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June 15 NASA aims for May 11 launch of Hubble missionNew union website: http://11-on.spaces.live.com/ Solar powered Amateur astronomer snaps space shuttle and telescope speeding across the sun
15th May 2009 Daily Mail By Claire Bates
At first glance it appears like a giant tennis ball with a speck of dirt.
But this extraordinary image, taken by an amateur astronomer, shows the Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Telescope passing in front of the sun.
It is the first time they have been photographed together making a ‘solar transit’ and came several minutes before Atlantis made contact with the telescope and attached to it.
 The Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Hubble Space Telescope are seen in silhouette (lower left hand corner). The sun appears ghostly because in order for the picture to be taken a prism attached to the camera filtered out most of the sunlight
In this image only the silhouette of the Space Shuttle can be seen. It launched from Cape Canaveral on Tuesday (11) and was pictured passing across the Sun on Wednesday
The shuttle has been sent up t do repairs on the Hubble for the fifth and final time. Astronauts on board are replacing the Wide Field Camera 2 and NASA hopes to get another five to 10 years of dazzling view of the cosmos from Hubble as a result of the upgrades.
 Thierry Legault in his back garden in Paris. The astrophotographer has captured impressive pictures of the sun.
To be able to get any kind of picture Mr Legault faced a challenging set of circumstances.
Firstly he was photographing objects only 35m and 13m in length that were travelling at 15,5000mph at a distance of 370miles, as well as being against the full glare of the sun.
However, the greatest challenge was to chase a hole in the clouds that were numerous in the area because there are currently many thunderstorms over Florida. I had to take the photo just at the right instant, ‘he told the Mail Online.
To achieve his images he only used his 8,000 Takahashi refractor telescope, a 2,000 21MP Canon camera and a Baader solar prism, which acts to reflect away most of the sun’s light.
The sun appears a yellow because the only about five per cent of the rays are permitted through the prism.
Finally Mr Legault used the lowest light sensitivity settling (ISO 100) and a very high shutter speed on his camera, exposing the sensor for only 1/8000 second.
STS-125: Final Shuttle Mission to Hubble Space Telescope
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) - NASA has chosen May 11 as the launch date for its last repair mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, not seen up close for seven years.
Space shuttle Atlantis is set to blast off then on the highly awaited 11-day flight, considered one of the most challenging yet.
 Space Shuttle Atlantis is seen on pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Fla. Monday, May 11, 2009. (Photo: AP / CBS)
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安華Annwa Comment :
Space Telescope is a title match to me. / 15 May 2009 July 01 The Rose Garden at White HouseGarden Tours
Roses bloom in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, Friday, May 23, 2008. The White House announced the schedule for the annual garden tours, where visitors will be able to see the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, Rose Garden, Children's Garden and the South Lawn of the White House. (Photo: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) ________________________________________________________________________________________________________
安華Annwa Comment :
Today is a sunshiny day.
23:00pm May 29 All That Glitters...A close-up of the shoes worn with a creation by fashion designer Ella Zahlan from the Spring-Summer 2008 high-fashion collection, during the AltaRoma fashion week at Rome's Auditorium, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2008. (Photo: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia / CBS) Traffic-wet-window
, Cars are seen during a traffic jam in the rain in Kiev, Ukraine, Daily Telegraph
A tennis ball is seen on a rainy day during the first round of the French Open at Roland Garros in Paris / 28 May 2008 Daily Telegraph
Who'll Stop The Rain?
May 13 China: Quake death toll jumps past 7,600May 12, 2008 -- Updated 1545 GMT (2345 HKT)
Story Highlights
NEW: 7,651 reported to be dead after major earthquake rocks central China
* 900 children also buried when a school building collapsed, 50 bodies found
* State news agency says several schools collapsed after 7.8 magnitude quake
* Officials expect death toll to continue rising
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- More than 7,600 people have been killed by Monday's (12) powerful earthquake in just one affected region of central China, the Chinese government said.
State-run news agency Xinhua said the official toll had risen to 7,651 in Sichuan Province.
In addition, at least 48 people were killed in the northwest Gansu Province, Xinhua said.
Authorities had earlier said they believed about 10,000 people were injured in Beichuan County in the northeastern part of the province.
The Sichuan provincial disaster relief headquarters said 80 percent of the buildings collapsed in the Beichuan Qiang Autonomous County after the 7.8-magnitude quake, Xinhua reported.
Several hundred students were also feared to be buried in collapsed school buildings, the agency said.
China's Seismological Bureau said the earthquake had affected more than half the country's provinces and municipalities.
President George W. Bush released a statement saying the United States "stands ready to help in any way possible."
"I am particularly saddened by the number of students and children affected by this tragedy," Bush said.
In Sichuan's Shifang city, the quake buried hundreds of people in two collapsed chemical plants, and more than 80 tons of ammonia leaked out, Xinhua said.
The local government evacuated 6,000 civilians from the area after homes and factories were also destroyed.
The quake was "felt in most parts of China," Xinhua reported, with the confirmed casualties in the provinces and municipality of Sichuan, Gansu, Chongqing and Yunnan.
Xinhua said several schools collapsed, at least partially, in the quake.
At one, as many as 900 students were feared buried. At least 50 bodies have been pulled from the rubble at the high school in the Juyuan Township of Dujiangyan City in Wenchuan County.
"Some buried teenagers were struggling to break loose from underneath the ruins while others were crying out for help," Xinhua reported.
"Grieved parents watched as five cranes were excavating at the site and an ambulance was waiting.
"An unknown number of students were also reported buried after buildings collapsed at five other schools in the province's Deyang City."
One person was killed in Santai County, in the city of Mianyang, when a water tower fell, the news agency reported.
A provincial government spokesman said they feared more dead and injured in collapsed houses in Dujiangyan City, Xinhua reported.
The news agency also quoted a driver for the seismological bureau saying he saw "rows of houses collapsed" in Dujiangyan.
Chinese President Hu Jintao immediately ordered an all-out effort to help victims of the earthquakes, Xinhua reported. It said Premier Wen Jiabao would go there to direct the rescue work.
Bonnie Thie, the country director the Peace Corps, was on a university campus in Chengdu about 100 km from the epicenter, in the eastern part of China's Sichuan province, when the first quake hit.
"You could see the ground shaking," Thie told CNN.
The shaking "went on for what seemed like a very long time," she said.
"This is a very dangerous earthquake," said Bruce Presgrave, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey.
The quake had the potential to cause major damage because of its strength and proximity to major population centers, he said.
In addition, the earthquake was relatively shallow, Presgrave said, and those kinds of quakes tend to do more damage near the epicenter than deeper ones.
An earthquake with 7.5 magnitude in the northern Chinese city of Tangshan killed 255,000 people in 1976 -- the greatest death toll from an earthquake in the last four centuries and the second greatest in recorded history, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
Tangshan is roughly 1,600 km from Chengdu, the nearest major city to the epicenter of Monday's quake.
After the first quake struck Monday, the ground shook as far away as Beijing, which is 1,500 km from the epicenter.
They felt "a very quiet rolling sensation" that lasted for about a minute, according to CNN correspondent John Vause.
"Our building began to sway," he said.
Thousands of people were evacuated from Beijing high-rises immediately after the earthquake.
At least six more earthquakes -- measuring between 4.0 and 6.0 magnitudes -- happened nearby over the three hours after the initial quake at at 2:28 p.m. local time (0728 GMT), the USGS reported.
A spokesman for the Beijing Olympic Committee said no Olympic venues were affected by the earthquake. The massive Three Gorges Dam -- roughly 600 km east of the epicenter -- was not damaged, a spokesman said.
The earthquake was also felt in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan, and as far away as Hanoi, Vietnam, and Bangkok, Thailand, according to the Hong Kong-based Mandarin-language channel Phoenix TV.
CNN's John Vause and Jaime FlorCruz contributed to this report.
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安華Annwa Comment :
I hope the disaster region could recover soon. If China accepts international coummunity aid. May 06 Miserable Myanmar: cyclone death toll exceeds 22,0006 May 2008 CNN
Story Highlights
More than 22,000 killed and 41,000 missing, Myanmar radio reports
3.6-meter storm surge leaves more than 100,000 homeless in one area
U.N. estimates that up to a million people could be left homeless
U.S. President George Bush says Navy is ready to help if asked
YANGON, Myanmar (CNN) --A Myanmar government radio station said Tuesday that more than 22,000 people are dead and 41,000 missing after the catastrophic cyclone that battered the country.
Left: In parts of Yangon, the rebuilding has begun.
Right: People travel on a small motor boat past a destroyed pier in the port of Yangon.
A news broadcast on the state-run station said Tuesday that 22,464 people had been confirmed dead after Cyclone Nargis. The broadcast added that 41,000 more were missing.
The U.N. estimated up to a million could be homeless.
China's state-run Xinhua news agency, quoting officials, reported a death toll of 10,000 alone in the township of Bogalay, where bodies were being dumped into the river.
CNN's Dan Rivers, the first Western journalist in Bogalay, said destroyed homes could be seen for 30 kilometer stretches.
In one area only four homes remained from a total of 369.
