Sunday, June 23, 2013

Super full moon shines brightly this weekend

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? A "supermoon" rises this weekend.

The biggest and brightest full moon of the year graces the sky early Sunday as our celestial neighbor swings closer to Earth than usual.

While the moon will appear 14 percent larger normal, skywatchers won't be able to notice the difference with the naked eye. Still, astronomers say it's worth looking up and appreciating the cosmos.

"It gets people out there looking at the moon, and might make a few more people aware that there's interesting stuff going on in the night sky," Geoff Chester of the U.S. Naval Observatory said in an email.

Some viewers may think the supermoon looks more dazzling but it's actually an optical illusion. The moon looms larger on the horizon next to trees and buildings.

The moon will come within 222,000 miles of Earth and turn full around 7:30 a.m. EDT, making it the best time to view.

As in any supermoon event, high tides are forecast because of the moon's proximity, but the effect is expected to be small.

Forget about the myths that swirl every time a supermoon appears. There's no link to higher crime or bizarre behavior. Scientists say that's just lunacy.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/super-full-moon-shines-brightly-weekend-163728260.html

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Zimmerman judge: No testimony on 911 call screams

SANFORD, Fla. (AP) ? The judge in the murder trial of George Zimmerman said Saturday that prosecution audio experts who point to Trayvon Martin as screaming on a 911 call moments before he was killed won't be allowed to testify at trial.

The screams are crucial pieces of evidence because they could determine who the aggressor was in the confrontation before Zimmerman fatally shot the unarmed teenager. Martin's family contends it was the teen screaming, while Zimmerman's father has said it was his son.

Judge Debra Nelson ruled that the methods used by the experts aren't reliable. But her ruling doesn't prevent the 911 calls from being played at trial.

She reached the decision after hearing arguments that stretched over several days this month on whether to allow testimony from two prosecution experts. One expert ruled out Zimmerman as the screamer and another said it was Martin. Defense experts argued there was not enough audio to determine who the screams are coming from. Zimmerman's attorneys also argued that the state experts' analysis is flawed.

Opening statements are set for Monday in the second-degree murder trial for the former neighborhood watch volunteer who says he fired on the black teenager in self-defense last year. Zimmerman is pleading not guilty.

The elimination of the audio experts will likely shorten the trial by a week. Before the ruling, attorneys had predicted the trial could last two to four weeks after opening statements.

A spokeswoman for prosecutors didn't immediately return an email Saturday.

Audio experts from both sides testified at different times during the hearing, which stretched over three weeks. Voice experts were hired by lawyers and news organizations to analyze the calls, which were made during the confrontation between the two. The experts arrived at mixed conclusions.

In deciding whether to admit the voice-recognition technology used by prosecution audio experts Tom Owen and Alan Reich, Nelson had to determine whether it is too novel or whether it has been accepted by the scientific community at-large.

"There is no evidence to establish that their scientific techniques have been tested and found reliable," the judge said in her ruling.

Owen was hired by the Orlando Sentinel last year to compare a voice sample of Zimmerman with screams for help captured on 911 calls made by neighbors. He said Zimmerman's voice doesn't match the screams. He only compared Zimmerman's voice to the 911 calls because he didn't have a voice sample for Martin at the time.

"The screams don't match at all," Owen testified during the hearing. "That's what tells me the screams aren't George Zimmerman."

Owen also testified that remarks Zimmerman made in a conversation with a police dispatcher aren't a racial slur. He testified Zimmerman said, "These f------ punks."

Reich testified in a report for prosecutors that the screams on the 911 tapes were from Martin, and the defense does not want him to testify at trial.

Reich's analysis also picked up words that other experts couldn't find. They include the words, "This shall be" from Zimmerman and "I'm begging you" from Martin.

Reich's testimony would "confuse issues, mislead the jury," the judge said.

In contrast, a British audio expert testified for the defense that it would be extremely difficult to analyze voices by comparing screaming to a normal voice.

