Canada's newest coin glows in the dark

Invisible during the day, the Pachyrhinosaurus's skeleton glows in the dark

The Royal Canadian Mint just can't sit still. Like a hyperactive kid, it has revamped Canadian cash, first introducing plastic bills and then killing the penny. Now it wants people to play with glow-in-the-dark quarters.

he mint's latest collectible coin features a dinosaur whose skeleton shines at night from beneath its scaly hide.

It's actually two images on one face, which could be a world's first. The other side depicts Queen Elizabeth. Her Majesty does not glow in the dark.

Made of cupronickel, the coin has a face value of 25 cents but is much larger than a regular Canuck quarter.

It shows an artist's rendering of Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai, a 4-ton, 26-foot dinosaur discovered in Alberta in 1972. It's the first in a four-coin series of photo-luminescent prehistoric creatures.

The mint says the skeleton can best be seen after the coin is exposed to sunlight, or to fluorescent or incandescent light for 30-60 seconds, adding that the luminescence won't fade with time.

The glowing novelty is a first for the mint, but sadly it won't be for general circulation.

The dino's mintage is limited to 25,000, and collectors who want to count their dinosaurs at night will have to pony up to the tune of $29.95. Canadian, of course. It launches April 16.

The shiny Pachyrhinosaurus may not be as cool as New Zealand's Star Wars, but at least it can keep you company in the dark.

And if the mint can do something similar for coins in circulation, I might just enjoy wearing wearing holes in my pockets with them.

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Keeping up with the Ridges

Sally and Jaime Ridge garnered plenty of attention at Sonny Bill

New Zealand is to set to get its very own version of hit US TV show Keeping Up with the Kardashians with Sally Ridge and daughter Jaime set to star in their very own reality show.

It's understood Sally and Jaime, 18, will feature in a TV3 show in the vein of the E! Channel hit which has seen millions of viewers worldwide following every moment of the Kardashian clans' made-for-TV lives for the last five years.

When contacted this afternoon Jaime said she had ''no comment to make''.

When asked if that meant the show wasn't happening she repeated the statement.

Media Works today refused to confirm or deny the show would screen.

"There is nothing imminent along these lines, but it's not our policy to comment on what is or isn't in development."

Keeping Up with the Kardashians initially centred around superstar siblings Kim, Kourtney and Khloe and their manager mum Kris. Lesser parts were played by brother Rob, stepfather Bruce Jenner and his children Kendall and Kylie along with Kourtney's long-term boyfriend Scott Disick.

Later the show grew to include the daughters' basketball playing husbands - Khloe is married to Lamar Odom and Kim had a brief 72 day marriage to Kris Humphries - and several spin-off versions of the series were created where the siblings took their luxury lives on the road to other cities - the last being New York. The seventh season is due out shortly.

While the Ridge women don't have the international pull of the Kardashians, there are some comparisons between their socialite lives where celebrity status has come through marriage and good looks.

Kris Kardashian is twice married. Her first husband, Robert, was a famous lawyer who helped defend O.J Simpson. Her current husband is a former decathlon gold medallist.

Sally Ridge was married to former All Black and New Zealand Warriors player Matthew Ridge before she switched sporting codes and took up with former Black Cap Adam Parore.

Daughter, Jaime, was involved with budding New Zealand hockey rep Dwayne Rowsell, then left him heartbroken when she took up with All Black and New Zealand heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Bill Williams.

That relationship was almost as short lived as Kim and Kris' and by New Zealand standards garnered as much publicity.

Like Kris and Kim, Sally and Jaime are inseparable.

When Williams had his February title bout, both mum and daughter were ringside. On Sundays the pair often feature side-by-side in the social pages where Sally has been chaperoning her daughter for years.

And the Ridges, like the Kardashian's who own fashion stores Dash, are also into fashion.

Sally is a former interior designer and owned failed underwear company James & August and her daughter is a model.

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Megaupload file-sharing site shut down

Megaupload charged users a fee to upload large files anonymously

Megaupload, one of the internet's largest file-sharing sites, has been shut down by officials in the US.

The site's founders have been charged with violating piracy laws.

Federal prosecutors have accused it of costing copyright holders more than $500m (£320m) in lost revenue. The firm says it was diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material.

The news came a day after anti-piracy law protests, but investigators said they were ordered two weeks ago.

The US Justice Department said that Megaupload's two co-founders Kim Dotcom, formerly known as Kim Schmitz, and Mathias Ortmann were arrested in Auckland, New Zealand along with two other employees of the business at the request of US officials. It added that three other defendants were still at large.

"This action is among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime," said a statement posted on its website.

In response, hackers targeted the US Department of Justice and FBI websites.

The FBI website is intermittently unavailable due to what officials said was being "treated as a malicious act".

The hackers' group Anonymous said it was carrying out the attacks.
Third-party sites

The charges included copyright infringement, conspiracies to commit racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering.

A federal court in Virginia ordered that 18 domain names associated with the Hong Kong-based firm be seized.

The Justice Department said that more than 20 search warrants had been executed in nine countries, and that approximately $50m in assets had been seized.

It claimed that the accused had pursued a business model designed to promote the uploading of copyrighted works.

"The conspirators allegedly paid users whom they specifically knew uploaded infringing content and publicised their links to users throughout the world," a statement said.

"By actively supporting the use of third-party linking sites to publicise infringing content, the conspirators did not need to publicise such content on the Megaupload site.

"Instead, the indictment alleges that the conspirators manipulated the perception of content available on their servers by not providing a public search function on the Megaupload site and by not including popular infringing content on the publicly available lists of top content downloaded by its users."

Before it was shut down the site posted a statement saying the allegations against it were "grotesquely overblown".

"The fact is that the vast majority of Mega's internet traffic is legitimate, and we are here to stay," it added.

"If the content industry would like to take advantage of our popularity, we are happy to enter into a dialogue. We have some good ideas. Please get in touch."
Blackouts

The announcement came a day after thousands of websites took part in a "blackout" to protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (Pipa).

The US Chamber of Commerce has defended the proposed laws saying that enforcement agencies "lack the tools" to effectively apply existing intellectual property laws to the digital world.

Industry watchers suggest this latest move may feed into the wider debate.

"Neither of the bills are close to being passed - they need further revision. But it appears that officials are able to use existing tools to go after a business alleged to be inducing piracy," said Gartner's media distribution expert Mike McGuire.

"It begs the question that if you can find and arrest people who are suspected to be involved in piracy using existing laws, then why introduce further regulations which are US-only and potentially damaging."

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