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Motor coaches are the fastest growing form of long distance transport in the United States, and British-owned companies are leads the charge.

It seems to sum up the average American traveler’s view of buses as the transport choice of last resort - slow, uncomfortable and out-of-date.

City buses were taken into public ownership in the 1960s but although they are subsidized by the state, they have been starved of cash in recent years.

Some cities have set-up devoted bus ways, rebranding them as "trains with rubber wheels".

But all of the new government money has gone on rapid transportation schemes, seen by politicians and planners as the only way to tempt motorists out of their cars. Federal spending on light rail raised from $494m (£314.24) in 1992 to $3.7bn (£2.35bn) in 2008.

Transit ridership and public transport in common, is growing faster than car mileage, which appeared to have peaked in the US, according to American Public Transport Association figures.
But critics say some systems are almost deserted outside of the rush hour and are not as cost-effective as buses.

Huawei is making its mark at CES, today introducing two new super-thin, 4.3-inch Android 4.0 smartphones, the Ascend P1 and the Ascend P1 S.

At just 0.26 inches thick, Huawei claims the P1 S is the thinnest smartphone in the world (the Droid RAZR, by comparison, is 0.3 inches at its thinnest). Powered by a 1.5-GHz dual-core TI OMAP 4460 Cortex A9 processor, the P1 S should be no slouch when it comes to performance, either.

The International Consumer Electronics show gathered about 150,000 people in Las Vegas this week. These are some of the more significant gadgets that were announced at the show.

The largest trade show in the Americas must be a great place to show off new products, right? Wrong. The International Consumer Electronics Show is quickly becoming a launch pad for products that fall flat.

Huawei’s other phone, the P1, will have the same Cortex-A9 processor, but measures a slightly thicker 5.0 x 2.5 x 0.3 inches.

Both devices sport 4.3-inch, 940 x 560-pixel Super AMOLED screens covered with Corning Gorilla Glass, and come wrapped in metal casings.

We got some hands-on time with both the P1 and P1 S and despite their thin shells, both devices felt very sturdy. Interestingly, the P1 S, while thinner than the P1, feels a bit heavier. For the P1 and P1 S’s exteriors, Huawei eschewed a textured finish and instead chose to use a glossy paint job, which quickly picked up fingerprint smudges and made the phones feel a bit slippery in our hands.

From a performance standpoint, however, both phones were very quick, offering no lag while scrolling through their apps menus or across multiple home screen pages.

Both the P1S and P1 offer 4G connectivity via their HSPA+ antennas. In addition to their dual-core processors, the P1 and P1S also include SGX 540 graphics processors, as well as 1GB of RAM and 4GB of ROM. Storage space is limited to 8GB, although can be expanded via the devices’ microSD card slots.

The P1 and P1 S also include 8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.3-MP front-facing cameras for video chat apps, MHL-HDMI connections, dual noise reduction microphones, and DLNA support. The handsets also come packed with ambient light sensors, as well as the ubiquitous accelerometers and gyro sensors.

Huawei has yet to establish a carrier partner or definitive price-point for its new halo phones, but company representatives say they are estimated to run roughly $400. Both phones are expected to launch around April in the U.S., Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia.

All of us need to reward ourselves over a time for the stress toll taken both physically and mentally by us. One of the best ways to chill out is to take a vacation and here are some amazing worldwide vacation rentals you can consider booking for your vacations

Manuel Antonio is the country's well-known national park. It can be described as one equal half of the beachfront and other equal parts of the rainforest, and that’s the reason why people choose a Manuel Antonio Villa for their trip to this gorgeous country.

Costa Rica Villa is the most popular formats in terms of accommodation and supple style. Vacation renters offers you large and opulent homes that sit straight on the beaches, come with private bungalows or beach front services, and which give you everything from daily housekeeping to a private chef. You can also find the right differing situation and find a cozy villa situated up in the hills with a breathtaking view of the sea and yet the calm of the forest at night. There are also a small private house or villas that are maintained by locals who live in the building too.


