Hot News Today

Luxurious Condo and Magnificent Ocean’s View at Myrtle Beach

2010-06-28T08:44:00.000-07:00

If you are wondering beach vacation, you have to consider SEASIDE Resort at Myrtle Beach. They have anything you want. This resort is the best resort at Myrtle Beach. They provide the condominiums because they understand that people like you need to be spoiled with great views and luxurious accommodations.

This resort offers sea view from their luxurious condominiums. The pure blue of Atlantic Ocean and Carolina coast can be seen directly from the condominium’s rooms. If you choose to have a vacation at the resort, you will get the famous Myrtle Beach Accommodations. The spacious rooms are available in 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms. You also get living room areas where you can use to accept guests or have a meeting with your colleague or family gathering. Dining room is something available also. All rooms equipped with balcony. You can cook your own foods in the fully equipped kitchen in the room.

If you are interesting, you make Myrtle Beach hotel reservations by online. The site you have to visit is http://www.seasidemb.com. The friendly operators will serve you well. You can also make a reservation by SMS; you can read further information about it when you visit the site. Remember, the resort is waiting for your arrival. You will never find such complete resort in other places.

Jordan Romero The Youngest Everest Climber

2010-05-22T02:58:00.000-07:00

Jordan Romero the Youngest Everest climber - A 13-year-old American boy has become the youngest climber to reach the top of Mount Everest. A spokesman for Jordan Romero says the boy's team called by satellite phone from the summit of the world's highest peak on Saturday. The previous record for the youngest climber to scale Everest had been held by Temba Tsheri of Nepal. He reached the peak at age 16. Romero was climbing Everest with a team that included his father and three Sherpa guides. He left for the peak from the base camp on the Chinese side of the mountain. Romero has been on a quest to climb the highest peaks on all seven continents.

Update from the team of Jordan Romero: Everything is going super well and they may attempt to summit today. They are currently at Step 1.

Bret Michaels Back in Hospital: He is a Rocker Who Suffers ‘Warning Stroke’

2010-05-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Bret Michaels Back in Hospital? Yes, read the story below. According to doctors, an Ultrasound Bubble test of Michaels' heart was then done, and they found a hole in his heart described as a Patent Forum Ovale. Wow! It’s surprising new for his fans, sometimes It’s hard to believe isn’t? It was only a couple of days ago that Bret Michaels’ fans were watching him chat to talk show legend Oprah Winfrey about his recovery from the massive brain hemorrhage he suffered. But now the news has reached us that the rocker is unfortunately back in hospital.

The new health woes come just days before Bret was to make an appearance at Sunday's live finale of 'Celebrity Apprentice,' where he's in one of the final two competitors vying for the show's title.
Bret’s physician, Joseph Zabramski, said that the hole in the heart diagnosis was “devastating news to Bret and his family.” He also said: “The good news is that it is operable and treatable, and we think we may have diagnosed the problem that caused the transient ischemic attack.”

Michaels' neurosurgeon, Dr. Joseph Zabramski, said, "There is no doubt that the positive Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) is devastating news to Bret and his family. The good news is that it is operable and treatable and we think we may have diagnosed the problem that caused the Transient Ischemic Attach (TIA) or warning stroke."

Zabramski says that he's well aware Michaels planned on attending the New York City finale and even getting back on the road to play concerts in the near future, but now adds: "Bret's brain and body are not quite 100 percent yet, especially with the hole found in his heart. Further tests will be conducted throughout the week and I will have more information next week as to how this Patent Foramen Ovale (PFO) will be treated. For now, Bret will be treated with outpatient care which includes a daily injection of Lovenox (a blood thinner to reduce the chance of blood clots) and blood tests.

Hopefully the information about Bret Michaels so far so good and applicable, thanks for stopping by.

See you in the next post in Hot New Today Blog!

Miss Universe S3x Tape Revealed: Must See!

2009-11-17T20:47:00.000-08:00

Miss universe s3x tape booming allover the web instantly, Miss universe s3x tape showing a threesome between Miss Universe Japan, Miss Universe Trinidad and Tabago, and a third party is quickly being spread across the internet.

The “s3x tape” allegedly shows Hiroko Mima (Miss Universe Japan 2008) and Anya Ayoung-Chee (Miss Universe Trinidad and Tobago 2008) getting up close and personal with each other, and a man identified as Anya’s boyfriend Wyatt Gallery.

The story is just hitting the media in Japan, and Miss Universe organizers don’t want to know about it, saying the tape “was apparently [taken] eight months after the pageant and neither were the reigning titleholder. The photographer is NOT a Miss Universe staffer so we have nothing to say or any involvement.” If you absolutely can’t resist, you can view the Miss Universe s3x tape here. Actually i don't like to put this link at my site, but it's fine :-)

Droid Phone Review

2009-11-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

It's hard to look at the droid verizon motorola smartphone without looking at the company which brought the device to life. Motorola: for years the name has been synonymous with... well, disappointment. While the industry-stalwart made cellphones sexy with the RAZR, the days which followed have not been especially fruitful or compelling. Over the past year or so, we've seen Motorola beating its way back into the mainstream through a series of smart plays: first embracing Android as a platform, then shucking off the weight of Windows Mobile and finally bringing some desirable (and high profile) devices to market.

With the DROID, the company has perhaps created its most attractive and intriguing piece of technology yet. Forging an alliance with both Verizon and Google, Motorola has come up with a second compelling reason to count the phonemaker down, but certainly not out, while the other two giants have finally found a seemingly worthy device to position against the iPhone. So we must pose these questions: is this the phone which will catapult Android into the mainstream? Is it the device that will pull Motorola back from the brink? And -- most importantly -- is it the lynchpin Google and Verizon have needed to challenge the leader in mindshare in the smartphone market? After putting the device through its paces, we think we can give you the answers you seek -- so read on to find out!
You can continue reading complete droid verizon motorola smartphone review at Engadget. It's a complete review i tell you, so happy reading!

Camel Ammo

2009-11-10T07:05:00.000-08:00

Camel Ammo – Celebrities inspire many things in fashion, but this is product that came to be not because of the positive fashion trends demonstrated by people in the limelight, but by the rising number of celebs appearing on magazines with an unfortunate fashion mishap; the camel toe!

Camel Ammo – Celebrities inspire many things in fashion, but this is one product that came to be not because of the positive fashion trends demonstrated by people in the limelight, but by the rising number of celebs appearing on magazines with an unfortunate fashion mishap; the camel toe!

In order to fight frontal wedgies and one of the top fashion faux-pas, two women came together to create Camel Ammo, a liner that fits into the lining of women’s panties so that they can wear the skinniest jeans without baring it all for the world to see. The fashion saver is a simple, eco-friendly piece of fabric, and it thanks its funny concept for making its success. On their website, many fashion lovers purchased the Camel Ammo on a whim as a joke, but have since written Testimonials to claim that funny or not, the Camel Ammo is a crucial item for women who love fashion.

Camel Ammo is “waging war on the front lines” and helping women across the world to remain discreet while showing off the rest of their goods!

Maclaren Stoller Recall

2009-11-09T08:59:00.000-08:00

News broke a couple of days ago that Maclaren were to issue a stroller recall, it is thought that more than one million strollers will be recalled. Stroller maker Maclaren is expected to recall about 1 million umbrella strollers sold in the U.S. since 1999, according to the report. The move comes after 12 children reportedly had their fingertips amputated by the strollers.

"Parents should stop using these strollers right away," a source familiar with the recall told the newspaper.

Maclaren, which dubs itself as "a premier British parenting lifestyle company that produces the world's most safe, durable, innovative and stylish baby buggies and strollers," is planning to provide a free kit to cover the stroller's hinge mechanism, the newspaper reported.

The affected models include Volo, Triumph, Quest Sport, Quest Mod, Techno XT, Techno XLR, Twin Triumph, Twin Techno and Easy Traveller. The voluntary recall is being conducted in cooperation with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

In a press release, the company said: "Safety is our first priority and through this voluntary effort we urge consumers to contact us immediately to obtain the kit which consists of hinge covers designed specifically to fit all Maclaren strollers."

This is what i just read about a couple hours ago.Copy link below to your browser to read more about Recall http://www.maclarenbaby.com/us/content/view/88573/98889729/lang,en/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,573128,00.html?test=latestnews

Deaf Actress Marlee Matlin Was on the Family Guy Presents Seth & Alex’s Almost Live Comedy Show

2009-11-09T02:49:00.000-08:00

Like i told you in previous post about Marlee Matlin, i will write about Marlee Matlin again. So let's read Alex Borstein who makes fun of Marlee Martin's speaking voice (a gag on Family Guy) sang Lady Gaga's Poker Face (which is now stuck in my head). In the middle of it, Marlee Matlin came on acting all pissed off, which was obviously scripted. Anyways, she came onto the stage, yelled at them , walked off and on her way walking off the stage, she pulled a tablecloth off of the table where someone was sitting at. Yeah, it was funny hah?

A too-long gag in which Borstein made fun of Marlee Matlin’s speaking voice was also rendered considerably less than scandalous by the fact that Matlin was allowed to come onstage and rip into the hosts. And in the youtube clip she did state that she loves the Family Guy and would voice her actual voice in a second. life is short, enjoy it.

Marlee Matlin's Book Must Read!

2009-11-09T00:43:00.000-08:00

The American actress Marlee Matlin has decided to tell all her love story in her new book. The book has some glimpses of her relationship with the Hollywood actor William Hurt. Moreover it reveals some shocking incidents in their romance too. Marlee Matlin will expose her romance in this book.

Well, after two years that they had dated Marlee Matlin revealed that she had new business in everyday. In her book 'I'll Scream Later' Matlin claims that she had been in a physically abusive relationship with actor William Hurt. She describes a turbulent and violent courtship and one abusive fight in which she claims Hurt threw her on a bed and ripped her clothes off while she sobbed, “No, no, no. Please Bill, no.” Even though she was scared of her boyfriend, she loved him.

During the two years that they had dated, the actress revealed that she had new bruises every day. There were a lot of unpleasant things happened around. Matlin said that Hurt was battling alcoholism at the time and she was addicted to cocaine.

Marlee Matlin feel'n so wrapped up in her world and her drugs. She was just 19 years at that time and had no friends. She believes that the drugs took over her life!. She need a changes indeed.

Okay, this is about her new book and for those Marlee Matlin fans i suggest you to hunt her book If you have not purchased it. For next post it still related to Marlee Matlin about, so stay tune to get the updated from me. See you in the next post in this blog! :-)

Kimberly Munley Wounded But Hailed as Hero Today

2009-11-06T10:25:00.000-08:00

Kimberly Munley is the civilian police officer who arriving first on the scene of the Foort Hood shootings. Based today report she shot Malik Nadal 4 times and now Kimberly Munley is being hailed as a hero. The base's top commander, Lieutenant General Bob Cone, credited her with stopping the shooting rampage that killed 13 people despite being wounded herself. Cone added that Munley and her partner responded within three minutes of reported gunfire on Thursday afternoon.

Kimberly Munley had been directing traffic moments before she confronted the gunman. Base officials lauded an officer, Kimberly Munley, who shot the gunman and was wounded herself.

"She happened to encounter the gunman. In an exchange of gunfire, she was wounded but managed to wound him four times," Cone said. "It was an amazing and aggressive performance by this police officer."

Kimberly Munley responded to reports of gunfire in the area with her partner. She rushed inside a building, saw Hasan rounding a corner. She was standing only "a few feet" from Hasan. She opened fire and took him down. Hasan fired on her and wounded her.

Thursday evening from the hospital, Munley was able to make phone calls.

Lt. General Robert Cone praised Sgt. Kimberly Munley's rapid response:

"It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer," Cone said.

Cone said Munley's aggressive response training taught her that "if you act aggressively to take out a shooter you will have less fatalities."

"She walked up and engaged him," he said. He praised her as "one of our most impressive young police officers."

The short background on Nadal Malik Hasan is that he is in the hospital on a ventilator and unconscience. He is a devout American-born Muslim. His name is his birth name. He is a Major in the U.S. Army and a psychiatrist who spent numerous years treating wounded troops at Walter Reed Army hospital in Washington, D.C. where he received a poor performance review from his commanding officer. He was transferred to Ft. Hood in June 2009.

Hasan has never served overseas but was due to deploy to Iraq in late November. The Major made many comments about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and some who knew him and work with him said he was against the wars, and said Muslims should stand up against the "aggressors," meaning allied forces. He was under investigation by the Army at the time of the shootings.

Malik Nadal Hasan Identified as Killer

2009-11-05T19:36:00.000-08:00

The shooter responsible for 11 deaths and at least 31 injuries has been identified as Malik Nadal Hasan, according to World News with Charles Gibson. Malik Nadal Hasan was an Army Major, a doctor at Fort Hood, one doctor among many who gave medical evaluation to soldiers who were soon to be deployed to Iraq.

It was first believed that there could be as many as three shooters involved in the Fort Hood tragedy. Malik Nadal Hasan, who was shot and killed and two other soldiers who were in custody. The two in custody have now been released. It is believed that Malik Nadal Hasan was the only one involved in the Fort Hood shootings.

Motive as to why the newly promoted Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan would open fire at Fort Hood is unclear at this time. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson reported to 'Fox News' that Malik Nadal Hasan was to be deployed to Iraq in the near future and he did not want to go. There was speculation that Malik Nadal Hasan may have been of Muslim faith, but it has been confirmed that Malik Nadal Hasan was a native of Jordan, therefore unlikely a convert.

Live by the Creed; Assassins Part 1

2009-11-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

Spike TV with Ubisoft announced right now/today that the Assassin’s Creed: Lineage short film will be aired on Spike TV, on Wednesday, November 11th, at Midnight. Originally hosted on Youtube, you can watch it below, if you won’t wait ’til 11th.

Assassin’s Creed: Lineage is developed by Hybride Technologies, the studio behind 300 and Sin City. The short film combines live-action and CGI to create an introduction to Assassin’s Creed II, centering around Giovanni Auditore da Firenze, father of Ezio Firenze, and flesh out the backstory to the events that lead to the game.

Short description: The Duke of Milan is murdered, and assassin Giovanni Auditore is sent to investigate. He attempts to thwart a conspiracy that threatens to implicate all of the prominent families of Italy, including the Vatican itself.
Watch it below for those who can’t be patience. Enjoy it!

Dexter Season 4 Episode 6 Must Watch!

2009-11-02T02:32:00.000-08:00

Dexter is one of the excellent television shows that comprise suspense, mystery and crime. I’m sure you must have enjoyed the last episode of it and the suspense continues with the upcoming show. Dexter Season 4 Episode 6 is set to air on Sunday November 1 2009 at 9:00 PM on Showtime. “If I Had a Hammer” is the title given to Dexter season 4 episode 6, wow, isn’t it interesting? Of course it is, so make sure you catch the episode to know why there was a need for Hammer.

Dexter season 4 episode 6 – Synopsis

In Dexter season 4 episode 6, Dexter works to stay ahead of Trinity investigation. In the meantime an unexpected source offers suggestion on the rasping between Rita and Dexter. There is lot more fun waiting on the actual episode “If I Had a Hammer”, so it is a must watch for all the Dexter fans!

When is Daylight Savings Fall 2009?

2009-11-01T09:17:00.000-08:00

When is Daylight Savings Fall 2009? The date for Daylight Savings fall back originally was the last Sunday of October. But two years ago the day we do our time change … changed.

Daylight Savings Fall 2009 clock change is November 1, 2009 … today!

The Daylight Savings fall back is no longer the last Sunday of October. Instead it’s now the first Sunday of November. For 2009, that date is today.

You next clock change is not until March. Clocks are changed the second Sunday in March each year. For 2010, that date will be March 14 2010.

The notion of changing clocks back and forth during a calendar year is believed originated by the Romans. During Romans times, historians believed citizens were told to use different clocks with different time settings throughout different parts of the year. Today’s modern use ofDaylight Savings time derives from the work of George Vernon Hudson in 1895.

And whereas society has come to refer to the date as “Daylight Savings Time”, the correct name is “Daylight Saving Time”.

Laura Bush Killed a Guy

2009-10-30T00:25:00.000-07:00

Lady Laura Bush or Laura Welch killed a guy in car accident Michael Douglas on Nov. 5, 1963, at 8 p.m., when she was 17 years old. Laura Bush killed a guy when driving east on Farm Road 868 with her best friend Judy Dykes to a party and the two ladies were talking about fashion when her car collided with Douglas’ Jeep. Mike Douglas, also 17, was thrown from the vehicle, he broke his neck, and died instantly.
Dan Harris, who witnessed the accident said:

“She didn’t see him, he didn’t see her.”

Laura’s best friend Beverly Girdley added:

“It was a terrible accident.”

Michael Douglas was star athlete at Laura Bush High School, he was excelling In track and football, he was the best player in school. He was nominated as the most popular boy in high school. Some people said that Laura was drinking, but police report said that the car speed reach 50 Mph at the time of the accident, the limit on that road was 55 Mph.

It is sad accident but that the fact and real story from Laura Bush this news released by Family Gay episode, the Boy’s family becomes so sad after hear this sad story. I want to show you the video; unfortunately the video has been removed.

The Office Subtle Sexuality

2009-10-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

Several employees of "The Office Subtle Sexuality" will be dressed up in costume Thursday, and not just for the show's Halloween episode.

Thursday also brings the debut of the show's latest webisodes. They're called "Subtle Sexuality," which is also the name of the girl band Kelly (Mindy Kaling) forms with receptionist Erin (Ellie Kemper). Together they record a song called "Male Primadonna," and the webisodes will chronicle the making of the video, "Behind the Music"-style.

Kaling, who also directed the webisodes (it's her first time at the helm), says she figures Kelly has auditioned for "American Idol" a few times but never got very far, so she decides to take matters into her own hands. As with most things that occupy Kelly's mind, "Male Primadonna" is about Ryan (B.J. Novak), and she enlists him to do a rap in the middle of the song. Andy (Ed Helms) tries to horn his way into the production as well.

You can watch the making-of video. "Subtle Sexuality" will debut on NBC.com on Thursday (Oct. 29).

Michael Jackson Autopsy Photo Leaked

2009-10-29T07:56:00.000-07:00

Today is a very surprising day for me, Why? Because the Michael Jackson autopsy death photo was leaked by a “high ranking police friend” to a Los Angeles restaurant owner. Now he has stored the Michael Jackson autopsy photo in his BlackBerry. Why a restaurant owner has the purported photo anyway, and who he is, is unclear. Moreover how a “police friend” got access to the photo remains unanswered.

Gerald Posner the reporter of The Daily Beast spoke that he is received a phone call from someone that allegedly has the latest king of Pop Michael Jackson photograph on the autopsy table. Posner are pretty sure that latest image of Michael Jackson “was not a Cell phone picture” because “quality was far too good” for the mobile phone camera.
The details are profiled in a report this week that an online writer received a telephone tip about the photo’s owner. What does the photo show? The viewer described the photo as "shocking." It is Jackson with his eyes wide open, shaved skull, shaven head, eyebrows tattooed, skin ashen in color, lips flat without makeup, showing a scar on left cheek, lying on his back on a metal autopsy table. The picture was taken at a 30-degree angle toward the left side of the corpse. My god it’s creepy, can’t imagine. The angle the alleged position of the cameraman is 30 degrees to the left. Beyond the telephone tip, a British tabloid editor told to Posner the photo could demand at least a $1 million sale price.

In my opinion publishing someone's death photo is very disgusting and disrespectful. Who really needs to see autopsy photos of a dead Michael Jackson anyway? How about you?

Watch MLB World Series 2009 Online

2009-10-28T21:02:00.000-07:00

Do you want to watch MLB World Series 2009 live online? Yes i do, LOL. Alright, the game is on for the Major League Baseball will be having a exciting seven matches for the Philadelphia Phillies vs New York Yankees. I think you should not miss to watch World Series live stream with the TV schedule and start time as follows:

MLB World Series TV Schedule: Yankees vs Phillies
Game 1: October 28, Wednesday at 7:57PM ET
Game 2: October 29, Thursday at 7:57PM ET
Game 3: October 31, Saturday at 7:57PM ET
Game 4: November 1, Sunday at 8:20PM ET
Game 5: November 2, Monday at 7:57PM ET
Game 6: November 4, Wednesday at 7:57PM ET
Game 7: November 5, Thursday at 7:57PM ET

2009 World Series TV Broadcast Schedule
United States (USA): Fox, Fox Sports en Espanol
- United Kingdom (UK): ESPN UK, ESPN America
- Australia: Fox Sports and One HD
- Canada: RSN, RDS
- Dominican Republic and Costa Rica: ESPN Latin America
- Mexico: Televisa
- Japan: NHK, J Sports
- China: ESPN Star Sports and FTV
- Venezuela: Meridiano TV, ESPN Latin America and Fox Sports

How to watch World Series Baseball online free live streaming video?
Aside from you can watch the game live on TV broadcast, you can also witness it on Sopcast, JustinTV, UStream, Hulu, and other video sharing websites. However, take note that online streaming is mostly illegal, that's why many live videos often shut down even while playing. Thus, if you stay at home or in front of your TV, it is still best to watch sports on TV. Think wisely to choose an option.

Keni Thomas

2009-10-28T20:20:00.000-07:00

Keni Thomas has the esteemed honor of singing the national anthem at the opening game of the 40th World (on Oct. 28). Keni Thomas the country singer, who served in the U.S. Army throughout the 90s, will perform in tribute to his fellow American heroes.

"As a veteran, it's a privilege and an honor to be part of Major League Baseball's tribute to veterans, and to represent country music," he says.

