At least 18 people were killed in Afghanistan suicide attack. According to the officials of the Interior Ministry, a man wrapped in explosives walked into a compound filled with Afghan police officers.
Monday’s attack was the second in as many days. On Sunday, a man drove a car filled with explosives into a convoy carrying French and Afghan soldiers on the southwestern edge of Kabul, killing himself and injuring three others, including one a French soldier.
The attacker struck in Tirin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan Province, the birthplace of Mullah Mohammad Omar, the founder of the Taliban movement.
The Interior Ministry said the attacker was dressed in a police uniform and set off the explosives during a training exercise in the compound. Eight officers were also wounded.
In 2007, about 140 suicide bombers struck Afghanistan; 2008, the number dropped to about 80.
Israel Defense Minister Ehud Barak has said that his country is not planning another attack over Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Barak said in an interview with the YNet news Web site, using Israel’s name for its recent 22-day offensive in Gaza, “It is not our intention to have an Operation Cast Lead 2.”
“We said there would be a response and there was a response last night,” he added.
His comments clashed with statements on Sunday by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni who said that, if necessary, Israel would mount a new offensive in the Gaza Strip to choke off cross-border rocket fire.
Both Barak, head of the center-left Labor Party, and Livni, chairman of the ruling, centrist Kadima party, are candidates for prime minister in Israel’s February 10 election.
Adobe Chief Shantanu Narayen has said that the company is trying make flash working for iPhone, though, he asserted that it’s not a easy thing.
In an interview with Bloomberg media at the Davos, Switzerland event, Shantanu said “It’s a hard technical challenge, and that’s part of the reason Apple and Adobe are collaborating,” he says. “The ball is in our court. The onus is on us to deliver.”
In the mean time, Apple co-founder Steve Jobs has maintained since nearly a year ago that the real obstacle is the nature of Flash itself.
While desktop Flash is too resource-heavy for the small processor and low memory of smartphones like the iPhone, Jobs has warned that Flash Lite is too feature-limited and doesn’t do many of the things users expect Flash to do — such as playing video on the web or showing complex animations on websites.
Taylor Swift – has announced her first headlining tour, which will take her to 52 cities over six months.
The singer has topped the Billboard chart for the past eight weeks with her second album, Fearless.
The singer’s show will feature multiple costume changes and an illuminated fairy-castle – and the new country group Gloriana.
Despite the extravagant set, the singer – who just launched a line of affordable dresses at Wal-Mart – says she’s mindful of the tough economy, so she plans to start ticket prices at around $20 in most markets.
Swift, 19, will officially kick off her Fearless Tour 2009, which she calls “a dream come true,” on April 23 in Evansville, Ill., immediately followed by Jonesboro, Ark., and St. Louis, Mo. (Tickets go on sale Feb. 6 at 10 a.m. PST.)
You’ve a chance to save the jet plane moving into the Hudson River.
Links are quickly being spread on the Internet of “Hero on the Hudson” - a game where you have to use your left and right arrow keys to land a jet onto the river.
This particular game is not offensive when people are clamoring for someone’s head, but it’s completely unnecessary.
The game is about as primitive as you can get, as many of the games are on Addictinggames.com. Of the 3,117 votes received, 75% give it a thumbs down.
Most of the comments below the game hit it on the head. It’s boring, stupid and offensive.
Nobody died or no serious injuries occurred when Flight 1549 had an emergency landing on the Hudson earlier this month.
The game is the latest in a chain of humorless acts that makes little sense to me. Stuff like this only perpetuates and sensationalizes similar schtick in the wake of tragic events.
The National Weather Service is forecasting the possibility of rain through the weekend in Riverside.
At the same time, a slight chance of rain and snow is predicted for the mountains Thursday, with the possibility of snow continuing through the weekend.
According to the National Weather Service, rain could move into the Inland area by Thursday.
The report said that the prediction for the valleys also calls for a slight chance of showers Thursday and the possibility of rain through
the weekend.
Temperatures in the mountains are predicted to hit highs in the 40s and lows in the 20s by the end of the week.
The Peanut product recall, said to be the largest ever, started with bulk peanut butter, spread to crackers and cookies and has engulfed products as diverse as kettle corn, pad Thai and trail mix.
The FDA said Friday that some boutique peanut butters, made from peanuts ground in stores, may be affected because of the wider recall.
The recall’s breadth has the $1 billion peanut farming industry on edge, says Emory Murphy, assistant executive director of the Georgia Peanut Commission. “This could affect demand,” he says.
In the mean time, the Department of Justice on Friday joined in the investigation of Peanut Corp. of America, raising the possibility of criminal charges. PCA’s Blakely, Ga., plant has been linked to a salmonella outbreak that’s sickened 529 and may have contributed to eight deaths.