Rivers said people were now sheltering under canvas covers. They had little food bar a small amount of eggs and rice. The area's rice had been destroyed, leaving Bogalay with a five-day supply. Water pumps were also ruined, and fuel was scarce.
Rivers had seen the army and Red Cross in the area, but the weather remained awful and conditions were miserable.
The aftermath has pushed Myanmar's normally secretive ruling military junta to ask for aid and release details of the devastation. However, the U.N. said its aid workers were still waiting for visas to enter the country. It, the Red Cross and other aid organizations have been gathering supplies to ship to the country.
U.S. President George Bush Tuesday called on the military junta to allow it to help with disaster assistance.
Bush, who made the comments while signing legislation awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to Myanmar democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, said the U.S. was ready to "come and help."
"The United States has made an initial aid contribution, but we want to do a lot more," Bush said.
"We are prepared to move U.S. Navy assets to help find those who have lost their lives, to help find the missing, and help stabilize the situation. But in order to do so, the military Junta must allow our disaster assessment teams into the country."
The U.S. Navy is making preparations to respond to any requests for assistance, U.S. military officials told CNN. The Navy has calculated it would take its nearest ships four days sailing time to get to the affected area.
Maung Maung Swe, Myanmar's social welfare minister, earlier told reporters that the country needed aid now, The Associated Press reported.
"Instead of waiting for figures on casualties and damage, it will be practical to send humanitarian aid to victims as soon as possible," Swe said.He revealed that that 95 percent of the homes in Bogalay -- a city of 190,000 -- had been destroyed, AFP reported.
"Many people were killed in a 12-foot tidal wave," Swe said.
The U.N. World Food Program (WFP), which was preparing to fly in food supplies, offered a grim assessment of the destruction: up to a million people possibly homeless, some villages almost totally destroyed and vast rice-growing areas wiped out, AP reported.
"We hope to fly in more assistance within the next 48 hours," WFP spokesman Paul Risley said from Bangkok. "The challenge will be getting to the affected areas with road blockages everywhere."
Based on a satellite map made available by the U.N., the storm's damage was concentrated over about a 30,000 square-kilometer area along the Andaman Sea and Gulf of Martaban coastlines, which is home to nearly a quarter of Myanmar's 57 million people.
Kyi Minn, of the international aid group World Vision, told CNN that the situation was bleak.
"It could be worse than [the] tsunami," Minn said, comparing the cyclone's impact on Myanmar to the damage caused following the tsunami that struck the region in late 2004. The tsunami was triggered by a a massive earthquake off the coast of Indonesia and killed more than 150,000 across the region.
Minn said clean drinking water, food, medicine and shelter were all at a premium.
Shari Villarosa, the top U.S. diplomat in Myanmar, told CNN that urgent help was needed.
"The situation is very bad and not getting better," said Villarosa
Villarosa said many in the international community wanted to help but were still waiting for the Myanmar government to grant their relief teams visa.
Nargis pummeled Yangon for more than 10 hours from Friday night into Saturday, with 20 inches of rain and winds above 240 km/hr.
While Myanmar's ruling military junta has been accused by U.S. first lady Laura Bush of not warning the public about the approaching cyclone, witnesses say state media did report the storm -- it just came too late.
"We did get a warning, but it seems the military warned at a late stage," an Australian witness in Yangon told CNN, adding there was no time for people to evacuate or buy emergency supplies.
She also said that perhaps "a lot of Burmese didn't take it as seriously as they could have."
MRTV disputed media accounts of insufficient warnings ahead of the storm.
"Timely weather reports were announced and aired" on TV and radio two to three days in advance to keep people "safe and secure," an MRTV anchor reported.
Video from the scene showed residents in some areas hacking their way through downed trees and trudging through knee-deep, swirling brown water. Thousands of tropical trees had been ripped up and thrown down, some into roadways.
Terje Skavdal, of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs, called it a "major crisis."
"It is a major undertaking to get it right for the government," Skavdal told CNN in an interview from Bangkok, Thailand. "There is a major job ahead of us."
As the international community prepared a response, survivors faced the chaos the disaster caused.
Most telephone and cell phone service was down in Yangon, a city of about 6.5 million people, Rivers said earlier Tuesday before traveling to Bogalay.
In some places, the price of fuel had quadrupled to $10 a gallon in the wake of the storm, he said. Even with that price lines for gas stretched around the block and some were turning to the black market.
The price of eggs had doubled, the main water supply had been cut in many areas and power lines were down, Rivers said.
"No food. No water," an exasperated man told him. "So you have to find everything."
Residents of one small community told Rivers that the army had been through to clear the main road but had not helped with recovery efforts.
A U.N. humanitarian official told CNN a five-person disaster assistance coordination team had arrived in Bangkok, but they would not know until later on Tuesday when they could enter Myanmar.
Another U.N. group said that simply getting visas for aid workers to enter Myanmar was a challenge. Visas were only available through the foreign ministry in Myanmar's main city Yangon, the United Nations Joint Logistics Centre said.
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said it had released $190,000 to help with the aftermath of the storm, the European Commission has pledged $3.1 million, Canada $2 million, China $1 million in aid including relief materials worth $500,000 and Thailand $100,000.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Embassy in Myanmar has issued a "disaster declaration" in the country and authorized the release of $250,000 for cyclone relief efforts, Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said. A disaster relief team was on standby, he said, but the Myanmar government had not given permission for the team to enter the country.
The State Department issued a travel warning Monday night, authorizing the departure of non-emergency U.S. personnel at the embassy and warning American citizens to "strongly consider" departing Myanmar.
The country's state radio said Saturday's vote on a military-backed draft constitution would be delayed until May 24 in 40 of 45 townships in the Yangon area and seven in the Irrawaddy delta, AP reported.
The constitutional referendum is referred to in the state-run media as the fourth step of a "seven-step road map to democracy."
The government has said elections will be held in 2010 to choose a representative government to replace the military junta.
Myanmar, traditionally known as Burma, last held multi-party elections in 1990, when Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy handily won. The military junta ignored the results.
The regime has come under intense international pressure, especially after using force last year to suppress a pro-democracy movement.
--CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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安華Annwa Comment : How horrible cyclone hit. I hope Myanmar regional disaster of cyclone where could get recover from international community aid soon. April 26 Raggedy Dog & Zoo keeper sprays waterRaggedy Dog
24 Apr 2008 CBS
Photo 1 of 7
Photo 5 of 7 Save some system for a dog of poor parenting. Particularly introduce these articles as fllowering: Get out Charles–Welsh nationalists threaten Prince over holiday home Gordon Brown, Prime Minister, promises change
A sorrowful day for the England Rose
140,000 UK homes without water
Churchill doubted Prince Philip could rule
Calvin Klein's ex to sell collection of Wallis' fabulous jewels
Camilla-aagh (almost) comes down to earth in India
Car that drove King Edward to announce his abdication in 1936 up for auction at Bonhams
The Chief Executive Officer of The New UN
Penguin is pleasantly seek global consorts
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安華Annwa Comment : I don’t know which dog, younger one? Middle one? or old one? It look like to be a mop after mopping dirty.
I love CBS classic photography & philosophic edit.
April 12 Why Diana is still the spirit of the ageWhy Diana is still the spirit of the age Last Updated: 3:08am BST 12/04/2008 By Allan Massie The inquest may be over, but the sentiments she embodied continue to shape our society, argues Allan Massie
In 1995, two years before the death of the Princess of Wales, the News of the World ran a report headlined: "CHARLES BEDDED CAMILLA AS DIANA SLEPT UPSTAIRS". It was part of a flood of stories, both before and after that car crash in Paris, that revealed the most intimate details of her marriage to the heir to the throne.
Forty years earlier, the Daily Mirror had run a more sober royal story.
"Come on, Margaret," it urged, calling on the Princess to make up her mind whether to marry Group Captain Peter Townsend or break off their romance.
The chairman of the Press Council, Sir Linton Andrews, thought it impertinent: "Surely a member of the Royal Family has a private life which all decent people should respect? It is purely a matter of human decency."
By the time of Diana, "human decency" had taken a large step backwards, and during the recent inquest into the Princess's death it can hardly be said to have made a comeback. There is no further need to trawl over the Princess's life, and few of us can have any desire to do so.
Many are likely to think they already know more about it than is fitting. Yet it is worth pondering its significance, not for what it says about her, but for what it says about us and the society in which we live.
In the days and weeks after her death, there was a flood of analysis, with commentators concluding that she had changed Britain irrevocably. Out with the stiff upper lip, in with touchy-feely sympathy and emotionalism. Diana, it was said, felt our pain and we felt hers.
Yet 10 years on, we can see that many of the changes she was credited with were already under way - the death of deference; the invasion of private life. No doubt Diana and the manner in which she presented herself and was perceived accelerated these changes - but the celebrity culture had been established before she came on the scene.
It is instructive to compare Margaret and Diana, for the former had been a celebrity too, if in the more subdued manner of her generation.