Among Keni's many missions as a U.S. Army Ranger and Staff Sergeant was the deadly Battle of Mogadishu, which was immortalized in the book and movie, 'Black Hawk Down.' Since leaving active duty, the singer has dedicated much of his time and money to help veterans and their families. Keni's will perform at the national anthem before the New York Yankees take on Philadelphia Phillies in the best-of-seven opener.

Rocko Rapper With Monica Arnold's Show

2009-10-28T06:44:00.000-07:00

Are you Rocko Rapper and Monica Arnold's fan? If that's true i got a great news for you and for all Monica Arnold's and Rocko Rapper fan in all over the world. Yeah, Monica's documentary on her life will be aired on BET Channel from yesterday October 27. This will be called "Monica: Still Standing" and of course she will sing her best songs "Still Standing". This show will be unforgettable moment for her fans.

The name of the show bear a significance as Monica Arnold is still standing after her personal tragedies.
Monica Denise Arnold , professionally known as Monica, is an American R&B singer, songwriter, and occasional actress. She was born in October 24, 1980 in Atlanta, Georgia.
Following a major success with “The Boy Is Mine“, a duet with singer Brandy, and a same-titled second album in 1998, a series of hit records established her position as one of the most successful urban R&B female vocalists to emerge in the mid-to late 1990s.

Monica Arnold has also achieved fame for appearing in several film and television productions, including supporting roles in big screen motion pictures Boys and Girls (2000) and ATL (2006) and a starring role in the MTV Films telefilm Love Song (2000).

In 2000, Monica Arnold’s boyfriend Jarvis Weems killed himself before Monica. Weems was her childhood friend and a local drug dealer. On July 18, 2000, Monica and Weems were going to a cemetery to visit the grave of Troy Weems, the younger brother of Jarvis, died in a car accident.On the way, all on a sudden , Jarvis Weems pulled out a gun and shot himself in the car.

Monica thought the reason behind Weem’s suicide was depression over his affair. From 2001 to 2003 Monica was dating Corey “C-Murder” Miller who was later arrested in a murder case. It was not a successful relationship. Now Rocko Rapper is fiance of R&B singer Monica. Monica Arnold was engaged to Rocko on December 24, 2007.

Rocko is Rodney Hill, Jr, an American rapper from Atlanta, Georgia. He is signed to So So Def/Island Urban through his own Rocky Road Records imprint. His debut album, Self-Made, was released on March 18, 2008. The album sold nearly 28,000 copies in its first week of release. Monica and Rocko have two children, Rodney III and Romello, who is named after Monica’s younger brother.

R&B singer Monica celebrated her 29th birthday Friday night (Oct 23) at Atlanta’s popular nightspot Luckie Food Lounge. Atlanta’s V-103 radio station, along with her close friends and family.
Monica dealt with lots of personal tribulations including the suicide of her boyfriend, and a tumultuous relationship with former fiance Corey “C-Murder” Miller. She had also gone through an unsuccessful period when her third and fourth albums All Eyez on Me (2002) and After the Storm respectively flopped badly. Monica then released her fifth studio album, The Makings of Me in October 2006.

Monica’s sixth album Still Standing will release on December 9th, but in the meantime you can take a look at her on her new BET reality series Monica : Still Standing after the Hip Hop Awards. Monica is still standing in spite of the disastrous incidents took place in her life. She has got an enviable mental strength which we hope, will uplift her always.

Lazio President Piero Marazzo Resign

2009-10-28T02:51:00.000-07:00

Is it true Lazio President Piero Marrazzo resign? What’s the reason? Before I answer this question, it think it’s a good idea if I write a short description about Piero Marazzo, Here we go. Piero Marazzo is the son of Giuseppe Marrazzo (a field journalist noted for his investigations on mafia) and Italian-American Luigia Spina, Piero Marrazzo (born in Rome on July 29, 1958) served as the President of Lazio, one of the twenty regions of Italy, from 2005 to 2009.

Piero Marrazzo was a political activist during his youth, leading towards reformist socialism, and obtained a degree in jurisprudence. He went on to become a prominent TV journalist, working for twenty years for RAI, on programmes such as TG2 and TG3, heading the Tuscany journalistic department of RAI, working with Giovanni Minoli (on programmes such as "Cronaca in Diretta", "Drugstories", and "Format"), and finally becoming the anchorman for eight consecutive years of "Mi Manda Rai Tre", for which he is most remembered. In November 2004 he left his job to run for presidency of Lazio as the candidate of centre-left coalition L'Unione; he won the April 2005 regional elections attracting 50.7% of votes.

A prominent opposition politician embroiled in a scandal over his alleged encounter with a transsexual prostitute resigned his high-profile job on Tuesday as head of the region that includes Rome. Piero Marrazzo has said he made mistakes and that he had been living a "nightmare" since the encounter in July in a Rome apartment. Four policemen have been arrested for allegedly attempting to blackmail the 51-year-old Marrazzo, who is married and has three daughters.

"My personal condition of extreme suffering makes my stay at the helm of the region not longer useful for the Lazio citizens," Marrazzo said in a statement announcing his resignation. He said the resignation was "final and irrevocable". He also maintained that he had always acted for the good of his citizens, "whatever personal mistakes I may have committed in my private life".

In previous statements, he had admitted to "weaknesses". Marrazzo had already handed over his responsibilities to his deputy last weekend, after the scandal broke. Media reports say there is a video evidence, though the video has not been publicly seen. You may search on search engine if there was, Marrazzo said he wrote three cheques to the alleged blackmailers, although they weren't cashed. He said he did not go to the police out of fear and shame.

The scandal was the latest blow to the already weak Democratic Party, the main opposition force to Premier Silvio Berlusconi's conservatives. Marrazzo has suspended his membership in the party, but the scandal has overshadowed the election of a new party leader in a primary vote this weekend. Media reports said Tuesday that Marrazzo, seeking to drop out of the public eye, wanted to spend some time at a Benedictine monastery or some other religious institute near the capital. His whereabouts were not made public. I hope you may get calm and rest from your trouble or scandal you had made.

Brooke Hundley and Steve Philips Affair

2009-10-27T11:31:00.000-07:00

Brooke Hundley, Brooke Hundley and Brook Hundley plus Steve Philips. Yups, that names are very familiar lately. Whats going on? Just kidding. You already know isn’t?. But I want to write about Brooke Hundley, but let’s started with Steve Philips.

Steve Phillips has lost his job as ESPN has said that he is not competent for the high profile job at the ESPN. He was a senior analyst at the ESPN and reportedly drew a very high salary from the broadcaster.
From the latest news I read, Steve Philips is reportedly going to spend some time at a rehabilitation center following the reports started making headlines about his wayward life.

His relationship with Brook Hundley seems to have given a big blow to former Mets general manager’s professional and personal life. His wife has separated and there is a real danger that he may lose the custody of his kids. Phillips has apologized for his wayward behavior to his coworkers and his family. But he should apologize more to his wife who has suffered tremendously from his long term sexual relationship with Brook Hundley.

Below is Broke Hundley photo info, check it out.

Who is Brooke Hundley? Brooke Hundley is the 22-year-old ESPN production assistant who had a sexual relationship with ESPN analyst Steve Phillips and then sent Phillips' wife a letter detailing their relationship. She's young, ambitious and eager to please. She is a 2008 graduate of Ithaca College - but her resume already includes stops at HBO, ABC, NBC Sports and the 24-hour sports network.

"Networking is not sucking up," Hundley wrote two years ago to her dean at Ithaca's Park School of Communications. "You never know who you will need help from further down the road ... so be nice, and get to know everybody." The 22-year-old's resume cites a variety of job skills, from sports media to breaking news. But Hundley found herself in the headlines over an alleged affair with Phillips, an ESPN baseball analyst. She reportedly blabbed about the affair to Phillips' wife, Marni, in a letter and may have contacted one of the couple's young sons. Phillips, 46, has been suspended by ESPN for a week and Marni has filed for divorce. Despite the sudden and unwanted attention, Hundley's MySpace page listed her mood Wednesday as "hopeful."

She is make me very Curious Who is the woman at the center of the latest media sex scandal? Her Facebook page reveals that she is a 2008 graduate of Ithaca College. Her LinkedIn page says she interned for Warner Brothers and ABC Studios and worked on the Olympics for NBC Sports before joining ESPN, and describes her experience as follows:

Media professional experienced in television production with broad knowledge and experience in live events, scripted shows, comedy, sports, documentaries and online content. Extensive knowledge in new and emerging technologies especially in social networks, and their successful integration into broadcast as well as complementary roles to existing programs to increase viewership.

When you look at the picture above, what do you think about them? are they harmonious or ~~sucks~~ what? Well that's all, see you in the next post on Hot News Today blog!

Top Ten Broadband in UK

2009-10-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

This article will displays the best Top 10 Broadband land-line or fixed-line providers in the UK, as voted by readers of ISPreview. Top 10 Broadband Awards were held in London yesterday. Talk less do more, okay here it is:
1. Fast.co.uk
2. Naims

3. ICUK
4. SurfAnyTime
5. Aquiss
6. Vispa'
7. IDNet
8. Zen Internet
9. UKFSN
10. TitanADSL

So who is the 1st winner at top 10 broadband awards? The winner is Plusnet. Yes, Plusnet impressed the judges with their value broadband package at just £5.99 a month, cheap price but high in quality indeed.

The top10 broadband awards judges examined the monthly costs associated with each of the nominated broadband providers and paid close attention to the extras included in the packages. On awarding the prize for Best Value Home Broadband, the Top10 judges said: “At just £5.99 a month, Plusnet Value offers the best value home broadband on the market”.

“Good value is not just about the price on the box and Plusnet’s Value Broadband package includes all the trimmings with a free wireless router, 24/7 support, free set up and broadband firewall and spam protection. Plusnet show that there’s more to value than upfront costs.” Now you know the best broadband in low cost but high in quality, so which one you choose?

Nook Electronic eBook Reader

2009-10-26T02:42:00.000-07:00

Nook is a new electronic book reader. This Nook eBook reader is a chain Barnes & Noble product. The bookstore chain Noble and Barnes in New York presented its first electronic reader, a device with a color dual screen (3.5-inch) called Nook and the price is $ 259. Aims to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.

Noble and Barnesis the latest company to join the e-book phenomenon dominated by Kindle, will have the Google Android operating system, which will enable users to purchase paid work also borrow books. Initially it has a catalog of more than one million eBooks.

Although the company had kept secret Nook features until the official presentation, the The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal gave details from the info given by Barnes & Noble to advertise on their pages.

With a price that is equal to the Kindle now-after being dropped repeatedly, the Nook has major developments such as color display and allow users to find their titles without a problem. The screen on this model, which includes a touch pad, works with the same technology used by the reader from Amazon and other similar devices called “electronic ink” that facilitates the electronic readout. The device supports the downloading of books, newspapers and other publications over a wireless net connection.

Nook users have access to more than one million electronic books through digital store the company launched last July, the first that integrates works without copyright restrictions that Google has digitized. Titles that Barnes & Noble sells on the site is also compatible with various electronic readers, as well as so-called smart phones, like Apple’s iPhone or Blackberry phones, but are not available for the Sony Reader, nor for the Amazon Kindle.

That's all , wait for the next latest news on this hot news today blog.

Droid Verizon Motorola Smart Phone

2009-10-25T11:08:00.000-07:00

Droid Verizon Motorola Smart Phone are booming all over the web. Many internet users search all about Droid Verizon phone reviews or photos. Droid Verizon phone picture below shows Droid is possibly running Android 2.0. The Droid picture, latest picture that we know as u also can see below the buttons at the base don’t match the other shots, it means that it could be a prototype or artist rendering. Interested?

Here are Features that Motorola Droid Verizon Phone had:

QWERTY Keyboard, PDA-PC Sync , Java Enabled, MMS Enabled, GPS, Wi-Fi Capable, 3G Data Capable, Bluetooth Enabled, Color Screen, Video Recording, Video Streaming, Touch Screen, Internet Browser, Email Access, SMS-Text Messaging, Calendar, Polyphonic Ringtones, Speakerphone, MP3 Player, Voice-Activated Dialing, USB Interface and of course and absolutely Warranty the first.

Well now below I mentioned about Motorola Droid Verizon Phone Specifications plus the picture:

It’s on Verizon.
Droid will have a slide-out physical keyboard.
It will run Google Android 2.0 (its still possibly).
It’s a powerful TI OMAP3430 processor (it is same as the iPhone and Palm Pre and not the sluggish Qualcomm 528MHz ARM11 that’s in currentDroid phones).
Droid verizon phone will have widgets, a nod to the CLIQ’s Motoblur interface.
With number 5 specs im pretty sure it will have multitasking.
Droid verizone phone will have a replaceable battery.
5 megapixel camera with a flash.
speech recognition capabilities.
Its touchscreen is expected to be 3.7-inches, 480×854 pixels; WVGA+.
It’s expected to have 256MB RAM.
It’s expected to ship with a 16GB microSD card but will support larger capacities.
It’s expected to have a GPS receiver.
It’s expected to have a 1400 mAh battery.
Its dimensions will be 4.6 in. wide, 2.3 in. tall, 0.54 in. thick, and will weigh a hefty 6.0 oz.
And It’s expected release in November.

As you can see, there is many "It expected" word in list specifications of Droid Verizon phone above. It Means i didn't know exactly Droid Verizon Motorola Smart Phone had specifications that i already mention about, it was just possibly. But i hope this phone have all that specifications. In this case, i will not accept if list number 16 are failed because I'm waiting for that month.

Who The Winner Of Celebrity Apprentice 2

2009-10-24T21:34:00.000-07:00

The Celebrity Apprentice at this year been a long journey drama, Celebrity apprentice would be the hottest topics on the internet till now. You might didn’t remember anymore when it starts and the end. Now I will tell you who the winner of The Celebrity Apprentice 2. Yes, the winner is Joan Rivers. Hooray!! I’m happy because I want she won the Celebrity Apprentice 2 and it happen.

Well, here a bit drama, Joan Rivers beat off the poker player Annie Duke on the three-hour live finale at Sunday night. She truly work hard to beat Annie Duke and It wasn't easy win of course, the finale challenge which had the only two contenders raise money
for their respective charities by selling Cirque du Soleil tickets and providing a pre-show VIP party saw Annie way ahead in earnings than Joan. While Annie also won props for integrating her charity well with the challenge, Joan took home points for attracting bigger celebrities and integrating another sponsor, Kodak, into the fore better.

In the end and after countless arguments, Donald Trump applauded Annie for doing a good job throughout, but highlighted Joan being a role model for many people. Then he fired Annie and named Joan Rivers the Celebrity Apprentice for this year. In this case Joan eventually raised $150,830 for the charity she supports, God's Love We Deliver, which provides prepared meals to those who are afflicted with HIV/AIDS, and thus can't cook for themselves. Annie raised more money $465,725 for Refugees International, a group which provides medical and educational support to displaced people across the globe. Now, that result may get some controversial from viewers. The discuss about this will be continues till The Next Celebrity Apprentice.

Meghan McCain Photos

2009-10-24T07:20:00.000-07:00

Meghan McCain is the daughter of Republican Senator, and Presidential candidate john McCain and his wife Cindy McCain. She is the 23-year-old woman, Right now her photos are become the hot topics all over the world. You can see Meghan McCain photos and a few about her biography below.

Meghan McCain Biography

Meghan McCain has just obtained her Bachelor Degree from Columbia University. Meghan McCain has since joined her father’s campaign and hopes to bring a brand new aspect to the campaign trail by blogging about her father campaign. Yups, blogging for campaign, not for her hobby.

Meghan McCain blog called “McCain Blogette” , she filled her blog with video, audio and text on everything she know all about debates and town halls to hotels and her daily activity. She spoke on her blog, it sounds like this:
“We were basically loosely inspired by Hunter S. Thompson’s ‘Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail,’ but for more of this generation. get to the hotel and there’s just crap absolutely everywhere.”

Meghan McCain is described as a spunky, outgoing and strong-willed woman, who isn’t afraid to be a freethinker. Meghan doesn’t believe that as a woman she has to be a girly-girl or a strictly politically minded woman. Meghan says she really enjoys clothes, fashion and hair, but she can’t denied that she also reads the New York Times daily, in her minds there is no reason to be limited. As for what she would do if her father becomes the President, and she say like this:
“If I was the first daughter, I would definitely be a public one. I like talking. Come up and talk to me, I love it!.
So, who wants to come up? (ask with raising hand).

Obama Nobel Peace Prize

2009-10-14T07:16:00.001-07:00

Obama peace prize has caused controversy among the opinion from politics or not. Obama peace prize For somebody who is concerned with peace, the 8 years under Bush was an absolute horrors. Wars of aggressions, wars under false pretenses, the exploitation of a terrorist to realize militant ambitions, torture, rendition, an assertion that the President of the United States in his role as Commander in Chief has no limits to his authority made the 8 years under the Bush Administration the peace advocate's nightmare.

Obama's great contribution to peace in the past year . . . the year for which he was nominated . . . is that he brought an end to the regime that was such a threat to world peace. Thanks to Obama's political campaign, we do not have to fear the consequences of having Bush II in the White House. If that title does not fit Senator McCain, it certainly fits Sarah Palin.

For the Nobel Peace Prize Committee, it is possible to understand how Obama's success in ending that reign was perhaps the biggest contribution to world peace anybody made in the previous 12 months. This is not to say that greater things could not have been accomplished - only that this is the greatest thing in the name of peace that was accomplished.

So, the next question becomes, how do you recognize that fact? How does the Nobel Peace Price Committee vote to use the Prize to mark the greatest advance in the cause of peace in the past 12 months?

They could not award the prize to the American voters or those who voted for Obama or those who worked for his campaign. The best option available is to give it to the person who successfully lead that campaign. The proper choice for winning that award was the leader of the that campaign: Obama himself.

'Heat Wave' Richard Castle's Novel

2009-10-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

Heat Wave, the book crime author Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) has been writing on ABC’s Castle, has begun to roll out on ABC.com, and though I’m still not sure I’ll be buying it when it’s released in print on Sept. 29, I am eagerly awaiting the second chapter tease.

In Heat Wave, Pulitzer Prize-winning magazine journalist Jameson Rook researches an article on New York’s Finest by tailing homicide detective Nikki Heat as she investigates the murder of a real estate mogul. The first chapter finds a reference to Heat having sat in “The Loss Chair” herself (a nod to Castle’s Det. Kate Beckett having lost her mother to a homicide) and to her love of animated movies (so I guess Castle is taking inspiration from elsewhere, unless I missed an episode).

What I find the most fun — besides looking for snippets of dialogue we heard in Season 1 — is reading how Castle plays up the sexual tension between Heat and Rook: “They turned to face each other, and she was a little startled by his proximity but didn’t pull back. Nose-to-nose with him in the heat, she held his gaze and watched the dance of reflected sunlight playing off his eyes. And then she blinked. Oh s—, she thought, what was that? I can’t be attracted to this guy. No way.” Castle creator Andrew Marlowe says specific page numbers will be referenced on the show in Season 2, I suspect that will be one of them.

As for who is the real author of Heat Wave, Marlowe insists there’s no mystery: “Richard Castle. The roguishly handsome best-selling author of the Derek Storm mystery series. He’s charming. He’s a good writer. And I don’t know why you’re trying to take credit away from him. The guy worked hard on it.

Presidents Cup Schedule 2009

2009-10-11T00:15:00.000-07:00

Here is the Presidents Cup Schedule for 2009.

All Times Eastern

Friday Four-ball
- Mickelson/Leonard vs. Goosen/Scott
- Furyk/Kim vs. Els/Weir
- O'Hair/Perry vs. Yang/Ishikawa
- Cink/Glover vs. Singh/Clark
- Mahan/Johnson vs. Villegas/Allenby
- Stricker/Woods vs. Ogilvy/Cabrera

Saturday Foursomes
- Match 1- 10:35 a.m.
- Match 2- 10:45 a.m.
- Match 3- 10:55 a.m.
- Match 4- 11:05 a.m.
- Match 5- 11:15 a.m.

Saturday Four-ball
- Match 1- 3:05 p.m.
- Match 2- 3:17 p.m.
- Match 3- 3:30 p.m.
- Match 4- 3:42 p.m.
- Match 5- 3:55 p.m.

Sunday Singles
- Match 1- 12:25 p.m.
- Match 2- 12:35 p.m.
- Match 3- 12:45 p.m.
- Match 4- 12:55 p.m.
- Match 5- 1:05 p.m.
- Match 6- 1:15 p.m.
- Match 7- 1:25 p.m.
- Match 8- 1:35 p.m.
- Match 9- 1:45 p.m.
- Match 10- 1:55 p.m.
- Match 11- 2:05 p.m.
- Match 12- 2:15 p.m.

Elizabeth Taylor In Hospital For Heart Surgery

2009-10-07T05:01:00.000-07:00

Actress Elizabeth Taylor wrote today for fans and for everyone, Elizabeth Taylor said she was going into a hospital for heart surgery and asked for prayers for everyone. It’s very surprisingly for everyone, but Elizabeth have

Taylor, 77, was diagnosed with congestive heart failure five years ago and also has endured severe back problems and a benign brain tumor operation. She made the announcement on her Twitter page, saying she wanted to break the news herself before the media found out.

She wrote this word exclusively for public and specially for her loyal fans, below is what she wrote.

Dear Friends, I would like to let you know before it gets in the papers that I am going into the hospital to have a procedure on my heart Taylor wrote. It's very new and involves repairing my leaky valve using a clip device, without open heart surgery, so that my heart will function better. Any prayers you happen to have lying around I would dearly appreciate. I'll let you know when it's all over. Love you, Elizabeth, she said.