The GMA says PCA supplied less than 1% of peanut products sold in the U.S. Still, the FDA says the company has more than 300 customers, many of whom used PCA’s products as an ingredient.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has been discharged from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences on Sunday,after spending a week in hospital following a bypass surgery.
He was admitted on January 24, and on January 25, he successfully underwent the beating heart bypass surgery.
The 11-hour surgery was performed by a team of doctors from AIIMS and the Asian Heart Institute. He is now back home at 7 Race Course Road.
The PM had multiple blockages in the heart. This was his second bypass. A team of doctors will closely monitor his progress at his residence.
Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has strengthened his position as the country’s leader in Iraq voting.
The leaders of rival Shia parties acknowledged on Monday that al-Maliki’s State of Law coalition appeared to be heading for a strong win.
According to the reports, if confirmed, the results in the second major election since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein would overturn six years of provincial rule by mostly religious parties and give al-Maliki strong momentum in his bid to hold on to power in a general election due this year.
Nobody has expected that they would achieve this in Basra, in Nassiriya, in Samawa, in Kut. In this government, nobody had expected they could achieve such a result, an official said.
Hundreds of thousands of eligible voters out of the 15 million eligible to vote in 14 of the country’s 18 provinces were reported to have been left off ballot lists. Election officials have said they will investigate.
In a truly remarkable and gutsy performance, Rafael Nadal shook down Federer 7-5, 3-6, 7-6 (3), 3-6, 6-2 in the final of the Australian Open on Sunday. It’s now Nadal’s sixth Grand Slam title at the same time he’s now the first man since Andre Agassi in 1999 to win majors on three different surfaces.
Nadal, the first Spaniard to win the Australian Open said here, “It’s a dream win here, one Grand Slam on hard court.”
“I worked very hard all my life to improve the tennis outside of clay. I’m very happy for the title. Today was really a lot of emotions on court.”
For all the talk of Federer’s automatic ascension to the accolade of the greatest of all-time, it has been the much-improved Nadal who has been the more ambitious and resourceful player over the past 13 months.
“Roger can’t be called the greatest ever yet,” said U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe.
Since June, Nadal has won three of the last four majors as well as the Olympic gold medal. He torched Federer in the 2008 French Open final for his fourth straight Roland Garros crown, stopped Federer’s five-title Wimbledon streak in a five-set classic.
South Korea’s exports lost one-third of their value in January from a year ago. The exports is said to be the biggest engine of the country’s economy has seen a sharper drop than expected.
According to a preliminary government data showed Sunday, the fall of 32.8% is far more than drops of 19% in November and 17.9% in December.
With exports accounting for nearly half of South Korea’s economic output, the plunge represents the biggest challenge that South Korea has faced so far in the global economic downturn that began more than a year ago with the housing crisis in the U.S.
The latest export data appeared on the Web site of the Korea Customs Service on Sunday. Reuters first reported the news. The Ministry of Knowledge Economy officially released the data on Monday morning Asia time.
The magnitude of the drop in demand for South Korean products outside the country started to become apparent two weeks ago when the customs agency reported that the value of exports through the first 20 days of January fell by nearly 29%.
Amid the cease-fire Israel bombed Hamas targets in the Gaza Strip Sunday. Hamas has not taken responsibility for, or condemned, the new attacks. Some of them have been claimed by members of the militant al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
The Hamas militant group that runs Gaza said Israeli aircraft bombed an unoccupied police station and at least six tunnels used to smuggle weapons and goods from Egypt into the Palestinian enclave. There were no reported casualties in the air strikes.
Hamas demanded that Israel open its border crossings with Gaza as part of a cease-fire.
Israel said that will not happen until Hamas releases a captive Israeli soldier held in Gaza for 2.5 years.
Meanwhile, the Egyptian government is trying to hammer out a long-term truce acceptable to both sides.
Michael Phelps has officially apologized for smoking marijuana after a picture was published in the United Kingdom’s News of the World, the New York Daily News reported.
The picture of the famous swimmer was shot during a Nov. 6 party at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where he was visiting a co-ed.
Phelps was asked if he wanted to smoke marijuana. He said yes and was then led to a back room, the newspaper writes.
Phelps said yesterday he was sorry for his actions, issuing a public apology. “I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment,” Phelps said.
“I’m 23 years old and despite the successes I’ve had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me.”
He continued by saying he was “sorry” and vowing to his fans that this was a one-time mistake. “I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.”