Her life was perhaps as unhappy, disturbed and scandalous as Diana's: her marriage also broke up, she had a succession of lovers, and she suffered press intrusion, especially during her affair with a much younger man, Roddy Llewellyn. But she didn't court the media. She didn't bare her soul on television. As far as was possible, she kept her private life to herself, and when her marriage to Lord Snowden ended, both remained silent.
In contrast, when Andrew Morton published his biography of Diana, some of us dismissed it as nasty back-stairs gossip. Then it emerged that Diana was the source of much of his information, relayed by way of friends. The idea that "a member of the Royal Family has a private life which decent people should respect" suddenly seemed absurd: Diana had co-operated in dismantling the barrier that protected her private life.
To say this is not to condemn her. She was a child of her age, one that values "emotional openness" and "emotional sincerity" and regards reticence as evidence of a lack of feeling and emotional inadequacy.
"Let it all hang out" has been the message, and the recommended response to any embarrassing revelation is to go on to television, confess all and receive absolution, because you too are a victim. Nobody played the victim more movingly or with more style than Diana.
By her time, it had become usual to speak of "the Royal soap opera", but she was unquestionably its star. A good soap can come to seem to its addicts every bit as real as the day-to-day world - it offers a make-believe world that is more acceptable, because it is so very much less demanding, than the real world of work, family and friends.
Not long after Diana's death, Tony Blair, as prime minister, called for the release of Deirdre Rachid, a fictional character fictionally imprisoned for a fictional offence in Coronation Street.
Many mocked his intervention, but in this confusion of real life and television, he represented the spirit of the times. When politics becomes a matter of presentation and the spin doctor rules, it becomes difficult to distinguish between reality and image.
When Diana was killed, and Blair pronounced her "the People's Princess", it was hard to remember that she was actually a member of one of the great Whig aristocratic families. The image, only in part consciously manufactured, had all but obliterated the reality.
Similarly, it is customary to refer to Diana as an icon, and indeed "icon" and "iconic" are two of the characteristic words of our time. One meaning of "icon" is "anybody or anything uncritically admired", and she was certainly that. But the first meaning fits her too: "a figure or image".
The icons of the Eastern Church are often beautiful, sometimes moving, but they are not lifelike. Likewise, the more "iconic" Diana seemed, the further the perception of her was removed from the reality. She was what you pleased to make of her: beauty in distress, the wronged woman, the comforter of little children and Aids victims.
She became an image on to which we could project all our own failures or inadequacies: it was as if loving Diana, sympathising with Diana, identifying with Diana, had become a substitute for living your own life, dealing maturely with your own problems, nurturing your own relationships. Hence the extraordinary outpouring of grief and mourning when she died, which shocked many who felt that they no longer recognised their country.
They were right that the country had changed: while the circumstances of her death were shocking (and, to some, shameful), the public response was out of all proportion. People grieved for Diana more intensely and openly than they might for their own family or friends - that is, for those they had actually known. No doubt some of those who flocked to the gates of Buckingham Palace to leave flowers were prompted by a sort of magnetism that would leave them feeling left out and inadequate if they resisted.
Yet while the sense of loss was in many cases as genuine as the anger directed at the supposedly "uncaring" and distant Royal Family, there was also something synthetic in the response.
It was as if a society in which family breakdown and loneliness are common, a society that has lost, discarded or outgrown religious belief and found nothing capable of replacing that lost faith, was desperately seeking a substitute, and in doing so creating an ersatz sense of community.
This process was in train before we knew of Diana's existence - but her life, as played out in public, put it at a canter, her death at the gallop. She was a child of the revolution in manner and sentiment which began in the Sixties; and the way she lived her life in public is still utterly in tune with our times, which revel in self-exposure.
Young people at university or in their last years at school may scarcely remember her. If they bothered to follow the inquest, they may have found it grotesque. Things have quietened down. Though the Royal Family is unlikely to regain the unqualified respect it used to be granted, the turbulence has subsided.
One's impression is that the great majority have wearied of the soap opera in which Diana starred.
Yet we are still in Diana territory. Murders, accidental deaths and disappearances are the occasion for people with no connection to the dead person to make a public display of their sensitivity - witness the hysteria over Madeleine McCann.
The barrier between the private and the public has not been repaired, and there is no sign that it ever will be. We still live in a society in thrall to illusion, one in which the perception of events is more important than the events themselves, and the entitlement to a private life is not regarded as "a matter of human decency".
Diana was the celebrity of celebrities - and remains so, even now that the idea of celebrity has become almost a joke. If the pundits who tell us that the good times are over and the economic future is grim are right, we may all have to discard illusion, face up to reality and recognise that life is a struggle, not a soap opera.
Diana may then seem a figure from a different world - but perhaps all the more glamorous for that. For iconic status is not easily shed, and a tragic death makes for a legend.
© Copyright of Telegraph Group Limited 2008.
My email on 8.8.2006
A Lebanese man releases a bird.
Photo: Daily Telegraph
U.N. vote on Lebanon cease-fire resolution expected
Cease-fire plan includes buffer zone, international peacekeepers
Fri, Aug 11, 2006 CNN
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- France and the United States said Friday (11) they have agreed on a final text of a resolution that could end the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.
It was distributed to the full U.N. Security Council in a closed-door session that began about 3 p.m. ET. Key Security Council members are hoping for a vote later Friday.....
My email on 31 Aug 2006 / 07:01
Remembering Diana
28 July 2006 CBS
Photo 10 of 10
New York's Empire State Building is illuminated in honor of Diana, Princess of Whales.
(Photo: AP Graphics Bank)
Aid donation bid for Lebanon
POSTED: Aug 31, 2006 CNN
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- Organizers are counting on dozens of aid ministers to arrive in a generous mood at an international donors conference Thursday (31 Aug) that aims to raise US$500 million to help war-crippled Lebanon get back on its feet......
POSTED: Sept 1, 2006 CNN
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) -- A donors conference is seeking to raise more aid pledges Friday to help alleviate worsening humanitarian conditions in Gaza, and organizers are urging world powers not to overlook the Palestinians' plight as attention remains focused on Lebanon.
On the first day of the conference Thursday (31 Aug), participants raised nearly US$1 billion to help Lebanon recover from more than a month of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. About 50 of the countries and organizations who attended Thursday's session on Lebanon will stay in Stockholm to discuss the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which organizers said deteriorated while the world shifted attention to the 34-day war in Lebanon.....
Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Eliasson, who is one of the hosts for the conference, said "the humanitarian situation is critical" and said the conference aimed to raise more pledges for a U.N. flash appeal for Palestinian aid that went out earlier this year. So far, about 39 percent of the requested US$330 million has been raised, he said...... Donors pledge Palestinians $500m Fri, 1 Sep 2006, BBC International donors have pledged $500m towards aid and reconstruction for the Palestinian territories, well above the UN's target figure of $330m.
我對Diana的敬仰 並不因為她已逝去 而認為其精神有所消逝或不同 法國前總統Chirac時期 黎巴嫩的聯合國停火決議(8月11日) 之前的過程我予以關鍵點的建言 到重建募款地點是瑞典(王儲是Princess Victoria) 首都Stockholm, 其當日(8月31日)我予以電郵大力促成 募款額達到超過美國預計的兩倍 其前後各項人物 時間 地點的安排 可謂 "天時 地利 人和" 一個月內即達成豐碩收穫 任務非常圓滿完成 April 11 Fanatic colorFanatic color
Fanatic
A Benin soccer fan is seen during the Africa Cup of Nations group B soccer match against Namibia in Sekondi, Ghana, Monday, Jan 28, 2008. (Photo: AP Photo/Themba Hadebe) Mexican Painting
A Mexican painting from a Mexican friend of blog. March 14 Birth from ParentFlower Power
 25 Feb 2008 CBS Phto 2 of 7
Moving models of flowers powered by solar energy are displayed at the European Council headquarters in Brussels, Monday, Feb. 25, 2008. The exhibition "Dancing Solar Flowers" features 10,000 flowers and is set to raise public awareness on issues linked with energy. (Photo: AP Photo/Yves Logghe)
Photo: Daily Mail
© Copyright 2008 all rights reserved.
March 11 Endeavour blasts off to international spaceEndeavour blasts off to international space Endeavour Mission STS-123 11 Mar 2008 CBS
Photo 1 of 11 The STS-123 crew portrait. From right (front row) are astronauts Dominic L. Gorie, commander; and Gregory H. Johnson, pilot. From the left (back row) are astronauts Richard M. Linnehan, Robert L. Behnken, Garrett E. Reisman, Michael J. Foreman and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Takao Doi, all mission specialists. Endeavour is scheduled for a mission that will include five spacewalks. (Photo: NASA) Photo 2 of 11
Space shuttle Endeavour lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center, Fla., Tuesday, Feb. 11, 2008. Endeavour's seven-man crew will deliver the first section of Japan's Kibo lab and Canada's two-armed robotic system to the International Space Station. (Photo: AP Photo/Terry Renna)
Photo 11 of 11
The U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds fly past Launch Pad 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in commemoration of NASA's 50th anniversary on Monday, Feb. 18, 2008. On the pad, space shuttle Endeavour waits for a scheduled March 11 launch on the STS-123 mission. (Photo: USAF/TSgt. Justin D. Pyle)
Endeavour blasts off to space station 11 Mar 2008 CNN
Story Highlights
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- Shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven blasted off Tuesday on what was to be the longest space station mission ever, a voyage to build a gangly robot and add a new room that will serve as a closet for a future lab.