"I've never come across a case in my 13 years where anybody's tried to compare screaming to a normal voice," said audio expert Peter French.

A second audio expert for the defense, George Doddington, also criticized prosecution experts who said Friday that screams and pleas on a 911 recording likely belonged to Martin.

"It's all ridiculous," Doddington said.

___

Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/khightower .

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP .

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/zimmerman-judge-no-testimony-911-call-screams-173730410.html

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Friday, June 7, 2013

Stars don't obliterate their planets (very often)

June 6, 2013 ? Stars have an alluring pull on planets, especially those in a class called hot Jupiters, which are gas giants that form farther from their stars before migrating inward and heating up.

Now, a new study using data from NASA's Kepler Space Telescope shows that hot Jupiters, despite their close-in orbits, are not regularly consumed by their stars. Instead, the planets remain in fairly stable orbits for billions of years, until the day comes when they may ultimately get eaten.

"Eventually, all hot Jupiters get closer and closer to their stars, but in this study we are showing that this process stops before the stars get too close," said Peter Plavchan of NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, Calif. "The planets mostly stabilize once their orbits become circular, whipping around their stars every few days."

The study, published recently in the Astrophysical Journal, is the first to demonstrate how the hot Jupiter planets halt their inward march on stars. Gravitational, or tidal, forces of a star circularize and stabilize a planet's orbit; when its orbit finally become circular, the migration ceases.

"When only a few hot Jupiters were known, several models could explain the observations," said Jack Lissauer, a Kepler scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffet Field, Calif., not affiliated with the study. "But finding trends in populations of these planets shows that tides, in combination with gravitational forces by often unseen planetary and stellar companions, can bring these giant planets close to their host stars."

Hot Jupiters are giant balls of gas that resemble Jupiter in mass and composition. They don't begin life under the glare of a sun, but form in the chilly outer reaches, as Jupiter did in our solar system. Ultimately, the hot Jupiter planets head in toward their stars, a relatively rare process still poorly understood.

The new study answers questions about the end of the hot Jupiters' travels, revealing what put the brakes on their migration. Previously, there were a handful of theories explaining how this might occur. One theory proposed that the star's magnetic field prevented the planets from going any farther. When a star is young, a planet-forming disk of material surrounds it. The material falls into the star -- a process astronomers call accretion -- but when it hits the magnetic bubble around it, called the magnetosphere, the material travels up and around the bubble, landing on the star from the top and bottom. This bubble could be halting migrating planets, so the theory went.

Another theory held that the planets stopped marching forward when they hit the end of the dusty portion of the planet-forming disk.

"This theory basically said that the dust road a planet travels on ends before the planet falls all the way into the star," said co-author Chris Bilinski of the University of Arizona, Tucson. "A gap forms between the star and the inner edge of its dusty disk where the planets are thought to stop their migration."

And yet a third theory, the one the researchers found to be correct, proposed that a migrating planet stops once the star's tidal forces have completed their job of circularizing its orbit.

To test these and other scenarios, the scientists looked at 126 confirmed planets and more than 2,300 candidates. The majority of the candidates and some of the known planets were identified via NASA's Kepler mission. Kepler has found planets of all sizes and types, including rocky ones that orbit where temperatures are warm enough for liquid water.

The scientists looked at how the planets' distance from their stars varied depending on the mass of the star. It turns out that the various theories explaining what stops migrating planets differ in their predictions of how the mass of a star affects the orbit of the planet. The "tidal forces" theory predicted that the hot Jupiters of more massive stars would orbit farther out, on average.

The survey results matched the "tidal forces" theory and even showed more of a correlation between massive stars and farther-out orbits than predicted.

This may be the end of the road for the mystery of what halts migrating planets, but the journey itself still poses many questions. As gas giants voyage inward, it is thought that they sometimes kick smaller, rocky planets out of the way, and with them any chance of life evolving. Lucky for us, our Jupiter did not voyage toward the sun, and our Earth was left in peace. More studies like this one will help explain these and other secrets of planetary migration.

