obama hittin back

STEELTON, Pa. - Democrat Barack Obama lashed out Sunday at rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, mocking her vocal support for gun rights and saying her record in the Senate and as first lady belied her stated commitment to working class voters and their concerns.

"She knows better. Shame on her. Shame on her," Obama told an audience at a union hall here.

The Illinois senator has spent three days on the defensive after comments he made at a San Francisco fundraiser were disclosed that suggested working class people are bitter about their economic circumstances and "cling to guns and religion" as a result.






marijuana users not payin their bills

OTTAWA - Medical marijuana users are on the hook for more than $500,000 in unpaid bills for government-certified weed, raising questions about the effectiveness of Health Canada's troubled dope program.

Newly disclosed statistics show that Health Canada has sent final notices - and sometimes dispatched a collection agency as well - to 462 registered users since government marijuana first became available in 2003.

"Most of the 462 individuals who have received a letter regarding their accounts in arrears have had their shipment ceased," department spokesman Paul Duchesne said in an e-mail.






marilyn porn for 1.5 mill

April 14, 2008 --

Some really like it hot.

In the sordid tradition of peddling raunchy video footage of celebrities a la Paris Hilton, a long-buried sex movie of Marilyn Monroe recently hit the market, a top collector told The Post.


An illicit copy of the steamy, still-FBI-classified reel - 15 minutes of 16mm film footage in which the original blond bombshell performs oral sex on an unidentified man - was just sold to a New York businessman for $1.5 million, said Keya Morgan, the well-known memorabilia collector who discovered the film and brokered its purchase.






conjuring ben franklin

WASHINGTON, April 14—A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time, according to a new paper in the latest issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society’s (OSA) open-access journal. They did this by aiming high-power pulses of laser light into a thunderstorm.

At the top of South Baldy Peak in New Mexico during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity akin to Benjamin Franklin's silk kite string. No air-to-ground lightning was triggered because the filaments were too short-lived, but the laser pulses generated discharges in the thunderclouds themselves.

"This was an important first step toward triggering lightning strikes with laser beams," says Jérôme Kasparian of the University of Lyon in France. "It was the first time we generated lighting precursors in a thundercloud." The next step of generating full-blown lightning strikes may come, he adds, after the team reprograms their lasers to use more sophisticated pulse sequences that will make longer-lived filaments to further conduct the lightning during storms.






mouth swab for lung cancer

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Damage to cells lining the mouth can predict similar damage in the lungs that eventually leads to lung cancer in smokers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday.

They hope it may be possible to some day swab the mouths of smokers to predict who is developing lung cancer -- saving painful and dangerous biopsies of the lung.

The process may also lead to tests that will predict other cancers, said Dr. Li Mao, an expert in head, neck and lung cancer at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.






wachovia problems

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- Wachovia Corp.'s (WB) controversial Pick-a-Payment mortgage program lets borrowers choose between four monthly payment amounts. Unfortunately for Wachovia, these "Pick-a-Pay" borrowers are increasingly inventing a fifth choice: Not making mortgage payments at all.

The Charlotte bank reported on Monday a $350 million loss during this year's first quarter, due in large part to stunningly high losses within its $121 billion-plus book of flexible-payment, or Pick-a-Payment, mortgages - a legacy of Wachovia's ill-conceived 2006 purchase of Golden West Financial.

On Monday, Wachovia conceded total losses from Pick-A-Pay loans could eventually amount to a staggering 7% to 8% of the loans' combined value, a range of $8.5 billion to $9.7 billion - meaning the bank, and its shareholders, will likely be coping with Pick-a-Pay losses for years to come.






trade deal dead?

A proposed free trade agreement between the US and Colombia will be "dead" unless Congress considers it soon, President George W. Bush has warned.

He urged the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, to table an imminent vote on the deal.

The House scrapped a clause requiring a vote within 60 days, making it unlikely to happen before November's elections.






HD moon map released

Selene, Japan's lunar spacecraft and HD peeping Tom, keeps sending stunningly-detailed information from our crystal clear Moon to trashed Mother Earth. These first-ever high definition global topographic maps of the Moon were created using 1,127,392 point measurements, taken with its laser altimeter. And they are just preliminary versions.






ohio's finest ...?!

SANDUSKY, Ohio (AP) -- A highway patrolman who was photographed in a handmade Ku Klux Klan costume while on duty the day before the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday has been suspended without pay, authorities said.

A fellow trooper who transmitted the cell-phone photo of white-masked lawman has been demoted.

Craig Franklin, a 12-year veteran of the Ohio Highway Patrol, is pictured in the January 20 photo with a white cone on his head, white paper mask and a white cloth covering his shoulders, according to a highway patrol report.






free photoshop alternative gets upgrade

The GIMP team announced today the first release from the 2.5 development series. It is true that this version is unstable, but a little bird told me to give it a try and see what's it capable of. First of all, let me tell you that its interface is quite redesigned and I think that some users will have problems adjusting with it, but that's just my two cents. On the other hand, version 2.5.0 of The GIMP includes some hot new features, like the integration of GEGL (Generic Graphics Library) which will finally get support for higher color depths, more colorspaces and eventually non-destructive editing.






your decisions viewed before you make them

You may think you decided to read this story -- but in fact, your brain made the decision long before you knew about it.

In a study published Sunday in Nature Neuroscience, researchers using brain scanners could predict people's decisions seven seconds before the test subjects were even aware of making them.

The decision studied -- whether to hit a button with one's left or right hand -- may not be representative of complicated choices that are more integrally tied to our sense of self-direction. Regardless, the findings raise profound questions about the nature of self and autonomy: How free is our will? Is conscious choice just an illusion?







baseball curse thwarted

NEW YORK -- A construction worker's bid to curse the New York Yankees by planting a Boston Red Sox jersey in their new stadium was foiled when the home team removed the offending shirt from its burial spot.

After locating the shirt in a service corridor behind what will be a restaurant in the new Yankee Stadium, construction workers jackhammered through the concrete Sunday and pulled it out.