Film maker Priyadarshan has slammed Danny Boyle’s underdog saga Slumdog Millionair, saying the film a “cheap trashy mediocre version” of erstwhile Bollywood hits. He is surprised that Mumbai is celebrating a film that shows only the city’s underbelly.
Priyadarshan said, “Slumdog Millionaire is nothing but a cheap trashy mediocre version of those commercial films about estranged brothers and childhood sweethearts that Salim-Javed used to write so brilliantly in the 1970s.”
“Why are we taking this treatment? Just because a white man has made ‘Slumdog Millionaire’, we’re so happy with it? I’ve read Vikas Swarup’s novel ‘Q&A’. It should have been made by Mani Ratnam. Then you’d have seen what he would have done with Mumbai.”
Priyadarshan asked, “Why has Danny Boyle not taken one shot of Marine Drive? Do his slumdwellers exist only within their slums?”
Gaza militants have launched two rockets into southern Israel, said Israel military.
Before this, Israel halted the operation after saying its goals had been achieved. But Hamas declared victory and militants have kept up sporadic attacks.
Sunday morning’s rockets demonstrated the fragility of a cease-fire that ended Israel’s devastating Gaza offensive on Jan. 18.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld says one landed near a kindergarten, but that there was no damage and no one was injured.
Since the cease-fire, militants have fired rockets into Israel and killed one soldier in a border attack. Israel has conducted retaliatory strikes and pounded tunnels Hamas uses to smuggle in weapons from Egypt.
Israeli forces have also killed three men Palestinians identified as farmers in violence along the Gaza-Israel border.
TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington would be taking a break from his work. In an uncommonly personal post from Europe, Arrington reported Wednesday that he is going to take some time off and reconsider his future.
The decision, he said, was prompted by an encounter he had as he was leaving a tech conference Tuesday in Munich, Germany.
Arrington, whose Web site had more than 2.2 million unique visitors in December, according to comScore, is the major-domo for startup showcase events and hands out “Crunchie” awards for companies.
The incident, as Arrington portrays it, represented a culmination of harassment that has come with TechCrunch’s success in its business niche.
Of the more recent incident, Arrington declared: “I draw the line at being spat on. It’s one step away from something far more violent.”
Such harassment may be interpreted as a dubious validation for TechCrunch, a high-profile part of the nonstop dialogue in the business of digital technology.
Kim Kardashian has praised all the way for Jessica Simpson. In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE Wednesday, Kardashian, 28, said, “Call me crazy, but when I saw the picture of Simpson performing Jan. 25 in Pembroke Pines, Florida, I was like, ‘Oh my God, Jessica looks hot!’ ”
“I actually love the outfit. I think she looks amazing. I love high-waisted jeans, I loved that belt, and her hair looked fabulous,” Kim added.
Adds Kardashian, who’s attending the Super Bowl this weekend with football player beau Reggie Bush of the New Orleans Saints, “I get that she does look curvier, but to me, there’s nothing wrong it.”
No stranger herself to barbs about her own curvy physique, Kardashian says, “It doesn’t really bother me anymore. I love curves.”
The New York Times would be selling its share of the Boston Red Sox baseball team. The company has revealed late yesterday that its income for the last three months of 2008 fell by nearly 48% year on year.
Janet L Robinson, the president and chief executive for the NYT’s parent company, warned that the rate of decline in print advertising revenue in January had accelerated from December.
The company said this was due to weakness in print advertising, its main source of income, across all of its major properties. Revenue from its digital businesses were also down year on year, the firm said.
However, circulation revenue was up 3.7% after prices increases were introduced for the New York Times and the Boston Globe.
Robinson said the publisher was responding to the present realities in its markets by looking to reduce costs and improve the financial position by completing the Slim transaction.
Andy Roddick is out from Australian Open where as Roger Federer moved within one victory of his 14th Grand Slam title with another dominating victory. Federer ousted Roddick 6-2, 7-5, 7-5 Thursday to reach the Australian Open final.
Federer, seeking his fourth Australian title, will face the winner of Friday’s semifinal between Nadal and fellow Spaniard Fernando Verdasco.
Roddick, who undertook a rigorous offseason training regime designed to help him beat Federer and top-ranked Rafael Nadal, was in good form.
The women’s final matchup was set earlier in the day. Serena Williams was calm, collected and cool — with the Rod Laver Arena roof closed to keep out Melbourne’s oppressive heat wave — to end Olympic champion Elena Dementieva’s 15-match winning streak with a 6-3, 6-4 victory.
All that stands between her and a 10th Grand Slam title is third-seeded Dinara Safina, who is hungry to take home her first major trophy to go along with the two that brother Marat Safin has earned.
Safina ousted fellow Russian Vera Zvonareva 6-3, 7-6 (4) in the other semifinal.