This is particularly right when heading to some place as amazing as Manuel Antonio. This is the kind of place where you might enjoy a tour of the "canopy" in order to spot rare birds and rainforest mortals. You could also head down to shady riverfront locations put into the forests as well and see the various kinds of mangrove trees and the many unusual plants and animals that live in this environment too. You can also find some accommodations that give you direct right of entry to the incredibly beautiful land and waters of the Manuel Antonio park as well. The primary thing to keep in mind about any Costa Rican vacation is the easy fact that it is one of the supplest and diverse chances available and it all begins with choosing your perfect holiday villa for your getaway.

A new snake species -Protobothrops maolanensis found in China is one of the littlest pit vipers in the world.

During a recent survey of forests in Maolan National Nature Reserve in Guizhou - China, the species was found by Yang and colleagues. At a maximum length of about 2.6 feet (0.7 meter), the new pit viper is the smallest known so far in the country.

Though the grayish brown species easily blends into its habitat, the ground-dwelling species ended up being the most common snake found during the research, noted Yang, of Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou.

Scientists have found two other new pit vipers in China so far in 2011: Sinovipera sichuanensis and Protobothrops maolanensis, he added.

The group of snakes known as pit vipers includes well-known species such as the copperhead, the rattlesnake, and the water moccasin. All known pit vipers are venomous, although their potency varies across species.

The toxicity of the new pit viper species is not yet known, but "kindly local peoples warned me that this snake is very poisonous," Yang added. "They said that some local peoples had been bit by this snake and then got poisoning—one was dead who had not got treatment in time."

Yang's team also found dead snakes that had been killed by people—the Miao, a local minority, believe that a snake encountered in the wild will bring bad luck unless it's killed immediately, he said.

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On Tuesday, a Japanese health official downplayed the dangers after cesium contaminated meat from six Fukushima cows was delivered to Japanese markets and probably ingested.

Goshi Hosono, state minister in charge of consumer affairs and food-safety, said he hoped to head off any overreactions.

"If we were to eat the meat every day, then it would probably be dangerous," Hosono said at a news conference Tuesday. "But if it is consumed only in small portions, I don't think it would have any long-lasting effects on the human body."

The meat, distributed late last month, has made its way to consumers and most likely has been ingested, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government said Monday evening. This was preceded by another recent discovery of radiation in the meat of 11 cows delivered to Tokyo from the same farm.

The discovery was made when Tokyo's office of health and welfare investigated six deliveries made at the end of June from a Fukushima farm. So far, radiation has been confirmed from three out of the six cows. In one case, radiation reached 3400 Becquerels, which is about seven times the limit set by the government.

When the Fukushima Prefectural Government, on Monday, investigated the farm from which the meat was delivered, cesium was found in cattle feed such as hay, with radiation levels as much as 57 times higher than the ceiling set by the Japanese government.

Up until now, cattle in Fukushima were only subject to a screening test, to inspect for radioactive particles adhering to the skin, and farmers were ordered to self-report how it the cattle feed was being stocked.

Yutaka Kashimura, Fukushima Prefecture's officer in charge of the livestock division, told CNN that the farmer may have given the cows hay that had been exposed to soil containing high levels of radiation. The farm is situated at about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant.

The Fukushima Prefectural government announced that it will check on all the farms in the prefecture to determine if the stored cattle feed is being protected from radiation. More than 500 farms will be inspected before the end of the week and nearly 2,800 by the end of the month.

On Saturday, the health and welfare office at Tokyo Metropolitan government found that meat from 11 cows from a Fukushima farm, which was about to be delivered, contained high levels of radiation. As a precaution, the office was ordered to trace meat from six cows from the same farm and realized that the meat is now circulating not only in Tokyo, but all over Japan.

No health problems linked to the incident been reported, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government told CNN.

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