The team said it learned that a Red Sox-rooting construction worker had buried a shirt in the new Bronx stadium, which will open next year across the street from the current ballpark, from a report in the New York Post on Friday.






here come da pope

Pope Benedict XVI comes to the United States Tuesday to speak not only to a US church still struggling to recover from crisis, but also to deliver a message to the world at the United Nations.

Throughout his six-day visit to Washington and New York, the German-born pontiff and onetime college professor is expected to emphasize the most universal of Christian values, while urging individual believers and church institutions to strengthen their Catholic identity.

"What marks this pontificate is the teacher in him," says the Most Rev. Donald Wuerl, archbishop of Washington, D.C. And this "is a great teaching moment."






dark matter particles discovered?

Researchers from Italy stirred up controversy eight years ago when they announced they had discovered the identity of dark matter, the invisible stuff that's thought to make up 23 percent of the universe. Now, after a long period of silence, the DAMA (DArk MAtter) collaboration at the University of Rome is about to reinforce its claim with fresh data. That's the rumor at the American Physical Society meeting here in St. Louis, anyway.

That's really all the information there is right now. The first data from the DAMA/LIBRA (Large sodium Iodide Bulk for RAre) experiment, an underground particle detector at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, is indeed slated for announcement on Tuesday at the NO-VE International Workshop in Venice. I've put in some e-mails to try to find out more. Researchers haven't seen the new results, but they say it would take a lot to convince them that the DAMA team is really onto something.







april 14th in history:

43 BC - Battle of Forum Gallorum: Mark Antony, besieging Julius Caesar's assassin Decimus Junius Brutus in Mutina, defeats the forces of the consul Pansa, who is killed.
69 - Vitellius, commander of the Rhine armies, defeats Emperor Otho in the Battle of Bedriacum and seizes the throne.
1028 - Henry III, son of Conrad, is elected king of the Germans.
1205 - Battle of Adrianople between Bulgarians and Crusaders.
1341 - Sack of Saluzzo (Italy) by Italian-Angevine troops under Manfred V of Saluzzo.
1434 - The foundation stone of Cathedral St. Peter and St. Paul in Nantes, France is laid.
1471 - In England, the Yorkists under Edward IV defeat the Lancastrians under Warwick at the battle of Barnet; the Earl of Warwick is killed and Edward IV resumes the throne.
1699 - Khalsa: Birth of Khalsa, the brotherhood of the Sikh religion, in Northern India in accordance with the Nanakshahi calendar.
1775 - The first abolition society in North America is established. The "Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage" is organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania by Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush.
1828 - Noah Webster copyrights the first edition of his dictionary.
1831 - Soldiers marching on a bridge in Manchester, England cause it to collapse.
1846 - The Donner Party of pioneers departs Springfield, Illinois, for California, on what will become a year-long journey of hardship, cannibalism, and survival.
1849 - Hungary declares itself independent of Austria with Louis Kossuth as its leader.
1860 - The first Pony Express rider reaches Sacramento, California.
1864 - Battle of Dybbøl: A Prussian-Austrian army defeats Denmark and gains control of Schleswig. Denmark surrenders the province in the following peace settlement.
1865 - U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is shot in Ford's Theatre by John Wilkes Booth.
1865 - U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward and his family are attacked in his home by Lewis Powell.
1881 - The Four Dead in Five Seconds Gunfight erupts in El Paso, Texas.
1890 - The Pan-American Union is founded by the First International Conference of American States in Washington, D.C.
1894 - Thomas Edison demonstrates the kinetoscope, a device for peep-show viewing using photographs that flip in sequence, a precursor to movies.
1912 - The British passenger liner RMS Titanic hits an iceberg in the North Atlantic, and sinks the following morning with the loss of 1,503 lives.
1915 - The Turks invade Armenia.
1927 - The first Volvo car premieres in Gothenburg, Sweden.
1931 - Spanish Cortes deposes King Alfonso XIII and proclaims the 2nd Spanish Republic.
1935 - "Black Sunday", the worst dust storm of the U.S. Dust Bowl.
1940 - World War II: Royal Marines land in Namsos, Norway, occupying key points, preparatory to a larger force arriving two days later.
1941 - World War II: The Ustashe, a Croatian far-right organization that pursued Nazi and fascist policies, is put in charge of the Independent State of Croatia by the Axis Powers after the April 6 invasion of Yugoslavia during Operation 25. In addition, Rommel attacks Tobruk.
1944 - Bombay Explosion (1944): A massive explosion rocks the Bombay harbor killing 300 and causing a loss of 20 million pounds at that time.
1945 - Osijek, Croatia, is liberated from fascistic occupation.
1956 - Videotape is first demonstrated at the 1956 NARTB (now National Association of Broadcasters) convention in Chicago, Illinois.
1958 - The Soviet satellite Sputnik 2 falls from orbit after a mission duration of 162 days.
1962 - Georges Pompidou becomes Prime Minister of France.
1964 - A Delta rocket's third-stage motor prematurely ignites in an assembly room at Cape Canaveral, killing 3.
1968 - At the U.S. Academy Awards, a tie between Katharine Hepburn and Barbra Streisand results in the two sharing the Academy Award for Best Actress.
1970 - An oxygen tank aboard Apollo 13 explodes, putting the crew in great danger and causing major damage to the spaceship.
1978 - 1978 Tbilisi Demonstrations: Thousands of Georgians demonstrate against the attempt by the Soviet Union authorities to change the constitutional status of the Georgian language.
1981 - STS-1 - The first operational space shuttle, Columbia (OV-102), lands at Edwards Air Force Base, California after its first test flight.
1986 - In retaliation for the April 5 bombing of the La Belle Discotheque in West Berlin in which two U.S. servicemen were killed, Ronald Reagan orders major bombing raids against Tripoli and Benghazi, in Libya, which kills 60 people.
1986 - 1 kg (2.2 pound) hailstones fall on the Gopalganj district of Bangladesh, killing 92. These are the heaviest hailstones ever recorded.
1988 - The USS Samuel B. Roberts strikes a mine in the Persian Gulf during Operation Earnest Will.
1988 - In a United Nations ceremony in Geneva, Switzerland, the Soviet Union signs an agreement pledging to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
1994 - In a U.S. friendly fire incident during Operation Provide Comfort in northern Iraq, two United States Air Force aircraft mistakenly shoot-down two United States Army helicopters, killing 26 people.
1999 - NATO mistakenly bombs a convoy of ethnic Albanian refugees - Yugoslav officials say 75 people are killed.
1999 - A severe hailstorm strikes Sydney, Australia causing A$1.7 billion in insured damages, the most costly natural disaster in Australian history.
2000 - Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich files a lawsuit against P2P sharing phenomenon Napster. This law-suit eventually leads the movement against file-sharing programs.
2002 - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez returns to office two days after being ousted and arrested by the country's military.
2003 - The Human Genome Project is successfully completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced to an accuracy of 99.99%.
2003 - U.S. troops in Baghdad capture Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestinian group that killed an American on the hijacked cruise liner the Achille Lauro in 1985.
2005 - The Oregon Supreme Court nullifies nearly 3,000 marriage licenses issued to gay couples a year earlier by Multnomah County.
2007 - At least 200,000 demonstrators in Ankara, Turkey protest against the possible candidacy of incumbent Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