She often uses a wheelchair in her rare public appearances but has enthusiastically embraced Twitter in recent months as a way of communicating directly with her fans and the media. Taylor's Hollywood publicist said he had nothing to add to her Twitter announcement.

Patrick Swayze Died at 57 Because Pankreatic Cancer

2009-10-03T04:03:00.000-07:00

Patrick Swayze, the charismatic and handsome like his last performance in the movie "Dirty Dancing" and "Spirit" has made him a romantic idol for millions of fans. Patrick Swayze died on Monday aged 57 years. Patrick Swayze dying of pancreatic cancer is caused.

Dr. George Fisher, Swayze was the personal physician, says that in early March 2008 Swayze began to suffer from the disease. Now Patrick Swayze died peacefully today, with family at his side after betarung with illness for 20 months, "Wolf said in a statement Monday recently, Swayze stars in A & E Network's" The Beast ", which debuted in January . He agreed to the role of undercover FBI agents before the diagnosis. Swayze said that made him stay motivated in life is herself and those closest. Because he was still able to continue working.

"The Beast" was canceled because of illness Swayze in June, after doctors said the cancer has spread to the liver. From this course A & E has lost a family member. Patrick is the inpirasi for collaborating with Patrick Swayze, especially for his wife and family will feel a very great loss.

Swayze is famous for a handful of supporting roles, he has violated the performance as a dance instructor Johnny Castle in 1987's "Dirty Dancing." Co-star Jennifer Gray, who played the young lover, Baby Houseman, in the film, Swayze is described as "beautiful and strong." Patrick rare and beautiful combination of rough masculinity and ineffable grace. ... He had a real cowboy with a soft heart. He was fearless, and determined to always do his own stunts, so that does not seem strange to me that the war had brought on the cancer was so brave and dignified, "Gray said in a statement Monday

Three years after "Dirty Dancing," he was a bigger star with the "spirit" in which he was an investment banker who died and to learn to access it the unspoken feelings of their partner (Demi Moore) is played. Whoopi Goldberg won an Oscar and the film helped People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1991.
"Patrick is a very good husband, a man who's funny and one to whom I owe a lot I could never be paid back," Goldberg said in a statement. "I believe in the 'Spirit' message, so he'll always be close." Swayze told Entertainment Weekly in 1990 that "the films of the most powerful of my life talking about a romantic character." He expanded on the effort he put in scenes of love for the people in 1991.

"This is probably the most frightening thing I do," he said, "something so personal and give people a chance out there to see if you're a good kisser or not. Patrick Wayne Swayze was born on August 18 in the year 1952 , in Houston, Texas. 's father was a master draftsman, his mother was a ballet dancer, and then director of Houston Ballet Dance Company.

He has his son into the world of dance, which is not always easy for a man in Texas. Indeed, young Swayze playing soccer, practicing martial arts and an accomplished diver and track star when he was growing up, when he was good enough to dance to get a college scholarship.
Action starts after playing the work version of Prince Charming in the early 70 "Disney on Ice" Swayze returned to Houston, where he Lisa Niemi, a student from the opportunity to meet with his mother. Both were married in 1975 and moved to New York for their careers.

Swayze like dancing career: He graduated with the prestigious Philippe Ballet and joined with other companies, the Eliot Feld Balletgeselskap. But surgery for an old football injury ended his career ballet and she turned to acting, nabbing the role of Danny Zuko in a major long-running Broadway production of "Grease" in 1978, was the time about the film starring John Travolta could save your movie. "Grease" has received the attention he's a pair of Hollywood, and he and Niemi moved West.

After a few bit parts, including one in 1981 an episode of "M * A * S * H," Swayze takes the role of Darrel Curtis in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 film "The Outsiders," which is also a future star Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, Emilio Estevez and Tom Cruise. Swayze was one of the lead in 1984's "Red Dawn," about a teenager to defend the city from a Soviet attack in America.

Not only have we lost the best actor today, I lost my brother "Outsiders" brother, "said actor C. Thomas Howell, who also starred with Swayze in" Red Dawn "and" Grand U.S. "But it's the" Dirty Dancing "is Swayze big hit. The film about a girl coming of age in a Catskills resort in the early '60s is a limited release intended, but it is one of the decade's biggest hits and sleep Swayze and Gray-name household names.

The film had a slogan - "Nobody puts Baby in the corner," uttered by Swayze character in Gray's dominating father (Jerry Orbach) - and finally produced a follow-up, in 2004 "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights." Swayze even sing Top 10 hit, "She's like the wind" on the soundtrack.

Swayze, who is known as the flat earth, good-guy actor decided to not follow predictable career. He watched "Dirty Dancing" with "Road House" (1989) where he played a rough-and-tumble driver bar (this film is very popular in night cable). He has succeeded in "Spirit" to "Point Break" (1991), about a group of thieves "City of Joy" (1992), where he played a doctor in the poor Indian villages, and "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar "(1995), in which he starred as a drag queen.

''I do not want to be Mr Romantic Leading Man did not. Do I want to Dance Dude no. I do not want to act not Guy. If I had to do, one of the people for life, it would make me crazy,''he told Entertainment Weekly in an interview in 1990.

Swayze's career declined in the late 90's. He had both legs broken in 1997 during the making of the film, "Letter From Killer," was in rehab for drinking problems admitted. In 2000 he flew his own twin-engine aircraft when the plane depressurized; Swayze landing in housing construction in Arizona. Although some witnesses said he appeared drunk, he then revealed that suffer from hypoxia, associated with the depressurization and three-pack-a-day cigarette habit.

Its relocation Swayze talent to choose to sleep with "Donnie Darko" (2001), a dark film about a troubled student who became a sensation in the video. Swayze has a sinister motivation speaker and Raves win for his performance.

Swayze newer version of TV movies including "King Solomon's Mines" and 2007's "Christmas in Wonderland." Although he still has the power to her beating heart - 22 years old Scarlett Johansson, after receiving from Harvard's Hasty Pudding awards in February 2007, said her dream date was "the possibility of Patrick Swayze, my dreams" - Swayze wasn 't too impressed with herself

Sex Scandals Samantha Geimer and Polansky, the Scandals Following Her

2009-10-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

After few hours i searching about Samantha Geimer Polansky scandals, i found the journey from where Samantha Geimer Polansky scandals begin. It is ironic journey exactly from my conclusion, anyway here the journey story right or wrong true or false it depend on our individual opinion, Check it out.

On a warm March evening in 1977, Polish director Roman Polanski had sex with a 13-year-old girl after a photo session led to champagne and Quaaludes in Jack Nicholson's hot tub. Charged with having unlawful intercourse with a minor, Polanski, then 44, pleaded guilty but fled to Paris before he was sentenced. By then, some of Hollywood's brightest stars—including Nicholson, Jacqueline Bisset and Anjelica Huston, bystanders all—had been swept up in the scandal. The only name missing—her identity protected by the court—was that of the victim: Samantha Gailey.

At the time, Gailey (now Geimer) was a child trying to fast-track her way to womanhood. In the media, however, she was cast as a wily Lolita. Polanski, who had established himself as a director with Rosemary's Baby (1968) and Chinatown (1974), continued his career in exile, with Tess (1979), Frantic (1988) and Bitter Moon (1994). Meanwhile, Geimer, now 34 and a secretary, had become depressed, dropped out of school and married and divorced before finding contentment in Hawaii. There she shares a modest three-bedroom home with second husband Dave Geimer, 31, a carpenter, and her children Jesse, 15, Alex, 8, and Matthew, 4.

Polanski's attorney met with a Superior Court judge in Los Angeles earlier this year, reportedly in hopes of securing a light sentence for the director, should he return to the U.S. With renewed public interest in the case, Geimer spoke with PEOPLE correspondent Danelle Morton about the past 20 years and why she would welcome Polanski's return.

WHEN I FIRST MET ROMAN Polanski I was living with my mother and sister in the San Fernando Valley. It wasn't Ozzie and Harriet, but we had a nice family life. My mother was a working actress, and I wanted to be like her. I wanted to be famous—a movie star. But I was really just on the edge of ceasing to be a tomboy and trying to act more like a young lady. I had a 17-year-old boyfriend who drove a Camaro, but my room was knee-deep in clothes; I had a Spider-Man poster on the wall and I kept pet rats.

My sister was dating a guy who knew Roman and introduced him to my mom, who had actually met him once before at a club. When Polanski said he'd take some pictures of me and put them in a European magazine, it was exciting. We thought it would be a good thing for my career.

On Feb. 20, 1977, Polanski took me on our first photo shoot in a hillside area just a few blocks from my house. We shot a roll of film; then he asked me to take off my shirt and took topless photos while I changed. I let him do it, but I felt self-conscious. I was thinking, "I shouldn't be doing this," but I was a kid, so I thought if it wasn't okay, he wouldn't tell me to do it. If I'd told my mom, she would never have let me go with him the second time. When he made another appointment a few weeks later, she had no reason to suspect anything. I didn't want to go, but I still thought it would be a good opportunity.

He picked me up again on March 10 at around 4 p.m. In the car he asked me if I'd ever had sex. I had, once (it was embarrassing to be a virgin among my friends), so I said yes. What I should have said is, "It's none of your business." We stopped off at Jacqueline Bisset's house, but I didn't recognize her at the time. Someone offered me a glass of wine, but I said no and went out by the pool because I didn't have anything to say to the adults. He took some shots of me wearing jeans and a white shirt tied up at the waist, but we were only there for about 15 minutes.

Then we go to Jack Nicholson's house. I had seen Chinatown and I was thinking "Wow! Jack Nicholson." The maid lets us in and disappears, so as far as I am concerned we are alone, and I'm very far from home. Polanski asks me to pose, drinking champagne. I wouldn't take the wine earlier but when he says champagne, that sounds interesting to me. He keeps refilling my glass. Then he asks me to pose topless again and says he wants to take pictures in the Jacuzzi. I don't have my bathing suit so I get in in my underwear. He takes pictures, then he gets in naked and now I'm thinking, "Oh, this is not right." I'm scared and woozy, so I tell him I have asthma and to take me home. I get out, grab a towel, but he doesn't want to take me home yet. That's when he takes out the Quaaludes and asks me if I've ever had one. I lie and say yes. I take one-third. He takes what's left and tells me to lie down for a minute. I know he wants to have sex and he is not taking no for an answer. I'm intoxicated and afraid and don't know what to do, so I just let it happen.

Then Anjelica Huston [who was Jack Nicholson's girlfriend at the time] knocked on the door. I assume she asked him, "What are you doing in my room?" I started to get dressed, but Polanski came back and said, "Lay back down," and he took off my underwear. He had been interrupted, so he finished—briefly—then went back to talk to her. I got dressed and went out to the car and started to cry. He took me home and said, "Don't tell your mom what happened." But my sister heard me telling my boyfriend on the phone what happened. My mom asked me if it was true, then called the police. That's when all hell broke loose.

The fallout was worse than what had happened that night. It was on the evening news every night. Reporters and photographers came to my school and put my picture in a European tabloid with the caption Little Lolita. They were all saying, "Poor Roman Polanski, entrapped by a 13-year-old temptress." I had a good friend who came from a good Catholic family, and her father wouldn't let her come to my house anymore. It was even worse for my mother because everyone was saying it was her fault. Meanwhile, I just shut down and didn't talk. I was this sweet 13-year-old girl, and then all of a sudden I turned into this pissed-off 14-year-old. I was mad at my attorney; I was mad at my mom. I never blamed her for what happened, but I was mad that she had called the police and that we had to go through this ordeal. Now I realize" she went through hell trying to handle things as best she could.

What I did with my life over the next five years was self-destructive. I had been heading in a positive direction before that, going on auditions, getting into commercials. But I never really got back on course. You can't be a movie actress and have this kind of secret. If I had pursued acting, it would have all come back and slapped me in the face again. So I became a rebellious teenager. I left school at 16 and hung out with a group of wilder kids. I was pregnant at 18 and married at 19.

Having Jesse, my first child, changed everything for me. But my ex-husband and I were separated before Jesse's first birthday. Suddenly I had a child; no one was going to take care of me; and worrying about foolish things just went out the window. We lived in a converted garage at my mom's home, and my grandmother looked after Jesse while I went to secretarial school.

I was still living there when I met Dave through friends. We had been together for a year when I became pregnant again. It was 1988, and Mom and her new husband had moved to Hawaii and were selling" the house. She said, "Just come. I'll move your stuff and get you on your feet." We didn't want to go at first. It seemed so far away. Would we like it? Could we find work? We didn't know anybody. In the end, we moved here and got married a year later. It turned out to be a really great decision. We had both our kids in this house. (Jesse goes to see his dad every summer and on the holidays.) My sister moved here too, and everyone's doing fine.

One of the things I always wanted was a good marriage and two or three kids and a home life. I like my work and the town I live in. It's a quiet, small neighborhood where you know everyone and your kids are safe. I'm glad to have moved away from L.A. and to have a normal, quiet existence. I've felt safe here. Here my neighbors are like, "Roman who?"

Then when the reports came out that Polanski was trying to get back in the country, my phone rang off the hook for three days. I couldn't let my kids answer it, and my life was turned upside down again. It was like I got a 20-year suspension on dealing with all this, and now my time was up. That's when I decided: no more hiding, no more waiting. When I was younger I really didn't have any control over the situation, but now I want to deal with it on my own terms. I don't carry feelings of anger towards Polanski. I even have some sympathy for him, what with his mother dying in a concentration camp and then his wife Sharon Tate being murdered by Charles Manson's people and spending the last 20 years as a fugitive. Life was hard for him, just like it was for me. He did something really gross to me, but it was the media that ruined my life.

Even now, so-called experts are using my situation on TV talk shows to push their own points, which have nothing to do with how I feel. Twenty years ago everything said about me was horrible. But these days it's not fashionable to bad-mouth the victim. Now I'm all ready to stand up and defend myself and everyone is saying "oh, you poor thing." But I'm not a poor thing. And I can't oblige everyone by becoming freaked out and upset just to make things sound more interesting. If Polanski comes back—fine. That would at least end it. It will never be over until that happens.

Source From People News

Few Samantha Geimer Photo

2009-10-02T20:51:00.000-07:00

Tired about Samantha Geimer photos, Samantha Geimer photos has really booming on entire internet and newspaper. Here is what i have found her photos updated about Gamantha Geimer. lets continue reading.

Samantha Geimer is at the center of the new documentary "Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired." In 1977, the 13-year-old girl took part in a photo shoot for "Vogue" magazine with the Oscar-winning director, and he slept with her after giving her champagne and a sedative tablet. The resulting trial saw him fleeing to France in 1978.

Now living in Hawaii, Samantha Geimer, formerly known as Samantha Gailey, has three children. She forgave Polanski in 1997 and considers his 30 years in exile as sufficient punishment.

Most recently, Polanski's lawyers have called for his remaining charges to be dropped after revelations in the recent documentary of "a pattern of misconduct and improper communications" on the part of the district attorney's office. For their part, the Los Angeles DA's spokeswoman ironically said, "We're looking forward to seeing Mr Polanski in Los Angeles to litigate it."

Source on the net

Earthquake : 2nd quake shakes Indonesia after temblor kills 467

2009-10-01T00:21:00.000-07:00

The death toll from Wednesday's undersea quake of 7.6 magnitude was expected to rise further after rescuers dig through the rubble in heavily populated towns of Sumatra island.

After yesterday earthquake in Indonesia west sumatera killed 467, this morning it is shaked again about 6.8-magnitude quake damaged additional buildings.

Rescuers struggled to reach survivors of the previous day's temblor, which killed at least 467 people and left thousands trapped under collapsed buildings.

"This is a high-scale disaster," Health Minister Siti Fadilah Supari told Metro TV.

Padang, a coastal city of 900,000 and capital of West Sumatra province, became the immediate focus of relief workers.

At least 500 buildings in Padang collapsed or were badly damaged in the Wednesday evening quake, which also set off fires, said Disaster Management Agency spokesman Priyadi Kardono.

A total of 467 people were confirmed dead and 421 seriously injured, said Tugiyo Bisri of the Social Affairs Ministry's crisis center. He said 376 deaths occurred in Padang, with rest of the deaths in four surrounding districts.

At least 80 people were missing at the 5-story Ambacang hotel in downtown Padang, said Indra, a paramedic who uses only one name. Rescuers, working in heavy rain, found two survivors and nine bodies in the hotel's rubble.

Terrified residents who spent a restless night were jolted by the fresh tremor on Thursday morning.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the inland quake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 hit about 150 miles (240 kilometers) south of Padang at a depth of just under 20 miles (24 kilometers).

The second quake reportedly damaged 30 houses in Jambi, another Sumatran town. It was not yet clear if there were injuries, said Jambi Mayor Hasfiah, who uses only one name, like many Indonesians.

Collapsed or seriously damaged buildings in Padang included hospitals, mosques, a school and a mall. TVOne network footage showed heavy equipment breaking through layers of cement in search of more than 30 students it said were missing from the school where they were taking after-school classes.

Parents of missing students stayed up all night, waiting for signs of life under the rubble.

"My daughter's face keeps appearing in my eyes ... my mind. I cannot sleep, I'm waiting here to see her again," a woman, who identified herself only as Imelda, told TVOne, tears rolling down her face. She said her 12-year-old daughter Yolanda was in school to take science lessons.

"She is a good daughter and very smart. I really love her. Please God help her. I hope rescuers, everybody... can help her out of here. Please!" she said.

An unidentified boy told TVOne that he escaped from the top floor just as the three-story school crumpled. He said he was taking math lessons while many others were taking science courses.

Wednesday's temblor severed roads and cut off power and communications to Padang. Thousands fled in panic, fearing a tsunami. The shaking was so intense that people crouched or sat on the street in fear.

Children screamed as an exodus of thousands of frantic residents fled in cars and motorbikes, honking horns.

The quake was felt hundreds of miles (kilometers) away in Malaysia and Singapore, causing buildings there to sway.

The extent of damage in surrounding areas was still unclear due to poor communications. Indonesia, a poor, sprawling nation with limited resources, sits on a major geological fault zone and is frequently hit by earthquakes.

More than 3,000 people were killed in the last big earthquake in 2006 that hit Yogyakarta, a major city on the main island of Java.

The latest quakes came in the wake of a killer tsunami Tuesday that hit islands in the South Pacific, killing at least 120 people. Geologists said the two events were not related.

The Padang quakes were along the same fault line that spawned the 2004 Asian tsunami that killed 230,000 people in a dozen nations.

Padang's mayor appealed for assistance on Indonesian radio station el-Shinta.

"We are overwhelmed with victims and ... lack of clean water, electricity and telecommunications," Mayor Fauzi Bahar said. "We really need help. We call on people to come to Padang to evacuate bodies and help the injured."

Thousands were believed trapped throughout the province, said Rustam Pakaya, head of the Health Ministry's crisis center.

The shaking felled trees and crushed cars in Padang. A foot could be seen sticking out from one pile of rubble. At daybreak, residents used their bare hands to search for survivors, pulling at the wreckage and tossing it away piece by piece.

The loss of telephone service deepened the worries of those outside the stricken area.

Hospitals struggled to treat the injured as their relatives hovered nearby.

Indonesia's government announced $10 million in emergency response aid and medical teams and military planes were being dispatched to set up field hospitals and distribute tents, medicine and food rations.

Local television reported more than two dozen landslides in the province. Some blocked roads, causing miles-long traffic jams of cars and trucks.

Earthquake in Western Indonesia reachs 467 People

2009-09-30T23:57:00.001-07:00

Indonesia Earthquake in western Indonesia very terrible, this tragedy maybe the 2nd terribly disaster after Tsunami a couple years ago. Indonesia earthquake give effect to American samoa, because after Indonesia struck by the earthquake American samoa got warning from Government, the warning is "Tsunami".

The latest information from Government Official at Jakarta have mentioned reaches 467 people died in west sumatra, Indonesia.

Tugiyo Bisri of the Social Affairs Ministry's crisis center says a total of 467 people are confirmed dead and 421 seriously injured in Wednesday's 7.6 magnitude quake.

He said Thursday that 376 deaths occurred in Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province. Pasaman district accounted for 75 deaths and the other dead were from three other districts.

Indonesia Earthquake, Padang Earthquake

2009-09-30T05:32:00.000-07:00

A major earthquake struck off the city of Padang on the coast of Indonesia’s Sumatra island on Wednesday, damaging houses, bringing down bridges and starting fires, a witness said.

It was unclear if there were any casualties.

The 7.6 magnitude quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in the city state of Singapore, 275 miles to the northeast, evacuating their staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled an earlier tsunami warning. Japan said no tsunami was expected there.

“Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here maybe because water pipes are broken and there is flooding in the streets,” said a Reuters witness in the city.

Phone lines were down.

Padang, the capital of Indonesia’s West Sumatra province, sits on one of the world’s most active fault lines along the “Ring of Fire” where the Indo-Australia plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes.

A 9.15 magnitude quake, with its epicenter roughly 600 km (373 miles) northwest of Padang, caused the 2004 tsunami which killed 232,000 people in Indonesia’s Aceh province, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other countries across the Indian Ocean.

The depth of Wednesday’s earthquake was measured at 85 km (53 miles), the United States Geological Survey said. It revised down the magnitude of the quake from 7.9 to 7.6.

A series of tsunamis earlier on Wednesday smashed into the Pacific island nations of American and Western Samoa, and Tonga killing possibly more than 100 people, some washed out to sea, destroying villages and injuring hundreds.

