The Czech Prime minister slaps the Health minister

No newspaper printed this ............strange
Take a look at the video

Sphere UFO reported by three witnesses in two states

An odd-shaped sphere UFO was reported by three unrelated witnesses in two states recently that could be the same object, according to information gathered from the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) database. A fourth case near Roswell, New Mexico, may also be related.

On April 22, 2009, near Dallas, a witness at an auto repair shop looked to the sky when he heard the sound of a military fighter jet and very soon he saw two more fighter jets moving across the sky.

But then two more objects caught his eye - and these were not jets. The witness said both objects appeared to be triangular in shape, but there was a sphere at each of the three points "joined by what looked to be black tube or beam structures that formed the triangle shape."

The witness went inside to get binoculars, but when he returned 20 seconds later, the two objects were gone, but the three fighter jets were heading into the direction where they were last seen.

Then on May 23, 2009, in Crockett, Texas, a woman looked up in the sky and saw "a huge multi-leveled triangular object" hovering. She reported that the object was "in the shape of a triangle with white orbs illuminating its 3 points."

After observing the silent object as it hovered for about 10 minutes, she said "a small white orb quickly shot out of the left side." The object remained hovering for another 15 minutes, and then "just disappeared."

Crockett is located in Houston County in northeastern Texas with a population of 7,141, and is named after Davy Crockett who reportedly camped here on his way to the Alamo.

Fast forward now to Kansas City, Kansas, on June 16, and a witness who was standing in her back yard and looking into a wooded area saw "three large spheres connected together with a large arm or protrusion extending out at an angle underneath the craft." I previosly reported on this story in Military jets spotted searching for sphere UFO over Kansas City, Kansas.

Marge Padgitt, the MUFON state section director for Kansas City, reports that she is investigating the Kansas City case and that the witness is working on an illustration of the object. Texas Field Investigator Fletcher Gray is investigating the Crockett, Texas case. Gray said that the witness near Dallas is also working on a sketch of the objects that he witnessed. Texas Field Investigator Jeremy Ray is investigating the case near Dallas.

Who’s behind the social network’s computing power? You’d be surprised!

Who’s behind the social network’s computing power? You’d be surprised!

There is a long history of companies pooling their resources to achieve a common goal. Sometimes the goal is to sell a comprehensive system to an end user. Sometimes the goal is to assemble a nifty service. The base premise is: one service provider or product offerer cannot provision the final product without the aid of others.

Today we see mashups. A web mashup is a web page or application that combines data from two or more external online sources. Rather than reinvent the wheel, for instance, a company who has agreat weather prediction tool might mashup the software provided by Google Mapping to produce one clean web site where you can search both for weather conditions and the geographies in question.

Long before mashups, there were white label products. A white label product or service is a product or service produced by one company (the producer or manufacturer) that other companies (the marketers) rebrand to make it appear as if they made it. Examples may include DVD players. There might be one gigantic DVD manufacturer in Korea knocking out the devices and Sears, Amazon, Kmart, Wal-Mart all buy them, put their own private label on them and resell the products as their own. It may look like a Best Buy brand DVD player, but it also looks remarkably like a Wal-Mart DVD player at the same time if you just scratch off that name badge and look underneath.

Another example often cited in the social networking space is a white label social network or community. This different than the branded social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace. If I think my company would benefit, I could offer a social community or network on my web site for my customers and prospects to discuss areas of joint interest. If I’m a travel company, I could use Ning, for instance, set up a community for all those cruise ship enthusiasts to discuss past cruises, future cruises, the best cruises, exotic cruises and best priced cruises.

If I’m a clever moderator, I can learn a lot about my market and create a loyal following of travelers who rely on my social community as one of their primary sources of travel information. It also gives me a chance to correct problems or soothe upset customers in almost real time. If my company is Ron’s Cruises (I should be able to come up with something better hopefully) I could call my new found social network “Cruise Net” and none of the members need to know I used a white label social networking software product to roll out the technology.