The space shuttle roared from its seaside pad at 2:28 a.m., lighting up the sky for miles around. It was a rare treat: The last time NASA launched a shuttle at nighttime was in 2006. Only about a quarter of shuttle flights have begun in darkness. "Good luck and Godspeed, and we'll see you back here," launch director Mike Leinbach radioed to the astronauts right before liftoff. "God truly has blessed us with a beautiful night here, Mike, to launch, so let's light them up and give Him a show," replied Endeavour's commander, Dominic Gorie. They did. The shuttle took flight with a flash of light, giving a peach-colored glow to the low clouds just offshore before disappearing into the darkness. Gorie and his crew face a daunting job once they reach the international space station late Wednesday night. The astronauts will perform five spacewalks, the most ever planned during a shuttle visit. The launching site was jammed with Canadians and Japanese representing two of the major partners in the international space station. The Canadian Space Agency supplied Dextre, the two-armed robot that was hitching a ride aboard Endeavour, while the Japanese Space Agency sent up the first part of its massive Kibo lab, a storage compartment for experiments, tools and spare parts. Also on hand for the liftoff was a 19-member congressional delegation led by Rep. Nick Lampson, D-Texas, whose district includes Johnson Space Center in Houston. He is pushing for increased NASA funding. For the first time since space station construction began nearly 10 years ago, all five major partners were about to own a piece of the orbiting real estate. The launch of the first section of Kibo, or Hope, finally propelled Japan into the space station action. "Our Japanese people have been waiting for a very long, long time," said Yoshiyuki Hasegawa, the Japanese Space Agency's station program manager. Preliminary design work for Kibo began in 1990. Space station construction, however, was stalled over the years for various reasons, most recently the 2003 Columbia tragedy. The main part of the Kibo lab will fly on the next shuttle mission in May, with the final installment, a porch for outdoor experiments, going up next year. Altogether, the Japanese Space Agency has invested about $6.7 billion in the space station program, including a Kibo control center near Tokyo. Canada's $200 million-plus Dextre, meanwhile, is designed to eventually take over some of the more routine outdoor maintenance chores from spacewalking astronauts. Dextre, short for dexterous and pronounced like Dexter, will join the space station's Canadian-built robot arm, already in orbit for seven years. In addition to working with their international payloads, Endeavour's astronauts will try out a caulking gun and high-tech goo on deliberately damaged shuttle thermal tile samples. The test -- part of NASA's ongoing post-Columbia safety effort -- should have been performed last year, but was put off because of emergency space station repairs. Astronaut Garrett Reisman will stay behind on the space station until June, swapping places with a Frenchman who accompanied Europe's Columbus lab into orbit in February. A Japanese astronaut is also part of Endeavour's all-male crew. It is the second of six planned shuttle missions this year, all but one to the space station. NASA faces a 2010 deadline for finishing the station and retiring its shuttles.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
安華Annwa Comment : If the space shuttle Endeavour carries these astronauts who don't take spacewalk in region where has alligator or crocodile, scorpion, infective mouse, as usual I bless them return home in safety.
March 10 Spectacular Stone / Ganges Glide / Angkor Wat in CambodiaGanges Glide
29 Feb 2008 CBS Photo 4 of 8
Indian fishermen row their boat in the River Ganges in Allahabad, India, Friday, Feb. 29, 2008. (Photo: AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)
8 Mar 2008 Daily Telegraph
A monk relaxing at Angkor Wat, Cambodia
Photo:Christian Goldsmith, Daily Telegraph
Spectacular Stone
7 Mar 2008 CBS
Photo 5 of 8
Sophie, an employee of Sotheby's, holds a rare pear-shaped D-color flawless diamond weighing 72.22 carats in the auction house in London Friday, March, 7, 2008. The diamond will be sold at auction in Hong Kong on April 10, and has an estimated value of $10.3 million. (Photo: AP Photo/Alastair Grant) © 2008 All rights reserved.
March 09 Philip's a Nazi, Camilla's a crocodile & Diana WAS murdered, but I'm not mad, insists Mohamed Al FayedBy PAUL HARRIS Last updated at 10:56am on 19th February 2008 Daily Mail
It was one of the most extraordinary performances ever seen in a British courtroom. Yesterday Mohamed Al Fayed used his big day in the inquest witness box to deliver a series of stunning allegations about the death of Princess Diana. The Harrods tycoon claimed that Prince Philip was a "Nazi racist" called Frankenstein. And Prince Charles, he said, had conspired with his father and his "Dracula family" to murder Diana so he could marry "crocodile" Camilla.
Al Fayed at Diana inquest: Insisted Prince Philip is a Nazi called Frankenstein and Camilla is a crocodile
Mr Fayed, pictured outside the High Court yesterday, also claimed that anyone who said Diana was not pregnant by his son Dodi - who died with her in the 1997 Paris car crash - was lying.
Insisting that he was not "mad", Mr Fayed appealed to the "ordinary people" of the jury to support his stand against the "murderous forces" of the British Establishment.
All you had to remember was one thing. Mohamed Al Fayed was telling the truth and everyone else was "talking baloney".
His son Dodi and Princess Diana were murdered in a plot hatched by Prince Philip and a massive cast-list of conspirators - ranging from the Royal Family and the security services to newspaper editors and "stooge judges" - played a part in the cover-up.
The Duke of Edinburgh was a Nazi racist called Frankenstein; the royals who made Diana's life such a misery for 20 years were "that Dracula family".
Not forgetting Prince Charles, of course, and his determination to clear the decks to marry his "crocodile wife", Camilla.
This was the opening act of Mr Fayed's long-awaited appearance at the High Court yesterday as he took the witness stand for the Diana and Dodi inquests.
For the next several hours, the billionaire businessman brought a touch of unintentional pantomime to the proceedings by accusing one of the barristers of talking out of his backside, describing his son's former fiancee Kelly Fisher as a hooker and gold-digger, dismissing Diana's ex-lover Hasnat Khan as someone who lived in a council house, and protesting that he wasn't going to answer any more silly questions.
In the public gallery of the court annex, his testimony brought waves of applause and hoots of laughter, echoed more politely in the main courtroom.
But this was the moment for which Mr Fayed had waited more than ten years, and he remained deadly serious.
"I'm not a mad person," he said. He was simply trying to uncover the truth, and he would not rest until he died, even if he "lost everything" trying to find it.
It was the first time the 75-year-old Harrods owner has strung together in public all the allegations and unanswered questions which convinced him that the 1997 Paris car crash was not simply a tragic accident.
On their own, some of the conspiracy theories that have emerged these last ten years might be teasingly compelling.
But when Mr Fayed was invited to list and justify them one by one yesterday, it opened the door to a performance bordering on farce.
He named more than 30 people alleged to have been involved in what he called the "slaughter" of Diana and Dodi, or in the subsequent plot to conceal it.
Tony Blair, two former Metropolitan Police Commissioners, a British ambassador and several peers, most of the French authorities and swathes of the British Establishment were on the list.
Coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker took about two hours of all this before he intervened. "There were a large number of people in this conspiracy on your account," he suggested.
"It's the facts," said Mr Fayed, shrugging and looking directly at the jury. "It's black and white."
If only things could have been that simple.
As it turned out, Mr Fayed spent much of his day in the witness box attempting to convince the jury that some of the most bizarre and seemingly unbelievable allegations were perfectly credible.
Just one hour and 16 minutes had ticked on the clock before he was confident he had done so.
"I'm sure by now the jury, they understand," the Egyptian tycoon declared. "They does not need any more. They can gives their verdict after seeing my witness."
Despite evidence to the contrary the Harrods tycoon claimed Diana was pregnant and engaged to Dodi
That moment, unfortunately, is likely to be many weeks away yet in this costly, marathon hearing. The entire inquest, Mr Fayed was reminded in court, had been brought about principally because of the allegations he made.
It has already cost more than £6million and is expected to continue for at least another five weeks, and an estimated £4million more.
It started predictably enough when Mr Fayed swore by Allah to tell the truth and began to answer questions from Ian Burnett QC, representing the coroner.
The lawyer acknowledged that Mr Fayed, a "buccaneering businessman", was in court as the father of a much loved son who died in a tragic crash. So far, all correct.
But only a matter of seconds elapsed before the first of a torrent of claims began.
Mr Fayed had brought with him three pages of printed foolscap to detail the thrust of his case that Diana and Dodi were assassinated to stop the mother of the future king of England from marrying a Muslim. Those assertions were repeatedly tested and challenged yesterday but Mr Al Fayed held firm to them.
First, the alleged cover-up. Two police commissioners, Lord Condon and Lord Stevens, never handed French investigating authorities a note which Diana wrote to her lawyer, Lord Mishcon, expressing fears that she was going to be murdered.
They had acted "criminally and unprofessionally", and he now planned to sue them for it, Mr Fayed said.