The House passed an $819 billion economic stimulus package. It was passed on a 244-188 vote.
The House stimulus package includes aid to states and localities to help them avoid cuts in Medicaid coverage and school funding.
Businesses would get $20 billion in tax cuts under the legislation. The bill would extend provisions enacted for 2008 that allow businesses of all sizes to depreciate 50 percent of investments in new equipment immediately.
The bill also would extend unemployment benefits and give unemployed workers subsidies for health care coverage. The legislation also would fund infrastructure improvements and investments in energy efficiency and alternative energy projects.
Most of the tax relief in the bill would go to individuals, including a $500 refundable tax credit for low- and middle-income workers.
A team of testers have now found that women smell of onions while men smell of cheese, and these findings have challenged as it is often suggested that there’s natural smell in females that arouse males.
A team of independent testers recruited by the scientists found the smell from women’s armpits was more unpleasant.
Men had relatively high levels of an odourless fatty acid which turned into a cheesy odour when exposed to the same types of bacteria, the researchers said.
Christian Starkenmann of Firmenich, a company in Geneva that researches flavours and perfumes for food and cosmetics companies said that “Men smell of cheese, and women of grapefruit or onion.”
According to the results, which appear in Chemical Senses, women’s armpit sweat contained relatively high levels of an odourless sulphur-containing compound - 5 milligrams per millilitre of sweat versus 0.5 milligrams in men, the New Scientist magazine reported today.
Actress Aishwarya Rai would be contesting loksabha polls against Pappu Yadav from Madhepura seat on Samajwadi Party ticket.
If we believe the sources, the actress has been contacted by the senior SP leaders.
It’s being said that SP leaders of Bihar unit are trying hard to make Aishwarya a candidate against Pappu Yadav, a Rashtriya Janta Dal MP, who’s in jail, facing several charges.
Senior leader and Janta Dal-U President Sharad Yadav would be contesting from this seat in the next coming polls, sources said.
Mahesh Bhupathi and Mark Knowles reached to the men’s doubles final in the Australian Open. The pair thrashed Lukasz Kubot and Oliver Marach 6-3, 6-1 to reach the final.
Bhupathi now has a chance to grab his fifth men’s doubles Grand Slam title, first Australian Open title and 11th overall.
The winners improved on their last year’s performance here as they had lost the semi-finals. This is also for the second time that Bhupathi has reached the final of the Australian Open.
Last time he made the finals of the men’s doubles at Australian Open was in 1999 with his estranged partner Leander Paes.
It’s been a long time that he won a men’s doubles title at a Grand Slam event. It was way back in 2002 that he annexed the title at the US Open with Max Mirnyi.
British government has given $3.2 billion to its carmakers. the business secretary, Peter Mandelson, told Parliament on Tuesday that the government offered automakers and suppliers access to £1.3 billion in loan guarantees from the European Investment Bank, topped off with another £1 billion from the Treasury.
The plan came a month after the United States pumped billions of dollars into General Motors and Chrysler, and France and Germany announced aid packages to support their automakers.
He said the government would also increase the amount that it spent on the training of employees. “There is no blank check on offer, no operating subsidies,” Mr. Mandelson said.
The opposition Conservative Party criticized the measures are “too little, too late” and accused the government of dithering while other nations moved swiftly to support their automakers.
Any aid to auto manufacturers in Britain is potentially more controversial than in those other countries. Though the industry adds about £10 billion to Britain’s economy and employs more than 800,000, most of the British manufacturers are owned by foreign companies.
Oil prices dropped below $42 a barrel in Asia as rising US crude inventories.
The US House of Representatives passed an $819-billion stimulus plan last night aimed at spurring growth amid the worst recession in decades.
Light, sweet crude for March delivery fell 54 cents to $41.64 a barrel by midday in Singapore in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 58 cents overnight to settle at $42.16.
The US Energy Department’s Energy Information Administration on Wednesday said commercial crude oil inventories jumped 6.2 million barrels from the previous week, almost twice what was expected.
Crude inventories have grown by more than 20 million barrels in the last month, stoking investor fear that consumer demand is suffering amid huge job losses in recent months.
The Jets have got a fiery innovator in Rex Ryan. The Jets reached an agreement with Rex Ryan, the former Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator.
Ryan will be introduced at the team’s Florham Park, N.J., headquarters on Wednesday at 10 a.m. Ryan signed a four-year contract worth about $12 million.
Acording to a Jets employee who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Woody Johnson, the Jets’ owner, and General Manager Mike Tannenbaum flew to Baltimore on Monday morning to make the expected move official.