These concepts are not new. They were preceded by reseller organizations and alternate channels. When I started in the computer hardware business over twenty years ago, we sold proprietary computers. That means software designed to run on them wouldn’t run on any other brand’s devices. If I could partner with a great bond management package, I could sell all the bond managers on using that partner’s software and they would have to buy my hardware. And they’d have to keep on buying my hardware as they grew and needed more horsepower to run the system. Prime Computer, Digital Equipment, Data General were all built on this premise.

Some proprietary computer hardware companies didn’t bother with a partner program. Their company was so well known that they could sell their proprietary hardware and the buyers would put their software programmers on the task to write applications to run there.

In the mid eighties, UNIX appeared as an operating system and changed the game. Suddenly all computer hardware manufacturers offered a commodity computing device. You could buy a UNIX box from company A, B or C. You could shop price, service and performance. The hardware companies with strong software partners could still drive sales. If you like the bond management software, my long standing relationship with the software company would encourage you to buy my hardware with an endorsement from the software vendor.

The hardware companies who were really clever encouraged those niche software vendors to resell our hardware bundled into the turn key system. The end user bought the application software, the hardware and the team deploying it all from the same reseller: one stop shopping. This is an early example of white label product offerings.

All this activity promoted alternate channels within the sales organization. You could buy my product directly from my company, or you could buy my product from one of my resellers. It behooves me to make sure the partners in my alternate channel reseller organization are happy. In fact supporting my resellers turned them into my customer.

One of the reasons the iPhone is such a big success is that Apple has opened up the device so thatdeveloper partners can easily write applications for the iPhone. Apple worries about turning out a reliable, well priced and cool looking device. Their partners think up great new applications that run on the iPhone and lead consumers to find the device indispensible. In search of a revenue generating model, Facebook opens up their social network to application developer partners. These Facebook “apps” help make money for the developers as well as the Facebook people.

Some of these distributions of responsibility can even exist within a single organization. So if a big computer company is pursuing a solution on behalf of their customer, (selling an enterprise webcasting solution for instance) they may use the “matrix” team that exists internally (a storage drive expert, a desktop computing group, a database expert, and a custom deployment solution team). On those same pre sales conference calls might be a channel partner team member that sells the streaming video software and another from the company that makes the web cams. All these partners figure out which channel the customer will ultimately buy from. The biggest problem is figuring out who’s in charge and leading the team.

The natural evolution of all these patterns of partnering is today’s cloud computing. It may even be transparent to the end user from exactly where the horsepower or tools are coming from…they all appear local. Because I only get to use my software through a browser, it doesn’t make a difference if my accounting software is really run on systems in India; that most of the computing hardware is farmed out to several large virtual computing companies; nor that I’m only charged when I use them instead of investing in hardware and software installed in our company’s computer room. For all I know, today’s company computing room is completely empty except for a couple of guys managing all the contracts and traffic.

Next steps in partnering? Well the lion’s share of the revenue and skill sets still resides in a group of heavy hitter computer companies. They have the marketing dollars and smart people to support and nurture the success of their channel partners. Who better to create social communities for their channel partners to share information? Who better to lever today’s social networking technologies in order to help their channel partners market their wares to end users?

How I'm going to use social networking to steal your identity!

How I’m going to use social networking to steal your identity

I think about all my trusted advisors in real life: my attorney, my doctor and others. There are questions that if posed by my insurance agent, I’d react by getting up from the table, letting him know it’s none of his business. But in the spirit of connecting socially, I easily answer these same questions in a Facebook quiz. It’s a cathartic release, a confession. Sometimes it makes up for the close mouthed, private way I act in real life. I know it seems great to “share” with others. And social network communities are the perfect place to dive in. Somehow sitting alone at the computer gives us license to answer some very intimate questions.

So the first thing I’ll do to steal your identity is find out everything I can about you. I can take a quiz, as apparently 34 million others did and with almost 200,000 fans, for “How Well Do You Know Me”? I’ll find out your birth date, where you were born, the names of your parents, your spouse, and your children. And I’ll find out their birthdates. I’ll find out your hobbies and your interests. I’ll see who all your friends are.

