March 30, 2007 - UNITED NATIONS - Britain took its case to free its 15 sailors and marines held by Iran to the United Nations on Thursday, asking the Security Council to support a statement that would "deplore" Tehran's action and demand their immediate release.

Iranian state television on Thursday also broadcast a few seconds of footage it says was of the operation that seized the 15 British soldiers in Iranian territorial waters.

In the clip, ab out five seconds long, gunshots were heard and a helicopter is shown hovering above inflatable boats in choppy seas. Then, the British seamen and marines appear seated in an Iranian guard boat, presumably after their capture.

The British move came as Iran rolled back on its promise to release the sole female British sailor among the captives, who were seized last week. The Iranian military chief, Gen. Ali Reza Afshar, said that because of the "wrong behavior" of the British government, "the release of a female British soldier has been suspended."

Iran's top negotiator, Ali Larijani, also hinted that the British crew members may be put on trial.

The British government said that its sailors and marines were seized Friday after completing a search of a civilian ship near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab waterway, which forms the border between Iran and Iraq, under a mandate from the Security Council and at the request of Iraq. Iran says the British vessels were inside its territorial waters.

British officials had been angered by Tehran's decision to show the captives on Iranian television. Britain's ambassador to Tehran lodged an official complaint of Iran's decision to show the video.

In the video that was broadcast Wednesday on Iran's Arab-language satellite channel, Turney said her group had "trespassed" in Iranian waters. The segment showed her wearing a black head scarf, sitting in a room before floral curtains and smoking a cigarette.

1. Only in America......can a pizza get to your house faster than an ambulance.
2. Only in America......are there handicap parking places in front of a skating rink.
3. Only in America......do drugstores make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.
4. Only in America......do people order double cheeseburgers, large fries, and a diet coke.
5. Only in America......do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.
6. Only in America......do we leave cars worth thousands of dollars in thedriveway and put our useless junk in the garage.
7. Only in America......do we use answering machines to screen calls and then have call waiting so we won't miss a call from someone we didn't want to talk to in the first place.
8. Only in America......do we buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight.
9. Only in America......do we use the word 'politics' to describe the process so well: 'Poli' in Latin meaning 'many' and 'tics' meaning
   'bloodsucking creatures'.
10. Only in America......do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

Mar 21, 2007 - SEOUL - South Korean carmakers plan to cut down on the number of scantily clad models at the Seoul Motor Show hoping people will look at the cars instead.

The show, which starts in April, usually attracts thousands of camera-wielding men snapping pictures of young women models in revealing costumes whose images quickly make their way to Web sites in the world's most-wired country.

Hyundai, which is unveiling several new models and a concept car called QarmaQ that uses lightweight plastics, will hire fewer models for the event. Its affiliate Kia will do the same.

 Hyundai, with Kia, is the world's sixth-largest car maker.

Renault Samsung Motors, starting last year, changed the attire of its models from miniskirts to more modest business suits and gave them handheld computers to help answer questions.

Mar 20, 2007 - MEDRAWER, AFGHANISTAN - The Medrawer Girls School was burned to a charred husk by terrorists determined to prevent local girls from reading textbooks and learning geometry. Smoke still curled above the surrounding eucalyptus grove as the students arrived for class – their hopes of an education, and the better life it promised, vanishing in the morning sunshine.

Even then, however, the village elders were beginning to formulate a decision that would change the lives of Atefa and – some would say – girls across Afghanistan. Later that day, they decided to take protection of the school into their own hands, cobbling together a corps of village volunteers that has stood watch over the now-rebuilt school every night since, sometimes armed only with spare farm tools and ancient swords passed down as family heirlooms.

Local authorities say that this was Afghanistan's first community-sponsored school-watch program. In the intervening year, the Afghan Department of Education has championed the idea nationwide in an effort to maintain what has been, in many respects, the government's most celebrated success: bringing education to Afghanistan – and especially to girls.

National education officials estimate that during the past 18 months, the Taliban has burned more than 180 Afghan schools. The threat of attacks, according to a 2006 UNICEF report, has prevented 100,000 children from attending school.

But the rate of attacks has fallen significantly in recent months – a success the government attributes to community watch groups. Plans are under way to expand them to schools in all 34 provinces.