The Jets employee said the deal was in place shortly after the Ravens lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers in the American Football Conference championship game Sunday night. It came three weeks after the Jets fired Eric Mangini after three seasons.
The Ryan boys are the sons of Buddy Ryan, the longtime coach who invented the 46 defense used by the Bears in the 1980s.
Calling the film’s title insulting, several dozen Mumbai slum residents protested the award-winning film “Slumdog Millionaire” on Thursday. Mumbai’s slum residents were not happy, even the movie has won several Golden Globe award and is in race to win Oscar.
The film, a rags-to-riches romance set in Mumbai’s notorious slums, has been tapped a favorite for several Oscar nominations after it swept its four categories at the Golden Globes, including the prize for best drama.
Nicholas Almeida, a social activist who organized the protest, said he planned to file a lawsuit on Friday to get the name changed.
The film, which tells the story of Jamal Malik, a poor youth who becomes the champion of India’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” television program as he searches for his lost love, has also been criticized for focusing on India’s poverty.
On Wednesday the cast and director spoke to the media in New Delhi about the film, and the controversy it has sparked.
Malaysia government has said that it has started the probe into salmonella scare in the country. The Famous Amos cookie chain has withdrawn dough from several of its outlets amid fears it was contaminated by the salmonella bacterium.
The action followed an outbreak of salmonella poisoning in the U.S., which has made at least 474 people sick since September as a result of infected peanut- butter and peanut-paste dough, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, Web site.
Famous Amos company representatives said the company did use peanut butter in cookies in Malaysia but that all its cookies were safe for consumption.
The salmonella bacterium is spread most often by the consumption of food contaminated by animal fecal matter, according to health experts.
The microbe usually flourishes within the intestinal tracts of fowl and mammals.
An estimated 1.4 million human salmonella infections occur each year, causing about 15,000 hospitalizations and 400 deaths.
President Barack Obama is allowed to keep his BlackBerry phone with him. Obama is a Self-confessed BlackBerry addict.
President George W. Bush was forced to give up using e-mail when he took charge, while President Bill Clinton sent just two e-mails during his administration.
There are also concerns that mobile devices such as BlackBerries, which contain built in GPS technology, could be hacked into, revealing the president’s location within a few feet.
But Obama may have pushed his Secret Service handlers’ technological patience far enough. Ambinder also reports that instant messaging in the White House will still be a definite no-no.
The Dark Knight and Gran Torino were crashed out from the race of Oscar’s top prize. Instead, the far more serious Holocaust-themed The Reader took the fifth berth and its director, Stephen Daldry, also managed to slip into his category.
In the mean time, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button managed to get 13 nominations. While romantic crowd-pleaser Slumdog Millionaire is said to be the favorite.
As expected, Heath Ledger’s vividly twisted take on the villainous Joker in The Dark Knight scored a supporting nomination for the Australian actor, who died a year ago today at age 28 after suffering an accidental prescription-drug overdose.
After her two Golden Globe wins, Kate Winslet was expected to earn a supporting nomination for her tormented concentration-camp guard in The Reader as well as a lead spot as a distraught suburban housewife in Revolutionary Road.
The Oscar ceremony will air Feb. 22 on ABC with Hugh Jackman stepping into the host spot for the first time.
IT giant Microsoft announced Thursday it will cut up to 5,000 jobs in the next year and a half. It would be the 5.5% of its global workforce.
Microsoft will slash 1,400 positions immediately, with the rest of the cuts coming by June 2010.
The company said it will save about $1.5 billion in operating expenses and $700 million in 2009 capital expenditure.
Shares of the company fell 7% in early trading on the news.
Microsoft also announced second-quarter net income of $4.17 billion, down 11% from a year earlier
The software maker said sales of its Vista operating system slumped 8% on weak PC sales as well as a continued shift toward lower-priced laptop computers.
It’s time of layoff in the IBM. The IT giant began a series of layoffs across the company in North America on Wednesday. However, a spokesperson declined to provide specific numbers or to identify what IBM locations were affected by the cuts.
There have been rumors of layoffs hitting as many as 16,000 – a number predicted by one Wall Street analyst. An unknown number of layoffs were at IBM’s Research Triangle Park campus, which is Big Blue’s largest with more than 11,000 employees.
Despite a global economic slowdown, IBM beat Wall Street expectations with a quarterly profit of $3.28 per share, the company said after the markets closed Tuesday.
A female graduate student was stabbed to death last night at a cafe inside a Virginia Tech dormitory. According to the authorities, police have nabbed a suspect and he was being questioned regarding this.
According to the reports, yesterday in the evening police responded to a 911 call reporting that a woman was being assaulted inside the Graduate Life Center at Donaldson-Brown.