I’ll read “25 things you didn’t know about me”. I’ll know what sports you like, what your middle name is. I’ll know what your favorite stores are. I’ll figure out where you live by seeing where you shop. Your grammar school and your high school will be listed. It won’t be long until I find out the name of your first pet. Oh look, you used to have a space between your two front teeth!

I’ll read what Greek god you are, what Sex In The City character you think you are and who is your celebrity twin. Then I’ll figure out your childhood nickname, in what city you met your significant other, the name of your favorite childhood friend, the street you lived on in third grade. It won’t be long before I know your oldest sibling’s birthday month and year, the middle name of your youngest child, your oldest sibling's middle name, the school you attended for sixth grade, and your childhood phone number including area code. You’ll have listed your oldest cousin's first and last name, the name of your first stuffed animal and the city or town where your mother and father met.

Your MySpace or Facebook Info page will tell me your email address and your employer. The “Who Are You Related To” will tell me all your relatives. It’s great to know what cities you’ve visited, so when I start using your credit cards I won’t set off any suspicious behavior.

Somehow or another, one of the eight thousand eight hundred and eighty four Facebook quizzes that everyone’s taken will provide me with the answers I’m looking for.

Because your bank, your credit card, your school, your payroll company and your employer might ask these security questions, I’ll read your blog so I can find out the first name of the boy or girl that you first kissed, the last name of your third grade teacher, where your nearest sibling lives and your youngest brother’s birthday. After reading your blog, even if I don’t have a direct answer to any of the security questions, I’ll know enough about you to start making really good guesses.

On LinkedIn you’ve listed the name of your elementary / primary school and the city or town where your first job was. I can see your college history and even all the people who connect with you doing business.

Even without all this data I could probably figure out what your passwords are. Most people use the same password for every web site. Here’s the top ten according to PC Magazine:

1. password

2. 123456

3. qwerty

4. abc123

5. letmein

6. monkey

7. myspace1

8. password1

9. link182

10. (your first name)

Didn’t have to do any research for those. And the default password usually included from your vendor will also let me try: sun123, Cisco, Alcatel, Kyocera, McAfee and IBM. A surprising number of people never change the password from the default after installation. If it’s a six character requirement I can guess, and likely be correct with shadow or summer. Eight characters? Then desklamp or portable. I’m guessing people start looking around when they have to come up with a password quickly. If the password requires a number, it is almost always “1”.

But unless you’re using a combination of upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols in a random order, I can either try a top ten favorite from above or dig into your (not very) private life and figure out your password. Or if I can’t figure out your password, I can answer the security questions that let me reset your password to one I like. Then you can’t get in, but I can.

My first step will be to break into your email. Most of us have had our email addresses for a very long time, so it is likely the password we used was a product of that time period. I signed up for my Yahoo email when it came out, probably a decade ago. I wanted to grab my name before other computer savvy “shulkin”s did. These were eras with less security concerns about password strength.

I’ll do this hacking into your email account late at night, so when the notifications of password changes come in, I can delete them before you wake up and check your email. Hopefully you’ll have a folder in your email system called “passwords”. That will make the rest of this identity theft easier. And if there’s anything good in your inbox, I’ll read them and mark them “unread” before I go.

Once in your email system, I’ll crack your credit cards and bank. I’ll answer the security questions to change the password, “in case I forgot it”. Then they’ll send that notification to the email address and I’ll delete those too. I’ll know what web sites you subscribe to, so I’ll go on eBay, Hoovers and all your other resources. This will let me know more about you, as well.

My next pass will be to get into your cell phone account. You manage it on line, so I can get that password with security questions. I can look up all the phone numbers you get calls from and to whom you call. These friends of yours might be my next targets. Maybe your girlfriend is using a combination of your first name and your birthday as her password. Worth a try. It will still be hours before either you or she wakes up.