Then, the rest of the allegations that have become so familiar to the jury these last four months - how Diana's private papers seemed mysteriously to have disappeared, how Mr Fayed came up against "the steel wall of the security services", how former royal butler Paul Burrell "sat here in the witness box talking about baloney things", and how French doctors "cooked up" the blood test results on crash driver Henri Paul to prove that he was drunk.
The only time tears welled in Mr Fayed's eyes was when he was asked about the moment he learned his son and Diana were dead. "It was slaughter, not murder," he said - and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket.
Both Dodi and Diana had told him in a phone call that they were getting engaged and that Diana was pregnant.
What about the avalanche of evidence that demonstrated this could not be true, Mr Burnett asked him? "It's all baloney," Mr Fayed said.
"I am the only person who say the truth. Anyone else, they just want to ridicule me and say I'm hallucinating." There were "idiots" employed by MI6 to do just that, he said.
And all those people who said she couldn't possibly be pregnant? "All lying," Mr Fayed said.
The main plank of Mr Fayed's insistence that the couple were murdered is the assertion that Prince Philip and Prince Charles plotted Diana's assassination during a meeting at Balmoral.
They then ordered MI6 in Paris to execute the plan, he claims.
Was the Queen involved? "I have no idea," he said. "I do not think the Queen is as important as that." (Mr Fayed maintains Prince Philip runs the country behind the scenes, it was explained).
What about Prince Charles? He participated in it, Mr Fayed said. "Definitely. And I am sure he knows what is going on to happen because he would like to get on and marry his Camilla, and this is what happened.
"They cleared the decks. They finished her, they murdered her, and now he is happy. He married his crocodile wife and he is happy with that."
It was well known, he continued, that Prince Philip was a racist. Dodi was a different religion - "Naturally tanned, curly hair - and they will not accept that he will have anything to do with the future king".
The Duke "grew up with the Nazis", he said, and was brought up by an auntie "who married Hitler's general".
He added: "This is the guy who is now in charge and manipulating everything and can do anything. They are still living in the 18th or 19th century."
With a flourish, Mr Fayed produced a newspaper article from a folder in front of him and jabbed at a photograph on the page.
He told the jury it showed Prince Philip walking with a Hitler general when he was 15 years old. "You think someone like that, growing up with the Nazis, accept my son? There is no way. This is the proof again. Time to send him back to Germany or from where he come from."
Then, a mischievous nugget of misinformation from Mr Fayed. "You want to have his original name?" he asked the court. "It ends with Frankenstein." (The Duke is a member of the Danish- German House of Schleswig-Holstein Sonderburg- Glucksburg). "Well it sounds like Frankenstein," he said.
Mr Fayed told the court that until the crash he enjoyed good relations with the Royal Family. He would sit next to the Queen at the Royal
Horse Show. He claimed Prince Philip came to a dinner "with all his Nazi German relations". He added: "So when they step on my foot and murder my son, I'm not accepting that. I will go to God, to anywhere in the sky, to the end of the world, because this is not acceptable."
Mr Fayed had some respite from his QC, Michael Mansfield, who produced a number of letters that Diana had written in the months before the Paris car crash. One note from July 27 1997, just over a month before her death, began "Dearest Dodi".
"Seldom has this particular lady ever been lost for words but the events of the last 24 hours have left her speechless," Diana wrote.
"I have always longed to stay at The Ritz since my father loved the hotel and now of course I see exactly why and what a wonderful dinner too. What can a girl say?!! Except perhaps to borrow a quote that was issued at 3.00 am on Sunday morning, 'I love hanging out with you too'. Lots of love, Dodi, and a million heartfelt thanks for all your kindness and generosity." But the heated exchanges were the theme of the day.
Cross-examined by Richard Horwell QC, for the Metropolitan Police, Mr Fayed lost his temper several times, saying that he would not answer "silly questions".
At one point the Harrods tycoon accused the barrister of "b******t", adding; "I cannot believe that you talk with this conviction out of your backside."
Outlining a list of more than 30 individuals and organisations that the he claimed were involved in Diana and Dodi's murders and the subsequent cover up, Mr Horwell pressed on: "Anyone who reaches a decision adverse to your position, Mr Al Fayed, must be dishonest, must be a conspirator?"
"Definitely," responded Mr Fayed. Moving on to his claim that Diana's sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale was also part of the cover-up, he added: "This is a particularly vile accusation that you make, isn't it, that the sister of Diana is involved in the cover-up of her murder?"
The hearing was told Mr Fayed claimed Sir Robert Fellowes, who is married to Diana's sister Lady Jane, was stationed in the British embassy in Paris to "co-ordinate" the plot on behalf of Prince Philip.
Mr Burnett asked: "He was murdering his sister-in-law?"
'What's wrong with that?" Mr Fayed replied. Mr Fayed went on to claim that Diana's relationship with long-term love Hasnat Khan had not been remotely serious.
The businessman ranted; "How can she marry somebody like that, who lives in a council flat and has no money? How can they think that a guy like that can support her?"
"Do you ever pay any attention to the evidence? The answer, I think, to my question is "no". All you are interested in is your assumptions and not evidence," Mr Horwell countered.
Mr Fayed responded: "I have no assumptions. I am not a mad person, right, as you are trying to portray me, please."
So who was the MI6 assassin who carried out the murder, he was asked? That was James Andanson, the so-called paparazzi and secret agent in the elusive white Fiat Uno that was seen in the tunnel that night.
Why, then - with all the might and power of the Royal Family and MI6 behind the plot, would the murderous assassin chose one of the world's lightest and least powerful cars (a clapped out one at that, the coroner interjected) - and take his dog with him?
That was his own car, Mr Fayed said, and he simply chose to use it that night.
Questioning Mr Fayed in detail about a call he claimed to have taken from his son and the princess just an hour before they died in which they revealed that that Diana was pregnant and they were to marry, Mr Horwell asked the tycoon how it would have been possible for a murder plot to be put into action with just minutes to spare.
"The first that the Establishment could have known of the pregnancy and the engagement was this telephone call. No one else was telephoned.
They have moments to put this conspiracy into action, Mr Al Fayed. Prince Philip has to be told, Prince Philip has to issue the order, MI6, MI5, the French security services, CIA, the ambulance service, the French doctors, the French scientist, James Andanson and his dog, all have to come together within a matter of moments, Mr Al Fayed, to kill Diana and Dodi."
He went on: "You have not even permitted this woman to have dignity in death, have you, Mr Al Fayed?"
The hearing continues.
© 2008 Associated Newspapers Ltd
When Harry appeared in Nazi uniform it left the rest of his family suddenly looking naked. In an instant, years of painstaking effort to smooth over the royals’ past were stripped away as memories and suspicions of royal links to Hitler’s Germany were resurrected.
The house of Windsor springs from the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert in 1840. He was the son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Germany and his name became that used by the British royal family.
A bit of a mouthful, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha turned out not to be Albert’s real surname, which was Wettin, the name of another aristocratic German dynasty.
It was only in 1917 that George V, worried by the anti-German feeling caused by the first world war, ordered the royal family to scrap Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Wettin for Windsor.
Matters are still not that simple. The name of the royal house is Windsor, but the surname of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh is Mountbatten-Windsor. The duke is also from the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg and so, arguably, are his heirs.
However, more embarrassing than names the length of a bus are the family’s links to Nazi Germany. The duke is Greek and some of his relatives sympathised with the Nazis; others joined them.
One brother-in-law, Prince Christoph of Hesse, was a member of the SS and flew fighters that attacked allied troops in Italy. In fact, so many of Philip’s relatives had Nazi links that when he married Princess Elizabeth he was severely limited on the guests he could invite.
Like most of the British aristocracy in the 1930s, George VI and his wife, the late Queen Mother, hoped to avoid war with Germany. The king sent birthday greetings to Hitler weeks before Germany invaded Poland.
More notoriously, his brother, the former King Edward VIII, who became the Duke of Windsor after abdicating in 1936, was sympathetic towards Hitler. Even in 1970 he told one interviewer: “I never thought Hitler was such a bad chap.”
The duke and his wife, Wallis Simpson, had visited Germany in 1937 and were taken to meet the Führer. When they left, Hitler said of Simpson: “She would have made a good Queen.”
Suspicions lingered that if Hitler had successfully invaded Britain, he might have tried to make the duke king again. Confidential files released in 2003 revealed that Nazi officials thought the duke was “no enemy to Germany” and would be the “logical director of England’s destiny after the war”.
Last year files released from the national archives revealed how a former head of British naval intelligence thought the duke’s return was a real possibility. The British admiral, who had attended Hitler’s 1937 Nuremberg rally, featured in an MI5 report as having said that Hitler “would soon be in this country, but that there was no reason to worry about it because he would bring the Duke of Windsor over as king”.