It’s situated on the outskirts of the campus. Investigators believe the victim and the suspect knew each other, officials said. Police said they recovered a knife at the scene.
Decline in male fertility is linked to water pollution, a British study has suggested.
The study, by Brunel University, the Universities of Exeter and Reading and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, shows for the first time how a group of testosterone-blocking chemicals is finding its way into UK rivers, affecting wildlife and potentially humans.
According to the Science Daily online, other studies have also suggested a link between this phenomenon and the increase in human male fertility problems caused by testicular dysgenesis syndrome.
Susan Jobling, who has been working intensively in this field for over ten years said “the new research findings illustrate the complexities in unraveling chemical causation of adverse health effects in wildlife populations and re-open the possibility of a human - wildlife connection in which effects seen in wild fish and in humans are caused by similar combinations of chemicals.”
A. R. Rahman did India proud once again as he bagged a triple nomination at the 81 st Oscar Academy Awards for Slumdog Millionaire.
Slumdog Millionaire, bagged 10 nominations in all including Best Motion Picture category, Best Director — Danny Boyle and Best Adapted Screenplay — Simon Beaufoy. Other nominations include Best Cinematography, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Film Editing.
At the same time, the romantic fantasy “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” led Academy Awards contenders with 13 nominations.
As expected, Heath Ledger had a supporting-actor nomination for “The Dark Knight” on the first anniversary of his death from an accidental overdose of prescription drugs.
Real-life couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie will both go to the Oscars as nominees. Jolie had a best actress nomination for the missing-child drama “Changeling.”
Last week, Burris, was nominated by the controversial Illinois Governor, Rod R Blagojevich, to the Senate. Reports said Burris could be sworn in later this week.
Blagojevich was earlier arrested by FBI on charges of “selling” the Senate seat vacated by Obama. Later released on bail, Blagojevich, who was impeached by the state House of Representatives, has denied the charges.
On Thursday, Burris told an impeachment inquiry in the state legislature that he had made no deals with Blagojevich to secure the appointment to the seat of Obama.
Tom Britt received the e-mail Monday night from neighbor Marcus Schrenker. Authorities believe Schrenker let his plane crash in the Florida panhandle and apparently parachuted to safety.
His single-engine plane continued flying on autopilot and eventually crashed late Sunday more than 200 miles away in a swampy area of the Florida Panhandle, authorities believe.
Authorities believe Schrenker was last seen Monday morning in Childersburg, Ala., just south of Birmingham, when a man using his Indiana driver’s license told police that he’d been in a canoe accident.
The tanks rolled in al-Karramah neighborhood in the northwest and the Tel al-Hawa neighborhood in the northeast. But after the respite, the explosive sounds that punctuated the nighttime hours underscored a resumption in offensive operations.
In the mean time, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya remained defiant, however, declaring in a speech Monday, “I say to our people that by God, we are closer to victory that ever. These precious bloods will not be wasted for nothing.”
The Israeli military on Monday paused for a fifth day for a three-hour break from its assault on Gaza to allow residents to pick up humanitarian supplies, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
At least 14 rockets were fired into Israel on Monday, many between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m. towards Sderot, Ofakim and Ashkelon, an Israeli police spokesman said. One rocket landed on a house in Ashkelon, causing damage but no injuries, an Israeli ambulance services spokesman said.
Meanwhile, President George W. Bush, speaking Monday at his final scheduled news conference before leaving office, said that a “sustainable cease-fire” in Gaza could only be accomplished when “Hamas stops firing rockets into Israel.”
A regional maritime official confirmed on Tuesday that pirates freed the African Sanderling and its 21 Filipino crewmen on Monday after three and half months in captivity.
In the mean time, a report said that at least 33 Filipino sailors are still held by pirates in separate incidents. The latest development came after the pirates released the Saudi oil tanker, Sirius Star.
The Sirius Star which was released on Thursday had been held near the Ukrainian cargo ship MV Faina, which was loaded with 33 Soviet-designed battle tanks and crates of small arms.
Since 1970, Japan has sent dozens of satellites into orbit, mostly on rockets built by other nations. But it has fallen behind China in the lucrative commercial satellite launching business.
Mitsubishi Heavy, which produces the H2A rocket, said it received an order from the Korea Aerospace Research Institute to launch its multipurpose Arirang 3 satellite during the fiscal year beginning April 2011. Still the price is not disclosed.
The H2A rocket was initially designed and built as a government project in which Mitsubishi Heavy took part. The rocket project has since been privatized as a business of Mitsubishi Heavy, now considered a vital part of Japan’s space program.