So if you wake up one morning and all your credit cards are cancelled or you’ve bought some airplane tickets or a nice HDTV (and had it drop shipped to an address one door down from yours where I’ll be waiting wisely informed as to when with the results of the record tracking on shipping); if your cell phone has ordered a bunch of custom ring tones or if your bank has had most of its funds transferred to my favorite charity, you’ll know that you answered one too many questions on that Facebook quiz.

Some things are meant to stay private. When you get on Facebook, stick to reminiscing about high school.

Michael Jackson Death Stops the Web, Causes Wikipedia Editing Chaos

Music icon Michael Jackson died Thursday in a Los Angeles hospital, causing millions of fans to overwhelm traffic servers and dominate the conversation of the most popular applications online, including Twitter.

Early news reports had reveled the so-called ‘King of Pop’ had suffered a cardiac arrest in his home prior to being rushed to the hospital. This caused many sites to announce the singer’s death hours before the hospital or the family had made any official statements. One of the biggest problems facing publishers online is enforcing strict source-based quality control over the news, especially when anyone is a simple blog sign-up away from spreading lies.

This is especially true when not-sourced allegations get into increasingly legitimate information resources, such as Wikipedia. As news of the singer’s stroke came in without true, a few volunteer editors of the web encyclopedia overrode protocol and kept changing Michael Jackson’s page to include his date of death. AsCNet noted, opposing editors tried to keep the page lie-free, noting they were “premature edits,” and some pleaded for responsible web behavior: “ONCE AGAIN, HE IS NOT DEAD, JUST STOP.”

Once Jackson was rushed to the hospital and passed away, most of the comments were gone and his final date on the site was established.

But many blogs around the net didn’t wait for the official word, either. TMZ.com was the first site to publish the singer’s death, about 3 hours before any major site. It received so much traffic that it went down a few times throughout the day.

Jumping off from TMZ.com’s lead, people logged on to social networks en masse and crashed several sites. Within three hours of the heart attack news, nine out of ten terms on the trending topics on Twitter were about Michael Jackson. Most tweets expressed sadness and grief over the news, while many used the service to publish links sending out users to other Jackson-related news around the net. In a statement to the New York Times Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the site saw “double the normal tweets per second the moment the news broke—the biggest increase since the US presidential election.” According to many users, the site crashed many times throughout the day.

News aggregators also reached very high levels of participation. On Digg, news of the singer’s death reached over 12,000 diggs within four hours.

PC World reported that instant messaging service AIM appeared to have more problems than most dealing with influx of traffic. Around 2:30PM PST, the service was blocked and failed to work for a long period of time.

In addition, Google noted earlier this morning that there were so many searches for ‘Michael Jackson’ that the site’s crawling robot believed it was under attack by a malignant bug. The company said that when the site receives a large volume of similar requests, CAPTCHA and malware-protection programs are automatically launched. This led to many people landing on a user-alert search page, instead of the news they were seeking.

And of course, video and music sites saw a huge spike in Jackson-related content. By the end of the day yesterday, Jackson’s Thriller album was the top album on iTunes and his videos on YouTube (including coverage from TV feeds) led the site on page views.

Michael Jackson was a child prodigy who became famous along with his brothers as part of the R&B group The Jackson Five. Later on as a solo-artist, he recorded Thriller, the best-selling album of all time with sales of more than 100 million. He was 50 years old at the time of his passing.

Twitter tears for 'King of Pop' Michael Jackson

THE internet was flooded with electronic tears for Michael Jackson today, with micro-blogging site Twitter notching up hundreds of tributes every minute including many from fellow celebrities.

The dead singer's official website, www.michaeljackson.com, carried just a single red page of tributes from his record company.

Official and unofficial fanclub sites from India to Germany also paid tribute to the star with single solemn pages or requests for condolences via email.

Users of social-networking site Facebook quickly created new pages in his honour, with a page called Michael Jackson RIP notching up more than 28,000 members in just a few hours.