world's largest solar plant being built in mojave desert

With California utilities expanding rapidly into renewables, the Mojave Desert is one of the hottest spots for solar energy. Last year, plans for the world’s largest solar array got underway in this ideal energy harvesting setting and the latest news is just as groundbreaking. Pacific Gas and Electric recently signed the world’s largest solar deal to date, teaming up with BrightSource Energy to produce three new solar-thermal electric plants for a whopping 500 megawatts of clean green power. The $2 to $3 billion dollar deal provides options for additional plants (up to 900 megawatts total), which would be enough to power 375,000 Californian homes.






mac os ready to challenge ms?

The 20-year death grip that Microsoft has held on the core of computing is finally weakening—pried loose with just two fingers. With one finger you press "Control" and with the other you press "right arrow." Instantly you switch from a Macintosh operating system (OS) to a Microsoft Windows OS. Then, with another two-finger press, you switch back again. So as you edit family pictures, you might use Mac's iPhoto. And when you want to access your corporate e-mail, you can switch back instantly to Microsoft Exchange.

This easy toggling on an Apple computer, enabled by a feature called Spaces, was but an interesting side note to last fall's upgrade of the Mac OS. But coupled with other recent developments, the stars are aligning in a very intriguing pattern. Apple's (AAPL) recent release of a tool kit for programmers to write applications for the iPhone will be followed by the June launch of iPhone 2.0, a software upgrade geared toward business users.






athletes heading to olympics must tread lightly

Athletes who display Tibetan flags at Olympic venues — including in their own rooms — could be expelled from this summer’s Games in Beijing under anti-propaganda rules.

Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), said that competitors were free to express their political views but faced sanctions if they indulged in propaganda.

He accompanied those comments with an admission that the Games were in “crisis” after pro-Tibet protests engulfed the Olympic torch relay.






the sex trade

ANN ARBOR, Mich.---Female penguins mate with males who bring them pebbles to build egg nests. Hummingbirds mate to gain access to the most productive flowers guarded by larger males.

New research shows that even affluent college students who don't need resources will still attempt to trade sexual currency for provisions, said Daniel Kruger, research scientist at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

The exchange of resources for sex---referred to by scientists as nuptial gifts---has occurred throughout history in many species, including humans, Kruger said. The male of the species offers protection and resources to the female and offspring in exchange for reproductive rights. For example, an arranged marriage can be considered a contract to trade resources.

However, the recent findings suggest that such behaviors are hard wired, and persist no matter how much wealth, resources or security that people obtain.






problems deporting terror suspects

A British appeals court Wednesday blocked the government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown from deporting to Jordan a firebrand Islamic cleric who has long been suspected of close ties to Al Qaeda. The court's rationale: there were reasonable grounds to believe the Jordanians would jail him for life based on evidence obtained through the torture of other detainees.

The court ruling is the latest example of how the alleged use of torture is complicating efforts by the United States and its allies to prosecute high-profile terror suspects and their associates. In this case, the suspect at issue, Abu Qatada, is a notorious radical imam who, British authorities charge, has inflamed British Muslims with his anti-Western sermons. All the while, he has maintained "long-established connections with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda," according to a British government dossier entered into evidence in his court case. Abu Qatada has always denied being an Al Qaeda operative or leader, although in an interview broadcast after 9/11 he said that even though he has never met Osama bin Laden he would have been "proud" to have done so.






chuck could take em!

Two Pennsauken High School students have been arrested after a teacher found what was believed to be a hit list that targeted actor Chuck Norris.

Camden County prosecutor's spokesman Jason Laughlin says the list also included the names of three students and a school staff member.

No one was injured.

School superintendent James Chapman said in a posting on the district's Web site that the boys said the list was a joke.






is this the end of R2D2?

THE actor who played R2-D2 in Star Wars was in hospital last night after being struck down by a mystery illness.

Kenny Baker, 73, fell ill as he flew back to England from a holiday in the US, reports UK tabloid The Sun.

The short-statured star was taken to hospital once the plane touched down at Manchester Airport, with friends fearing him to be seriously ill.

But last night a family member said he was recovering and expected to be back at his home near Preston, Lancs, in a few days.






tanning bed happiness

A 13-year-old boy is recovering after sustaining severe burn blisters to his face after visiting a tanning salon three times in a day.

Kieron Saunders from Tredegar, Blaenau Gwent, spent a total of 21 minutes under the lights of the stand-up booth.

He has been told to stay at home for a week after the burns became infected.






reboot your brains addicts

Scientists for the first time have identified long-term changes in mice brains that may shed light on why addicts get hooked on drugs—in this case methamphetamines—and have such a tough time kicking the habit. The findings, reported in the journal Neuron, could set the stage for new ways to block cravings—and help addicts dry out.

Researchers, using fluorescent tracer dye, discovered that mice given methamphetamines for 10 days (roughly equivalent to a human using it for two years) had suppressed activity in a certain area of their brains. Much to their surprise, normal function did not return even when the drug was stopped, but did when they administered a single dose of it again after the mice had been in withdrawal.






you can run.. but you can't hide in mexico

It’s been drilled into the American imagination by countless “B” Westerns and pulpy crime novels: When the heat is on, you make a run for the border. The law must abide by the law, the premise goes, so if the sheriff cannot head you off before you reach the Rio Grande, he’s obliged to pull up reins in jursidictional frustration while you and whatever longhorns you’ve rustled splash to safety on the Mexican side.