LONG HELD FEARS

Geologists have long said Padang, with a population of 900,000, may one day be destroyed by a huge earthquake because of its location.

“Padang sits right in front of the area with the greatest potential for an 8.9 magnitude earthquake,” said Danny Hilman Natawidjaja, a geologist at the Indonesian Science Institute, in February.

“The entire city could drown” in a tsunami triggered by such a quake, he warned.

Several earthquake-prone parts of the country hold tsunami practice drills, and the national disaster service sends alerts via telephone text messages to subscribers.

Earthquake Disaster

2009-09-30T05:25:00.001-07:00

Earthquake disaster today is going worst. There are many earthquake disaster that happen iin the world, suvh as japan, and other caountry. Tsunamis like that caused by the Samoa earthquake are among nature’s most lethal disasters. We look at some of the worst.
• The highest recorded wave in history took place in 1958 in Alaska. A large (magnitude 7.9) earthquake caused 30 million cubic metres of rock to fall into Lituya Bay.
This created a wave that reached 1,720ft tall; more than twice the height of the Canary Wharf Tower. Only two deaths were recorded, as it took place in a sparsely populated area.

• Three and a half billion years ago, an asteroid is believed to have crashed somewhere into the oceans. The impact caused a tsunami so huge that it swept all the way around the world several times, killing all surface life and flooding all land except the highest mountains.

It would have travelled fast enough to make it all the way around the world in just 30 hours.

• The 2004 Boxing Day tsunami was caused by the second largest earthquake ever recorded – between magnitude 9.1 and 9.3, or more than twice the amount of energy as all the explosives used in the Second World War, including the atomic bombs.

The quake caused the seabed to rise several metres. The death toll is estimated at 230,000 people, the single most devastating tsunami in history. Deaths were recorded in South Africa, almost 5,000 miles from the epicentre, and in places the wave reached two miles inland.

• In 1883, a volcano on the island of Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra in Indonesia, exploded. The explosion, 13,000 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, blasted approximately five cubic miles of rock and ash into the air, causing the average global temperature to drop by as much as 1.2C.

The resulting tsunamis, caused by the explosion and by superheated rivers of gas and rock called ‘pyroclastic flows’ rushing into the ocean, accounted for the bulk of the official 36,417 death toll. Ships as distant as South Africa, 4,700 miles away, were rocked by the wave.

• The 1755 Lisbon earthquake caused the most lethal tsunami ever in the Atlantic ocean. The quake, the fires and waves together caused the deaths of at least 60,000 people in Portugal and Spain, and wrecked sea ports on the coast of north Africa.

The devastation caused the philosopher Voltaire to write his great work Candide, a satirical work asking how God can be benevolent and yet permit such horror.

OMG!! Philippine Storm Toll Rises to 140 Dead

2009-09-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

OMG!! that word is match to describe how surprise i am when i know theres 140 dead in this tragic tragedy Philiphine Storm in Manila, philiphines. and this is not finish yet, it will continues based on prediction from the expert source.

The Philippines appealed for international help Monday after a tropical storm killed 140 people in the country's north and warned a new storm could strike this week, with tens of thousands of citizens still displaced from their homes.

At least 32 people were reported missing, and authorities were still trying to verify scores of unconfirmed deaths, including in the hard-hit capital Manila and nearby Rizal province, where there were reports that about 99 more people had died, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said.

Tens of thousands of residents, meanwhile, began a massive cleanup of the carnage left by Tropical Storm Ketsana, which struck Saturday, bringing the region's worst flooding in 42 years and triggering deadly landslides.

The extent of devastation became clearer Monday with mud-covered communities, cars upended on city streets and huge numbers of villagers without drinking water, food and power.

In Manila's suburban Marikina city, a sofa hung from electric wires.

Resident Jeff Aquino said floodwaters rose to his home's third floor at the height of the storm, when it dumped more than a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours.

Aquino, his wife, three young children and two nephews spent that night on their roof without food and water, mixing infant formula for his 2-year-old twins with the falling rain.

"We thought it was the end for us," Aquino said.

Among those stranded by the floodwaters was young actress Christine Reyes, who was rescued by movie and TV heartthrob Richard Gutierrez from the rooftop of her home near Manila after she made a frantic call for help to a local TV network with her mobile phone.

"If the rains do not stop, the water will reach the roof. We do not know what to do. My mother doesn't know how to swim," she said, weeping.

Gutierrez, a close friend and Reyes' co-star in an upcoming movie, heard of her plight, borrowed an army speedboat and ferried Reyes, her mother and two young children to safety.

Since the storm struck, the government has declared a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces, allowing officials to use emergency funds for relief and rescue.

The homes of more than 450,000 people were inundated. Some 115,000 of them were brought to about 200 schools, churches and other evacuation shelters, officials said. Troops, police and volunteers have been able to rescue more than 7,900 people so far, Teodoro said.

He told a news conference that help from foreign governments will ensure that the Philippine government can continue its relief work. Government welfare officials have begun focusing on providing food, medicine and other necessities to those in emergency shelters.

Teodoro said government forecasters have monitored a low pressure area over the Pacific that could develop into a storm and possibly hit the country later this week, he said.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has said Ketsana and the flooding were "an extreme event" that "strained our response capabilities to the limit but ultimately did not break us."

The United States has donated $100,000 and deployed a military helicopter and five rubber boats manned by about 20 American soldiers from the country's south, where they have been providing counterterrorism training. The United Nations Children's Fund has also provided food and other aid.

Officials expected the death toll to rise as rescuers penetrate villages blocked off by floating cars and debris.

The 16.7 inches (42.4 centimeters) of rain that swamped metropolitan Manila in just 12 hours on Saturday exceeded the 15.4-inch (39.2-centimeter) average for all of September, chief government weather forecaster Nathaniel Cruz said.

Government forecasters tracked Ketsana moving toward Vietnam on Monday at about 372 miles (600 kilometers) west of the northern Philippines.

Source USA Todays

Obama spoke : I Was Black Before the Election (Remarkable)

2009-09-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

At this time i will post about how Obama interview in david letterman show, its very interesting. Obama told he is black before the election, it's a big meaning if we explore about his words, anyway lets just read the News about Obama in late show david letterman, and you can read about letterman obama top 10 below. Continue reading..

Addressing suggestions that recent criticism of his health care reform efforts has been grounded in racism, President Obama this afternoon quipped, "I think it's important to realize that I was actually black before the election."

The comment, which the president made in an afternoon taping of CBS' "The Late Show," prompted laughter from the audience and this response from host David Letterman: "How long have you been a black man?"

Mr. Obama said the notion that racism is playing a role in the criticism, which has been voiced by former President Jimmy Carter and others, is countered in part by the fact that he was elected in the first place – which, he said, "tells you a lot about where the country's at."

"One of the things that you sign up for in politics is that folks yell at you," the president said, noting that "whenever a president tries to bring about significant changes, particularly during times of economic unease, there is a certain segment of the population that gets very riled up." He pointed to the experiences of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as examples.

The Letterman interview, which comes on the heels of his appearance on five different networks on Sunday, marks the latest public relations effort from a president trying to win public support for his health care efforts. Perhaps in honor of the forum, Mr. Obama opened with a joking reference to Letterman's mention that an audience member had brought a heart-shaped potato to the taping.

The main reason he had come on the show, Mr. Obama quipped, was "to see that heart-shaped potato." After Letterman retrieved the potato, the smiling president deadpanned, "That's remarkable. This is remarkable." He then, with the audience member's consent, kept the potato.

The appearance was not all jokes; Mr. Obama said that the economy was improving but that employment was lagging behind.

"Unemployment is still going to be a big problem for at least another year," he said, though he insisted the economy would emerge "stronger than before."

On Afghanistan, the president said that he will not make a decision whether to send more troops until he decides on a strategy following a comprehensive review. The top commander in Iraq has warned that more troops are needed for the U.S. to have a chance to emerge victorious.

Asked by Letterman about the wisdom of the war in Iraq, Mr. Obama said, "because Saddam Hussein is not there, that's a good thing. He was somebody who certainly had aspirations to cause a lot of trouble."

Mr. Obama added, however, that "that given the enormous stakes we had in Afghanistan, we should have finished the job there."

The president, who appeared to a standing ovation, told Letterman that his kids had been doing well, and that "they basically just goofed off all summer, which I couldn't do." He said their lives had been relatively normal and that "people don't really give them too much of a fuss" when they go out.

Mr. Obama has appeared on the "Late Show" five times before, though never as president. The interview will air in full Monday evening.

Tim Tebow Released From University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center

2009-09-27T11:02:00.000-07:00

As i mentioned in my older post Tebow Injured and its really made me and other Tebow Fans sad and together pray for his healthy, now i can mentioned the good news for us. The good news is University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow was released from University of Kentucky Chandler Medical Center Sunday morning after being held overnight for precautionary reasons.

"Tim is doing fine this morning," said head coach Urban Meyer. "His CT scans came back and indicated that Tim suffered a concussion. Our medical and athletic training staff will continue to monitor him to determine how much rest and recovery he needs. We will have additional information and updates this week." Now we can watch him again.

Hot News: Conan O'Brien Injured After Tonight Show Stunt

2009-09-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

I hope he will be better soon, below is the latest news about Conan O'brien that i knew about a minutes ago. Let reading the news right now.

Conan O'Brien found out the hard way that physical comedy is harder than it looks.
The Tonight Show host, 46, reportedly suffered a concussion after hitting his head while filming a stunt for the show on Friday with Desperate Housewives actress Teri Hatcher.

The bit involving Hatcher, whose episode was canceled and replaced with a rerun, poked fun at her recent participation in a triathlon.
"We did this bit and at the very end, when we ran in to cross the finish line, he slipped as he was crossing the finish line and hit his head," Hatcher tells Entertainment Tonight of O'Brien's accident.

"He didn't get off floor right a way, but then he [seemed] like he recovered and [pulled] it together, and they did an instant replay, and you could really see his head hit the floor," the actress said. "He did go to hospital and he does have a concussion."

The NBC network confirmed O'Brien was taken to a local hospital for observation, but did not elaborate on his current condition.

Check out then-and-now photos of your favorite TV stars.
In a statement, O'Brien, who took over the late-night staple from Jay Leno in June, used his trademark humor to reflect on the incident.

"Last thing I remember I was enjoying the play with Mrs. Lincoln, and the next thing I knew I was in bed being served cookies and juice" O'Brien said in the statement.

There is no word yet from NBC about plans for future Tonight Show episodes.

Hot Trend: Tebow injured

2009-09-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

Read news in Hot Public News to update the latest News around the world. Hot Public News Proudly brought the latest news to you for those who's hunt the update Information or news around the world. Happy Reading!

Florida quarterback Tim Tebow was taken to the hospital by ambulance after taking a shot to the head while being sacked in the third quarter of the No. 1 Gators’ game against Kentucky at Commonwealth Stadium on Saturday night.
There was no immediate report on the quarterback’s condition.

Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, was sacked by Wildcats defensive end Taylor Wyndham on a third-and-6 play from the Kentucky 9. Tebow didn’t appear to see Wyndham, who hit him squarely in the chest. As Tebow fell to the ground, the back of his head hit Gators tackle Marcus Gilbert’s knee.

Tebow, a senior from Jacksonville, Fla., lay motionless on the turf for several seconds. He was eventually able to sit up, and was then helped to the Florida sideline by trainers and coaches, where his parents came down from the stands to join him. At one point, the entire Florida team was on the field to check on their star quarterback. Kentucky officials had a motorized cart and backboard in place to remove Tebow from the field.

Hot Trend: Volleyball Welcomes Nittany Lion Squad Riding a 76-match Winning Streak

2009-09-26T19:37:00.001-07:00

This weekend provides the first true test of the strength and power of the Illinois volleyball team.

The No. 15 Illini host Ohio State at Huff Hall on Friday night in their Big Ten opener, but the ultimate challenge comes Saturday night, when No. 1 Penn State comes to town for a game featured live on the Big Ten Network. The Nittany Lion have not lost a regular-season set since 2007 and are riding a 76-match winning streak into this weekend.

"Against Penn State, we have to pass and take care of the ball that's a big deal because they're the most successful recovery team in the country," said head coach Kevin Hambly.

The Illini hope the home-court advantage will give them an edge.

"Having the home crowd definitely helps because then you don't have to bring as much energy from yourself," senior Kylie McCulley said. "But, that's what we are working on as a team, being able to bring energy from ourselves no matter what."

Hosting the top team in the nation makes for a pretty exciting start to the conference season in the Illini's eyes.

"We are just really excited to start playing Big Ten again, it's just a different kind of competition," sophomore Michelle Bartsch said.

"It will be a little eye-opening for (freshman starter) Erin (Johnson) because she hasn't been exposed to Big Ten play yet. It is just a lot more physical, the girls are a lot taller. Everyone just competes so hard in this conference."

Illinois has been focusing on building off its success in the nonconference portion of the season.

"I think, carrying on from last weekend, we're just going to work on our blocks and our defense. We just want to be stronger," McCulley said.

Although the Illini faced both teams last season, they know teams change their lineups, leading to a different atmosphere.

"This is a really tough weekend, they are both really good teams, and they're better then they were last year but so are we," McCulley said. "Every year we learn more about them and ourselves. It's hard to guess what they'll bring this year."

Even after a solid run in nonconference play, Hambly is unsure of how the team will perform.

"It's just a different level of athletes with different challenges every weekend," head coach Kevin Hambly said. "I am just curious to see how this works out. I think we're ready physically and (strategically). I just want to see what happens, see if we're ready for the grind of the Big Ten."

The Illini start off the weekend with Ohio State at 7 p.m. on Friday.

The Buckeyes are off to a 12-1 start and are coming off a title at the Sports Imports Classic in Columbus, Ohio.

"Ohio State has three really, really good players, these are top level players and how well we handle them and how well we play offensively, those are the keys," Hambly said.

Hambly thinks this tough level of competition early in the season will help the players know exactly what they need to work on.

"It's nice to start the Big Ten play at home," Hambly said. "If we're going to play Penn State and Ohio State we want to play them early because they are going to be really good at the end of the year, and we would rather have them now."

Source On The Net

Hot News: Giant baby draws spectators to Indonesian hospital

2009-09-26T19:19:00.001-07:00

Read news in Hot Public News to update the latest News around the world. Hot Public News Proudly brought the latest news to you for those who's hunt the update Information or news around the world. Happy Reading!

KISARAN, Indonesia – Indonesia's heaviest-ever newborn drew curious crowds Friday to a hospital where the boy named Akbar — or the Great in Arabic — came into the world at a record 19.2 pounds (8.7 kilograms).

Akbar Risuddin was born to a diabetic mother in a 40-minute cesarean delivery that was complicated because of his unusual weight and size, Dr. Binsar Sitanggang said.

"I'm very happy that my baby and his mother are in good health," father Muhammad Hasanuddin said Friday. "I hope I can afford to feed the baby enough, because he needs more milk than other babies."

Crowds pushed to get a peek of the extraordinary boy, who measured nearly 24 inches (62 centimeters) when he was born Monday, at the Abdul Manan hospital in the northern town of Kisaran on the island of Sumatra.

"This is fantastic," Dewi Miranti, a mother from a nearby village, said as she peered through a window with about a hundred other people. "He looks very well and is cute."

The baby's extreme weight was the result of excessive glucose from his mother during pregnancy, Dr. Sitanggang said.

"He is greedy and has a strong appetite, nursing almost nonstop," the doctor said.

The boy was the third child of Hasanuddin, 50, and mother Ani, 41, who like many Indonesians goes by a single name. His two "little" brothers weighed 11.6 pounds (5.3 kilograms) and 9.9 pounds (4.5 kilograms) at birth.

The former Indonesian record holder was a 14.7-pound (6.7-kilogram) baby boy born on the outskirts of the capital, Jakarta, in 2007.

Guinness World Records cites the heaviest baby as being born in the U.S. in 1879, weighing 23.75 pounds (10.4 kilograms). However, it died 11 hours after birth. The book also cites 22.5-pound (10.2-kilogram) babies born in Italy in 1955 and in South Africa in 1982.

Source On The Net AP

Hot News: Iran Will Allow UN to Inspect Nuclear Site

2009-09-26T19:07:00.000-07:00

Iran said Saturday it will allow U.N. nuclear inspectors to examine its newly revealed, still unfinished uranium enrichment facility as world criticism mounted over the underground site that was developed secretly.

The presence of a second uranium-enrichment site that could potentially produce material for a nuclear weapon has provided one of the strongest indications yet that Iran has something to hide — despite its repeated assertions that its program is only to generate power.

That impression was reinforced by a close aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said the site will be operational "soon" and would pose a threat to those who oppose Iran.

"This new facility, God willing, will become operational soon and will blind the eyes of the enemies," Mohammad Mohammadi Golpayegani told the semi-official Fars news agency.

The existence of the secret site was first revealed by Western intelligence officials and diplomats on Friday. It is located in the arid mountains near the holy city of Qom, inside a heavily guarded, underground facility belonging to Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, according to a document sent by the Obama administration to lawmakers.

President Barack Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy accused Iran on Friday of constructing a secret underground uranium enrichment facility and of hiding its existence from international inspectors for years.

Just hours before Iran said it would allow International Atomic Energy Agency inspections of the site, Obama warned Tehran of grave consequences from a united global front and offered "a serious meaningful dialogue" over its nuclear program.

The White House responded to Iran's offer of inspections by urging Iran's complete and immediate cooperation with the IAEA.

Obama said in his address that evidence of Iran's building the underground plant "continues a disturbing pattern of Iranian evasion" that jeopardizes global nonproliferation.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the revelation was firm proof Iran was seeking nuclear weapons.

"This removes the dispute whether Iran is developing military nuclear power or not and therefore the world powers need to draw conclusions," Lieberman told Israel radio. "Without a doubt, it is a reactor for military purposes not peaceful purposes."

Israel considers Iran a strategic threat due to its nuclear program, missile development and repeated references by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Israel's destruction.

Vice President Ali Akbar Salehi, who heads Iran's nuclear program, said on national television that inspectors from the IAEA could visit the site, though he did not specify when.

Salehi said there was nothing secret about the site and that Iran complied with U.N. rules that require it to inform the world body's nuclear agency six months before a uranium enrichment facility becomes operational.

"Under (NPT) rules, we are required to inform the IAEA of the existence of such a facility 180 days before introducing materials but we are announcing it more than a year earlier," he said.

The Iranians claim to have withdrawn from an agreement with the IAEA requiring them to notify the agency of the intent to build any new nuclear facilities and instead are now only subject to the six-month notification requirement before a facility becomes operational.

But the IAEA says Tehran cannot unilaterally withdraw from that bilateral agreement and still should have announced its plans to build the facility.

The statement by Khamenei's aide that the facility will be operational "soon" seemed to suggest that it could be ready even ahead of the 18-month figure cited by Salehi.

The small-scale site is meant to house no more than 3,000 centrifuges — much less than the 8,000 machines at Natanz, Iran's known industrial-scale enrichment facility, but they could still potentially help create bomb-material.

Experts have estimated that Iran's current number of centrifuges could enrich enough uranium for a bomb in as little as a year.

Washington has been pushing for heavier sanctions if Iran does not agree to end enrichment, which many nations believe is part of Tehran's drive to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is designed to generate electricity.

U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon expressed grave concern about the facility and said "the burden of proof is on Iran," in a statement by his office.

Salehi said construction of the Qom facility was a "precautionary measure" to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from possible attacks.

"Given the threats we face every day, we are required to take the necessary precautionary measures, spread our facilities and protect our human assets. Therefore, the facility is to guarantee the continuation of our nuclear activities under any conditions," he told the television.

Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, however, told Sky News television that Iran was clearly bucking the international community's demand that it keep its activities transparent.

Blix, speaking from Stockholm, told the broadcaster that the clerical regime was clearly going against the spirit of the international community's demands.

"The revelation of a second plant shows that they are not exactly transparent, as the IAEA has asked them to be," he said. "This has not been an exercise in openness."

If Iran were developing nuclear weapons, it would be at precisely such a place, noted Mark Fitzpatrick, of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"If they were to develop a nuclear weapon they would probably do it at a clandestine facility so that they wouldn't trigger the obvious trip wire," he said.

While an actual weapon is several years away, said Paul Rogers a security expert at the University of Bradford in northern England, something rudimentary could be rigged up within a year if Iran stepped up its enrichment activity.

"If it were to re-enrich its low-grade uranium to weapons-grade for an experimental device it would take about a year," he said. "That would almost be a demonstration to show it had the capability."

The key Western powers at the United Nations have given Tehran until year's end to cease enriching uranium or face new sanctions.

On Oct. 1 diplomats from Iran, the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany will meet to discuss Tehran's nuclear program.

Source Yahoo news

Evidence emerges that seasonal flu vaccine increases risk of H1N1 swine flu

2009-09-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

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To hear it from the vaccine makers, their vaccines are perfectly safe and have no side effects. A person can receive an unlimited number of vaccines (10, 100 or even 1000) and have absolutely no ill effects, they claim. This is the quack science mythology upon which mass vaccination policies are currently based. But new evidence is emerging that people receiving a seasonal flu shot are made more susceptible to H1N1 swine flu as a result.

CBC News in Canada is now reporting disturbing findings you need to know about: "Four Canadian studies involved about 2,000 people, health officials told CBC News. Researchers found people who had received the seasonal flu vaccine in the past were more likely to get sick with the H1N1 virus."