The dead singer shot past the Iranian election on the list of most popular topics on Twitter as news of his death ricocheted around cyberspace.

The top two "trending topics" on Twitter were Jackson-related within hours of his death, pushing Farrah Fawcett, the Charlie's Angels star who also died this morning, down to number three and the Iranian election down to number five.

RIP MJ, MichaelJackson and Thriller were among the so-called hashtags being used by Twitter users to group messages about his death.

A host of celebrities led the electronic outpouring of grief.

RIP MJ he lives forever in my heart. I will never forget the day he came to see me in the studio and I played him music," wrote Wyclef Jean, formerly of The Fugees.

Two-time Oscar winner Jane Fonda wrote: "I am stunned. My friend, Michael Jackson is dead."

"Michael Jackson showed me that you can actually see the beat. He made the music come to life!! He made me believe in magic. I will miss him," US rapper-actor P Diddy wrote.

Actress Lindsay Lohan wrote: "Sending my love and prayers out to Michael and his family."

Tearful messages in several languages from all over the world hit the Twitter thread #MichaelJackson every second or so. But several other Twitter threads also clocked up the grief from its millions of users.

Cswint wrote: "Dancing around listening to MJ the way he would have wanted it. Everyone dance."

Infinitespace wrote: "We danced to #MichaelJackson records at my 7th birthday party. His music will last longer than Beethoven."

Others, meanwhile, lamented the fact that they will not now see their hero live in concert.

Twitterer Bensong wrote: "Just cancelled my London hotel booking. I was only going for the Michael Jackson concert."

Others refused to accept their hero had simply died of a heart attack.

Hinasafi wrote: "Autopsy will tell the truth - reliable sources told me about al-Qaeda's planned involvement in the death of Michael Jackson."

A brand new Facebook page called Michael Jackson Isn't Dead was created For those of us who refuse to believe the king of pop is dead and who are willing to begin a quest to find him!"

It had only six members.

Another site called "Michael Jackson Isn't Dead, Just Preparing for a Strong Come-back," had 34-members.

It stated: "Michael Jackson isn't dead! This is just all part of his plan for a super surprise come-back tour!! It's the perfect plan!"

Michael Jackson, pop music legend, dead at 50

Michael Jackson, the show-stopping singer whose best-selling albums -- including "Off the Wall", "Thriller" and "Bad" -- and electrifying stage presence made him one of the most popular artists of all time, died Thursday

He was 50.

He collapsed at his residence in the Holmby Hills section of Los Angeles, California, about noon Pacific time, suffering cardiac arrest, according to brother Randy Jackson. He died at UCLA Medical Center.

Lt. Fred Corral of the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office said an autopsy would probably be done on the singer Friday, with results expected that afternoon.

"Michael Jackson made culture accept a person of color," the Rev. Al Sharpton said. "To say an 'icon' would only give these young people in Harlem a fraction of what he was. He was a historic figure that people will measure music and the industry by."

Jackson's blazing rise to stardom -- and later fall from grace -- is among the most startling of show business tales. The son of a steelworker, he rose to fame as the lead singer of the Jackson 5, a band he formed with his brothers in the late 1960s. By the late '70s, as a solo artist, he was topping the charts with cuts from "Off the Wall," including "Rock With You" and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough."

In 1982, he released "Thriller," an album that eventually produced seven hit singles. An appearance the next year on a Motown Records 25th-anniversary special cemented his status as the biggest star in the country.

For the rest of the 1980s, they came no bigger. "Thriller's" follow-up, 1987's "Bad," sold almost as many copies. A new Jackson album -- a new Jackson appearance -- was a pop culture event. iReport: Share your memories of Michael Jackson

The pop music landscape was changing, however, opening up for rap, hip-hop and what came to be called "alternative" -- and Jackson was seen as out of step.

His next release, 1991's "Dangerous," debuted at No. 1 but "only" produced one top-ranking single -- "Black or White" -- and that song earned criticism for its inexplicably violent ending, in which Jackson was seen smashing car windows and clutching his crotch.