For a nation often conflicted about the trappings of modernity, the eagerness of rural villages like Medrawer to patrol their own schools is telling. It suggests that, after years of ambivalence or even hostility, Afghans have come to recognize the importance of education – and they are willing to defend it, even in the wee hours of the morning with ax in hand.

When the local elders in Medrawer met to discuss the future of the girls' school, they knew that one underpaid government security guard wasn't enough. Nor could the government of Laghman Province provide police support: The entire province has only 250 police officers and 199 schools.

Mar 22, 2007 - NEW YORK  - News Corp. and NBC Universal will launch a free online video site this summer, featuring full-length movies and television shows in a challenge to Google's YouTube.

The move underscores how serious a threat YouTube has become to media companies, which fear losing a new generation of viewers who are as likely to be found in front of computers as television screens. Another media company, Viacom, has sued Google for $1 billion over unauthorized use of its videos on YouTube.

While NBC Universal and News Corp. compete fiercely for TV and movie audiences globally, their partnership shows the risks executives will take to regain control over content as more consumers turn to YouTube or Apple's iTunes.

The two companies also enlisted three of Google's largest rivals -- Yahoo, Microsoft and Time Warner's AOL -- as distributors of the entertainment on their Web sites. Discussions are ongoing with other Internet companies.

Content will include such popular TV shows as "Saturday Night Live" on NBC and "The Simpsons" from News Corp.'s Fox network, as well as films like "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Borat" from 20th Century Fox.

The Internet video market is key to the future of media and will be vast enough to accommodate competition, analysts said. But one area where YouTube is clearly ahead with consumers is in the uploading of home-made videos -- a function that has made the site extremely popular with the younger audience.

Mar 22, 2007 - HARARE - Zimbabwe appealed for African support on Thursday amid signs of unease in the continent over its crackdown on the main opposition party, and a Harare court ruled that injured activists could seek treatment abroad.

Zambian President Levy Mwanawasa said on Wednesday that "quiet diplomacy has failed to help solve the political chaos and economic meltdown in Zimbabwe," and urged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to get involved. Mwanawasa's comparison of Zimbabwe to a "sinking Titanic whose passengers are jumping out" was the clearest sign of cracks emerging in the region over Mugabe's authoritarian rule, especially the suppression of a March 11 opposition rally.

Two members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe's main opposition party, were allowed to leave on Thursday to seek treatment in South Africa for injuries they said were inflicted by police who arrested them at the rally. Sekai Holland and Grace Kwinje, who were detained again on Saturday as they tried to board a flight to South Africa, flew to Johannesburg after the High Court ruled that they were free to travel if they informed police.

The pair, both bandaged and appearing dazed, were placed on stretchers and whisked to a local hospital after arriving in South Africa aboard an air ambulance. Holland's husband said his wife was in "terrible" shape after her ordeal in custody.

Pictures of the battered MDC chief on his way to hospital provoked international outrage. The United States and Britain led Western criticism of Mugabe and threatened to impose more sanctions against the 83-year-old ruler and his government.

Mugabe's government responded this week by threatening to expel Western diplomats in Harare if they meddled in local politics. Mugabe has accused the West of funding the MDC to topple him from power amid a deepening economic crisis.

Analysts said Zimbabwe's economic problems -- inflation over 1,700 percent, 80 percent unemployment and chronic food and fuel shortages -- raised the specter of social unrest and the flight of more Zimbabweans to neighboring countries.

Mugabe, Zimbabwe's sole ruler since independence from Britain in 1980, has traded on his legacy as a leading light in Africa's anti-colonial struggle, blaming Zimbabwe's problems on Western sabotage after his seizure of white commercial farms.

March 21, 2007 - Jamaican police revealed the death of Pakistan cricket coach Bob Woolmer is being treated as “suspicious”.

Woolmer was found unconscious in his hotel room on Sunday morning and was pronounced dead after being transferred to hospital.

The 58-year-old’s team had suffered a shock World Cup defeat to Ireland the previous day which ended their chances of reaching the Super Eight stage in the West Indies. 

Unverifiable reports and wild guesses, littered across the mainstream media and keenly promoted in the blogosphere, have suggested that anything from murder by poisoning and strangling to suicide by means of a drugs and alcohol cocktail, to a stress-related heart attack may have caused the Pakistan coach's death.

Most appear to be in agreement that Woolmer was initially discovered unconscious on the bathroom floor in his hotel room, but that's about all they agree on. Woolmer's family, the BBC reports, believe that he fell victim to a heart attack induced by high levels of stress.