The story doesn't cite the percentage increase in H1N1 virus risk, but it's apparently enough to give pause to many doctors and infectious disease experts. "We don't know with this year's flu shot how it interacts with the pandemic flu shot, so it's a worry," said Dr. Michael Gardam in the CBC News article quoted below. He's the director of infectious diseases prevention and control at the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion.

The upshot of all this is that Canadian health officials are now scratching their heads, wondering whether the seasonal flu vaccines will actually make the H1N1 pandemic worse!

It's fascinating that this data is coming out of Canada, not the U.S. In the United States, the mainstream media has engaged in a virtual blackout of any information that questions the safety of vaccines, even while openly pushing outrageous lies about the swine flu vaccine.

Vaccines weaken your immune system
What this information reveals is further evidence that flu shots damage or weaken your immune system, making you more susceptible to subsequent infections. Flu shots don't even work to reduce your risk of getting the flu that they're targeting! Most people who get the flu are the very same people who routinely receive flu shots.

This will hold true with H1N1 swine flu as well: The people getting the swine flu virus will be primarily those who routinely receive flu vaccinations.

You know why? Because a flu shot trains your immune system to be lazy. It exposes your immune technology to an artificially weakened virus, resulting in a lazy adaptive response from your immune technology. In much the same way that your leg muscles atrophy if you stop walking, your immune system begins to weaken if you don't exercise it. And this leads to an increased risk of being unable to defend against future exposure to infectious disease, which is exactly what we're seeing with this Canadian study.

Vaccines are the quackery of modern medicine. They not only don't work to protect people from the diseases they target; they also increase the risk of being infected with other diseases. And that doesn't even include the ways in which vaccine ingredients (adjuvants or preservatives) can cause permanent damage to your nervous system.

Source from Naturalnews.com

2009-09-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

VIENNA – Iran has revealed the existence of a secret uranium-enrichment plant, the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday, a development that could heighten fears about Tehran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon and escalate its diplomatic confrontation with the West.

President Barack Obama and the leaders of France and Britain plan to accuse Iran of hiding the facility in an address at the opening of the G-20 economic summit Friday, a senior White House official told the AP.

The official said Obama, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy will demand Tehran open the covert facility to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Iran is under three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment at what had been its single known enrichment plant, which is being monitored by the IAEA.

Two officials told the AP that Iran revealed the existence of the second plant in a letter sent Monday to International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire confirmed receipt of the letter, saying the agency was informed "that a new pilot fuel enrichment plant is under construction." The letter said that the plant would not enrich uranium beyond the 5 percent level suitable for civilian energy production. That would be substantially below the threshold of 90 percent or more needed for a weapon.

Iran told the agency "that no nuclear material has been introduced into the facility," he said. "In response, the IAEA has requested Iran to provide specific information and access to the facility as soon as possible."

The officials said that Iran's letter contained no details about the location of the second facility, when — or if — it had started operations or the type and number of centrifuges it was running.

But one of the officials, who had access to a review of Western intelligence on the issue, said it was about 100 miles (160 kilometers) southwest of Tehran and was the site of 3,000 centrifuges that could be operational by next year.

The officials who spoke to the AP — one from a European government with access to IAEA information and the other a diplomat in Vienna from a country accredited to the IAEA — demanded anonymity Friday because their information was confidential. One said he had seen the Iranian letter. The other told the AP that he had been informed about it by a U.N. official.

Iranian officials had previously acknowledged having only one plant — which is under IAEA monitoring — and had denied allegations of undeclared nuclear activities.

An August IAEA report said Iran had set up more than 8,000 centrifuges to churn out enriched uranium at its cavernous underground facility outside the southern city of Natanz. The report said that only about 4,600 centrifuges were fully active.

Iran says it has the right to enrich uranium for a nationwide chain of nuclear reactors. But because enrichment can also produce weapons-grade uranium, the international community fears Tehran will make fissile material for nuclear warheads.

The IAEA says Iran has amassed more than a ton of uranium from its older Natanz centrifuges that is less than 5-percent enriched and unsuitable for weapons use. But through further enrichment, that amount would give Tehran more than enough material to produce enough weapons-grade uranium — enriched to 90 percent and beyond — for one nuclear weapon.

U.N. officials familiar with IAEA monitoring of Iran's nuclear activities have previously told the AP they suspected Iran may have undeclared enrichment plants with the state-of-the-art centrifuges that enrich more quickly and efficiently than Iran's mainstay P-1, a decades-old model based on Chinese technology.

The revelation of a secret plant further hinders the chances of progress in scheduled Oct. 1 talks between Iran and six world powers.

At that meeting — the first in more than a year — the five permanent U.N. Security Council members and Germany plan to press Iran to scale back on its enrichment activities. But Tehran has declared that it will not bargain on enrichment Iran's nuclear negotiator dismissed the threat of new sanctions in an interview released Friday.

Saeed Jalili said that Iran has "the right to uranium enrichment, and we will never give up this right," the German weekly Der Spiegel reported.

"We have lived with sanctions for 30 years, and they cannot force a great nation like the Iranian one to its knees," Jalili told Der Spiegel. "They do not scare us. On the contrary: we welcome new sanctions."

Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for nonproliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, suggested that Iran had little choice about disclosing the secret site ahead of the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh.

"Iran undoubtedly announced it to the to the IAEA because they were afraid it would become known to the U.S. and others," he said.

Fitzpatrick said the disclosure "will add to the momentum behind a push for stronger sanctions on Iran" should the Oct. 1 talks in Geneva fail.

Jalili is to meet with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns and representatives from Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany.

On Thursday, Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said the Group of Eight is giving Iran until the end of the year to commit to ending uranium enrichment — a process that can produce fissile material for the core of a nuclear weapon — and avoid new sanctions.

The existence of a secret Iranian enrichment program built on black-market technology was revealed seven years ago. Since then, the country has continued to expand the program with only a few interruptions as it works toward its aspirations of a 50,000-centrifuge enrichment facility at Natanz.

Source On the Net

Hot News: The Largest hoard of Anglo-Saxon treasure found in UK

2009-09-24T13:44:00.000-07:00

LONDON – An amateur treasure hunter prowling English farmland with a metal detector stumbled upon the largest Anglo-Saxon treasure ever found, a massive seventh-century hoard of gold and silver sword decorations, crosses and other items, British archaeologists said Thursday.

One expert said the treasure found by 55-year-old Terry Herbert would revolutionize understanding of the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic people who ruled England from the fifth century until the Norman conquest in 1066. Another said the find would rank among Britain's best-known historic treasures.

"This is just a fantastic find completely out of the blue," Roger Bland, who managed the cache's excavation, told The Associated Press. "It will make us rethink the Dark Ages."

The Anglo-Saxons, a group of Germanic tribes, gradually invaded England by sea starting in the fifth century in the wake of the collapse of the Roman Empire. Originally, they came from what is now the coastal region of northwest Germany.

Their artisans made striking objects out of gold and enamel and created poetry including "Beowulf," an anonymous epic poem about a warrior who does battle with monsters and a dragon.

Archaeologist Kevin Leahy, who catalogued the find, said the stash appeared to be war loot and included dozens of pommel caps — decorative elements attached to the knobs of sword handles. He noted that "Beowulf" contains a reference to warriors stripping the pommels of their enemies' weapons as mementoes.

But much other Anglo-Saxon literature and artwork has been lost through warfare, looting, upheavals and the passage of time, leaving scanty evidence for scholars of the period.

Bland said the hoard was unearthed in what was once Mercia, one of five main Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and is thought to date to 675-725 AD.

The hoard consists of at least 650 items of gold and 530 silver objects weighing more than 2.2 pounds (1 kilo), along with some copper alloy, garnets and glass.

A total of 1,345 items have been examined by experts and 56 lumps of earth were found to contain metal artifacts detected by an X-ray machine, meaning the total will likely rise to about 1,500.

Most of the objects are ornaments for weapons and other military artifacts, some inlaid with precious stones.

"I think wealth of this kind must have belonged to a king but we cannot say that for absolute certain," Bland said.

Leslie Webster, the former curator of Anglo-Saxon archaeology at the British Museum, said the amount of gold uncovered — about 11 pounds (5 kilograms) — suggested that early medieval England was a far wealthier place than previously believed.

She also said the crosses and other religious artifacts mixed in with the mainly military items, might shed new light on the relationship between Christianity and warfare among the Anglo-Saxons.

Herbert, from the western English town of Burntwood, found the gold on a friend's farm on July 5 and spent the next five days scouring the field for the rest of the hoard, recovering the first items before professional archaeologists took over the excavation.

"Imagine you're at home and somebody keeps putting money through your letterbox, that was what it was like," Herbert said. "I was going to bed and in my sleep I was seeing gold items."

The hoard was officially declared treasure by a coroner, which means it will now be valued by a committee of experts and offered up for sale to a museum. Proceeds would be split 50-50 between Herbert and his farmer friend, who has not been identified. The find's exact location is being kept secret to deter looters.

Bland said he could not give a precise figure for the worth of the hoard, but he said the treasure hunter could be in line for a "seven-figure sum."

Herbert said the experience had been "more fun than winning the lottery," adding that one expert likened his discovery to finding Tutankhamen's tomb.

"I just flushed all over when he said that. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up," Herbert said.

The treasure is in storage at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Some of the items are due to go on display starting Friday.

One of the most intriguing objects in hoard is a small strip of gold inscribed with a warlike Latin quotation from the Old Testament, which translates as: "Rise up, O Lord, and may thy enemies be dispersed and those who hate thee be driven from thy face."

The strip may have been fastened to a shield or a sword belt.

Bland said archaeologists were still baffled by the function of many of the pieces.

"There's lots of mystery in it," he said.

Source The Associated Press

Hot News: Massachusetts. gov tells state workers to shut out Hyatt

2009-09-24T13:39:00.000-07:00

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Mass. gov tells state workers not to do business with Hyatt after housekeepers fired.
BOSTON (AP) -- Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said Wednesday that he has instructed state employees to stop doing business with Hyatt hotels until it rehires 100 housekeepers it fired last month.

Hyatt Hotel Corp., citing declining revenues, laid off the Boston-area housekeepers and replaced them with lower-paid workers from a Georgia company.

In a letter to Hyatt, Patrick criticized the layoffs, citing reports that fired workers trained their replacements after being told they were vacation fill-ins.

He urged Hyatt to work with staffers, rather "than tossing them out unceremoniously."

Hyatt, in a statement, said that like many other businesses it has been forced to make difficult staffing decisions. The company said it offered the laid-off workers severance, counseling, retraining and health coverage to year's end.

Patrick met with about 30 of the workers at a union hall Wednesday night.

"I know these are tough economic times but there is a right way and a wrong way to do things and this was wrong," the governor said following the private meeting.

Serandou Kamara, 32, said she had worked five years at the hotel cleaning rooms and told Patrick how upset she was at the way she was let go.

"We are human beings. What they did to us was wrong," said Kamara, who has three children and is expecting a fourth.

Patrick acknowledged that his own administration has been forced to cut jobs due to a budget shortfall, but said he never misled state workers or asked them to train their replacements.

In its statement, Hyatt said the governor's threatened boycott of the hotel would endanger the livelihoods of 600 other employees who live and work in Massachusetts.

"We do not understand why the Governor is putting more Massachusetts jobs at risk instead of working with us to find jobs for employees affected by the realities of these unprecedented economic challenges," the company said.

Hot News: Abercrombie & Fitch Faces Lawsuit Over Muslim Headscarf

2009-09-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

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Given the hyper-sexualized advertising that Abercrombie & Fitch has long embraced, it is no surprise that the company encourages its employees to let their hair down. But is the company practicing discrimination if it won't hire a young woman who covers her head for religious reasons? Yes, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Last week the EEOC filed suit against Abercrombie on behalf of Samantha Elauf, a 19-year-old community college student from Tulsa, Okla., who is Muslim.

The suit alleges that Abercrombie "refused to hire Ms. Elauf because she wears a hijab, claiming that the wearing of the headgear was prohibited by its Look Policy," or employee dress code. The suit says that Abercrombie "failed to accommodate her religious beliefs by making an exception to the Look Policy. These actions constitute discrimination against Ms. Elauf on the basis of religion." (See pictures of being Muslim in America.)

Elauf, who had experience working in retail, interviewed for a position at a Tulsa Abercrombie Kids store in June 2008. During the interview, she wore a black hijab, or headscarf, in line with Muslim religious tradition. According to the EEOC, Elauf got word through a friend, who worked in the store, that the headscarf cost her the job. The EEOC alleges that during its investigation, Abercrombie & Fitch flatly told the agency, in a position statement, that "under the Look Policy, associates must wear clothing that is consistent with the Abercrombie brand, cannot wear hats or other coverings, and cannot wear clothes that are the color black." Elauf is suing for back pay and compensation related to emotional pain and anxiety.

"If these allegations are true," says Chuck Thornton, deputy director of the ACLU of Oklahoma, "they are serious. In this day and age, it's not acceptable. Certainly, a headscarf is part and parcel of the Islamic experience." (Read "How to Reach Teens in a Recession? Ask A[a {e}]ropostale.")

When contacted for a response, Abercrombie & Fitch issued the following statement: "We cannot comment on pending litigation. We have a strong equal-opportunity policy, and we accommodate religious beliefs and practices when possible. We are confident that the litigation of this matter will demonstrate that we have followed the law in every respect."

Was Abercrombie & Fitch within its rights to enforce its dress code? Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits religious discrimination. "It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer to fail or refuse to hire .... any individual ... because of such individual's race, color, religion, sex or national origin," the law states. The key language, says Stewart Schwab, an employment lawyer and dean of Cornell Law School, is found in a 1972 amendment to Title VII. This amendment defined "religion.

" It reads, "The term 'religion' includes all aspects of religious observance and practice, as well as belief, unless an employer demonstrates that he is unable to reasonably accommodate an employee's or prospective employee's religious observance or practice without undue hardship on the conduct of the employer's business."

This case could hinge on a jury's interpretation of the phrase "undue hardship." If Abercrombie & Fitch had made an exception of its Look Policy for Elauf - a "reasonable accommodation" - would that move have hurt the Abercrombie brand? On the surface, that argument seems specious, at best.

Would shoppers at that Abercrombie Kids store have been so jarred by the hijab that they wouldn't have bought the company's jeans? If the company makes that case, it doesn't think much of the religious tolerance of the good folks of Oklahoma. (Read "Abercrombie & Fitch: Worst Recession Brand?")

Still, this case is far from a lock for Elauf. "You can't give a blanket statement that this clearly violates her rights," says Schwab. "Employers often win cases involving dress codes. There's a general feeling that employers are entitled to set an image in their stores." If a company sells sex - you can sometimes find a shirtless male model hanging out in front of Abercrombie stores - let's face it, head coverings aren't ideal.

No matter how the suit turns out, Abercrombie & Fitch doesn't need another headache. The company just announced more dismal sales figures: August same-store sales declined 29%. In 2004, the EEOC sued Abercrombie for limiting its hiring of minorities; that case was settled for $50 million.

A British woman sued the company for discrimination after Abercrombie's management allegedly shunted her to the stockroom for wearing a cardigan to cover her prosthetic arm. In August, a tribunal awarded her nearly $15,000. The EEOC has also sued Hollister, a teen retailer owned by Abercrombie, for allegedly firing a Pentecostal worker who asked to dress more modestly. That case is still pending.

As for Elauf, she is under attorney's orders to keep quiet about the case. But her grandfather, Ata Elauf, is clearly irked. "They put a wedge into her Americanism," says Elauf. "She grew up here speaking the language, going to school. Why did they do this? She's sort of confused."

Source Time.com

HOt News: Divorce in America: Ind., Fla. counties are top

2009-09-24T10:54:00.001-07:00

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ISLAMORADA, Fla. – It's easy to see why bookkeeper Linda Mortimer moved to the Florida Keys 20 years ago: the impossibly blue water, the year-round sunshine, a lifestyle so laid-back that every day is like a Jimmy Buffett lyric.

What Mortimer didn't anticipate was falling in love — and then getting divorced less than two years after taking her wedding vows.

"I discovered after we got married that my husband had been divorced four times," said Mortimer, as she finished a noontime burger while sitting at the bar at the Ocean View, a local party spot and Mortimer's place of employment.

"I was his No. 5. He didn't understand why I got so upset."

Divorce is as common in the Florida Keys as fresh grouper and cold beer. Census statistics released this week show that Monroe County — which includes the cluster of 1,700 islands floating off South Florida — has the second-highest proportion of divorced residents. A little more than 18 percent of the people living in Monroe County are divorced, second only to Indiana's Wayne County, which had 19 percent. Nationwide, 10.7 percent of people over 15 are divorced.

Three of the top 10 counties the divorced call home are in Florida — rural Putnam County in Northeast Florida and urban Pinellas County on the Gulf Coast are the other two. Indiana had a total of three counties in the top 10 as well. Along with Wayne County, Floyd and Madison counties made the list.

Newly released census figures show that while the number of unmarried people continued its 10-year climb, the ranks of married people in the United States rose by nearly 6 million last year, bucking a decade-long decline. The number of divorced people rose, but only slightly.

Among the other marriage- and divorce-related findings from the census data:

• The number of unmarried people climbed to about one-third of all Americans over 15.

• Oklahoma has the highest rate of people who have been married three times or more.

• Utah and Idaho tied for the youngest median bride age, at 23.5 years old.

Residents of Wayne County, Ind., don't see why their home should be the divorce capital of America. The water tower in Richmond, Ind., the county's largest city, welcomes visitors to "A Great All-American City."

"It just doesn't make all that much sense," said Michael Jackson, an associate professor of psychology at Earlham College, a private university in Richmond. "We find it really questionable. It just sounds funny."

Indiana is one of a handful of states that don't track divorce statistics. So it's hard to tell if the percentage is caused by a large number of divorces or a large number of young single people moving out of the county to attend college, or if it's just a statistical anomaly.

Divorce counselors say the economy could be partly to blame for adding more stress to marriages. Indiana has been hit hard by the collapse of the auto and manufacturing industries. Wayne County had an average annual unemployment rate of 6.8 percent in 2008 — when the census data was collected — a rate above the state average at the time but still below many other areas of the state and country.

Tom Amyx, who owns a deli along Richmond's main street, said bad financial times shouldn't be a reason for married couples to split. He just celebrated his 40th wedding anniversary with his wife, Sherry, and says couples should tough out hard times. He said attitudes have changed about marriage, with some younger people considering it a less-than-permanent relationship that they can escape if they aren't happy.

"It's not ever about the other person anymore; it's about me, me, me," he said. "People need to make a commitment and stick to the commitment. It's not just a promise — it's a covenant. That's a very serious thing."

Amyx, who has lived in several other states, sees no reason Wayne County would top the list.

"We don't have that many people in the county," he said, "but evidently they get around."

Some folks in the Florida Keys are quick to say that it's not that people are actually divorcing in droves there — it's that divorced people come to the area to start new lives.

"The Keys are a great place to hide," said Mortimer, who is 60. When asked from what, she said: "Child support. Alimony."

A guy sitting next to Mortimer at the Ocean View bar finished his martini in a plastic cup. His chuckle nearly drowned out the Creedence Clearwater Revival song playing on the radio.

"The IRS. The CIA. Family," he said.

Others say that the party lifestyle — and a high cost of living — stresses families to the breaking point.

"This is a place of escape. A place of hedonistic abandon," said Dr. Fred Covan, a Key West therapist. "We have a condition here, we say people get Key Wasted. People come down here and do really, really stupid stuff."

Alcohol was named as a frequent culprit. People in Nevada, which at 14 percent had the highest divorce rate of any state, gave similar reasons.

Frank Lin, a divorce attorney whose firm, Lin & Associates, uses the phone number 702-DIVORCE, said Nevada laws, a 24/7 Sin City environment rich in temptation and other marriage hurdles probably combine to lead to more divorces.

"One of our clients was a bartender at the Palms and he started seeing a cocktail waitress at the Playboy Club. When I go to work, I don't have cocktail waitresses in high heels showing cleavage," Lin said. "He does — that's part of sort of his daily environment."

The most popular ad campaign in recent years promoting Las Vegas to tourists is "What happens here, stays here," and several party planners sell special divorce parties, offering the recently unmarried a guys' or girls' night out on the town.

But casino and nightclub employees aren't the only ones feeling marriage pressures, Lin said, because the rest of Las Vegas works a 24-hour cycle, too. Affairs aren't the only reason people get divorced here, he said.

"If both parties work 9-to-5 jobs, you see each other. But if one party works 9-to-5 and the other party works swing or graveyard, it's not an environment conducive to a marriage," Lin said.

Nevada's laws make it easier to get divorced compared with other states. Couples need only live in the Silver State six weeks before their marriage can be dissolved, while other states require longer residency and a cooling-off period.

Key West divorce lawyer Jiulio Margalli has noticed another trend among couples who are divorcing on the island paradise.

"What we have now is people getting divorced and fighting over who is going to take over the debt. Who's going to be saddled with the $800K mortgage that neither one could pay?" he said. "It used to be that we saw people get divorced and fight over the home. Now it's, 'Oh, my God, not only are we getting divorced, our credit is going down the tubes and we're going into foreclosure.'"

Regardless of the cause, having nearly 20 percent of the population divorced is cause for concern, said Brad Wilcox, director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia.

"It's basically a social and environmental toxin," Wilcox said of divorce.

Source On the Net

Hot News: Vaccine helps prevent HIV infection

2009-09-24T10:40:00.000-07:00

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BANGKOK – For the first time, an experimental vaccine has prevented infection with the AIDS virus, a watershed event in the deadly epidemic and a surprising result. Recent failures led many scientists to think such a vaccine might never be possible.