And then "Dangerous" was knocked out of its No. 1 spot on the album charts by Nirvana's "Nevermind," an occurrence noted for its symbolism by rock critics.

After that, more attention was paid to Jackson's private life than his music career, which faltered. A 1995 two-CD greatest hits, "HIStory," sold relatively poorly, given the huge expense of Jackson's recording contract: about 7 million copies, according to Recording Industry of America certifications.

A 2001 album of new material, "Invincible," did even worse.

In 2005, he went to trial on child-molestation charges. He was acquitted.

In July 2008, after three years away from the spotlight, Jackson announced a series of concerts at London's O2 Arena as his "curtain call." Some of the shows, initially scheduled to begin in July, were eventually postponed until 2010.

Rise to stardom

Michael Jackson was born August 29, 1958, to Joe Jackson, a Gary, Indiana, steelworker, and his wife, Katherine. By the time he was 6, he had joined his brothers in a musical group organized by his father, and by the time he was 10, the group -- the Jackson 5 -- had been signed to Motown.

He made his first television appearance at age 11.

Jackson, a natural performer, soon became the group's front man. Music critic Langdon Winner, reviewing the group's first album, "Diana Ross Presents the Jackson 5," for Rolling Stone, praised Michael's versatile singing and added, "Who is this 'Diana Ross,' anyway?"

The group's first four singles -- "I Want You Back," "ABC," "The Love You Save" and "I'll Be There" -- went to No. 1 on the Billboard pop chart, the first time any group had pulled off that feat. There was even a Jackson 5 cartoon series on ABC.

In 1972, he hit No. 1 as a solo artist with the song "Ben."

The group's popularity waned as the '70s continued, and Michael eventually went solo full time. He played the Scarecrow in the 1978 movie version of "The Wiz," and released the album "Off the Wall" in 1979. Its success paved the way for "Thriller," which eventually became the best-selling album in history, with 50 million copies sold worldwide.

At that point, Michael Jackson became ubiquitous.

Seven of "Thriller's" nine cuts were released as singles; all made the Top Ten. The then-new cable channel MTV, criticized for its almost exclusively white playlist, finally started playing Jackson's videos. They aired incessantly, including a 14-minute minimovie of the title cut. ("Weird Al" Yankovic cemented his own stardom by lampooning Jackson's song "Beat It" with a letter-perfect parody video.)

On the Motown Records' 25th-anniversary special -- a May 1983 TV extravaganza with notable turns by the Temptations, the Four Tops and Smokey Robinson -- it was Michael Jackson who stopped the show.

Already he was the most popular musician in America, riding high with "Thriller." But something about his electrifying performance of "Billie Jean," complete with the patented backward dance moves, boosted his stardom to a new level.

People copied his Jheri-curled hair and single-gloved, zippered-jacket look. Showbiz veterans such as Fred Astaire praised his chops. He posed for photos with Ronald and Nancy Reagan at the White House. Paul McCartney teamed with him on three duets, two of which -- "The Girl Is Mine" and "Say Say Say" -- became top five hits. Jackson became a Pepsi spokesman, and when his hair caught fire while making a commercial, it was worldwide news.

It all happened very fast -- within a couple years of the Motown special. But even at the time of the "Motown 25" moonwalk, fame was old hat to Michael Jackson. He hadn't even turned 25 himself, but he'd been a star for more than half his life. He was given the nickname the "King of Pop" -- a spin on Elvis Presley's status as "the King of Rock 'n' Roll" -- and few questioned the moniker.

Relentless attention

But, as the showbiz saying has it, when you're on top of the world, there's nowhere to go but down. The relentless attention given Jackson started focusing as much on his eccentricities -- some real, some rumored -- as his music.

