Hamburg - The leaves are changing to brown and red tones, a sign that the cold weather months have arrived. 

Gradually, thicker coats are appearing, often wrapped around a man or woman carrying a hot chocolate or cappuccino. The delicious brown tones in those drinks are not just in the paper cups this season. They can also be found in the make-up of the women passers-by, as many cosmetic companies this season feature shades of brown. 

Hamburg - Glittery stars, ornaments piled on ornaments, tinsel and wooden figures: The practice of digging deep into the decoration box will be part of Christmas 
2008. 

People tuned in to tradition are delighted by such displays, while purists are horrified. But Christmas is a time when contrasting worlds of taste collide but still manage to celebrate the holiday peacefully together under the Christmas tree. 

The two conflicting decoration styles seem to have particularly inspired younger designers who have used entirely different forms in their creche and incense smoker creations. 

Washington, October 25 : The world’s oldest cooked cereal, enjoyed by European diners about 8,000 years ago, was prepared instantly just by soaking it in hot water.

The researchers behind this finding have revealed that the ancient cereal, dating from between 5920 to 5730 B. C., consisted of parboiled bulgur wheat that Early Neolithic Bulgarians could refresh in minutes with hot water.

"People boiled the grain, dried it, removed the bran and ground it into coarse particles," Discovery News quoted lead author Soultana-Maria Valamoti, an assistant professor of archaeology at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece, as saying.

Sydney - Westfield Group founder Frank Lowy, whose two great loves are making money from building shopping malls and running the game of football in Australia, reckons the global recession will hit professional sport hard.

Attendances will be down, the dollar-value of television broadcast contracts will fall and clubs will struggle to survive as the turnstiles spin more slowly.

"There's only so much money to go around," the country's richest man and the chairman of its Football Federation said. "I think the world will have to contract, so will sport have to contract, it's as simple as that."

But, as other recessions have shown, it's not as simple at that at all.

Sydney - Some are calling sleep the new s