The World Health Organization and the U.N. agency UNAIDS said the results "instilled new hope" in the field of HIV vaccine research, although researchers say it likely is many years before a vaccine might be available.

The vaccine — a combination of two previously unsuccessful vaccines — cut the risk of becoming infected with HIV by more than 31 percent in the world's largest AIDS vaccine trial of more than 16,000 volunteers in Thailand, researchers announced Thursday in Bangkok.

Even though the benefit is modest, "it's the first evidence that we could have a safe and effective preventive vaccine," Col. Jerome Kim told The Associated Press. He helped lead the study for the U.S. Army, which sponsored it with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The institute's director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, warned that this is "not the end of the road," but he said he was surprised and very pleased by the outcome.

"It gives me cautious optimism about the possibility of improving this result" and developing a more effective AIDS vaccine, Fauci said. "This is something that we can do."

The Thailand Ministry of Public Health conducted the study. The U.S. Army has long worked with that government and others to develop and test vaccines and medicines to protect troops and the general public.

The study used strains of HIV common in Thailand. Whether such a vaccine would work against other strains in the U.S., Africa or elsewhere in the world is unknown, scientists stressed.

Even a marginally helpful vaccine could have a big impact. Every day, 7,500 people worldwide are newly infected with HIV; 2 million died of AIDS in 2007, UNAIDS estimates.

"Today marks a historic milestone," said Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, an international group that has worked toward developing a vaccine. Warren was not involved in the study.

"It will take time and resources to fully analyze and understand the data, but there is little doubt that this finding will energize and redirect the AIDS vaccine field," he said in a statement.

The study tested the two-vaccine combination in a "prime-boost" approach, in which the first one primes the immune system to attack HIV and the second one strengthens the response.

They are ALVAC, from Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccine division of French drugmaker Sanofi-Aventis; and AIDSVAX, originally developed by VaxGen Inc. and now held by Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases, a nonprofit founded by some former VaxGen employees.

ALVAC uses canarypox, a bird virus altered so it can't cause human disease, to ferry synthetic versions of three HIV genes into the body. AIDSVAX contains a genetically engineered version of a protein on HIV's surface. The vaccines are not made from whole virus — dead or alive — and cannot cause HIV.

Neither vaccine in the study prevented HIV infection when tested individually in earlier trials, and dozens of scientists had called the new one futile when it began in 2003.

"I really didn't have high hopes at all that we would see a positive result," Fauci confessed.

The results proved the skeptics wrong.

"The combination is stronger than each of the individual members," said the Army's Kim, a physician who manages the Army's HIV vaccine program.

The study tested the combo in HIV-negative Thai men and women aged 18 to 30 at average risk of becoming infected. Half received four "priming" doses of ALVAC and two "boost" doses of AIDSVAX over six months. The others received dummy shots. No one knew who got what until the study ended.

Thanad Yomha, a 33-year-old electrician from southeastern Thailand, said he didn't expect anything in return for volunteering for the project.

"I did this for others," Thanad said. "It's for the next generation."

Participants volunteered for the study and were told about the potential risks associated with receiving the experimental vaccine before agreeing to participate.

All were given condoms, counseling and treatment for any sexually transmitted infections, and were tested every six months for HIV. Any who became infected were given free treatment with antiviral medicines. All participants continued to receive an HIV test every six months for three years after vaccinations ended.

The results: New infections occurred in 51 of the 8,197 given vaccine and in 74 of the 8,198 who received dummy shots. That worked out to a 31 percent lower risk of infection for the vaccine group. Two of the infected participants who received the placebo died.

The vaccine had no effect on levels of HIV in the blood for those who did become infected. That had been another goal of the study — seeing whether the vaccine could limit damage to the immune system and help keep infected people from developing full-blown AIDS.

That result is "one of the most important and intriguing findings of this trial," Fauci said. It suggests that the signs scientists have been using to gauge whether a vaccine was actually giving protection may not be valid.

"It is conceivable that we haven't even identified yet" what really shows immunity, which is both "important and humbling" after decades of vaccine research, Fauci said.

Details of the $105 million study will be given at a vaccine conference in Paris in October.

This is the third big vaccine trial since 1983, when HIV was identified as the cause of AIDS. In 2007, Merck & Co. stopped a study of its experimental vaccine after seeing it did not prevent HIV infection. Later analysis suggested the vaccine might even raise the risk of infection in certain men. The vaccine itself did not cause infection.

In 2003, AIDSVAX flunked two large trials — the first late-stage tests of any AIDS vaccine at the time.

It is unclear whether vaccine makers will seek to license the two-vaccine combo in Thailand. Before the trial began, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said other studies would be needed before the vaccine could be considered for U.S. licensing.

"This is a world first which proves that vaccine development is possible," Supachai said. "But this is not to the level where we can license or manufacture the vaccine yet."

Mass-producing the vaccine, plus how to proceed with future studies, will be discussed among the governments, study sponsors and companies involved in the trial, Kim said. Scientists want to know how long protection will last, whether booster shots will be needed, and whether the vaccine helps prevent infection in gay men and injection drug users, since it was tested mostly in heterosexuals in the Thai trial.

The study was done in Thailand because U.S. Army scientists did pivotal research in that country when the AIDS epidemic emerged there, isolating virus strains and providing genetic information on them to vaccine makers. The Thai government also strongly supported the idea of doing the study.

Source Associated Press

Hot Trends USA: Corpus Delicti

2009-09-23T22:12:00.000-07:00

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Corpus delicti (Latin: “body of crime”) is a term from Western jurisprudence which refers to the principle that it must be proven that a crime has occurred before a person can be convicted of committing the crime.

For example, a person cannot be tried for larceny unless it can be proven that property has been stolen. Likewise, in order for a person to be tried for arson it must be proven that a criminal act resulted in the burning of a property. Black’s Law Dictionary (6th ed.) defines “corpus delicti” as: “the fact of a crime having been actually committed.”

In the Anglo-American legal system, the concept has its outgrowth in several principles. Many jurisdictions hold as a legal rule that a defendant’s out-of-court confession, alone, is not sufficient evidence to prove the defendant’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. See, e.g., Wong Sun v. United States, 371 U.S. 471, 497 n.14, 83 S.Ct. 407, 9 L.Ed.2d 441 (1963)(citing to corpus delicti rule and stating: “For the history and development of the corroboration requirement, see 7 Wigmore, Evidence [3d ed. 1940], §§ 2070-2071; Note, Proof of the Corpus Delicti Aliunde the Defendant’s Confession, 103 U. of Pa. L. Rev. 638-649 [1955]. For the present scope and application of the rule, see 2 Underhill, Criminal Evidence [5th ed. 1956], §§ 402-403.

For a comprehensive collection of cases, see Annot., 45 A. L. R.2d 1316 [1956].”) A corollary to this rule is that an accused cannot be convicted solely upon the testimony of an accomplice. Some jurisdictions also hold that without first showing independent corroboration that a crime happened, the prosecution may not introduce evidence of the defendant’s statement.

Hot News: Ahmadinejad’s Nuclear Offer

2009-09-23T22:07:00.000-07:00

In an exclusive wide-ranging hour-and-a-half interview with NEWSWEEK's Lally Weymouth and editors from The Washington Post, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad discussed his upcoming talks with the United States, his opinion of President Obama, and his continued denial of the Holocaust, as well as the U.S.-led effort in Afghanistan, which he views as doomed.

In it he previewed his offer to purchase enriched uranium from the United States for medicinal purposes, which proliferation experts say is likely a nonstarter. Excerpts:

As you know, Iran has been holding a NEWSWEEK correspondent for three months, Maziar Bahari. I know you have been very generous this morning saying you would help release the American hikers. On humanitarian grounds, would you consider releasing Maziar?
I would like all prisoners to be released, but I am not the judge. The judge has to decide on this. If I were in charge of this case, I would guarantee that all the prisoners would be released.

But you said that you would try to get the American hikers released. Could you try to do the same for Maziar?
I want all prisoners to be released. Every one. Americans and non-Americans—it really makes no difference.

When Iran is trying to restart relations with the West, why would you once again deny that there was a Holocaust when that is so easily disprovable?
Don't you think that the Holocaust is a very important issue?

Yes, I think it is the greatest crime of the 20th century.
So you do agree that it is an important topic. Do you believe that the Holocaust still carries through to this day in terms of its effects today? Could you explain to me how it affects issues today?

It does not matter what I think. It matters what you think, Mr. President.
I understand, but I would like for us to exchange our views so as to resolve an issue here.

The world wants to know what you think.
Who is the world here?

Iran is trying to improve its relationship with the West, as I understand it. It is clear that there was a Holocaust. Why would you say there was no Holocaust? Do you feel there should be no Jewish state—no Israel?
What I am saying is extremely clear. It is an academic approach to a crucial subject and also one based on humanitarian considerations. What I am saying here is that in past history many events have happened, and in World War II many crimes were committed. Over 60 million people were killed and even more were displaced. So we have several specific questions with regard to the events of World War II, and I believe we cannot find the answers to these questions through the propaganda that is promoted by the media. In the end, the questions need convincing answers. The first question that I have to try and understand is why in the midst of all that happened in World War II, the Holocaust is emphasized more than any other [event]?

Let's say that Stalin's crimes were equally great.
The second question is why do Western politicians focus on this issue so much? The third question is how does that event connect with issues that we see around us in the world today? Was this a historical event that happened in isolation without impacting the present conditions? The next question we should ask ourselves is if the event did take place, where did it happen, who were the perpetrators, what was the role of the Palestinian people? What crime have they committed to deserve what they have received as a result?

Why exactly should the Palestinian people be victimized? Are you aware that over 5 million Palestinians have been displaced and have had refugee status? What role did they play in the Holocaust? Why is the Holocaust used as a pretext to occupy the land of other people? Why should the Palestinian people give their lives up for it? You are probably aware that there have been embargoes on the people of Gaza.

Source News week

Hot News: Gadhafi on U.N. ... and on and on and on

2009-09-23T22:04:00.000-07:00

UNITED NATIONS — Several minutes into what would become a disjointed hour-and-a-half talkathon, just after he speculated that swine flu was the result of a military experiment gone wrong, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi told members of his U.N. audience that they were, essentially, window dressing.

The U.N. General Assembly, he said, was just a debating society, much like the famous Speakers Corner in London's Hyde Park, where anyone can get on a soapbox and try to draw a crowd.

"You just make a speech and then disappear," Gadhafi said in Arabic, according to a rough simultaneous translation. "You are … like décor."

Gadhafi's point was that real power in the United Nations resides in the Security Council and its veto-wielding five permanent members — the United States, Britain, China, France and Russia.

U.N. speeches are supposed to be around 15 minutes; Gadhafi droned on so long his translator had to be relieved. He talked about his sleeping habits. He compared the Taliban to the Vatican. He suggested Israel might have been behind the John F. Kennedy assassination.

This wasn't the longest U.N. speech — Cuban leader Fidel Castro talked for four hours in 1960. It nevertheless was a vintage moment for the Libyan dictator, who has long sought the mantle of developing-world revolutionary and was making his first U.N. appearance after 40 years in power.

Gadhafi began by praising President Obama, who had spoken before him, but Obama was long gone from the hall.

The Libyan leader laid a yellow folder in front of him, opened some of the handwritten pages and began railing against the United Nations. Since the world body was founded in 1945, he said, "65 aggressive wars took place without any collective action by the United Nations to prevent them."

Source USA Todays

Hot News: Iran's president rails against capitalism

2009-09-23T22:01:00.000-07:00

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UNITED NATIONS – Under increasing attack over Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday that Tehran was ready to meet conciliation with conciliation.

Ahmadinejad spoke to a half-empty chamber as he sought to cast himself as a beleaguered champion of the developing world, that he portrayed as under attack from rapacious capitalism.

At the same time, the Iranian leader issued stinging attacks on the United States and its allies without calling them by name. The delegations of the U.S., Canada and Israel were among those absent from the chamber.

Ahmadinejad did not mention the uproar over Iran's nuclear program, calling instead for global nuclear disarmament.

Moments before he spoke, foreign ministers of six global powers told reporters on the sidelines of the General Assembly that they expect Iran to come clean about its nuclear program. Tougher sanctions against Iran are being considered if talks between the powers and Iran on the issue, set for Oct. 1, don't yield results.

At times, Ahmadinejad struck a softer tone, declaring that Tehran was "prepared to warmly shake all those hands which are honestly extended to us." He said Iran is committed to participate in building durable peace and security worldwide, while defending its legitimate and legal rights.

The Iranian leader also peppered his speech with religious references, invoking the prophets of Judaism and Christianity, as well as Islam.

Yet most of the speech focused on his usual themes — scathing verbal attacks on archenemy Israel and the West.

He assailed Israel for what he said was a "barbaric" attack on the Gaza Strip last winter, and condemned the U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and attacks inside Pakistan. He also accused the West of hypocrisy, saying it preached democracy, but violated its fundamental principles.

Ahmadinejad portrayed Iran as a defender of poor countries, lashed out at unbridled capitalism which he said has reached the end of the road and will suffer the same fate as Marxism.

Turning to domestic affairs, Ahmadinejad insisted he won a "large majority" in what he described as "glorious and fully democratic" June elections. Pro-reform opposition politicians have alleged massive electoral fraud, and Ahmadinejad has been at the center of political turmoil since then.

Outside the U.N. complex, hundreds of supporters of Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi rallied against Ahmadinejad, wearing green, the movement's signature color. One of the demonstrators, Amir Arani, said that the election was stolen and that "our president is not Ahmadinejad."

In the plenum, many seats were empty during the speech, and some delegates got up midway through. The U.S., Israel and Canada were among those that boycotted the speech, in protest against his persistent denial of the Holocaust.

In another apparent anti-Semitic reference, Ahmadinejad complained that a "small minority" controls politics, economics and culture across much of the world.

Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, said: "It is disappointing that Mr. Ahmadinejad has once again chosen to espouse hateful, offensive and anti-Semitic rhetoric."

Through the day, key speakers, including U.S. President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, had taken Iran to task for its nuclear ambitions.

The U.S. and its allies believe Iran is trying to make nuclear weapons, despite Tehran's assertion that it is only building a peaceful nuclear energy program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has not been forthcoming about its nuclear program, and the U.N. Security Council has imposed sanctions against Iran three times since 2006 for its refusal to freeze uranium enrichment.

Next month, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with Germany, are to hold talks with Iran. Obama wants to pursue tougher sanctions if those meetings yield nothing.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Wednesday with her counterparts from Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany to prepare for the meeting in Geneva. British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said the group expects a "serious response" from Iran at that meeting.

Russia has stood in the way of stronger action against Tehran in the past, but Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday, after a meeting with Obama, that "in some cases sanctions are inevitable."

In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Ahmadinejad has said he expects "free and open" discussions at that meeting, but that Iran will not negotiate uranium enrichment.

When asked in an interview with CBS television Wednesday whether Iran had reversed position and was ready to put its nuclear program on the table, he said: "We have not actually changed our mind."

Iran's position suggests that diplomatic efforts might soon hit an impasse.

On Thursday, a high-level meeting of the U.N. Security Council is expected to adopt a resolution calling for a more intense global campaign to reduce the threat of nuclear proliferation. It does not name countries, but refers to previous resolutions that imposed sanctions on Iran and North Korea.

Source On The Net

Hot News: Water Found on the Moon!

2009-09-23T21:54:00.000-07:00

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Since man first touched the moon and brought pieces of it back to Earth, scientists have thought that the lunar surface was bone dry. But new observations from three different spacecraft have put this notion to rest with what has been called "unambiguous evidence" of water across the surface of the moon.

The new findings, detailed in the Sept. 25 issue of the journal Science, come in the wake of further evidence of lunar polar water ice by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and just weeks before the planned lunar impact of NASA's LCROSS satellite, which will hit one of the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's south pole in hope of churning up evidence of water ice deposits in the debris field.

The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. Finding water on the moon would be a boon to possible future lunar bases, acting as a potential source of drinking water and fuel.

Apollo turns up dry

When Apollo astronauts returned from the moon 40 years ago, they brought back several samples of lunar rocks.

The moon rocks were analyzed for signs of water bound to minerals present in the rocks; while trace amounts of water were detected, these were assumed to be contamination from Earth, because the containers the rocks came back in had leaked.

"The isotopes of oxygen that exist on the moon are the same as those that exist on Earth, so it was difficult if not impossible to tell the difference between water from the moon and water from Earth," said Larry Taylor of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who is a member of one of the NASA-built instrument teams for India's Chandrayaan-1 satellite and has studied the moon since the Apollo missions.

While scientists continued to suspect that water ice deposits could be found in the coldest spots of south pole craters that never saw sunlight, the consensus became that the rest of the moon was bone dry.

But new observations of the lunar surface made with Chandrayaan-1, NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and NASA's Deep Impact probe, are calling that consensus into question, with multiple detections of the spectral signal of either water or the hydroxyl group (an oxygen and hydrogen chemically bonded).

Three spacecraft

Chandrayaan-1, India's first-ever moon probe, was aimed at mapping the lunar surface and determining its mineral composition (the orbiter's mission ended 14 months prematurely in August after an abrupt malfunction). While the probe was still active, its NASA-built Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M3) detected wavelengths of light reflected off the surface that indicated the chemical bond between hydrogen and oxygen — the telltale sign of either water or hydroxyl.

Because M3 can only penetrate the top few millimeters of lunar regolith, the newly observed water seems to be at or near the lunar surface. M3's observations also showed that the water signal got stronger toward the polar regions.

Cassini, which passed by the moon in 1999 on its way to Saturn, provides confirmation of this signal with its own slightly stronger detection of the water/hydroxyl signal. The water would have to be absorbed or trapped in the glass and minerals at the lunar surface, wrote Roger Clark of the U.S. Geological Survey in the study detailing Cassini's findings.

The Cassini data shows a global distribution of the water signal, though it also appears stronger near the poles (and low in the lunar maria).

Finally, the Deep Impact spacecraft, as part of its extended EPOXI mission and at the request of the M3 team, made infrared detections of water and hydroxyl as part of a calibration exercise during several close approaches of the Earth-Moon system en route to its planned flyby of comet 103P/Hartley 2 in November 2010.

Deep Impact detected the signal at all latitudes above 10 degrees N, though once again, the poles showed the strongest signals. With its multiple passes, Deep Impact was able to observe the same regions at different times of the lunar day. At noon, when the sun's rays were strongest, the water feature was lowest, while in the morning, the feature was stronger.

"The Deep Impact observations of the Moon not only unequivocally confirm the presence of [water/hydroxyl] on the lunar surface, but also reveal that the entire lunar surface is hydrated during at least some portion of the lunar day," the authors wrote in their study.

The findings of all three spacecraft "provide unambiguous evidence for the presence of hydroxyl or water," said Paul Lacey of the University of Hawaii in an opinion essay accompanying the three studies. Lacey was not involved in any of the missions.

The new data "prompt a critical reexamination of the notion that the moon is dry. It is not," Lacey wrote.

Where the water comes from

Combined, the findings show that not only is the moon hydrated, the process that makes it so is a dynamic one that is driven by the daily changes in solar radiation hitting any given spot on the surface.

The sun might also have something to do with how the water got there.

There are potentially two types of water on the moon: that brought from outside sources, such as water-bearing comets striking the surface, or that that originates on the moon.

This second, endogenic, source is thought to possibly come from the interaction of the solar wind with moon rocks and soils.

The rocks and regolith that make up the lunar surface are about 45 percent oxygen (combined with other elements as mostly silicate minerals). The solar wind — the constant stream of charged particles emitted by the sun — are mostly protons, or positively charged hydrogen atoms.

If the charged hydrogens, which are traveling at one-third the speed of light, hit the lunar surface with enough force, they break apart oxygen bonds in soil materials, Taylor, the M3 team member suspects. Where free oxygen and hydrogen exist, there is a high chance that trace amounts of water will form.

The various study researchers also suggest that the daily dehydration and rehydration of the trace water across the surface could lead to the migration of hydroxyl and hydrogen towards the poles where it can accumulate in the cold traps of the permanently shadowed regions.

Hot News: Gadhafi's colorful UN speech rouses and confuses

2009-09-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

and his speech made waves online.

In his long and at times dramatic address to the UN today, Gadhafi aired varied and eyebrow-raising complaints. Among his targets:

-- The international body's Security Council, which he termed the "Terror Council," for failing to prevent or aggressively intervene in conflicts around the world since its inception in 1945.

-- The UN's location in New York, which he described as inconvenient for him and other traveling world leaders, causing them all to suffer from jetlag.

-- The Iraq war, which he described as "the mother of all evils." He added that the perpetrators of the war should be tried in international court, and he also compared the Taliban favorably to the Vatican.

-- A range of conspiracies involving Israel, swine flu and the JFK assassination.

At one point near the conclusion of his speech, during which multiple translators were employed, Gadhafi tossed the UN Charter away dismissively.

Needless to say, Gadhafi's speech hasn't gone unnoticed. As of this writing, six different variations of his name are spiking in web searches, while four different versions of his name appear in Twitter's list of top "trending topics." Blame for this confusion could be pointed directly at the big three cable news networks, CNN, MSNBC and Fox, which all featured different spellings of the Libyan leader's name (Gadhafi, Qaddafi and Khaddafy) on screen at various points during his speech. However, in fairness to the aformentioned media giants, transliterating written and regionally pronounced Arabic is done in many different ways, often leading to confusion.