According to a report published BBC News, Laurence Painell, product manager at Microsoft “We didn’t quite anticipate the demand that we saw.”
he new operating system apparently is more attractive than its predecessor, the Windows Vista, as the new version requires lesser PC resources.
The unlimited download of Windows 7 Beta will last for two weeks, according to Microsoft.
Based on preliminary estimates, the CEA said, more than 110,000 people attended the conference last week in Las Vegas.
That’s far fewer than the 130,000 the group conservatively predicted for this year and 23 percent off the 141,150 who attended last year. And last year was down from the 143,695 who attended in 2007.
The report said that MySpace is a party for teenagers, Facebook is for a hangout for college students, and LinkedIn is a conference for working professionals.
The research group found that some 35% of online adults now have at least one profile on a social networking site, more than quadruple the amount that did in February 2005, when the figure was 8%.
Another surprising finding in Pew’s study is the prevalence of minority groups on social sites. The portion of African-American adults with an online social profile (48%) as well as non-white Hispanics (43%) both eclipse the portion of white adults on the site, just 31%.
Henderson, 50, said he yearns to give it one more try in an A’s uniform before his hometown fans, but he isn’t sure how it might play with Cooperstown officials and their induction rules.
” A true hometown hero, Henderson becomes the fifth player who logged a significant amount of time in Oakland to become a Hall of Famer, joining Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Rollie Fingers and Dennis Eckersley.
Henderson maintained he isn’t holding a grudge against the A’s that they weren’t able to bring him back one last time at the end of his career despite several personal appeals to make it happen. After all, he still thinks it can happen.
Henderson did single out late A’s manager Billy Martin, under whom he achieved many of his early successes, including breaking the season stolen-base record in 1982 with 130.
McDaniels said at the news conference “I’ve spent a lot of time and preparation over the last year getting myself more ready to go in case this opportunity did present itself again.”
Since Bill Belichick became Patriots coach in 2000, McDaniels is the third member of his staff to be tapped for an NFL head coaching job.
Former Patriots offensive coordinator Charlie Weis, who left in 2005 to become Notre Dame’s head coach, was replaced by McDaniels, who called the plays during the 2005 season as the team’s quarterbacks coach, a title he held from 2004 until his departure.
In 2007, McDaniels directed a Patriots offense that set NFL records for points (589) and touchdowns (75) in a season.
The 53-year-old had been with the Colts since 2002, having previously spent six seasons as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Smoltz was introduced at a news conference in Boston, according to a report on the team’s website.
At least 399 people are sickened in 42 states. The brand is primarily used in schools, hospitals, long-term care facilities and restaurants, according to the Minnesota Dept. of Health.
Doug Schultz of the state’s Dept. of Health said that the tub of peanut butter that tested positive for salmonella was an open container obtained from a senior care facility that had several residents fall ill with the outbreak strain of salmonella typhimurium.
However, it has not been proven that this case is linked to the national salmonella outbreak that is currently ongoing in the United States.
Meanwhile, King Nut said in a statement posted on its website that further tests are being conducted by King Nut and the FDA on closed containers of the peanut butter.
King Nut has asked customers to “put on hold all of their peanut butter in question. A recall of this product will be announced Monday morning, the website published.
Although the study does not demonstrate a causal link between blood pressure and external temperature, the observed relationship nevertheless has potentially important consequences for blood pressure management in the elderly.
Study by the Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale of Paris, the systolic (top number) and diastolic (bottom number) blood pressures both rose and fell with the change of seasons in the 8,801 people, aged 65 or older.
The average systolic blood pressure, for example, was five points higher in winter than in summer for the participants. Instances of high blood pressure (systolic blood pressure higher than 159, or diastolic higher than 94 millimeters of mercury or higher) were found in 33.4 percent of participants during winter but just 23.8 percent during summer.
According to research published online Jan. 5 in Psychopharmacology, brain scans of smokers taken before and 24 hours after quitting showed increased activity in certain areas of the brain that cue the person to crave a drag.
Researcher Joseph McClernon, an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center, said in a news release issued by the school “We saw activation in the dorsal striatum, an area involved in learning habits or things we do by rote, like riding a bike or brushing our teeth.”
“Our research shows us that when smokers encounter these cues after quitting, it activates the area of the brain responsible for automatic responses. That means quitting smoking may not be a matter of conscious control,” Joseph McClernon added.
Dr. Bruce Rubin of Wake Forest University School of Medicine in North Carolina, said “The only problem we’ve seen is in a small child when it has been put under the nose.”
Rubin says problems are unlikely in older kids and adults because their airways are bigger. He says his findings apply to any product applied to the skin that, like VapoRub, contains camphor, menthol and eucalyptus.