The technical paper is online at http://iopscience.iop.org/0004-637X/769/2/86/ .

NASA Ames manages Kepler's ground system development, mission operations and science data analysis. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., developed the Kepler flight system and supports mission operations with JPL at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore archives, hosts and distributes the Kepler science data. Kepler is NASA's 10th Discovery Mission and is funded by NASA's Science Mission Directorate at the agency's headquarters in Washington.

NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at Caltech manages time allocation on the Keck telescope for NASA. JPL manages NASA's Exoplanet Exploration program office. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information about the Kepler mission is at http://www.nasa.gov/kepler .

More information about exoplanets and NASA's planet-finding program is at http://planetquest.jpl.nasa.gov .

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/space_time/nasa/~3/F4D8N1_w9HE/130606134722.htm

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Erdogan calls for end to Turkey protest

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, waves to the crowd upon his arrival at the Ataturk Airport of Istanbul early Friday, June 7, 2013. Erdogan took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, waves to the crowd upon his arrival at the Ataturk Airport of Istanbul early Friday, June 7, 2013. Erdogan took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

The crowd cheers for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's arrival at the Ataturk Airport of Istanbul early Friday, June 7, 2013. Erdogan took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

The crowd cheers for Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's arrival at the Ataturk Airport of Istanbul early Friday, June 7, 2013. Erdogan took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

A supporter of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan holds a mobile with his portrait upon his arrival at the Ataturk Airport of Istanbul early Friday, June 7, 2013. Erdogan took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his wife Emine wave to the crowd upon their arrival at the Ataturk Airport of Istanbul early Friday, June 7, 2013. Erdogan took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end. (AP Photo/Thanassis Stavrakis)

(AP) ? Turkey's prime minister took a combative stance on his closely watched return to the country early Friday, telling supporters who thronged to greet him that the protests that have swept the country must come to an end.

In the first extensive public show of support since anti-government protests erupted last week, more than 10,000 supporters cheered Recep Tayyip Erdogan with rapturous applause outside Istanbul's international airport.

Despite earlier comments that suggested he could be softening his stand, Erdogan delivered a fiery speech on his return from a four-day trip to North Africa. "These protests that are bordering on illegality must come to an end as of now," he said.

Tens of thousands of protesters have held demonstrations that have spread to dozens of cities across Turkey, sparked by the violent police reaction last Friday to what started out as a small protest against a plan to develop Istanbul's central Taksim Square.

Since then, three people have died ? two protesters and a policeman ? and thousands have been wounded. One protester is on life support in a hospital in Ankara.

Protesters from all walks of life have occupied the square and its park, objecting to what they say is Erdogan's increasingly autocratic and arrogant manner ? charges he vehemently denies.

Turks have been awaiting Erdogan's words upon his return, seeing them as a signal of whether the demonstrations would fizzle or rage on.

Erdogan at times was almost drowned out by his supporters, part of the base that has helped him win three landslide elections. "God is Great," they chanted, and soon moved on to slogans referring specifically to the protesters in Taksim Square.

"Let us go, let us smash them," they shouted. "Istanbul is here, where are the looters?"

Erdogan had initially referred to the protesters as looters and troublemakers, while also acknowledging that excessive police force might have been used, and promising it would be investigated.

Erdogan's speech, delivered from atop an open-air bus outside the airport terminal, appeared at first to be an attempt to strike a unifying note.

"They say I am the prime minister of only 50 percent. It's not true. We have served the whole of the 76 million from the east to the west," he said, referring to his election win in 2011, when he took 50 percent of the vote.

"Together we are Turkey. Together we are brothers," he said, adding "We have never endeavored to break hearts. We are in favor of mending hearts."

But he soon became more combative.

"We have never been for building tension and polarization. But we cannot applaud brutality," he said.