March 9, 2007 - Washington - German researchers found they could use odors to re-activate new memories in the brains of people while they slept -- and the volunteers remembered better later.

Their study showed that memories are indeed consolidated during sleep, and show that smells and perhaps other stimuli can reinforce brain learning pathways. 

While doing this task, some of the volunteers inhaled the scent of roses. The volunteers then agreed to sleep inside an MRI tube. Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to "watch" their brains while they slept. At various stages during sleep, Born's team wafted in the same scent of roses.

The volunteers were tested again the next day on what they had learned. After the odor night, participants remembered 97.2 per cent of the card pairs they had learned before sleep. But they only remembered 86 per cent of the pairs if they did not get the rose smell while sleeping.

 Mar 15, 2007 - KABUL, Afghanistan - Testimony gathered by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission documents how life for many Afghan women remains so bleak that some choose a horrific and painful death instead.

The group interviewed about 800 Afghans whose sisters, daughters and daughters-in-law have killed themselves by self-immolation to escape domestic abuse, forced marriage and other misogynistic social customs.

The report and anecdotal evidence from other rights workers suggests the phenomenon is growing, with desperate women sometimes mimicking what they have seen reported on TV. 

One woman committed suicide by setting herself ablaze after her father-in-law tried to rape her. Another set herself on fire because her brothers would not let her marry, preferring that she remain their servant at home. Yet another told her mother before she died that her husband beat her daily.

Reports from Herat, in western Afghanistan, show about 90 women set fire to themselves last year there and more than 70 percent died. Afghanistan's poor health system can do little for the badly burned. Fourteen pages of the commission's report are dedicated to brief descriptions by family members of reasons these women committed suicide. Most are because of rape, beatings and accusations against their honor. None of the dead women or their relatives are named in the report.

The mother of a victim in Badghis is quoted saying that her daughter committed self-immolation because her fiance accused her of getting pregnant by another man and would not accept the child as his own. The mother of another victim said that her daughter was actually a victim of domestic violence although it was portrayed by others as a suicide.

Mar 15, 2007 - NEW YORK - WCBSTV in New York reports that Nino Selimaj, who runs six pizza restaurants in New York, on Wednesday unveiled his $1000 Luxury Pizza, a 12 inch (30 cms), thin crust topped with caviar, lobster, creme fraiche and chives. Cut into eight, it works out at $125 a slice. 

Selimaj said his restaurant Nino's Bellissima, which is the only one of his restaurants to offer the Luxury Pizza, needs 24 hours notice for the gourmet dish as it orders the caviar in advance.

If diners are still peckish after the Luxury Pizza, they can always head over to the midtown restaurant Serendipity that sells a $1,000 ice-cream sundae called Golden Opulence which is covered in 23K edible gold leaf.

Mar. 14, 2007 - Washington -  Gonzales is in hot waters over the ousters of US attorney generals. Some of the dismissed prosecutors complained at hearings last week that lawmakers tried to influence political corruption investigations. Several also said there had been Justice Department attempts to intimidate them.

E-mails between the Justice Department and the White House, released Tuesday, contradicted the administration's earlier contention that Bush's aides had only limited involvement in the firings.

The House and Senate Judiciary Committees have invited Rove, Miers and her deputy, William K. Kelley, to testify voluntarily about their roles in the firings. Gonzales has pledged to allow five of his aides involved in the dismissals to testify.

The fired prosecutors are: Carol Lam and Kevin Ryan of California, Bud Cummins of Arkansas, Paul Charlton of Arizona, John McKay of Washington state, Daniel Bogden of Nevada, David Iglesias of New Mexico and Margaret Chiara of Michigan.

Gonzales and the White House denied the charges of a political purge and said they intended to submit the names of the replacements for confirmation.

They initially said the White House had only limited involvement in the firings. But e-mails released by the agency this week made clear that the firings were the result of a two-year campaign to purge the ranks of U.S. attorneys for various reasons, including chafing at the administration's crime-fighting priorities. The e-mail exchanges between Gonzales' chief of staff and Miers and Kelley made clear the White House was deeply involved in the plan.

Miers, at that time White House counsel, at one point suggested firing all 93 U.S. attorneys. That idea was rebuffed by Kyle Sampson, Gonzales' top aide. Rove is mentioned in several of the e-mails as key to the process. Kelley gave the green light for the firings in another e-mail, saying the White House offices of legislative affairs, political affairs and communications had signed off on it.