Cpl. Cesar Laurean is the latest American to learn how illusory that supposed safety can be: Hoary movie clichés notwithstanding, Mexico these days offers no easy sanctuary from the long arm of American law. Nor vice versa.








April 11th in History

491 - Flavius Anastasius becomes Byzantine Emperor, with the name of Anastasius I.
1079 - Bishop Stanislaus of Krakow is executed by order of Bolesław II of Poland.
1241 - Batu Khan defeats Béla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Muhi.
1512 - War of the League of Cambrai: French forces led by Gaston de Foix win the Battle of Ravenna.
1689 - William III and Mary II are crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.
1713 - War of the Spanish Succession (Queen Anne's War): Treaty of Utrecht.
1775 - The last execution for witchcraft in Germany takes place.
1828 - Foundation of Bahia Blanca.
1856 - In Rivas, Nicaragua, Juan Santamaria burns down the hostel where William Walker's filibusters are holed up.
1865 - President Abraham Lincoln makes his last public speech.
1868 - The Shogunate is abolished in Japan.
1876 - The Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks is organized.
1888 - The Concertgebouw in Amsterdam is inaugurated.
1899 - Spain cedes Puerto Rico to the United States.
1905 - Albert Einstein reveals his Theory of Relativity (special relativity).
1919 - The International Labour Organization is founded.
1921 - First sports broadcast on the radio takes place.
1921 - The Emirate of Transjordan is created.
1921 - Iowa becomes the first U.S. state to impose a cigarette tax.
1945 - World War II: American forces liberate the Buchenwald concentration camp.
1951 - Korean War: President Harry Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of overall command in Korea.
1951 - The Stone of Scone, the stone upon which Scottish monarchs were traditionally crowned, is found on the site of the altar of Arbroath Abbey. It had been taken by Scottish nationalist students from its place in Westminster Abbey.
1952 - The Battle of Nanri island takes place.
1955 - The Air India Kashmir Princess is bombed and crashes in a failed assassination attempt on Zhou Enlai by the Kuomintang.
1957 - Britain agrees to Singaporean self-rule.
1961 - The trial of Adolf Eichmann begins in Jerusalem.
1965 - The Palm Sunday tornado outbreak of 1965: Fifty-one tornadoes hit in six Midwestern states, killing 256 people.
1968 - President Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968, prohibiting discrimination in the sale, rental, and financing of housing.
1968 - German student leader Rudi Dutschke is shot in Berlin.
1970 - Apollo 13 is launched.
1979 - Ugandan dictator Idi Amin is deposed.

hamas threatening to invade egypt again

Egypt has sent 1,200 extra security personnel to the border area with Gaza, officials say.

The Egyptians fear another breach of the frontier by Palestinians trying to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza.

A senior member of Hamas, which controls Gaza, threatened on Tuesday to repeat a breach of the border with Egypt earlier this year.






food prices rise... chaos ensuing

Gunfire in Haiti. Riots in Cameroon. A government crisis in the Philippines. The effects of skyrocketing food prices have reached every corner of the globe. Now, the World Bank has called for world leaders to take action before it is too late.

The scenes in Haiti have been dramatic. Gunfire on the streets in the capital Port-au-Prince; thousands parading through the streets; and 9,000 United Nations peacekeepers powerless to stop the violence and the widespread looting. Five people have been killed in the violence since last Thursday, according to unofficial reports. Even an impassioned plea by the Caribbean country's President Rene Preval on Wednesday failed to restore order.

"The solution is not to go around destroying stores," he said. "I'm giving you orders to stop."






sex temple

ELDORADO, Texas (AP) — Agents searching a 1,700-acre polygamist compound in West Texas found a bed in the soaring limestone temple and prosecutors believe it was used for male members to have sex with their underage wives after sect-recognized unions.

The discovery was revealed Wednesday as troopers completed their weeklong search of the grounds of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, said spokeswoman Tela Mange.

The temple "contains an area where there is a bed where males over the age of 17 engage in sexual activity with female children under the age of 17," according to an affidavit quoting a confidential informant who had been providing information to the Schleicher County sheriff for years.






saving whales

North Atlantic right whales have always been noisy animals—and now that racket may save their lives.

Scientists have engineered a high-tech system of submerged listening posts stretching across 55 miles (88 kilometers) of Massachusetts Bay that can detect the sounds of the critically endangered animals.

The network is designed to protect the whales from deadly collisions in the busy shipping lanes that run through Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary. About a third of all right whale deaths worldwide are attributed to ship collisions






how earthquakes stop

Every earthquake starts small. Beginning at one point, it extends outward, causing tremors in and around its path. At some point, though, all earthquakes stop. So what brings this mighty process to a halt?

That’s an important question, because the duration of an earthquake helps determine how much damage it will do. Will the tremor be of mild magnitude—say, a magnitude 4 on the Richter scale, the kind that occur all over the world every day—or a 9, which happens no more than once a decade on average?






scientists using performance enhancing drugs

April 9, 2008 -- One in five Nature readers -- mostly scientists -- say they up their mental performance with drugs such as Ritalin, Provigil, and Inderal.

The online poll from the British science magazine didn't ask readers how they felt about professional athletes using drugs to enhance their physical performance. But when asked how they felt about professional thinkers using drugs to enhance their cognitive performance, nearly 80% said it should be allowed.

While only a fifth of the poll's 1,400 respondents admitted to drug use to improve concentration, nearly two-thirds said they knew of a colleague who did. And if there were "a normal risk of mild side effects," nearly 70% of the scientists said they'd boost their brain power by taking a "cognitive-enhancing drug."






the thread of zombie computers

SAN FRANCISCO -- Gangs of thousands of zombie home computers grinding out spam, committing fraud and overpowering websites are the most vexing net threat today, according to law enforcement and security professionals.