Other royals also had links to the Nazis. Baron Gunther von Reibnitz, the father of Princess Michael of Kent, was a party member and an honorary member of the SS. And the brother of Princess Alice, a great-aunt to the Queen, was a Nazi who said that Hitler had done a “wonderful job”. March 04 Medvedev: I will work with PutinMedvedev: I will work with Putin New Russian president: I will work with Putin
March 3, 2008 -- Updated 0838 GMT
NEW: Medvedev wins by a landslide
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) -- As Dmitry Medvedev stood poised to win the Russian presidential election by a landslide, he vowed to work closely with the man who tapped him for the job, President Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin, left, and Dmitry Medvedev wave at a surprise appearance at a Red Square rock concert Sunday night.
People holding banners for the pro-Kremlin youth movement "Young Russia" attend a concert Sunday on Red Square.
"I will work on this together with Mr. Vladimir Putin, as the future chairman of the government," Medvedev told supporters in Moscow.
He won 70.2 percent of the vote, with 99.45 percent of precincts counted, according to the head of the elections commission on Monday, The Associated Press reported.
Earlier, the commission said Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov was in second place with almost 18 percent of the vote, followed by populist nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky with 10 percent and a largely unknown Andrei Bogdanov with 1.3 percent.
Medvedev said the "unprecedented high" turnout -- which he put at about two-thirds of eligible voters -- was an indication "that our people are not indifferent to the future of our country" and gives him the mandate he needs to govern.
Medvedev, 42, said he would follow the foreign policy priorities set during the eight years of Putin's rule, "the essence of which is the protection of Russian interests around the whole perimeter."
Medvedev said Putin, who is to move into the role of prime minister, would have his constitutionally defined powers separate from those of the president, "and nobody proposes to change them."
He predicted their work together "may bring interesting results for the country and become a positive factor in the development of our country."
His comments came shortly after Putin congratulated his protege on his projected victory, calling the results an affirmation of his own policies.
"This victory is going to be a guarantee that the course that we have all chosen together, the successful course that we have been pursuing for the past eight years, will be continued," Putin told the crowd at a Red Square rock concert broadcast on Russian TV.
Putin praised Russians for demonstrating their society "is becoming efficient, responsible and active," and thanked the candidates who ran against his choice to replace him -- but added, "The election is over."
"I am very hopeful that the electoral passions will stay in the past, and all those who really do love our Russia will pool their efforts in work for the good of the citizens of our great homeland."
Independent observers called the campaign one-sided, with news outlets heavily biased toward the Kremlin's choice.
The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, the continent's top election watchdog, refused to monitor the balloting because of what it called severe restrictions on its observers by the Russian government.
But Putin insisted last month that Russia has "fully implemented" all of its commitments to the OSCE.
And Medvedev had genuine appeal to many Russian voters. "He is a wonderful, young, handsome, energetic man who will continue Putin's work and be a shining example to our children," voter Tamara Razumova said.
Medvedev has publicly committed to promote democracy, fight corruption, and bolster the rule of law. But as Kremlin critics point out, Putin made similar promises when he ran, only to be criticized at home and abroad for cracking down on opposition groups.
"His pronouncements were quite opposite to what he was doing," said Evgeny Volk, an analyst at the U.S.-based Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Many Russians credit Putin with leaving the country out of the poverty and uncertainty of the 1990s and is responsible for the current national economic boom -- so his endorsement carried a great deal of weight.
Russian analyst Vycheslav Nikonov said it remains to be seen how much power Putin will wield as prime minister, but he is likely to remain "a very influential political figure for years to come."
"I don't know what's going to happen in half a year. It may all change," said Nikonov, the president of the Politika Foundation, a Russian think-tank.
"Putin is still more popular, more trustworthy. As for Medvedev, he is the president of hope, and much will depend on whether he can deliver."
Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
安華Annwa Comment :
March 02 Pitchers & CatchersFebruary 29 T.Rex ExhibitT.Rex Exhibit
26 Feb 2008 CBS
Photo 5 of 7 The skull of a Tyrannosaurus rex at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2008. This T.rex is one of two "battling Tyrannosaurus" that are part of the final phase of the new "Dinosaurs in Their Time" exhibit that will open in June 2008. (Photo: AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar) February 27 White House weather broadcastSerene Sunrise
15 Feb 2008 CBS
The morning sunrise warms the sky over the White House, Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, in Washington. President Bush is expected to leave for trip to Africa later in the day. (Photo: AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)
Glossed Over
22 Feb 2008 CBS
Flowers are encased in a layer of ice during a winter storm in Washington on Fri Fev 22, 2008 (Photo, AP-Jacquelyn Matub)
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. February 25 Oscars 2008 WinnersOscars 2008 Winners
Last Updated: 3:01am GMT 25/02/2008 Daily Telegraph
Photo 3 of 10 Photo 7 of 10
Left: Daniel Day-Lewis won the best actor Oscar for his portrayal of a single-minded oilman in There Will Be Blood
Right: French star Marion Cotillard, 32, also beat the favourite, veteran British actress Julie Christie, to the coveted best actress award for her magnetic depiction of tragic French singer Edith Piaf in La Vie en Rose.
Oscar 2008 winners in full
Best Picture: "No Country for Old Men,"
Other nominees: "Atonement," "Juno," "Michael Clayton," "There Will Be Blood."
Director: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Other nominees: Julian Schnabel, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Jason Reitman, "Juno"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."
Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, "There Will Be Blood"
Other nominees: George Clooney, "Michael Clayton"; Johnny Depp, "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"; Tommy Lee Jones, "In the Valley of Elah"; Viggo Mortensen, "Eastern Promises."
Foreign Film: Counterfeiters," Austria
Other nominees: "Beaufort," Israel; "The "Katyn," Poland; "Mongol," Kazakhstan; "12," Russia.
Original Screenplay: Diablo Cody, "Juno"
Other nominess: Nancy Oliver, "Lars and the Real Girl"; Tony Gilroy, "Michael Clayton"; Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava and Jim Capobianco, "Ratatouille"; Tamara Jenkins, "The Savages."
Documentary Feature: "Taxi to the Dark Side"
Other nominees: "No End in Sight," "Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience," "Sicko," "War/Dance"
Documentary (short subject): "Freeheld"
"La Corona (The Crown)," "Salim Baba," "Sari's Mother."
Original Score: "Atonement," Dario Marianelli
Other nominees: "The Kite Runner," Alberto Iglesias; "Michael Clayton," James Newton Howard; "Ratatouille," Michael Giacchino; "3:10 to Yuma," Marco Beltrami
Cinematography: "There Will Be Blood"
Other nominees: "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford," "Atonement," "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "No Country for Old Men,"
Original Song: "Falling Slowly" from "Once," Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
Other nominees: "Happy Working Song" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz; "Raise It Up" from "August Rush," Nominees to be determined; "So Close" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz; "That's How You Know" from "Enchanted," Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.
Film Editing: "The Bourne Ultimatum"
Other nominees: "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," "Into the Wild," "No Country for Old Men," "There Will Be Blood."
Actress: Marion Cotillard, "La Vie en Rose"
Other nominees: Cate Blanchett, "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"; Julie Christie, "Away From Her"; Laura Linney, "The Savages"; Ellen Page, "Juno."
Supporting Actor: Javier Bardem, "No Country for Old Men"
Other nominees: Casey Affleck, "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford"; Hal Holbrook, "Into the Wild"; Philip Seymour Hoffman, "Charlie Wilson's War"; Tom Wilkinson, "Michael Clayton."
Supporting Actress: Tilda Swinton, "Michael Clayton."
Other nominees: Cate Blanchett, "I'm Not There"; Ruby Dee, "American Gangster"; Saoirse Ronan, "Atonement"; Amy Ryan, "Gone Baby Gone";
Adapted Screenplay: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, "No Country for Old Men"
Other nominees: Christopher Hampton, "Atonement"; Sarah Polley, "Away from Her"; Ronald Harwood, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly"; Paul Thomas Anderson, "There Will Be Blood."
Animated Feature Film: "Ratatouille"
Other nominees: "Persepolis"; "Surf's Up."
Art Direction: "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
Other nominees: "American Gangster," "Atonement," "The Golden Compass," "There Will Be Blood."
Sound Mixing: "The Bourne Ultimatum"
Other nominees: "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "3:10 to Yuma," "Transformers."
Sound Editing: "The Bourne Ultimatum"
Other nominees: "No Country for Old Men," "Ratatouille," "There Will Be Blood," "Transformers."
Costume: "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"
Other nominees: "Across the Universe," "Atonement," "La Vie en Rose," "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street."
Makeup: "La Vie en Rose"
Other nominees: "Norbit," "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End."
Animated Short Film: "Peter & the Wolf."
Other nominees: "I Met the Walrus," "Madame Tutli-Putli," "Meme Les Pigeons Vont au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven)," "My Love (Moya Lyubov),"
Live Action Short Film:"Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets)"
Other nominees: "At Night," "Il Supplente (The Substitute)," "Tanghi Argentini," "The Tonto Woman."
Visual Effects: "The Golden Compass"
Other nominees: "Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End," "Transformers."
© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2008
February 23 Super-speed Internet satellite blasts off in Japan / Celebrate Crown Prince Naruhito birthdaySuper-speed Internet satellite blasts off in Japan / Celebrate Crown Prince Naruhito birthday
Super-speed Internet satellite blasts off in Japan 23 Feb 2007
(CNN) -- Japan launched a rocket Saturday carrying a satellite that will test new technology that promises to deliver "super high-speed Internet" service to homes and businesses around the world.