In his last speech in Tunisia before flying to Istanbul, Erdogan had said that terrorist groups were involved in the protests, saying they had been identified.

In a twist, Erdogan implied that bankers were also part of a conspiracy that was fuelling the protests. He added that the flames of dissent had been fanned by other groups too.

"Those who call themselves journalists, artists, politicians, have, in a very irresponsible way, opened the way for hatred, discrimination and provocation," he said.

Speaking before Erdogan's return, Koray Caliskan, professor of political science and international relations at Bosporus University, pointed out that the prime minister was maintaining a hard line because "until now Erdogan had always gained support by increasing the tension in the country."

"Turkey is absolutely at a crossroads. Erdogan won't be able to point at Turkey as a model of democracy anymore," he said.

In his earlier comments in Tunisia, Erdogan acknowledged that some Turks were involved in the protests out of environmental concerns, and said he had "love and respect" for them.

Those comments don't appear to have swayed many of the thousands of protesters who thronged the square for a sixth day Thursday. More than 10,000 others filled a busy street in a middle class area of Ankara.

"I do not believe his sincerity," said protester Hazer Berk Buyukturca.

Turkey's main stock market revealed the fears that Erdogan's comments would do little to defuse the protesters, with the general price index plunging by 8 percent after his comments on concerns that continuing unrest would hit the country's economy.

Over the past week the demonstrations have spread to 78 cities, growing into public venting of what protesters perceive to be Erdogan's increasing arrogance. That includes attempts to impose what many say are restrictive mores on their personal lives, such as how many children to have or whether to drink alcohol.

So far, 4,300 people have been hurt or sought medical attention for the effects of tear gas during the protests, the Turkish Human Rights Foundation said. One person is on life support in Ankara.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said more than 500 police officers had been injured. A total of 746 protests had erupted, causing some 70 million Turkish Lira ($37 million) in damages, he said. Nearly 80 protesters were still hospitalized, and almost all detained protesters had been released.

____

Fraser reported from Ankara. Ezgi Akin in Ankara contributed.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-06-06-Turkey-Protests/id-35b393b2f9a8430c9f09dcea15faaf03

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Sunday, April 28, 2013

White House correspondents' after-dinner jokes: Best zingers from the 'nerd prom'

Saturday night was the annual White House Correspondents? Association dinner. Here are some of the best jokes, plus a menu designed especially for Washington and Hollywood celebrities.

By Brad Knickerbocker,?Staff writer / April 28, 2013

President Barack Obama talks with Michael Clemente, Executive Vice President of Fox News, at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel Saturday in Washington.

Carolyn Kaster/AP

Enlarge

Saturday night?s ?nerd prom? ? officially known as the White House Correspondents? Association annual dinner ? is best known for the celebrities it attracts, a reminder of Henry Kissinger?s quip: "Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac."

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But it?s also a comedy slam of sorts as the M.C. ? late-night TV host Conan O?Brien this year ? and other notables trade quips and barbs over dessert.

(In case you?re wondering, that was a concoction called ?The Galaxy? ? rich chocolate truffle mousse layered with chocolate genoise and almond macaroon; ganache truffle center finished in chocolate glaze, garnished with fresh raspberries It had been preceded by an entr?e of Texas-rubbed petite filet with a calvados demi, paired with duo of jump shrimp seasoned with red curry, roasted haricot verts, baby pepper, patty pan squash, and tasso mache choux risotto. We don?t know about you, but Decoder goes absolutely nuts over roasted haricot verts.)

But back to the rhetorical sweets and savories at the dinner. Here are some of the best, according to a variety of sources:

"It's an honor to share this stage with the president," O?Brien said at the start of his set. "When you think about it the president and I are a lot alike. We both went to Harvard. We both have two children and we both told Joe Biden we didn't have extra tickets for tonight's event."