Sampson resigned on Tuesday. Mike Battle, who oversaw the U.S. attorneys, announced his resignation last week in a departure the agency said had been long planned. Bush, and Gonzales a day earlier, used a phrase made famous in previous scandals  "mistakes were made" and pledged to set things right with Congress.

March 14, 2007 - WASHINGTON - Gen Peter Pace, the top-ranking U.S. military officer and chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose controversial remarks that homosexuality amounted to an immoral act led to angry reactions from various sections of the society, attempted to pacify the critics saying the remarks were his personal opinion.

Pace had told the Chicago Tribune during an interview that the military should not condone immoral acts such as homosexual relations. He said he believed homosexual acts between individuals are immoral and immoral acts should not be condoned.

The remarks brought forth criticism from diverse sections of people, including gay activists and politicians.

Pace later said in a statement he made a mistake by devoting so much time to his personal views. During the interview, Pace outlined his support for the Pentagon's policy of 'don't ask, don't tell' on gays serving in the military, which had became law in 1993 under president Bill Clinton. The law allowed gays and lesbians to be in the army as long as they keep their sexual preferences private and do not engage in homosexual acts. Pace said he supported the policy, which he claimed opposed homosexual acts.

Pace's problems seemed to be not over. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, when asked to comment on the controversy said personal opinion was not relevant. He said what is important is that "we have a law, a statute that governs 'don't ask, don't tell.' that's the policy of this department."

Mar 8, 2007 - SACRAMENTO - The state Board of Education voted Thursday to ask a publisher to remove from a seventh-grade history textbook a picture of a Sikh religious leader Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, that many followers said was offensive and inaccurate.

The controversial image shows Guru Nanak wearing a crown and with a close-cropped beard. The depiction runs contrary to Sikh faith, which requires observant men to wear a turban and not to shave their facial hair. Guru Nanak also was a man of the people and would not have worn an ornate crown.

The image is taken from a 19th century painting made after Muslims ruled India. The publisher used it because it complies with the company's policy of using only historical images in historical texts, said Tom Adams, director of curriculum for the Department of Education.

After Sikhs complained that the picture more closely reflected a Muslim man than a Sikh, Oxford offered to substitute it with an 18th century portrait showing Guru Nanak with a red hat and trimmed beard. But Sikhs said that picture made their founder look like a Hindu.

The publisher now wants to scrap the picture entirely from the textbook, which was approved for use in California classrooms in 2005. There are about 250,000 Sikhs in California.

Sikh leaders say they want a new, more representative image of Guru Nanak, similar to the ones they place in Sikh temples and in their homes. The publisher has rejected those images as historically inaccurate. No images exist from the founder's lifetime, 1469 to 1538. 

Mar 12, 2007 - WASHINGTON - Halliburton, the US oil services giant, announced that it is shifting its corporate headquarters to Dubai. Halliburton, which was once run by Vice President Dick Cheney, said Sunday it was relocating to the United Arab Emirates to capitalize on the region's booming energy market.

"It's an example of corporate greed at its worst," Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee said. "This is an insult to the US soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years."

Halliburton and its former KBR subsidiary, which it is spinning off, have weathered several contracting controversies and investigations since Halliburton was awarded a no-bid 2.4 billion dollar contract to supply the US military on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. KBR agreed last year to pay the US government eight million dollars to settle fraud claims related to an Army supply contract.

Halliburton said it was relocating to Dubai on business grounds. The firm said that over 38 percent of its 13 billion dollar oil-field services revenue was generated from the eastern hemisphere. It also said its move to the United Arab Emirates was the next step in a strategic plan unveiled in 2006 to boost its business with national oil companies in and around the Gulf region.

The global firm has operations in 70 countries and more than 45,000 employees

Mar 12, 2007 - NEW YORK - Palm Pictures has acquired North American rights to the political and sexual satire "The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai," centering on a Japanese call girl who gets caught up in international intrigue. 

The Japanese-language production will be released in theaters in early April and on Palm's DVD label shortly thereafter.

In the film, the title character gets shot in the head after a fight breaks out at her sexual role-playing club, allowing her to "understand foreign languages and solve complex mathematic formulas," according to the official plot line. She discovers a finger cut from the American president in her pocket and is soon using her newfound powers to stop evil forces from "pushing the button" to start worldwide nuclear war.