Today's botnet herders have hundreds of thousands of computers at their command and use technically sophisticated ways to hide their headquarters, making it easy for them to make millions from spam and credit card theft. They can also be used to direct floods of fake traffic at a targeted website in order to bring down a rival, extract protection money or less frequently, used to make a political point in the case of attacks on Estonia and the Church of Scientology.






virginia teacher was running escort service

A social studies teacher resigned her position Wednesday as new information surfaced that shows she was involved with operating an escort service while on staff at Kellam High School.

One day earlier, Michelle Droelle told The Virginian-Pilot she got out of the business before she began teaching two years ago. But The Pilot has discovered escort service ad contracts signed by Droelle during the current school year – including one dated March 12, 2008.

Droelle, 33, voluntarily resigned, school officials said.







273,000+ stranded

April 10 (Bloomberg) -- AMR Corp.'s American Airlines scrubbed 933 more flights today, adding to 1,550 already canceled this week, as it continued aircraft wiring repairs and groundings that have stranded more than 273,000 passengers.

American said it had ``no choice'' in parking its 300 Boeing Co. MD-80 jets, which make up nearly half its fleet, after the planes again failed to meet a U.S. safety order. The carrier expects further cancellations tomorrow and April 12 before all of its MD-80s are back in service late that day.

Federal Aviation Administration whistleblower complaints that spurred a safety audit at 117 airlines and caused at least four carriers to ground planes sent a wake-up call to regulators and an industry that had grown complacent about maintenance, a former top safety official said.






carter to meet with terrorist leader

Former president Jimmy Carter plans to meet next week in Damascus with Khaled Meshal, the head of the Palestinian militant group Hamas, in a direct rebuke of the Bush administration's campaign to isolate it.

The disclosure of Carter's plans by the Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat and subsequent confirmation by sources familiar with his itinerary instantly placed the campaigns of Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) in a political bind.

The campaign of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, was quick to blast Carter's plans and called on both Obama and Clinton to condemn the meeting with what the State Department lists as a terrorist group.






facebook sex

A woman says she is a Facebook sex addict and has slept with 50 men she met through the networking site.

Laura Michaels, 23, set up a group called "I Need Sex" on the site.

She invited men to contact her and those whose picture she liked, she met up with.






god particle coming?

British physicist Peter Higgs - with the help of the US$2 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - aims to study the origins of life by studying particles. The LHC, built 100m beneath the French-Swiss border at CERN, is due to be in operation in June.

The scientist specifically wants to uncover the existence of what has been called the Higgs boson – named after the theory he proposed over 40 years ago. The hypothetical Higgs boson, dubbed by some as the ‘God particle’, is fundamental to understanding the Universe but has not yet been detected. This particle would fill a missing element in explaining how subatomic particles — such as quarks and electrons — have weight.






eggs are dangerous... again

Middle-aged men who ate seven or more eggs a week had a higher risk of earlier death, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

Men with diabetes who ate any eggs at all raised their risk of death during a 20-year period studied, according to the study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The study adds to an ever-growing body of evidence, much of it contradictory, about how safe eggs are to eat. It did not examine what about the eggs might affect the risk of death.






ron paul lone dissenter on china and tibet

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The U.S. House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a resolution Wednesday calling on China to end its crackdown on Tibet and release Tibetans imprisoned for "nonviolent" demonstrations.

The vote was 413-1. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, who has not dropped out of the presidential race, was the lone congressman voting against it.

The resolution passed just hours before runners were to carry the Olympic torch on a six-mile route around San Francisco Bay.






be careful the next time you ask for another pillow

This seems the right time to broach the subject of a concierge’s limits. I am told they won’t do anything illegal. Drugs are out, as are hookers, though of course they’ve been asked. Just in case you need to know, there’s a coded way to ask for a prostitute. You phone the concierge and say: “Can I have another pillow?” This is embarrassing, because my wife is quite partial to an extra pillow. Which means I’ve often called down and asked for a prostitute to help her sleep. Having said that, they’ve only ever sent a pillow. Which is probably for the best.

Although the concierge doesn’t arrange extra pillows, call girls do find their way into the bar. Only last week, Richard tells me, a cleaner discovered a guest and someone who wasn’t his wife at it in the restaurant toilet.