O?Brien had plenty of zingers for the media. Among them:

?The print media are here for two very good reasons: food and shelter?. The print media still has a big star in Bob Woodward. Earlier the waiter asked if he wanted regular or decaf. And he said, ?Stop threatening me??. TIME will outlive Newsweek the way Juliet outlived Romeo?. MSNBC?s Chris Matthews is here. He has the only show where commercials exist just so they can wipe the spittle off the lens.?

And here?s some of what political junkies said were President Obama?s best jokes:

?The media landscape is changing so rapidly you can't keep up with it. I mean I remember when 'buzzfeed' was just something I did in college around 2 a.m."

"Did you know that Sheldon Adelson spent $100 million of his own money on negative ads [in the 2012 presidential campaign]? You've got to really dislike me to spend that kind of money. Sheldon would have been better off offering me $100 million to drop out of the race. I probably wouldn't have taken it, but I would have thought about it. Michelle would have taken it. You think I'm joking."

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/dFpgN1uh-gI/White-House-correspondents-after-dinner-jokes-Best-zingers-from-the-nerd-prom

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Boston bomb suspect moved; FBI probe shifts focus

BOSTON (AP) ? Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was moved from a hospital to a federal prison medical center while FBI agents shifted the focus of their investigation to how the deadly plot was pulled off and searched for evidence Friday in a landfill near the college he attended.

Tsarnaev, 19, was taken from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was recovering from a throat wound and other injuries suffered during an attempt to elude police last week, and he was transferred to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles from Boston, the U.S. Marshals Service said. The facility, at a former Army base, treats federal prisoners.

"It's where he should be; he doesn't need to be here anymore," said Beth Israel patient Linda Zamansky, who thought his absence could reduce stress on bombing victims who have been recovering at the hospital under tight security.

The FBI's investigation of the April 15 bombing has turned from identification and apprehension of suspects to piecing together details of the plot, including how long the planning took, how it was carried out and whether anyone else knew or was involved.

A federal law enforcement official not authorized to speak on the record about the investigation told The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity on Friday that the FBI was gathering evidence regarding "everything imaginable."

FBI agents picked through a landfill near the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, where Tsarnaev was a sophomore. FBI spokesman Jim Martin would not say what investigators were looking for.

An aerial photo in Friday's Boston Globe showed a line of more than 20 investigators, all dressed in white overalls and yellow boots, picking over the garbage with shovels or rakes.

Investigators also have continued to interview people who were close to Tsarnaev, including two young men from Kazakhstan who were students with him at UMass Dartmouth.

Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev were jailed by immigration authorities the day after Tsarnaev's capture. Kadyrbayev's lawyer, former federal prosecutor Robert Stahl, said the pair, who had partied with Tsarnaev and other students at an off-campus apartment, had nothing to do with the attack and had no idea their friend harbored any violent thoughts.

"These kids are just as shocked and horrified about what happened as everyone else," Stahl said. He said they are being held for violating their student visas by not regularly attending classes and want to return to Kazakhstan as soon as possible.

U.S. officials, meanwhile, said that the bombing suspects' mother had been added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the deadly attack ? a disclosure that deepens the mystery around the Tsarnaev family and marks the first time American authorities have acknowledged that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva was under investigation before the tragedy.

The news is certain to fuel questions about whether President Barack Obama's administration missed opportunities to thwart the marathon bombing, which killed three people and wounded more than 260.

Tsarnaev is charged with joining with his older brother, now dead, in setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs. The brothers are ethnic Chechens from Russia who came to the United States about a decade ago with their parents. Investigators have said it appears that the brothers were angry about the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the investigation, said the CIA had Zubeidat Tsarnaeva's name added to the terror database along with that of her son Tamerlan Tsarnaev after Russia contacted the agency in 2011 with concerns that the two were religious militants.

About six months earlier, the FBI investigated mother and son, also at Russia's request, one of the officials said. The FBI found no ties to terrorism. Previously U.S. officials had said only that the FBI investigated Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

In an interview from Russia, Tsarnaeva said Friday that she has never been linked to terrorism.

