The other side had a highly funded, extremely well-oiled machine with all the political leadership except the governor pushing to make this happen," he said. "The fact that it came down to this tight a vote is really astounding."
Also in the crowd was Michael Feiner, a farmer from Roxbury and gay marriage supporter, who took a break from collecting sap for maple syrup-making to come to the Statehouse.
"I'm taking a break to come and basically make sure that I was here to witness history," he said.
The House had initially approved the bill last week with a 95-52 vote. Smith and his leadership team worked through the weekend to try to persuade some legislators to change their minds.
One who did was first-term Rep. Jeff Young, D-St. Albans. He said he continued to be philosophically opposed to gay marriage, but decided that voting with his fellow Democrats would help him be an effective legislator in the future.
"You realize that, you know, it's a poker game in some ways," Young said. "Chips on the table. I'm a freshman. I have no chips. If I ... had 20 years of chips, I probably could play any card I want. I don't have that option."
He added, "It's the way the political game is played."
Well...at least he was creative...
BURLINGTON, Vt. – A man who bolted antlers to the head of a dead doe and posed for a photograph with the deer was fined $400 and jailed for game violations. Marcel Fournier, 19, shot the deer the evening of Nov. 22 and used lag bolts and epoxy to attach a 10-point rack, officials said. He then checked in the kill as lawful game at Barnie's Market. It's illegal to kill an antlerless deer, and it's also illegal to hunt at night. The Concord resident admitted to the killing and led a game warden to the deer's remains after an anonymous caller alerted authorities. Fournier said he had "quite a time" drilling and fastening the antlers, authorities said. Game warden David Gregory said the antlers didn't look or feel right. "When you grabbed them, you'd feel movement," he said. Col. David LeCours, chief warden of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said the size of the antlers relative to the size of the deer seemed off. "Something wasn't natural about them, in addition to the fact that they weren't natural," he said. Fournier was sentenced to 10 days in jail Feb. 18 for taking a deer in a closed season. He won't qualify for a state hunting, fishing or trapping license for at least three years. LeCours said add-on antlers are the stuff of legend, but that it's the first documented case of it in Vermont.
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