april 10th in history

879 - Louis III becomes King of the Western Franks.
1500 - Ludovico Sforza is captured by the Swiss troops at Novara and handed over to the French.
1606 - The Charter of the Virginia Company of London was established by royal charter by James I of England with the purpose of establishing colonial settlements in North America.
1710 - The first law regulating copyright is issued in Great Britain.
1741 - War of the Austrian Succession: Prussia defeats Austria in the Battle of Mollwitz.
1790 - United States Patent system established
1815 - Mount Tambora eruption covers several islands with ash in Indonesia.
1816 - The U.S. government approved the creation of a Second Bank of the United States.
1821 - Patriarch Gregory V of Constantinople is hanged by the Turks from the main gate of the Patriarchate and his body is thrown into the Bosphorus.
1826 - The 10,500 inhabitants of the Greek town Messolonghi start leaving the town after a year's siege by Turkish forces. Very few of them survive.
1856 - Theta Chi Fraternity Founded at Norwich University
1857 - The Sepoy Mutiny popularly known as the "Revolt of 1857" broke out in Meerut, India as part of the Indian independence movement.
1864 - Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg is elected emperor of Mexico.
1865 - American Civil War: A day after his surrender to Union forces, Confederate General Robert E. Lee addresses his troops for the last time.
1865 - The last photograph of Abraham Lincoln alive was taken.
1866 - The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) is founded in New York City by Henry Bergh.
1868 - At Arogee in Abyssinia, British and Indian forces defeat an army of Emperor Theodore. While 700 Ethiopians are killed and many more injured, only two die from the British/ Indian troops.
1869 - José Martí founds the Cuban Revolutionary Party.
1896 - Spiridon Louis wins the marathon of the first Olympic Games.
1906 - The Four Million, O. Henry's second short story collection, is published.
1912 - The RMS Titanic leaves port in Southampton, England for her first and only voyage.
1916 - The Professional Golfers Association of America (PGA) is created in New York City.
1919 - Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata is ambushed and shot dead by government forces in Morelos.
1924 - The first train robbery is reported in Greece outside the city of Larissa.
1925 - The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is first published in New York, New York by Charles Scribner's Sons.
1933 - New Deal: The Civilian Conservation Corps is created.
1938 - Édouard Daladier becomes Prime Minister of France.
1941 - World War II: The Axis Powers in Europe establish the Independent State of Croatia from occupied Yugoslavia with Ante Pavelić's Ustase fascist insurgents in power.
1944 - Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escape from Birkenau death camp.
1944 - Henry Ford II is named executive vice president of Ford Motor Company.
1953 - The first 3D film is released in New York.
1957 - The Suez Canal is reopened for all shipping after being closed for three months.
1959 - Akihito, future Emperor of Japan, weds Michiko.
1963 - The submarine USS Thresher is lost at sea, with all hands (129 officers, crewmen and civilian technicians).
1964 - The Polo Grounds are demolished.
1968 - Shipwreck of the Wahine outside Wellington harbour.
1970 - Paul McCartney announces that he's leaving The Beatles.
1971 - Ping Pong Diplomacy: In an attempt to thaw relations with the United States, the People's Republic of China hosts the U.S. table tennis team for a weeklong visit.
1972 - 20 days after he was kidnapped in Buenos Aires, Oberdan Sallustro is executed by communist guerrillas.
1972 - Vietnam War: For the first time since November 1967 American B-52 bombers reportedly begin bombing North Vietnam.
1973 - A British Vanguard turboprop crashes during a snowstorm at Basel, Switzerland killing 104.
1978 - Volkswagen becomes only the second non-American automobile manufacturer to build cars in the United States (after Rolls-Royce), opening a plant in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania.
1979 - On "Terrible Tuesday", a tornado lands in Wichita Falls, Texas killing 42 people. (see Red River Valley Tornado Outbreak).
1991 - Italian ferry Moby Prince collides with an oil tanker in dense fog off Livorno, Italy killing 140.
1991 - A rare tropical storm develops in the Southern Hemisphere near Angola; the first to be documented by satellites.
1998 - The Belfast Agreement is signed.
2006 - Hundreds of thousands protest H.R. 4437 (aka the "Sensenbrenner Bill") in cities across the United States.

mercury's day

ebay antiquing

While we (sort of) understand why people pay a little more for a bottle of wine that's improved with age, we're not quite so sure about the speculative value of an aging French fry.

Still, there's a kind of earnest enthusiasm about this eBay ad for "the only known 1993 [McDonald's french] fry in existence," as though it is something that anyone will realize the innate value of.






on women's bellies

April 8, 2008 -- Having a big waist may raise women's death rates, even in women who aren't overweight.

That news comes from a study of 44,600 female nurses enrolled in a long-term health study.

The bottom line: Waists mattered more than weight.

Being in the normal weight range was less important than having a waist less than 34.6 inches and a waist-to-hip ratio of less than 0.88 .To calculate your waist-to-hip ratio, divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement.






space tourism

A rocket-powered plane that will allow tourists to travel in space is in development and will start flights in two years.

Plans have been revealed for 'Lynx', a two-seater 'space taxi', which will be capable of flying 37miles above the Earth from 2010.

Flights will cost passengers £50,000 for a journey in the rocket-powered vehicle that is intended to operate like a normal aeroplane by taking off and landing on runways.

It will reach twice the speed of sound on its ascent to offer space tourists spectacular views of Earth.






sex is in the eyes

It is one of the main questions on an amorous young man's mind - how can you tell whether a girl might be interested in a one-night stand without having to waste precious time in small talk?

Similarly, an eligible young lady might be keen to know whether the chap chatting her up is the type who's ready to settle down and raise a family.

It turns out that the answers have been staring them in the face.






watch what homework you bring to lunch

Melanie Bowers, 13, and her parents walked into Athens High School Monday afternoon to talk to campus police. They were hoping to get some answers.

"It never should have happened in the first place. The whole assignment was a silly assignment and they should have contacted us immediately after it happened," said J.R. Bowers, Melanie's father.

It was an assignment for history class--to make a protest sign for or against an issue, and Melanie said she chose illegal immigration. Her sign read, "If you love our nation, stop illegal immigration." Somehow, Melanie said the sign got passed around lunch and angered a group of Latino students.







niedermayer? dead
dead wormer? dead
abu obaidah al-masri? dead

A U.S. official says an al-Qaida figure believed to help plan the 2005 subway and bus bombings in London has died.

The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, tells VOA that Abu Obaidah al-Masri appears to have died of natural causes some months ago. The official also says Masri died in the Afghan-Pakistan region.

Masri was also suspected in a plot to blow up commercial airliners over the Atlantic Ocean in 2006.

Masri had been reported killed in a missile strike in Pakistan in 2006.






SEAL medal of honor

WASHINGTON — President Bush on Tuesday awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously to a member of the Navy Seals who threw himself on a grenade in 2006 to save his comrades in Iraq.

President Bush presented the Medal of Honor to George and Sally Monsoor, parents of Petty Officer Monsoor.

The president presented the award, the nation’s highest military honor, to the parents of the Petty Officer Second Class Michael A. Monsoor, 25, in a ceremony at the White House.

“The Medal of Honor is awarded for an act of such courage that no one could rightly be expected to undertake it,” Mr. Bush said, adding that those who knew Petty Officer Monsoor were not surprised he had made the sacrifice.






kidney cancer vaccine

A small biotech company received approval yesterday from the Russian Ministry of Public Health to market the cancer vaccine Oncophage for some types of kidney cancer.

The Scientist reports that the approval of the Antigenics cancer drug is the first for any cancer immunotherapy by any regulatory body in the world. It comes after the treatment didn't pass muster with the FDA, despite $425 million spent developing the treatment over 12 long years. Oncophage differs from preventative vaccines because it is supposed to treat an existing malignant condition, not prevent precursors to a cancer's development (By contrast, Gardasil helps prevent cervical cancer by providing protection from human papillomavirus, but it doesn't treat cervical cancer itself.)