"It's all lies and hypocrisy," she said from Dagestan. "I'm sick and tired of all this nonsense that they make up about me and my children. People know me as a regular person, and I've never been mixed up in any criminal intentions, especially any linked to terrorism."

Tsarnaeva faces shoplifting charges in the U.S. over the theft of more than $1,624 worth of women's clothing from a Lord & Taylor department store in Natick in 2012.

Earlier this week, she said she has been assured by lawyers that she would not be arrested if she traveled to the U.S., but she said she was still deciding whether to go. The suspects' father, Anzor Tsarnaev, said that he would leave Russia soon for the United States to visit one son and lay the other to rest.

A team of investigators from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow has questioned both parents in Russia this week, spending many hours with the mother in particular over two days.

Meanwhile, New York's police commissioner said the FBI was too slow to inform the city that the Boston Marathon suspects had been planning to bomb Times Square days after the attack at the race.

Federal investigators learned about the short-lived scheme from a hospitalized Dzhokhar Tsarnaev during a bedside interrogation that began Sunday night and extended into Monday morning, officials said. The information didn't reach the New York Police Department until Wednesday night.

"We did express our concerns over the lag," said police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, who with Mayor Michael Bloomberg had announced the findings on Thursday.

The FBI had no comment Friday.

___

Sullivan reported from Washington. Contributing to this report were Associated Press writers Rodrique Ngowi in Boston, Colleen Long in New York and Pete Yost and Julie Pace in Washington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/boston-bomb-suspect-moved-fbi-probe-shifts-focus-021629955.html

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Touch footy touches down | Surf Coast Times ? Bellarine Times ...

A new football competition has just arrived on the Surf Coast.

Touch football, which started in Australia back in 1923 is still an emerging sport in AFL-mad Victoria, but is fast gaining in popularity as a non-contact sport that is easy to learn and fun to play.

Due to popular demand, the inaugural Surf Coast Touch Football competition has just kicked off, initially comprising nine teams, over 90 players, for both guys and girls. The competition launched last week at Torquay?s Banyul Warri Fields sports precinct, with a friendly game and function.

With many family members playing in the same teams, it promises to be a real family affair, with ages ranging from 15 to 60-plus and an even gender balance between male and female players.

Organised through the Surf Coast Shire recreation facilities team in conjunction with some committed community members, the competition will run every Thursday night over the next 11 weeks until the end of June.

It follows a series of promotional days at the Cowrie Market over the past six months and a recent six-week Come and Try program that aimed to introduce newcomers to the game.

Touch football was initially played as a training technique for rugby league and also as a social game in parks. It became a recognised sport in its own right in 1968 when the first official game of touch took place in Sydney.

By the early 1970s, touch was widely played throughout New South Wales, Queensland and New Zealand. The ensuing 40 years have seen the game?s rapid expansion, particularly across the South Pacific, Europe and the United Kingdom.

This is reflected in the cultural diversity among participants in the inaugural Surf Coast competition, with many having played touch in other countries before moving to the local area.

The game is easy to learn, requires minimal equipment and has a strong social focus, all of which make it suitable for all ages and levels ? beginners are especially welcome. Played over two 20-minute periods, with a five-minute break in between, the game?s highly aerobic nature also appeals to those looking to improve their health and fitness in a fun environment.

The arrival of touch on the Surf Coast adds to the diversity of activities undertaken at Banyul Warri Fields, which have continued to grow since the precinct opened in late 2011, and further enhances its role as a valuable community asset.

For more information or to enquire about touch football on the Surf Coast, contact the Surf Coast Sport and Recreation Centre on 5261 4606 or by email on surfcoastsrc@surfcoast.vic.gov.au.

Source: http://www.surfcoasttimes.com.au/sport/othersport/2013/04/28/touch-footy-touches-down/

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