Perhaps Gadhafi's odd address is related to a lack of proper rest? He may have planned to stay on Donald Trump's sprawling property in Bedford, NY, home to Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren, where a tent was erected earlier in the week complete with electricity, a satellite dish and camel-themed lining on the walls. It's unclear whether or not the dictator planned to lodge inside the tent or inside of the seven-bedroom, nine-bathroom Trump mansion that sits on the property. Some have speculated that Gadhafi may have been merely planning to entertain guests in the tent. Regardless, local residents and elected officials reacted with indignation when they learned of the tent on Trump's property, which was shut down by building inspectors for not having the proper permits.

How Gadhafi, who's already had plans to stay in Englewood, NJ and Central Park while in the area squashed by public outrage, came to even be on Trump's property appears to be a bit of a mystery. A state department official told the AP that the Libyan government had rented the property for the week, but a Trump spokesperson told the New York Post that her boss and his company had no contact with Gadhafi or the Libyan government and that "the property was leased on a short-term basis to Middle Eastern" business partners who "may or may not have a relationship to Mr. Gadhafi." The Post also reported that Gadhafi may have spent last night at the Libyan Mission in midtown Manhattan after being expelled from Trump's property, where he was visited by Louis Farrakhan.

Source : Yahoo News

Hot News: Mackenzie Phillips says she had sex with her dad

2009-09-23T21:45:00.000-07:00

CHICAGO – Former child star Mackenzie Phillips said Wednesday that she had a decade-long sexual relationship with her father, pop superstar John Phillips, who also taught her how to roll joints and injected her with cocaine.

Mackenzie Phillips, 49, writes in her new book, "High on Arrival," that she had sex with her father on the night before she was to get married in 1979 at age 19.

Phillips wrote in her book: "I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father." John Phillips, who died in 2001, was the leader of the 1960s group the Mamas and the Papas.

She told "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in an interview that aired Wednesday that her siblings "definitely have a problem with this." Winfrey also read a statement from Genevieve Waite, John Phillips' wife at the time of the alleged abuse and Mackenzie's stepmother. Waite's statement said John Phillips was "incapable, no matter how drunk or drugged he was, of having such a relationship with his own child."

Phillips, 49, who starred on TV's "One Day at a Time," said the sexual relationship with her father lasted a decade and ended when she became pregnant and didn't know who had fathered the child. She had an abortion, which her father paid for, and "and I never let him touch me again."

Phillips' mother is Susan Adams, the first of John Phillips' four wives. He was also married for eight years to "Mamas and Papas" singer and co-founder Michelle Phillips.

Phillips has long acknowledged having drug problems, and she told Winfrey that she first tried cocaine when she was 11 years old. Her father did drugs with her, taught her to roll joints and injected her with cocaine. Phillips said she's been clean for a year after pleading guilty to possessing cocaine and entering a drug treatment program.

She said she confronted her father in the early stages of the abuse, which she described as rape.

"My dad said, 'Raped you? Don't you mean when we made love?' And in that moment I thought, 'Wow, I'm really on my own here,'" Phillips said. She learned to turn her anger toward herself and "boxed it away" rather than think about the drug-fueled incest, she said.

Phillips said she doesn't hate her father, who died in 2001 of heart failure at the age of 65.

"I understand that he was a very tortured man and ... passed that torture down to me," she said.

Phillips said the sexual relationship, although she believes it eventually became consensual, was "an abuse of power" and "a betrayal" on her father's part. She said she forgave John Phillips on his deathbed.

"I can't be the only one this has happened to," Phillips said. "Someone needs to put a face on consensual incest." Her book was in the top 20 on Amazon.com as of Wednesday afternoon, but it wouldn't be the first popular book about consensual incest. In 1997, novelist Kathryn Harrison had a best-seller with "The Kiss," a memoir about her affair with her father.

John Phillips, who also had an acknowledged history of drug abuse, co-founded the Mamas and the Papas and helped write its biggest hits, including "California Dreamin'" and "Monday Monday." He also helped organize the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, which helped introduce Jimi Hendrix to American audiences.

Hot News: Swine Flu Symptoms Checker

2009-09-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

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Swine flu does not normally infect us, and has only rarely crossed over into the human population. When it has, it has died out rapidly.

however the virus has proved to be more resilient. The Health Protection Agency has said that this particular strain of the virus is highly contagious and has managed to spread quickly from person to person.

If you have recently been to Mexico or parts of America, or you have come into contact with someone who has recently been there, you may have become infected, especially if you are now displaying flu-like symptoms.

Take this quick test to check your symptoms, and find out what you need to do next in the event of infection.

Please bear in mind that the symptoms of human seasonal flu and swine flu are almost identical, so it is important not to get alarmed if you are displaying flu symptoms as they are most likely to be caused by human seasonal flu. However, you should always contact your GP if you suspect you have any type of flu as there can be complications arising from the infection, especially in the very young or the elderly.

Source On the Net

Hot News: Yale student's cause of death: traumatic asphyxia

2009-09-16T13:16:00.000-07:00

NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The chief state's medical examiner said Wednesday a Yale University graduate student whose body was found stuffed inside a basement wall died of traumatic asphyxiation.

Dr. Wayne Carver's office released the results three days after the body of 24-year-old Annie Le was found in a Yale medical school research building. Carver had previously announced Le's death as a homicide.

Police released a Yale University animal research technician from custody Wednesday after collecting DNA samples and questioning him in Le's killing.

Raymond Clark III was taken into custody Tuesday night at his apartment in Middletown, Conn., and was released into the custody of his attorney early Wednesday, New Haven police said.

Clark's attorney, David Dworski, of Fairfield, said Wednesday his client is "committed to proceeding appropriately with the authorities." He would not comment further.

Investigators are hoping to figure out within days whether Clark can be ruled out as the killer.

Clark has been described as a person of interest, not a suspect, in Le's death. Her body was found Sunday, which was to have been her wedding day.

Clark and and his fiancee, Jennifer Hromadka were both animal research technicians in the lab where Le worked.

Hromadka wrote on her MySpace page that she's not perfect, but cautioned people not to judge her.

"Who are you to judge the life I live? I know I'm not perfect and I don't live to be, but before you start pointing fingers make sure your hands are clean!!" the 23-year-old wrote.

The date of the MySpace posting is unclear. The page has since been taken down.

Overnight, state police officers sorted through items on a card table set up outside Clark's ground-floor apartment's door.

A tow truck took away a red Ford Mustang neighbors say was used by Clark.

A resident of the complex, Rick Tarallo said he, his wife and 6-month-old daughter live in a unit next to Clark and his fiancee, Jennifer Hromadka.

He said the couple was "really quiet" and lived with an older man, whom he speculated was one of their fathers.

"He seemed like a good guy," Tarallo said of Clark. "They didn't strike me as someone who would try to kill somebody."

Source On the Net The AP.

Hot News: Strange Dwarf Planet Has Red Spot

2009-09-16T09:32:00.000-07:00

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A dwarf planet in our solar system, called Haumea, is known for its unusual shape and fast spin. Now astronomers have discovered another distinguishing feature: a dark red spot which appears to be richer in minerals and organic compounds than the surrounding icy surface.

Haumea, discovered in 2004, orbits the Sun beyond Neptune, in a region known as the Kuiper Belt. It is classified as a dwarf planet — a celestial body that is big enough to have been rounded by its own gravity, but has not cleared its neighboring region of similar objects. There are four other dwarf planets: Ceres, Pluto, Eris and Makemake. Haumea is the fourth largest dwarf planet.

Haumea is also the fastest spinning large object in the solar system – one day on Haumea is equal to about 3.9 hours on Earth. This rapid rotation distorts Haumea, elongating it into a football-like shape.

Most of what we know about this object was determined from studying variations in its brightness, called a "light curve." And it is through examination of this light curve that scientists have found the dark spot.

"The two brightness maxima and the two minima of the light curve are not exactly equal, as would be expected from a uniform surface," said Pedro Lacerda of Queen's University Belfast in the United Kingdom. "This indicates the presence of a dark spot on the otherwise bright surface."

Additionally the light curve is not exactly the same shape in all wavelengths. Small but persistent differences indicate that the dark spot is slightly redder in visible light and slightly bluer at infrared wavelengths.

"Our very first measurements of Haumea already told us there was a spot on the surface, but it was only when we got the infrared data that we were able to begin to understand what the spot might be," Lacerda said.

While the origin of the spot is unknown, possible interpretations of these measurements are that the spot is richer in minerals and organic compounds, or that it contains a higher fraction of crystalline ice. If the spot is a scar of a recent impact, then the spot material might resemble the composition of the impactor, perhaps mixed with material from the inner layers of Haumea.

Lacerda will present the discovery Wednesday at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany.

New observations of this spot are planned for early 2010 using the ESO Very Large Telescope. "Now we will get detailed spectroscopy of the spot to hopefully identify its chemical composition and solve the puzzle of its origin" Lacerda concluded.

Source On the Net : Space.com

Hot News: Comet Outburst Spawns Mini-Comets

2009-09-16T09:30:00.001-07:00

A comet recently spewed out a cluster of mini comets in a huge outburst that was the largest ever witnessed by astronomers.

A team of researchers began observing the comet 17P/Holmes in October 2007, after it was reported that the object, about 2.2 miles wide (3.6 km wide), had brightened by a million times in less than a day.

UCLA researcher Rachel Stevenson and colleagues noted multiple fragments flying rapidly away from the comet's nucleus. They continued observing for several weeks after the outburst using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii and watched as the dust cloud ejected by the comet grew to be larger than the sun.

The astronomers examined a sequence of images taken over nine nights using a digital filter that enhances small features. They found numerous tiny objects that moved away from the nucleus at speeds of up to 280 mph (125 meters per second). These objects were too bright to simply be bare rocks, but instead were more like mini comets, creating their own dust clouds as ice on their surfaces sublimated directly to vapor.

"Initially we thought this comet was unique simply because of the scale of the outburst," Stevenson said. "But we soon realized that the aftermath of the outburst showed unusual features, such as these fast-moving fragments, that have not been detected around other comets."

Although the outburst was impressive in the telescope images, it wasn't visible to the naked eye.

Scientists aren't sure of the exact cause of the outburst. Possibly, pressure inside the comet built up as it moved closer to the sun, until eventually part of the surface broke away, releasing a huge cloud of dust and gas, as well as larger fragments.

Even after ejecting mini comets, the solid nucleus of comet Holmes survived and continued on its orbit, seemingly unperturbed.

Holmes takes about 6 years to circle the sun, and travels between the inner edge of the asteroid belt to beyond Jupiter. The comet is now moving away from the sun but will return to its closest approach in 2014, when astronomers will examine it for signs of further outbursts.

Stevenson will present the findings at the European Planetary Science Congress in Potsdam, Germany on Wednesday.

Source On The Net

Hot News: British Skeleton Suggests Ancient Murder Mystery

2009-09-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

A skeleton found at an ancient Roman site in Britain has researchers wondering if they've stumbled on a murder mystery.

Excavations at the buried town of Venta Icenorum at Caistor St. Edmund in Norfolk, England, found what, for now, archaeologists are terming a "highly unusual" setup.

"This is an abnormal burial," said archaeologist Will Bowden of the University of Nottingham. "The body, which is probably male, was placed in a shallow pit on its side, as opposed to being laid out properly. This is not the care Romans normally accorded to their dead. It could be that the person was murdered or executed, although this is still a matter of speculation."

The skeleton has been removed for further investigation.

"It is an exciting find, and once we have cleaned the bones they will undergo a full examination and a range of scientific tests to try and find out how this individual died," Bowden said in a statement today.

The Caistor excavations - the digging began in 1929 - have also revealed evidence of Iron Age as well as early prehistoric occupation around 10,000 B.C.

"These excavations have added an enormous amount to what we knew before," Bowden said. "There are flints so sharp you could still shave with them - they are so fresh they have barely moved in all that time."

Recent surveys have produced a street plan and shown the town's water supply system and the series of public buildings, including baths, temples and forum, known from earlier excavations.

Caistor lies in the territory of the Iceni, the tribe of Boudica who famously rebelled against Roman rule in A.D. 60/61. The survey revealed numerous circular features that apparently predate the Roman town, suggesting Caistor was the site of a large settlement before the Roman town was built.

Original Story: British Skeleton Suggests Ancient Murder Mystery

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Hot News: Enought, US military deaths in Iraq war at 4,344

2009-09-16T08:58:00.000-07:00

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As of Tuesday, Sept. 15, 2009, at least 4,344 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The figure includes nine military civilians killed in action. At least 3,473 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is three fewer than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Tuesday at 10 a.m. EDT.

The British military has reported 179 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each.

Since the start of U.S. military operations in Iraq, 31,494 U.S. service members have been wounded in hostile action, according to the Defense Department's weekly tally.

The latest deaths reported by the military:

• No new deaths reported.

___

The latest identifications reported by the military:

• No new identifications reported.

___

Source On the Net:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/

Hot News: Found Firm place to stand outside solar system

2009-09-16T08:45:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON – Astronomers have finally found a place outside our solar system where there's a firm place to stand — if only it weren't so broiling hot.

As scientists search the skies for life elsewhere, they have found more than 300 planets outside our solar system. But they all have been gas balls or can't be proven to be solid. Now a team of European astronomers has confirmed the first rocky extrasolar planet.

Scientists have long figured that if life begins on a planet, it needs a solid surface to rest on, so finding one elsewhere is a big deal.

"We basically live on a rock ourselves," said co-discoverer Artie Hatzes, director of the Thuringer observatory in Germany. "It's as close to something like the Earth that we've found so far. It's just a little too close to its sun."

So close that its surface temperature is more than 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, too toasty to sustain life. It circles its star in just 20 hours, zipping around at 466,000 mph. By comparison, Mercury, the planet nearest our sun, completes its solar orbit in 88 days.

"It's hot, they're calling it the lava planet," Hatzes said.

This is a major discovery in the field of trying to find life elsewhere in the universe, said outside expert Alan Boss of the Carnegie Institution. It was the buzz of a conference on finding an Earth-like planet outside our solar system, held in Barcelona, Spain, where the discovery was presented Wednesday morning. The find is also being published in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

The planet is called Corot-7b. It was first discovered earlier this year. European scientists then watched it dozens of times to measure its density to prove that it is rocky like Earth. It's in our general neighborhood, circling a star in the winter sky about 500 light-years away. Each light-year is about 6 trillion miles.

Four planets in our solar system are rocky: Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

In addition, the planet is about as close to Earth in size as any other planet found outside our solar system. Its radius is only one-and-a-half times bigger than Earth's and it has a mass about five times the Earth's.

Now that another rocky planet has been found so close to its own star, it gives scientists more confidence that they'll find more Earth-like planets farther away, where the conditions could be more favorable to life, Boss said.

"The evidence is becoming overwhelming that we live in a crowded universe," Boss said.

Source On The Net

http://www.eso.org/ European Southern Observatory

Hot News: Pakistan outsources part of terror war to militia

2009-09-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

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DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan – They wear their hair and beards long, Taliban style, and support attacks on U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. Yet the fighters are tolerated and — many believe — backed by Pakistan because they share a common enemy: the country's most deadly terror network.

Pro-government militias like this one on the border of the country's lawless tribal regions are an important plank in the campaign against the Pakistani Taliban following the slaying of its chief, Baitullah Mehshud, in a CIA missile strike last month.

They know the enemy and the terrain, need no motivation and their willingness to fight means fewer army casualties. And with the Pakistani Taliban ranks said to be in disarray following the death of their leader, some of their fighters could be persuaded to change sides and join them.

But critics say Pakistan risks creating a monster by linking up with them and other militias. While tribal feuding ensures they are enemies of Baitullah's men for now, they are cut from the same militant cloth he was. Any alliance with the state could be temporary, and one day authorities could find themselves fighting their former proxies.

The United States, which gives millions of dollars in civilian and military aid to Pakistan each year, will be particularly concerned with the militia in Dera Ismail Khan because it still espouses militant Islam. The group's logo proclaims the need for war in the name of God. The confusion is apparently reflected in the name that some in the town have given the group: "the government Taliban."

Fighters from the Abdullah Mehsud militia met The Associated Press at their headquarters in the city, just outside the Taliban stronghold of Waziristan. On the banks of the River Indus, the town has a large police and military presence.

Abdullah — who was killed by security forces two years ago — and Baitullah are not related. They come from different subtribes of the Mehsud, the major clan in Waziristan.

The fighters operate openly in the city. Toting automatic weapons, they travel the streets in battered pickups and keep a makeshift prison in their headquarters, located in a side street about half a mile (one kilometer) from the town center. They claim to have killed or executed 70 of Baitullah's men over the last year.

"(Baitullah) Mehsud's fighters are killing the common men," said Baz Mohammed, a top commander flanked by heavily armed fighters.

Last July, a Baitullah loyalist assassinated the group's former leader, Qari Zainuddin, as he slept in a room in the headquarters. Mohammed was shot four times in the leg in the attack and now walks with crutches. The attack left two bullet holes in the wall of the room.

"Yes, we will take revenge," Mohammed said. "If we don't, what is the point of our group?"

Hours after visiting the headquarters, an Associated Press reporting team was detained by the army for 12 hours at a hotel and its members had their cell phones seized. It was released on condition it left the town and returned to the capital immediately. No formal reason was given for the detention, but a military official in Islamabad later said local authorities — who are on the lookout for foreign terrorists — were concerned about the team's identities.

Mohammed and others said they supported attacks inside Afghanistan, but that attacking the Baitullah group was their priority goal at the moment. U.S. officials say militants based on the Pakistani side of the border are to blame for much of the violence plaguing Afghanistan eight years after the American-led invasion.

"Where people are suffering from oppression, we have to fight. That is God's order," Mohammed said.

They declined to answer when asked whether foreign al-Qaida militants should be given sanctuary in the tribal regions — another major concern of the West, which fears the area remains an international terrorist hub.

One fighter, Abdullah Haq, said he used to belong to the Pakistani Taliban but left last year in a disagreement over attacks on targets inside Pakistan. On his cell phone, he keeps pictures of captured Baitullah men — including two bound and gagged prisoners he said the group had executed last week after taking them to the tribal regions.

Rooting out deeply entrenched militants from the border regions is a massive task for Pakistan's stretched military, which has tried and failed to defeat the insurgents in Waziristan before. It has been accused in the past of being soft on militants who concentrate their energies on the Afghan side of the border, allowing it to direct resources at those posing a direct threat to Islamabad.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas denied the military had any links with the Abdullah militia and another pro-government group led by Turkistan Bhitani in the nearby town of Tank. Abbas referred questions to the civil administration in the area, whose officials did not make themselves available for telephone interviews.

Still, Abbas acknowledged the fighters were useful in the battle against the Pakistani Taliban, which has carried out scores of attacks across the country over the last 2 1/2 years that have triggered international fears over the safety of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

"If you have to fight the big devil, you welcome anyone in that fight," Abbas said.

Observers say there is little doubt the militias have received or continue to receive support from security agencies, either cash, weapons or logistics. In August, army gunships were deployed to repel a Pakistani Taliban attack on the stronghold of Bhitani, intelligence officers said at the time.

"We have the full support of the government side," said Mohammed, who declined to elaborate on the exact nature of their relationship. "We have a free hand to attack Mehsud's men in this area."

Tribal armies have sprung up in other areas of the northwest, including the Swat Valley, where a military offensive has largely succeeded in driving out the Taliban. But militias there consist mostly of villagers with aging weapons and little battle experience.

In harnessing tribes to fight one another, Pakistan is following the tradition of the region's past British colonial rulers, who bought the loyalties of the tribes in an attempt to pacify the northwest. The armies have drawn comparisons with government-backed militias in Iraq that have been credited with helping beat back the insurgency there.

Mohammed claimed his militia has between 3,000 and 4,000 men, spread out over Waziristan and bordering regions. Even if accurate, that is much less than the approximately 15,000 men the Pakistani Taliban are believed to have in the area.

But he said more of Baitullah's men were joining him now that their leader was dead, a claim that could not be verified but one that analysts said was plausible.

"With their leadership in disarray, the military might well be able to get more tribals on their side," said Shuja Nawaz, a Pakistani military expert at the U.S.-based Atlantic Council.

Exploiting existing divisions between militants in Waziristan is especially important because the military has said it will not launch a large-scale ground offensive there yet out of fears it could unite the insurgents. The army is carrying out targeted air strikes and maintaining a blockade of the region that it says is weakening the enemy, while the United States is pressing ahead with missile strikes like the one that killed Baitullah.

But questions remain about the unity of the groups lined up against the Taliban. Mohammed spoke in scathing terms of Bhitani and said he would not cooperate with him.

Mohammed and the leader of a related militia, Baba Waziristan, said they planned a major offensive after the end of the Islamic fasting month next weekend. Baba said he was working to unite all three in the fight against Baitullah.

"God willing, this task would be accomplished after Ramadan and we will create a big force," Baba said in a telephone interview. "We will use all available tools to eliminate those who are bombing our mosques, attacking public places and killing innocent people."

Syed Fayaz Hussani Bukhari, a respected member of the Shia Muslim community in Dera Ismail Khan, said he feared Pakistani sponsorship of the militia could mean problems in the future.

"This group has been created for a special purpose. Once that has been achieved, what will they do?" he said, explaining he feared the government had given up its authority over the region.

Source Associated Press

Hot News: Six Hong Kong workers die in elevator shaft fall

2009-09-13T21:06:00.000-07:00

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HONG KONG – A construction platform inside an elevator shaft collapsed Sunday, sending six workers falling about 20 stories to their deaths inside a Hong Kong skyscraper, officials said.

The accident occurred at the International Commerce Center, which will be 118 stories high when completed next year, making it one of the world's tallest buildings and the highest in Hong Kong.