The development opens up the disturbing (and intriguing) possibility that small biotech companies will increasingly seek to market their products in the developing world. As Ren Benjamin, a biotech analyst at the investment firm Rodman and Renshaw told The Scientist, "This will really be a landmark analysis -- not only to see whether small biotechs can do it alone in these other countries, but also, are these other countries worth pursuing."






pixar to release all movies in 3D

NEW YORK (AP) - The Walt Disney Co. said Tuesday its Pixar animation studio is committing to 3-D and will release all of its movies in the format beginning with "Up" next year.

Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter made the announcement in New York at a presentation of Disney's upcoming lineup of animated movies through 2012.

He said Walt Disney Animation Studios will offer "The Princess and the Frog," a musical set in New Orleans, in the traditional hand-drawn format for release for Christmas 2009.






kosovar constitution

Kosovo's parliament has adopted a new constitution, almost two months after unilaterally declaring independence from Serbia.

The charter pledges to build a state protecting minorities such as the Serbs who vehemently oppose Kosovo's split.

The text is to come into force on 15 June when the UN is due to complete a handover of powers to the new state.






above average hurricane season predicted

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — A noted hurricane researcher predicted Wednesday that rising water temperatures in the Atlantic will bring a "well above average" storm season this year, including four major storms.

The updated forecast by William Gray's team at Colorado State University calls for 15 named storms in the Atlantic in 2008 and says there's a better than average chance that at least one major hurricane will hit the United States.








april 9th in history

193 - Septimius Severus is proclaimed Roman Emperor by the army in Illyricum (in the Balkans).
475 - Byzantine Emperor Basiliscus issues a circular letter (Enkyklikon) to the bishops of his empire, supporting the Monophysite christological position.
1241 - Battle of Liegnitz: Mongol forces defeats the Polish and German armies.
1413 - Henry V is crowned King of England.
1440 - Christopher of Bavaria is appointed King of Denmark.
1682 - Robert Cavelier de La Salle discovers the mouth of the Mississippi River, claims it for France and names it Louisiana.
1865 - American Civil War: Robert E. Lee surrenders the Army of Northern Virginia (26,765 troops) to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, effectively ending the war.
1867 - Alaska purchase: Passing by a single vote, the United States Senate ratifies a treaty with Russia for the purchase of Alaska.
1909 - The U.S. Congress passes the Payne-Aldrich Tariff Act.
1916 - World War I: Battle of Verdun - German forces launch their third offensive of the battle.
1917 - World War I: Battle of Arras - The battle begins with Canadian forces executing a massive assault on Vimy Ridge.
1937 - The Kamikaze arrives at Croydon Airport in London - it is the first Japanese-built aircraft to fly to Europe.
1939 - Marian Anderson sings at the Lincoln Memorial, after being denied the right to sing at the Daughters of the American Revolution's Constitution Hall.
1940 - World War II: Germany invades Denmark and Norway.
1942 - World War II: Battle of Bataan/Bataan Death March - United States forces surrender on the Bataan Peninsula. The Japanese Navy launches an air raid on Trincomalee in Ceylon (Sri Lanka); Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire are sunk off the island's east coast.
1945 - World War II: The German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer is sunk.
1945 - World War II: Battle of Königsberg, in East Prussia, ends.
1945 - The United States Atomic Energy Commission is formed.
1947 - The Glazier-Higgins-Woodward tornadoes kills 181 and injures 970 in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.
1947 - The Journey of Reconciliation, the first interracial Freedom Ride begins through the upper South in violation of Jim Crow laws. The riders wanted enforcement of the United States Supreme Court's 1946 Irene Morgan decision that banned racial segregation in interstate travel.
1948 - Jorge Eliécer Gaitán's assassination provokes a violent riot in Bogotá (the Bogotazo), and a further ten years of violence in Colombia (La violencia).
1948 - Massacre at Deir Yassin.
1953 - Warner Brothers premieres the first 3-D film, entitled House of Wax.
1957 - The Suez Canal in Egypt is cleared and opens to shipping.
1959 - Mercury program: NASA announces the selection of the United States' first seven astronauts, which the news media quickly dub the "Mercury Seven".
1967 - The first Boeing 737 (a 100 series) takes its maiden flight.
1969 - The "Chicago Eight" plead not guilty on federal charges of conspiracy to incite a riot at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Illinois.
1969 - The first British-built Concorde 002 mades its maiden flight from Filton to RAF Fairford.
1975 - The first game of the Philippine Basketball Association, the second oldest professional basketball league in the world.
1991 - Georgia declares its independence from the Soviet Union.
1992 - A U.S. Federal Court finds former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega guilty on drug and racketeering charges. He is sentenced to 30 years in prison.
1992 - John Major's Conservative Party wins an unprecedented fourth general election victory in the United Kingdom.
1999 - Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, President of Niger, is assassinated.
2003 - 2003 invasion of Iraq: Baghdad, Iraq falls to American forces.
2005 - His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales weds Camilla Parker Bowles.

twoday

seaweed is heart yummy!

TEL AVIV, ISRAEL—Physicians for decades have grappled with ways to block further tissue damage in patients who suffer heart attacks. They have tried everything from drugs to cell therapy—all with little luck. But promising new research indicates that a biogel made from seaweed may have the healing powers that have thus far eluded them.

The first clinical trial in humans recently began of an alginate-based biomaterial that, when injected into animals, helped their hearts repair themselves. The therapy is set to be tested over the next year in 30 patients in Germany, Belgium and Israel who have suffered severe heart attacks; if successful, the trial will be expanded to include a few hundred U.S. heart patients, and the experimental biogel could be on the market by 2011.

"This could revolutionize the treatment of patients recovering from a massive heart attack," says Jonathan Leor, director of the Neufeld Cardiac Research Institute at Tel Aviv University's Sheba Medical Center, who helped develop the potentially heart-saving therapy.






google teams up with the un

A new partnership between the UN refugee agency and Google allows users of the powerful Google Earth search tool to track refugees in global conflict regions.

Nearly 35 million people across the globe have been uprooted by violence, political conflict and catastrophe. Now the United Nations is partnering with Google in a new effort to keep track of them.