A rocket carrying a super-fast Internet satellite lifts off from its launch pad on the Japanese island of Tanagashima. The rocket carrying the WINDS satellite -- a joint project of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries -- lifted off its pad at 5:55 p.m. (0855 GMT). If the technology proves successful, subscribers with small dishes will connect to the Internet at speeds many times faster than what is now available over residential cable or DSL services. The Associated Press said the satellite would offer speeds of up to 1.2 gigabytes per second. The service initially would focus on the Asia-Pacific region close to Japan, a JAXA news release said. "Among other uses, this will make possible great advances in telemedicine, which will bring high-quality medical treatment to remote areas, and in distance education, connecting students and teachers separated by great distances," JAXA said. The rocket was launched from Japan's Yoshinobu Launch Complex at the Tanegashima Space Center. Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
Happy birthdat to the Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan & Japanese royal family
23 Feb 2008
Photo: 法新社
February 17 Miserable time in AfghanPhoto 5 of 7 / CBS
Rough Winter
An Afghan refugee girl asks for a blanket during a relief distribution in Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, Feb. 14, 2008. Cold weather, snowstorms and avalanches nationwide have claimed at least over 600 lives and more than 100,000 sheep and goats, according to the Afghanistan National Disaster Management Commission. (Photo: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) Afghanistan: Government raps emergency response commission as winter death toll rises KABUL, 6 February 2008 (IRIN) - The lower house of the Afghan National Assembly has issued a 10-day ultimatum to the national emergency response commission to boost and expand humanitarian assistance to thousands of people affected by extremely cold weather and heavy snow. "If (government) officials fail to reach and assist affected people within 10 days, we will go for impeachment and a vote of no-confidence," warned Yunus Qanoni, speaker of the house, at the end of a parliamentary debate on disaster management on 4 February. The ultimatum applies to government bodies sitting on the commission, whose meetings are also attended by UN agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Latest figures compiled by the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority (ANDMA) show that over 600 people - mostly children and the elderly - have died since December as a result of sub-zero temperatures, snow and cold-related respiratory diseases. Members of parliament (MPs) summoned ministers and other high-ranking officials on 3-4 February for questioning after local media outlets criticised the response to the current winter crisis and spiralling food prices. Tonnes of food and non-food items have been distributed to vulnerable and disaster-affected families in several provinces, but MPs have been critical of relief operations and demanded that officials "do more and better". Uncoordinated response Government bodies, NGOs, UN agencies, NATO-led Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs) and many private sector actors have participated in relief activities and distributed relief mostly in an uncoordinated, and often unilateral, manner which, according to ANDMA, has created operational confusion. "Lack of coordination has been a major problem for us," said Abdul Matin Edrak, head of ANDMA in Kabul. "We call on UN agencies, NGOs and PRTs to ensure greater and improved coordination with the national emergency response commission." The commission, in collaboration with UN agencies, earmarked US$2,500,000 for winter disaster management operations. Additionally, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) pre-positioned 22,000 metric tonnes of mixed food items in 18 vulnerable provinces. The plan was to distribute the food through food-for-work and/or food-for-education programmes. Winter lasts until April in many parts of Afghanistan, and officials say needs have outstripped initial preparations and more aid is needed now. Institutional weaknesses ANDMA and other government departments involved in relief activities say their efforts to manage disasters and provide an adequate humanitarian response have been hindered by poor resources, low capacity and unexpectedly heavy snowfall which has blocked access to many rural communities. "The level of needs is beyond our capacity," Edrak of ANDMA told IRIN, adding that his organisation needed comprehensive capacity-building, technical resources and financial support. A UN disaster assessment and coordination team that visited Afghanistan in July 2006 made 73 recommendations for an urgent "revitalisation and modernisation" of the country's disaster management capacity. Over 20 months have passed but Afghanistan still has a weak and underdeveloped disaster management body, officials such as Edrak of ANDMA conceded. ad/ar/cb (END) A selection of IRIN reports are posted on ReliefWeb. Find more IRIN news and analysis at http://www.irinnews.org Une sélection d'articles d'IRIN sont publiés sur ReliefWeb. Trouvez d'autres articles et analyses d'IRIN sur http://www.irinnews.org This article does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. Refer to the IRIN copyright page for conditions of use. Cet article ne reflète pas nécessairement les vues des Nations Unies. Voir IRIN droits d'auteur pour les conditions d'utilisation. © 2008 ReliefWeb With the exception of public UN sources, reproduction or redistribution of the above text, in whole, part or in any form, requires the prior consent of the original source. February 14 A sorrowful day for the England RoseSaudis ban red roses for Valentine's Day
By Sally Peck Daily TelegraphLast Updated: 3:54pm GMT 12/02/2008
Look out Cupid: No roses in Riyadh Saudi Arabia's religious police have banned the sale of red roses ahead of Valentine's Day. Crimson items - from roses to wrapping paper - have been banned from the shelves of florists and gift shops in Riyadh until Friday (15) by the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Every year officials visit florists a few days before Feb 14 to issue warnings on red items, which are widely seen as symbols of love, according to local newspapers. The Commission raids shops on the eve of Valentine's Day, which it sees as an encouragement of relations outside of wedlock, to ensure that the ban is being carried out. According to the Saudi Gazette, the ban has resulted in a blossoming black market for red roses. One man, who claimed to run an underground flower shop out of his flat, said he could make as much as SAR20-30 (£2.70- £4) per rose, when the normal price is SAR5-7 (68p - £1). He told the paper that he sometimes delivers bouquets in the middle of the night to avoid prying eyes, and that his loyal customers place orders weeks before the Feb 14 holiday. Relationships outside marriage are strictly prohibited in the conservative Muslim state and are punishable by law. "As Muslims we shouldn't celebrate a non-Muslim celebration especially this one that encourages immoral relations between unmarried men and women," Sheikh Khaled al-Dossari , a scholar in Islamic Studies and sharia law, told the paper. However, there is some hope for hopeless romantics. This year Valentine's Day coincides with mid-term break, so many Saudis have already left the kingdom on holiday. The ban came into force in Riyadh on Sunday and red items remain forbidden until after February 14.
Flower robbers strip Langley florist almost bare Published: Thu, Feb 14, 2008 Glenn Bohn, Vancouver Sun
METRO VANCOUVER -- Roses, orchids and daisies meant for lovers were stolen during the wee hours of Valentine's Day from a florist shop in Langley. "Basically, they took an awful lot of flowers that were for morning pickups, as well as our cash register," Flowers and Co. owner Allan Colyn said in an interview. "It's Valentine's Day, so most people were buying red and white. These guys have got good taste. I guess they were window shopping and really liked what they saw."
Bandits exploited the season's romantic holiday, looting Alan Colyn's flower shop before Valentine's Day. Matthew Claxton/Langley Advance
Colyn said he has plenty of flowers in storage to make up new bouquets and make up the stolen orders, so his romantically inclined customers won't go away empty handed. But Flowers and Co. has lost "several thousand" dollars worth of flowers, as well as a cash register that didn't contain any cash. RCMP Cpl. Peter Thiessen said the flower thieves got into the shop sometime between midnight and 8 a.m. this morning by removing an entire pane of glass window from the storefront. He noted that procedure requires the skills and tools of a glazier or construction professional who installs and removes glass windows. Thiessen said the RCMP detachment in Langley has seen a rash of similar burglaries in the past few months in which thieves removed windows to gain entry. Where will the botanical booty end up? Like other communities, it's not uncommon in Langley for flowers to be sold on highways and major roads. "That could be where these flowers are destined," Thiessen said. "Someone will simply set up [shop] at the side of the road." Another possibility, he quipped, is that the thief or thieves "have a large number of significant others in their lives." gbohn@png.canwest.com © 2008 Canwest Interactive, a division of Canwest Publishing Inc.. All rights reserved. Unauthorized distribution, transmission or republication strictly prohibited. February 11 Spacewalkers anchor new lab to space stationSpacewalkers anchor new lab to space station Spacewalkers anchor new lab to space station Feb 11, 2008 -- Updated 1742 GMT (0142 HKT)
Two spacewalking astronauts floated out of a hatch on the international space station on Monday (11) to help install a new European lab, while a crewmate who was supposed to participate in the outing helped from inside. Spacewalkers Rex Walheim and Stanley Love ventured outside as the space station passed over Asia. / Photo: CNN
Atlantis back on track after illness From correspondents in Houston | February 11, 2008 The Australian
ASTRONAUTS at the International Space Station (ISS) today got back on track preparing for a space walk after a German astronaut fell sick, forcing the exercise to be delayed for 24 hours. NASA said earlier Hans Schlegel had recovered from the unidentified ailment, and the space walk was on schedule for tomorrow. Mr Schlegel, nevertheless, was pulled off the walk, which is to begin hooking up the European Columbus science research module delivered to the ISS aboard the US Atlantis space shuttle. He will be replaced by US astronaut Stanley Love, who will join Rex Walheim on the exercise. Mr Schlegel, one of seven astronauts, including two Europeans, who rode the Atlantis up to the ISS, was reported ill just after the shuttle docked yesterday at the space station, two days into the mission. But overnight Markus Bauer, the spokesman for the European Space Agency, said Mr Schlegel, 56, appears to have recuperated and was doing "very well". "We are assuming that he will take part in the second spacewalk," said Mr Bauer. While Mr Schlegel's ailment remains unexplained, the German astronaut - who joined a shuttle mission in 1993 - spoke to Mission Control in Houston after waking up shortly before 9pm AEDT Sunday. "Greetings to everybody in America, in Europe and in Germany, and especially, of course, to my close family and my lovely wife, Heike," he said. The space walk will now take place at 1.35am AEDT Tuesday, and last about six-and-a-half hours. Mr Walheim and Mr Love will have to spend a night in a decompression chamber ahead of the walk to purge nitrogen from their bodies, NASA said. They spent today preparing their spacesuits, while others aboard the ISS transferred supplies from the Atlantis. Today the astronauts were also to use a camera attached to a robotic arm to inspect a 3.25cm tear in the thermal blanket on the shuttle's right Orbital Manoeuvring System pod. The damage occurred during the launch on Thursday and was discovered the next day, shuttle flight director Mike Sarafin said. The delay to the first spacewalk has forced the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to extend the original 11-day mission of the shuttle Atlantis by one day, setting its return to earth on February 19. The Atlantis mission to deliver the 10-tonne Columbus laboratory marks a milestone in Europe's role in space. Paid for mostly by Germany, Italy and France, it is the first ISS addition not made in the US or Russia. The laboratory will be used for biotechnology and medicine experiments involving microgravity. 安華Annwa Comment :
God bless them return home in safety. February 08 Pacific countries' spacecrafts launched to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New YearAtlantis en route to space station
Thur Feb 7, 2008 -- Updated 2101 GMT (0501 HKT)
CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AP) -- After two months of delay, shuttle Atlantis blasted into orbit Thursday with Europe's gift to the international space station, a $2 billion science lab named Columbus that spent years waiting to set sail.