Speaking at the scene in the Kowloon district, Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang told reporters the men fell after the platform they were working on collapsed in the elevator shaft.

All six workers died, police spokesman Michael Kwan said. The workers were believed to have fallen from around the 30th floor to the 10th floor, he said.

The building's developer, major Hong Kong property company Sun Hung Kai, has agreed to pay each of the victims' families 1 million Hong Kong dollars ($128,000) on top of normal compensation payments, Hong Kong Labor Secretary Matthew Cheung told local media.

Sun Hung Kai did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Construction accidents in Hong Kong declined by about 76 percent from 1998 to 2008, as the government worked to enhance safety amid a continuous push by developers to build the soaring office and residential towers that have become a hallmark of the city.

Even so, some workers are killed every year, with falls a major cause of death. Between 2000 and 2004, nearly 44 percent of fatal construction accidents involved falls. There were 16 fatalities in 2006, according to the government.

Hot News: Dozens of Taliban killed after U.S. deaths

2009-09-13T21:01:00.000-07:00

KABUL - About 50 Taliban militants died in a battle in western Afghanistan after an insurgent ambush killed three U.S. troops, an Afghan official said Sunday.

The fighting took place in a region controlled by militants that has been the site of huge battles in the past, some that have caused high numbers of civilian casualties. In Saturday's clash, a militant-fired rocket struck a home and killed a woman and a teenage girl, Afghan police said.

The battle followed an insurgent ambush that killed three Americans and seven Afghan troops, said Afghan army spokesman Maj. Abdul Basir Ghori. The ambush involved two roadside bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades, the U.S. military said Sunday.

Fighting — which included NATO airstrikes — continued for six to eight hours after the ambush, U.S. military spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said. She couldn't provide casualty figures and no other Afghan officials immediately confirmed the death toll.

"The combined ISAF and Afghan force was receiving significant small-arms, RPG and indirect fire throughout that time frame," she said, referring to the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

Saturday's violence came the same day Afghan officials said 50 other civilians, security forces and militants were killed in a spate of attacks around Afghanistan, including 20 noncombatants killed in two roadside bomb explosions.

Violence has risen steadily across Afghanistan in the last three years, and militants now control wide swaths of the countryside.

The U.S. and NATO have a record number of troops in the country, and the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is likely to soon request thousands more. A record number of U.S. and NATO troops have died in Afghanistan already this year.

Also Sunday, an ISAF official provided more information about the rescue of a New York Times reporter from Taliban captors in Kunduz province earlier this month. Afghan journalists were angered that the British-Irish reporter was rescued but his Afghan translator died during the operation and his body was left behind.

The official said the operation was launched because there were signs that the Taliban kidnappers planned to move the two men and hand them over to higher-level insurgents.

British troops came under heavy fire as soon as their helicopters landed, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to provide details of the operation that had not been made public.

The rescuing troops brought body armor for Times reporter Stephen Farrell and for Afghan interpreter Sultan Munadi, the official said. When the British forces found Farrell, they immediately asked him where Munadi was, but Farrell said he had been killed. Because the militant gunfire was so heavy, the troops had to leave Munadi's body behind, the official said.

The British troops killed about a dozen militants during the operation, the official said.

"People need to understand that it's not like we walked in and tried to save this one guy and leave the other behind," the official said. "It was really heavy fire, and the risk wouldn't have been justified to recover a person they knew was already dead."

Hot News: the Italy grapples with priest sex abuse accusations

2009-09-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

VERONA, Italy – It happened night after night, the deaf man said, sometimes in the priest's bedroom, sometimes in the bathroom, even in the confessional.

When he was a young boy at a Catholic-run institute for the deaf, Alessandro Vantini said, priests sodomized him so relentlessly he came to feel "as if I were dead." This year, he and dozens of other former students did something highly unusual for Italy: They went public with claims they were forced to perform sex acts with priests.

For decades, a culture of silence has surrounded priest abuse in Italy, where surveys show the church is considered one of the country's most respected institutions. Now, in the Vatican's backyard, a movement to air and root out abusive priests is slowly and fitfully taking hold.

A yearlong Associated Press tally has documented 73 cases with allegations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the past decade in Italy, with more than 235 victims. The tally was compiled from local media reports, linked to by Web sites of victims groups and blogs. Almost all the cases have come out in the seven years since the scandal about Roman Catholic priest abuse broke in the United States.

The numbers in Italy are still a mere trickle compared to the hundreds of cases in the court systems of the United States and Ireland. And according to the AP tally, the Italian church has so far had to pay only a few hundred thousand euros (dollars) in civil damages to the victims, compared to $2.6 billion in abuse-related costs for the American diocese or euro1.1 billion ($1.5 billion) due to victims in Ireland.

However, the numbers still stand out in a country where reports of clerical sex abuse were virtually unknown a decade ago. They point to an increasing willingness among the Italian public and — slowly — within the Vatican itself to look squarely at a tragedy where the reported cases may only just be the tip of the iceberg. The Italian church will not release the numbers of cases reported or of court settlements.

The implications of priest abuse loom large in Italy: with its 50,850 priests in a nation of 60 million, Italy counts more priests than all of South America or Africa. In the United States â€” where the Vatican counts 44,700 priests in a nation of 300 million â€” more than 4,000 Catholic clergy have been accused of molesting minors since 1950.

The Italian cases follow much the same pattern as the U.S. and Irish scandals: Italian prelates often preyed on poor, physically or mentally disabled, or drug-addicted youths entrusted to their care. The deaf students' speech impairments, for example, made the priests' admonition "never to tell" all the more easy to enforce.

In this predominantly Roman Catholic country, the church enjoys such an exalted status that the pope's pronouncements frequently top the evening news, without any critical commentary. Even those with anti-clerical views acknowledge the important role the church plays in education, social services and caring for the poor.

As a result, few dare to criticize it, including the mainstream independent and state-run media. In addition, there's a certain prudishness in small-town Italy, where one just doesn't speak about sex, much less sex between a priest and a child.

"It's a taboo on top of a taboo," said Jacqueline Monica Magi, who prosecuted several pedophilia cases in Italy before becoming a judge. "This is the provincialism of Italy."

Breaking the conspiracy of silence, 67 former students from Verona's Antonio Provolo institute for the deaf signed a statement alleging that sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment occurred at the school from the 1950s to the 1980s at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary.

While not all acknowledged being victims themselves, 14 of the 67 wrote sworn statements and videotaped testimony, detailing the abuse they say they suffered, some for years, at the school's two campuses in Verona, the city of Romeo and Juliet. They named 24 priests, lay religious men and religious brothers.

Vantini said he, too, was silent for years.

"How could I tell my papa that a priest had sex with me?" Vantini, 59, told the AP one afternoon, recounting through a sign-language interpreter the abuse he said he endured. "You couldn't tell your parents because the priests would beat you."

Vantini named two priests and two lay brothers â€” three of whom are still alive â€” but asked that their names not be printed for fear of legal action. He spoke with the nervousness and agitation he says has accompanied him all of his life from being raped as a child by a priest.

"I suffered from depression until I was 30," said Vantini, who attended the school from age 6 to 19. "My wife said it was good that I spoke out because it lifted this weight from my chest."

Vantini's one-time schoolmate, Gianni Bisoli, 60, named the same men in his written declaration and in an interview, as well as 12 other priests and brothers from the Congregation, accusing them of sodomizing him, forcing him to have oral sex and to masturbate them.

In his declaration, Bisoli also accused Verona's late bishop, Monsignor Giuseppe Carraro — who is being considered for beatification — of molesting him on five separate occasions while he was a student at Provolo, which he attended from age 9 to 15.

A diocesan probe cleared Carraro of sex abuse. But the investigation interviewed none of the alleged victims, limiting testimony to surviving members of the Congregation, other school personnel and their affiliates, and documentation from the Congregation and Verona diocese.

The late bishop's beatification process was suspended pending the investigation, but is now going ahead to the Vatican's saint-making office.

Five decades later, Bisoli still recalls the route he said he took from the institute, located on a quiet street named for the congregation's founder, Don Antonio Provolo, along the serpentine Adige river to the bishop's residence tucked behind Verona's Piazza del Duomo.

Bisoli, who became deaf at age eight, said he was accompanied by one of his abusers and walked past the red brick Castelvecchio, an imposing 14th-century citadel, then along the main Corso Cavour thoroughfare or the more out-of-the-way pedestrian shopping street Via Mazzini.

"They brought me inside the curia (the diocese headquarters)," Bisoli recalled in an interview. "There was a servant who opened the door, then someone brought me inside. It was dark."

Bishop Carraro appeared, he recalled. "The bishop started to touch me, grope me," he said, running his hands up and down his body, pulling at his shirt and shorts to demonstrate. "I pulled away. But he continued to touch me for 15, 20 minutes. I didn't know what to do."

On a subsequent occasion, Bisoli says, the bishop tried to sodomize him with a banana. Another time, they were on the sofa and he sodomized him with his finger, offering him candy to appease him, Bisoli said.

Once, Bisoli said, the bishop offered him some gold crosses that had caught Bisoli's eye.

"I said 'at least give me 10,000-20,000 lire so I can buy a Coca-Cola or an ice cream,'" Bisoli recalled.

The current bishop of Verona, Monsignor Giuseppe Zenti, initially accused the former students of fabricating their claims in talking in January to L'Espresso, a left-leaning newsweekly. Zenti called the accusations "lies" and a stunt that was part of a long-standing real estate dispute between the Congregation and the deaf students' association, to which the alleged victims belong.

But when one of the accused lay religious men admitted to sexual relations with students, Zenti ordered an internal investigation into the Congregation. The results found that some abuse occurred, albeit a fraction of what has been alleged.

According to the diocese probe, there were episodes of physical violence against two unnamed students between 1958 and 1965. From 1965 to 1967, two would-be priests with "sexual disorders" were kicked out; while between 1965 and 1990 a religious brother had sexual relations with an undetermined number of students, the investigation found. In all cases the accused were removed.

"There could have been some episodes, some bad apples are possible," Carlo de' Gresti, spokesman for the Provolo institute said in an interview at the school's Chievo campus, where a lay staff now runs a technical school for poor teens. "It happens, even in families. That there could have been 26, 27, 25 pedophiles? There is no objective corroboration from anyone who isn't inside the (students') association."

Advocates, however, says the diocese's investigation was fatally flawed because it didn't interview the alleged victims and only people with links to the school who may have something to hide.

"If they had wanted to shed full light on it, they wouldn't have only heard from priests and lay brothers, but from the deaf as well," said Marco Lodi Rizzini, a spokesman for the victims.

The investigation has been forwarded to the Vatican, said the Rev. Bruno Fasani, spokesman for the diocese. He claimed former students had been manipulated into denouncing innocent priests and accused some of harboring a long-standing animosity to the church.

Zenti, for his part, asked forgiveness from the victims.

"The feeling that prevails is above all one of profound solidarity with the victims of abuse," Zenti said in a May statement. "To them and their families, a humble request of forgiveness is made."

Among the cases the AP tallied, there were charges of inducing boys into prostitution, participation in satanic rituals, and one notorious case in which the church itself determined that an elderly Florentine priest was responsible for "sexual abuse, false mysticism and domination of consciences."

Where there were sentences, they ran from a two-year suspended sentence to eight years in jail, although with Italy's notoriously lengthy appeals process it's unclear how many have been carried out. Where civil damages were awarded, which has been rare, the amounts ranged from about euro15,000 per victim to euro150,000 (about $22,000 to $220,000 at today's exchange rates).

The cases in the AP survey involve civil or criminal cases and investigations. For that reason, the Verona figures were omitted, since no criminal or civil action is pending because the statute of limitations has expired.

In 2002, when the abuse scandal was erupting in the United States, the No. 2 official in the Italian Bishops' Conference, Monsignor Giuseppe Betori, was quoted as saying clerical sex abuse was so limited in Italy that the conference leadership hadn't even discussed the matter.

But Italian prelates and the Vatican now seem to be taking the problem far more seriously. Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican prosecutor in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — which handles cases of priestly sex abuse — acknowledged that public awareness of the problem in Italy had increased as a result of the "tsunami" of cases that came to light in the United States.

"There is a change of mentality, and we find that to be very positive," he told the AP.

In a shift for the Vatican, Scicluna acknowledged that priestly sex abuse was an age-old problem that needed to be rooted out.

"I don't think it's a question of happening. It has always happened. It's important that people talk about it, because otherwise we cannot bring the healing which the church can offer to people who need it — both the victims and perpetrators."ed

Source associated Press

Hot News: The Civilian contractor shot dead on US base in Iraq

2009-09-13T20:41:00.000-07:00

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BAGHDAD – A civilian contractor was shot and killed Sunday on an American military base in the Iraqi city of Tikrit and a U.S. soldier has been detained in connection with the incident, the military said.

The contractor was shot at 8:30 a.m. at Camp Speicher, the military said in a statement.

Houston-based KBR confirmed the man killed was one of its employees, 27-year-old Lucas Vinson from Louisiana. No hometown was available.

"As the Army is leading the investigation of the incident, KBR is not providing further comment at this time," spokeswoman Heather Browne said in an e-mailed statement. "We are of course fully cooperating with the Army on its continued investigation."

Maj. Derrick Cheng, a public affairs officer, said a soldier had been detained in connection with the incident, but that he could not divulge any more information while the investigation is ongoing.

"We offer our sincere condolences to the family of the individual," he said.

The U.S. military makes wide use of contractors in Iraq for security, technical support and supply functions.

KBR is the primary support contractor in Iraq, providing troops with essential services, including housing, meals, mail delivery and laundry.

As of June 30, 1,395 civilian employees of U.S. government contractors had been killed in Iraq, according to an AP count.

Source By Associated Press

Hot News: The Coldest, Driest, Calmest Place on Earth has Found

2009-09-01T06:24:00.000-07:00

The search for the best observatory site in the world has lead to the discovery of what is thought to be the coldest, driest, calmest place on Earth - a place where no human is thought to have ever set foot.

To search for the perfect site to take pictures of the heavens, a U.S.-Australian research team combined data from satellites, ground stations and climate models in a study to assess the many factors that affect astronomy - cloud cover, temperature, sky-brightness, water vapor, wind speeds and atmospheric turbulence.

The researchers pinpointed a site, known simply as Ridge A, that is 13,297 feet (4,053 meters) high up on the antarctic Plateau on the continent at the bottom of the world.

The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 degrees Celsius) and an extremely low amount of water in the air.

The site is also extremely calm, which means that there is very little of the atmospheric turbulence that elsewhere makes stars appear to twinkle.

"It's so calm that there's almost no wind or weather there at all," said study leader Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory in Australia.

All these elements combine to make the perfect recipe for an astronomical observation post: "The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers," Saunders said. "Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth."

The site would even be superior to the best existing observatories on high mountain tops in Hawaii and Chile, Saunders said. Researchers assert that a telescope at the site could take images nearly as good as those from the space-base Hubber Telescope.

Located within the Australian Antarctic Territory, the site is 89 miles (144 km) from an international robotic Observatory and the proposed new Chinese 'Kunlun' base at Dome A, a higher point on the Antarctic Plateau.

The finding was detailed on Aug. 31 in the Publications of the Astronomical Society.

Original Story: Coldest, Driest, Calmest Place on Earth Found

Hot News: Calif. residents return to rubble as fires spread

2009-09-01T01:40:00.000-07:00

LOS ANGELES – Bert Voorhees and his son fetched several cases of wine from the brackish water of their backyard swimming pool, about all he salvaged from his home in deadly fires that have swept Southern California.

"You're going to be living in a lunar landscape for at least a couple of years, and these trees might not come back," said Voorhees, 53. "Are enough of our neighbors going to rebuild?"

Residents began to return to the ashes of their homes on Monday and ponder what's next even as the blazes fanned out, destroying 53 homes and threatening 12,000 others. Lack of wind has kept the flames from driving into the hearts of the dense suburbs northeast of Los Angeles.

"This is a very angry fire that we're fighting right now," U.S. Forest Service Cmdr. Mike Dietrich said Monday night. "I'm not overly optimistic but yet at the same time, our firefighters are going to be taking every action to keep this fire from burning more destruction."

Beth Halaas, who lives next door to Voorhees, knew her creekside home in Big Tujunga Canyon was gone when she saw her favorite Norwegian dishware on television news, but she was desperate to see for herself and cajoled fire officials to escort her through barricaded roads Monday.

"It's just stuff," she murmured, as her 5-year-old son Robert kicked at a deflated soccer ball in his sandbox. She raked ceramic cups from the ashes.

T.J. Lynch and his wife, Maggie, left for an evacuation center late Monday after the eerie orange glow on the horizon turned into flames cresting the hill near their Tujunga home.

"It's pretty surreal, pretty humbling, how your life is represented in these objects that you collect and then you have to whittle them down," he said, describing the difficulty of choosing what to bring with them.

He said his wife would miss the 1965 Mustang that she has owned since she was a teenager. He would miss the antiques that decorate their home.

"It's a beautiful place — is? Was? I don't know anymore," he said of their home.

The fire has killed two firefighters — Capt. Tedmund Hall, 47, of San Bernardino County, and firefighter Specialist Arnaldo "Arnie" Quinones, 35, of Palmdale — and charred 164 square miles of brush.

The 53 homes destroyed included some forest cabins, said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Dennis Cross. He did not know how many were full-time residences.

Fire crews set backfires and sprayed fire retardant at Mount Wilson, home to at least 20 television transmission towers, radio and cell phone antennas, and the century-old Mount Wilson Observatory. It also houses two giant telescopes and several multimillion-dollar university programs in its role as both a landmark for its historic discoveries and a thriving modern center for astronomy.

If the flames hit the mountain, cell phone service and TV and radio transmissions would be disrupted, but the extent was unclear.

The blaze in the Los Angeles foothills was the biggest but not most destructive of California's wildfires. Northeast of Sacramento, a wind-driven fire destroyed 60 structures over the weekend, many of them homes in the town of Auburn.

The 275-acre blaze wiped out an entire cul-de-sac, leaving only smoldering ruins, a handful of chimneys and burned cars.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Monday toured the Auburn area, where only charred remnants of some homes remained. At some houses, the only things left on the foundation are metal cabinets and washers and dryers.

East of Los Angeles, a 1,000-acre fire threatened 2,000 homes and forced the evacuation of a scenic community of apple orchards in an oak-studded area of San Bernardino County. Brush in the area had not burned for a century, fire officials said. Flames burning like huge candles erupted between rocky slopes of the San Bernardino Mountains and the neat farmhouses below. A few miles away, a 300-acre wildfire that erupted on the edge of Yucaipa forced the evacuation of 200 homes.

With highs topping 100 degrees in some areas and humidity remaining low, the central and Southern California mountains were under a weekend warning of extreme fire conditions, the National Weather Service said.

Associated Press Writers John Antczak, Daisy Nguyen and Solvej Schou in Los Angeles and Samantha Young in Auburn contributed to this report.

Hot News: 2 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan

2009-09-01T01:31:00.000-07:00

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KABUL (AP) — Bombs killed four NATO troops Monday — two Americans and two Britons — ending the deadliest month of the war for U.S. forces as the top NATO commander called for a new strategy to confront the Taliban.

The U.S. military said the two Americans were killed in separate explosions in southern Afghanistan but gave no further details. Their deaths brought to 47 the number of U.S. troops who have died in the Afghan war in August — three more than in July which had been the deadliest month.

In London, the British Ministry of Defense said the two British soldiers were killed by a bomb on a foot patrol north of Lashkar Gah, a southern Afghan city where Prime Minister Gordon Brown paid a surprise visit last weekend and promised help for his embattled force.

U.S. casualties have been mounting since President Obama ordered 21,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, shifting the focus of the war on Islamic extremism from Iraq to this country where the global conflict began nearly eight years ago.

Since the reinforcements began arriving last spring, American deaths have climbed from six in April to 12 in May, 24 in June to more than 40 for the next two months as U.S. troops push into areas of the country long under Taliban rule.

The latest casualties occurred as the top U.S. and NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal sent his much-anticipated strategic review of the Afghan war to the Pentagon and NATO headquarters.

"The situation in Afghanistan is serious, but success is achievable and demands a revised implementation strategy, commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort," McChrystal said in a statement Monday.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ordered the 60-day review to size up the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Afghanistan.

McChrystal did not ask for more troops but is expected to do so in a separate request in a couple weeks, two NATO officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

The U.S. already has about 62,000 troops in Afghanistan — a record number — and will have 68,000 by the end of the year. In total there are more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO troops in the country. There were roughly 250,000 international forces in Iraq during the 2003 invasion.

U.S. officials had hoped that the Aug. 20 presidential election would establish an Afghan government with the legitimacy to combat the Taliban, corruption and the flourishing drug trade.

The vote, however, was clouded by allegations of widespread fraud as well as threats and intimidation by the Taliban.

New vote tallies released Monday showed President Hamid Karzai leading with 45.8% of the votes counted, with top challenger Abdullah Abdullah trailing with 33.2%. Ballots have been counted from almost half of the country's voting stations. Karzai needs 50% of the votes to avoid a runoff.

On Monday, an Afghan man told reporters that Taliban militants cut off his nose and both ears as he headed for a polling station in central Afghanistan.

"I was on my way to a polling station when Taliban stopped me and searched me. They found my voter registration card," Lal Mohammad said from a hospital bed in Kabul. He said after cutting him, they beat him unconscious with a weapon.

"I regret that I went to vote," Mohammad said, crying and trying to hide his disfigured face. "What is the benefit of voting to me?"

Original Source USA Today