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees unveiled on Tuesday a multimedia system to monitor refugees in conflict regions using Google Earth, the internet search giant's global mapping software.






the ocean will KILL you

Bracing seaside air may not be so healthy after all. The mix of sea salt, ship fumes and city smoke leads to a chemical reaction that encourages the formation of ozone smog.
Sea breeze
(iStockphoto)

A team led by James Roberts, from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, has developed a new mass spectrometer capable of measuring nitryl chloride (ClNO2) – a chemical that encourages the formation of ozone.

This compound is created when nitrogen oxides – from ship exhausts and city smoke – mix with aerosol particles containing chloride, such as sea salt spray. Until recently there was no way of measuring nitryl chloride, so nobody knew how much was floating around.






our sister solar system

Astronomers have discovered a planetary system orbiting a distant star which looks much like our own.

They found two planets that were close matches for Jupiter and Saturn orbiting a star about half the size of our Sun.

Martin Dominik, from St Andrews University in the UK, said the finding suggested systems like our own could be much more common than we thought.

And he told a major meeting that astronomers were on the brink of finding many more of them.

The St Andrews researcher said this planetary system, and others like it, could host terrestrial planets like Earth. It was just a matter of time before such worlds were detected, he explained.






yahoo ms proxy war!

Now that Microsoft has made another pass at Yahoo, and Yahoo has rebuffed Redmond's advances, what's next? Here's an outline of the likely sequence of events.

Let's assume that Yahoo fails to agree on a deal with Microsoft before the three-week deadline Microsoft set in its April 5 letter, which would be April 26. At that point Microsoft, presumably, will launch a proxy battle to take over Yahoo's board.

First, Yahoo has to send out its proxy materials to shareholders, which includes information about its board nominees. (Yahoo recently extended the deadline for nominating board members to 10 days after it announces its annual meeting, and the company still hasn't scheduled that yet.) Given that Yahoo's shareholder meeting was in June of last year, that could imply that the deadline to nominate candidates for the board would fall in May.






braille cell phone

Braille phones in and of themselves aren't all that unique, but a former professor (who just so happens to be completely blind) from Tsukuba University of Technology has crafted a variant that jumps and jives. Dubbed the world's first vibrating Braille cellphone, the device is programmed to emit pulses depending on which key is pressed; more specifically, a pair of terminals attached to the handset "vibrate at a specific rate to create a message." Those currently involved with the project are now toiling to make the keypad-to-vibration converters smaller, but there's no word just yet on whether the technology will be picked up commercially.






lungless frog

The first recorded species of frog that breathes without lungs has been found in a clear, cold-water stream on the island of Borneo in Indonesia.

The frog, named Barbourula kalimantanensis, gets all its oxygen through its skin.

"Nobody knew about the lunglessness before we accidentally discovered it doing routine dissections," study lead author David Bickford, a biologist at the National University of Singapore, said in an email.

His colleague Djoko Iskandar at the Bandung Institute of Technology in Indonesia first described the frog in 1978 from one specimen. About 15 years later, fishermen found another individual.






anbar's last stand

COMBAT OUTPOST NORSEMAN, Iraq - The marines of India Battery of the 3rd Battalion, 11th Regiment jokingly referred to the first half of their deployment to Anbar Province as a "desert spa" experience.

After serving early in the war as the insurgency's engine, the largely Sunni province seemed to have been tamed after the US helped turn tribal leaders against Al Qaeda in Iraq elements there.

It was a success story that Gen. David Petraeus held up as a "model" for the country in congressional hearings last September. And on Tuesday, as General Petraeus returns to Washington, he is likely to be asked about recent turmoil in Iraq's Shiite south – not the relative calm in its western Sunni heartland.

But as the marines of the 3/11 have learned since their deployment shifted to Anbar's desolate western reaches, all is not yet tranquil in the province.






economic contraction - likely

Federal Reserve officials anticipated that the economy would shrink in the first half of the year, with some concerned about ``a prolonged and severe economic downturn.''

``Many participants thought some contraction in economic activity in the first half of 2008 now appeared likely,'' the Fed said in minutes of the March 18 Federal Open Market Committee meeting released in Washington today.

Policy makers also found little sign that housing markets have reached a bottom, the minutes showed. Traders increased bets that the Fed will lower its benchmark interest rate half a point when policy makers meet April 29-30, futures prices show.






patraeus and cocker's feet to the fire

In a reprise of their testimony last September, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker came to Capitol Hill today to tell lawmakers that security has improved in Iraq and that the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has taken steps toward political reconciliation and economic stability.

But unlike in September, when that news was fresh and the administration said a corner had been turned, even some of the war's strongest supporters in Congress have grown impatient and frustrated. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Crocker are facing many lawmakers today and tomorrow who had expected more by now and who are wondering whether any real change will occur before the clock runs out on the Bush administration.






teenagers gone wild

The 16-year-old victim is literally backed into a corner as fellow teens scream at her, threaten her and ultimately beat her unconscious.

Two teenage males stand "lookout" and a video camera rolls, according to authorities in Florida, as the high school cheerleader, a guest at the house where the beating allegedly occurred, is intermittently berated and pummeled by peers.

When the 35-minute beating is done, the girl is allegedly forced into a car and dumped at another friend's house. She is told to keep her mouth shut — or else the next beating will be worse, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd said.






ms couric meet mr blitzer

CBS, the home of the most celebrated news division in broadcasting, has been in discussions with Time Warner about a deal to outsource some of its news-gathering operations to CNN, two executives briefed on the matter said Monday.

Over the last decade, CNN has held intermittent talks with both ABC News and CBS News about various joint ventures. But during the last several months, talks with CBS have been revived and lately intensified, according to the executives who asked for anonymity because of the confidential nature of the negotiations.

Broadly speaking, the executives described conversations about reducing CBS’s news-gathering capacity while keeping its frontline personalities, like Katie Couric, the CBS Evening News anchor, and paying a fee to CNN to buy the cable network’s news feeds.






pope to talk about pedos

The Vatican's No. 2 official says Pope Benedict XVI recognizes the damage and pain caused by the clergy sex abuse crisis and will seek healing during his U.S. trip next week.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone said in an interview Tuesday with The Associated Press that Benedict will deliver a message of "trust and hope."

The pope turns 81 during the trip. Bertone says Benedict is fit but could not meet all the invitations from U.S. cities and had to limit himself to Washington and New York.