As the Web site Allmusic.com notes, he was rumored to sleep in a hyperbaric chamber and to have purchased the bones of John Merrick, the "Elephant Man." (Neither was true.) He did have a pet chimpanzee, Bubbles; underwent a series of increasingly drastic plastic surgeries; established an estate, Neverland, filled with zoo animals and amusement park rides; and managed to purchase the Beatles catalog from under Paul McCartney's nose, which displeased the ex-Beatle immensely.

In 1990s and 2000s, Jackson found himself pasted across the media for his short-lived marriages, the first to Elvis Presley's daughter, Lisa Marie; his 2002 claim that then Sony Records head Tommy Mottola was racist; his behavior and statements during a 2003 interview with British journalist Martin Bashir done for a documentary called "Living With Michael Jackson;" his changing physical appearance; and, above all, the accusations that he sexually molested young boys at Neverland.

The first such accusation, in 1993, resulted in a settlement to the 13-year-old accuser (rumored to be as high as $20 million), though no criminal charges were filed, Allmusic.com notes.

He also fell deeply in debt and was forced to sell some of his assets. Neverland was one of many holdings that went on the block. However, an auction of material from Neverland, scheduled for April, was called off and all items returned to Jackson.

Interest in Jackson never faded, however, even if some of it was prurient. In 2008, when he announced 10 comeback shows in London, beginning in July 2009, the story made worldwide news. The number of concerts was later increased to 50.

Seventy-five thousand tickets sold in four hours when they went on sale in March.

However, when the shows were postponed until 2010, rumors swept the Internet that Jackson was not physically prepared and possibly suffering from skin cancer.

At the time, the president and CEO of AEG Live, Randy Phillips, said, "He's as healthy as can be -- no health problems whatsover."

Jackson held open auditions for dancers in April in Los Angeles.

He is survived by his three children, Prince Michael I, Paris and Prince Michael II.

Two-year-old 'world's youngest smoker'

A TWO-YEAR-OLD boy from the city of Tianjin in China is the world's youngest smoker.

Well, at least the youngest to admit it.

Except he didn't admit it, his dad did, after proudly teaching Tong Liangliang how to spark up between tantrums and milky vomits.

Liangliang's dad said his son was born with a hernia, and being too young for an operation, has taken up smoking to help him deal with the pain.

Now he's a pack-a-day man. Pack-a-day toddler. And he won't give up, screaming and throwing himself on the floor if he's refused a durry.

"The father wasn't aware how serious the toddler's habit had become until the child began to increase the number of cigarettes he smoked per day," news agency CRI said.

The Guinness Book of World Records is unlikely to accept the feat, as it has refused such requests before on the grounds that it "promoted a harmful habit".

Girl killed by Internet 'Lover'

A schoolgirl who went to a cake shop to break up with her Internet "lover" died after being taken hostage and stabbed by the man.

The man was shot in a police attempt to save the girl and is recovering in a hospital.

IMAGE : "An injured girl is carried to a nearby hospital Monday afternoon after she was rescued from a man who took her in hostage in a food shop in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. The girl, surnamed Fang, died in hospital from loss of blood. "

The girl, believed to be about 16 years old, met the man in a cake shop near her school around 5:30 on Monday in Nanjing, Jiangsu province.

"I was told Fang (the school girl) was there to meet her Internet 'lover', who came to see her from Shenzhen," said a schoolboy surnamed Wang who goes to the same school as the girl. "Don't know what went wrong."

According to police, the man stabbed the girl because she wanted to break up with him.

Fang had previously skipped school to visit the man, said her teacher, who rushed to the scene after receiving a call regarding the incident.

The girl had already been stabbed several times before the emergency call was made, but she was still alive when police arrived. All three shop employees and customers had escaped.

The man held Fang close to his body as a shield and pointed the knife against her throat to resist arrest. Fang had several stab wounds and was bleeding heavily, according to police.

When police were unable to arrest the man, two snipers in position outside the cake shop fired two shots at him around 6:50 pm. Both the schoolgirl and the stabber were then taken to hospital, but Fang was confirmed dead due to excessive blood loss.

Her Internet "lover" was still hospitalized. No other information has been released about him.