Mar 9, 2007 - GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

The Mayan community decided it would be necessary to cleanse the sacred site of "bad spirits" after Bush's visit so that their ancestors could rest in peace. The rites — which entail chanting and burning incense, herbs and candles — would prepare the site for the third summit of Latin American Indians March 26-30.

Bush's trip has already has sparked protests elsewhere in Latin America, including protests and clashes with police in Brazil hours before his arrival. In Bogota, Colombia, which Bush will visit on Sunday, 200 masked students battled 300 riot police with rocks and small homemade explosives. The tour is aimed at challenging a widespread perception that the United States has neglected the region and at combatting the rising influence of Venezuelan leftist President Hugo Chavez, who has called Bush "history's greatest killer" and "the devil."

Iximche, 30 miles west of the capital of Guatemala City, was founded as the capital of the Kaqchiqueles kingdom before the Spanish conquest in 1524.

March 9, 2007 - BERLIN - A 43-year-old German decided to settle his imminent divorce by chainsawing a family home in two and making off with his half in a forklift truck.

Police in the eastern town of Sonneberg said the trained mason measured the single-storey summer house -- which was some 8 meters (26 feet) long and 6 meters wide -- before chainsawing through the wooden roof and walls.

 After finishing the job, the man picked up his half with the forklift truck and drove to his brother's house where he has since been staying.

March 9, 2007 - WASHINGTON - Number of new U.S. $1 coins bearing the image of George Washington are missing the words "In God We Trust" and other lettering along the edges.

The Mint released more than 300 million gold-colored, George Washington $1 coins last month, but it recently discovered a problem. The coins, made by the Philadelphia Mint, were supposed to have the inscriptions "In God We Trust," "E Pluribus Unum," the date and the mint mark around the edge.

It is unclear how the mistake occurred or how many of the coins are in circulation. The Mint would make necessary technical adjustments in the manufacturing to eliminate the defect.

On the auction Web site eBay, one of the coins sold for $405.

One of the most famous Mint errors in the United States occurred in 1922. A defective die for the obverse, or head, side of the 1-cent piece failed to show the "D" mark indicating it was struck at the Denver Mint. One of those coins in mint condition would fetch upwards of $10,000.

March 06, 2007 - Watauga, Texas: In a shocking case, Police in Texas found a videotape which shows two teenagers teaching a two-year-old and a five-year-old to smoke Marijuana.

The home video of two boys, aged two and five shows them being forced to smoke a marijuana cigar while the mother still remains in the background. Police says their uncle, 17-year old Demetris Mccoy and 18-year old Vanswan Polty – were teaching the two children—how to get high. 

The incident began unfolding February 22, when the Fort Worth Police Department executed a search warrant to look for stolen goods in the apartment of 17-year-old Demetris McCoy, the unemployed uncle of the two children, and 18-year-old Vanswan Polty.

Police say - there's faint female laugher in the tape, which could be the boys mother. The boys' mother has told police she was sleeping in the back bedroom during the incident.

The person behind the camera is a minor who has not been charged as of now, even though he's the one who rolled on the whole thing. Polty is free on $22,000 bail - Mccoy remains at the Tarrant county jail.

Children have been placed in foster care.

March 05, 2007 - Mumbai - Newly wed British actress Elizabeth Hurley arrived in India with husband Arun Nayar on Monday for a traditional Indian-style wedding later this week at an ancient palace in Rajasthan.

Hurley, 41, and Indian businessman Nayar, 42, married in a civil ceremony at a picturesque castle in England on Friday, following it up with a celebrity-studded party at the weekend.

The wedding couple travelled to Mumbai, where a prominent Indian socialite will host a party for them on Monday evening. They have booked dozens of rooms in Mumbai's and Jodhpur's best hotels for their guests from across the world.

The newly-weds were expected to attend receptions in Mumbai before heading to Jodhpur in Rajasthan, renowned for its opulent palaces, for a traditional Indian wedding on Thursday or Friday. The "Bedazzled" star and former lover of Hollywood actor Hugh Grant will wear a $7,800 pink silk sari created by designer Tarun Tahiliani for the ceremony.

Hurley's 13-year relationship with Grant ended in 2000 after his well-publicised encounter with a prostitute.

Two years later, she had a son with US film producer Steve Bing. She met Nayar, who is a sort of celebrity himself, shortly after her child was born.