David Bernens, a spokesman for P&G, said the finding came as a surprise. “Vicks VapoRub has been proven safe and effective through multiple clinical trials.
It has been in the market for over 100 years,” Bernens said, noting that the label says the product should not be used in children under age 2 without a doctor’s advice, and not under the nose.
But it’s a long journey to the stardom for this Golden Boy of the music world. He’s described as one of the most innovative composers to ever work in the industry. His unique style and immense success transformed film music in the 1990s prompting several film producers to take film music more seriously.
Rahma’s early life was quite struggling. Music maestro was born to R. K. Shekhar, of Tamilian descent, who was a composer and conductor for Malayalam-language films in Keralite cinema.
In 1991, Rahman began his own music recording and mixing studio, attached to backyard of his house and later his acclaimed music compositions have led TIME Magazine to declare him the “Mozart of Madras”
Rahman has been noted to write film songs that amalgamate elements of these music systems and other genres, layering instruments from differing music idioms in an improvisatory manner.
His interest and outlook in music stems from his love of experimentation.[ Rahman’s compositions, in the vein of past and contemporaryChennai film composers, bring out auteuristic uses of counterpoint, orchestration and the human voice, evolving Indian pop music with uniquetimbres, forms and instrumentation.
His first soundtrack Roja was listed in TIME’s “Top 10 Movie Soundtracks of All Time” in 2005. Film critic Richard Corliss felt the “astonishing debut work parades Rahman’s gift for alchemizing outside influences until they are totally Tamil, totally Rahman.”
There’s been mounting speculation in industry circles that the Oscars are trying to make the Golden Globes increasingly insignificant.
According to the sources closed to the organizers “J.Lo wasn’t the first choice,” says a source close to the planning.
“They were hoping that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie would open the show; it looked good, then all of a sudden, Brad and Angie weren’t interested anymore. J.Lo was happy to do it, and there you go.”
The couple has been dating since Brady split from actress Bridget Moynahan in 2006, with whom he shares a 16-month-old son. Bundchen has previously dated actor Leonardo DiCaprio.
People.com has published a report regarding this that Brady, 31, proposed to 28-year-old Bundchen with a diamond solitaire on Friday, informing friends and family over the weekend.
An official announcement and preliminary wedding details are reportedly being planned by Bundchen and her closest friends this week.
Her agent has refused to confirm or deny the reports, saying, “We don’t comment on our clients’ private lives.”
Winehouse and Fielder-Civil married in Miami in May 2007, but he was arrested six months later over an assault. Later in July he was sentenced to 27 months in jail for beating up a bar manager and then offering him a bribe to keep quiet about it.
Attorney Henri Brandman said he had been instructed by Blake Fielder-Civil “to commence divorce proceedings on the grounds of Amy’s adultery.”
Winehouse’s spokesman did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Winehouse has been linked by tabloid newspapers to other men and recently has been photographed on holiday in the Caribbean with an alleged new beau, Josh Bowman.
Before this, Russia was set to resume gas supply to the European countries. It would ease a crisis that has hit a swathe of countries and highlighted their dependence on Moscow.
The announcement came after Russia, Ukraine and the EU signed an agreement on monitoring the movement of gas through the transit network, the workings of which are notorious for being untransparent and corrupt.
EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs had said that “it will take some time to reach our consumers, between 24 and 40 hours,” while other EU officials have said it might take as much as three days.
Russia says all such gas must be paid for by Kiev as part of its transit contract with Moscow.
The donations came from three alumni who said they were motivated by the desire to protect the environment from greenhouse gases.
The institute will expand Stanford’s role in energy research and national energy policy. It will consolidate Stanford’s existing energy-focused efforts onto one site — and allow the hiring of new faculty.
The new institute will be directed by Lynn Orr, professor of energy resources engineering and director of Stanford’s Global Climate and Energy Project. He plans to pull together 136 faculty members in 21 departments to create interdisciplinary projects.
The announcement came after Russia, Ukraine and the EU signed an agreement on monitoring the movement of gas through the transit network, the workings of which are notorious for being untransparent and corrupt.
EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs said that “it will take some time to reach our consumers, between 24 and 40 hours,” while other EU officials have said it might take as much as three days.
Russia says all such gas must be paid for by Kiev as part of its transit contract with Moscow.
“The president awaits talks between Prime Minister Tymoshenko and Russian Prime Minister Putin, during which all political problems will be removed,” his spokeswoman of the Ukraine government told reporters on Monday.
In the mean time, Russia’s gas export company Gazprom says Ukraine has signed a fresh copy of a gas transit monitoring agreement, without any added conditions.
Monday’s signing should allow the resumption of gas supplies to much of Europe, shut down because of a contractual dispute between the two countries.