Atlantis blasts off on its way to the international space station to deliver a science lab.
The 7 Atlantis astronauts head to the launch pad Thursday (7) morning. Atlantis and its seven-man crew safely roared away from their seaside launch pad at 2:45 p.m., overcoming fuel gauge problems that thwarted back-to-back launch attempts in December. The same cold front that spawned killer tornadoes across the South earlier in the week stayed far enough away and, in the end, cut NASA a break. All week, bad weather had threatened to delay the flight, making liftoff all the sweeter for the shuttle team. The sky was cloudy at launch time, but rain and thunderstorms remained off to the west. "Three, two, one, zero, and liftoff of space shuttle Atlantis as Columbus sets sail on a voyage of science to the space station," NASA's Launch Control exclaimed at the moment of liftoff. Probably no one was happier than the 300 Europeans who gathered at the launch site to see Atlantis take off with their beloved Columbus lab. Twenty-three years in the making, Columbus is the European Space Agency's primary contribution to the space station. The lab has endured space station redesigns and slowdowns, as well as a number of shuttle postponements and two shuttle accidents. "We're all as excited as heck," said an emotional Alan Thirkettle, Europe's space station program manager. "I've lost about 500 grams (about 1 pound) so far, and that's just been tears." Columbus will join the U.S. lab, Destiny, which was launched aboard Atlantis exactly seven years ago. The much bigger Japanese lab Kibo, or Hope, will require three shuttle flights to get off the ground, beginning in March. Atlantis' commander, Stephen Frick, and his U.S., German and French crew will reach the space station on Saturday and begin installing Columbus the very next day. Three spacewalks are planned during the flight, scheduled to last 11 or, more likely, 12 days. "We're looking forward to doing our part to bring it up to Peggy Whitson and her crew on the international space station, and start its good work and many, many years of science," Frick said before launch. Besides Columbus, Atlantis will drop off a new space station resident, French Air Force Gen. Leopold Eyharts, who will swap places with NASA astronaut Daniel Tani and get Columbus working. Tani will return to Earth aboard the shuttle, ending a mission of nearly four months. To NASA's relief, all four fuel gauges in Atlantis' external fuel tank worked properly during the final stage of the countdown. The gauges failed back in December because of a faulty connector, and NASA redesigned the part to fix the problem, which had been plaguing the shuttles for three years. NASA was anxious to get Atlantis flying as soon as possible to keep alive its hopes of achieving six launches this year. The space agency faces a 2010 deadline for finishing the station and retiring the shuttles. That equates to four or five shuttle flights a year between now and then, something NASA Administrator Michael Griffin considers achievable. "We're coming back, and I think we are back, from some pretty severe technical problems that led to the loss of Columbia. We understand the foam now," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said, referring to the chunks of insulating foam that kept breaking off the fuel tanks. Barring any more major mechanical trouble or freak hailstorms like the one that battered Atlantis's fuel tank one year ago, "this should be like some of those earlier times when we had some fairly interrupted stretches with no technical problems where we could just fly," Griffin said in an interview with The Associated Press. "That's what I'm looking forward to."
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Russia ready to send another space freighter to orbital station
Tue 05/ 02/ 2008 RIA Novosti
MOSCOW, February 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will launch Tuesday a Soyuz-U carrier rocket with a cargo spacecraft on board to deliver food, equipment and other supplies to the International Space Station (ISS), a Mission Control spokesman said.
The Progress M-63 space freighter is scheduled for launch from the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan at 1:03 p.m. GMT on February 5, the spokesman said. It is expected to deliver 2.5 metric tons of cargo to support the ISS operation.
The automatic docking with the orbital station has been set for 2:38 p.m. GMT on February 7.
The current expedition on board the ISS comprises U.S. astronauts Peggy Whitson and Daniel Tani, and Russia's Yury Malenchenko.
Meanwhile, NASA said on Monday that the repeatedly-delayed Atlantis space shuttle launch had been set for February 7.
During the upcoming mission, the crew members will carry out three spacewalks, installing and activating the $2 billion Columbus space laboratory, which has taken some 10 years to construct and is Europe's main contribution to the International Space Station (ISS).
The ISS crew will also see a new face, with flight engineer Daniel Tani being replaced by European Space Agency astronaut Leopold Eyharts.
The flight has been repeatedly delayed since December 6 over problems with faulty fuel tank sensors and a radiator hose. The launch of the 24th shuttle mission to the ISS is still uncertain, however, due to weather concerns making yet another delay extremely likely.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 安華Annwa Comment : The Pacific Union is dawning. I Bless them will return home in safety. Pacific countries hit by bad weatherSevere weather, tornadoes kill dozens across South
Wed Feb 6, 2008 -- Updated 0220 GMT (1020 HKT)
JACKSON, Tennessee (CNN) -- Tornadoes and storms in the mid-South have killed 54 people since Tuesday evening in the deadliest tornado outbreak in the United States in more than 20 years. A tornado touches down outside Atkins High School in Arkansas / Photo: Daily Telegraph
At least two tornadoes hit north Mississippi, tearing through buildings and ripping down power lines / Photo: Daily Telegraph
At least two tornadoes hit Mississippi, tearing through buildings and power lines / Photo: Daily Telegraph
The storms ripped apart homes and trapped residents of university dorms and a retirement home in debris. The trail of death stretched across four states, with four people killed in Alabama, 13 in Arkansas, seven in Kentucky and 30 in Tennessee. In some cases, there was almost no warning before the severe weather hit. James Baskin of Jackson, Tennessee, was driving a car when a twister "just picked us up and threw us," he said. Everyone in the car was injured, including his daughter's friend, who suffered a broken collarbone. "We'll get through it. Nobody's dead. That's the biggest thing," Baskin said. The storm system was becoming less intense as it moved east Wednesday, CNN meteorologist Rob Marciano said, but the National Weather Service issued tornado and severe storm warnings and said extreme weather still was possible. President Bush said Wednesday he had called the governors of the affected states to offer help and to tell them that "the American people hold those who suffered up in prayer." The Federal Emergency Management Agency was deploying teams to the area, Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said Wednesday. "We're going to keep watching this," he said. The newest deaths were reported in Sumner County, Tennessee, where two victims were found outside a house that had been blown away by the storm, said Jay Austin, the county's primary death investigator. Elsewhere in the area, a mother was found dead in a creek bed about 50 yards from where her house stood. Her baby was found alive 250 yards away. The child was taken to a local hospital, Austin said. Meanwhile, the Tennessee Highway Patrol reported looting in hard-hit Macon County, where 12 people died, CNN affiliate WSMV reported. Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, who flew over the disaster area Wednesday, said he was stunned by the storm's power. "I don't think that I have seen, since I've been governor, a tornado where the combination of the intensity of it and the length of the track was as large as this one," Bredesen said. "That track had to be 25 miles long. [The twister] didn't skip like a lot of them do. ... It's just 25 miles of a tornado sitting on the ground." In Jackson, Tennessee, a tornado trapped Union University students and retirees in collapsed buildings, said Julie Oaks, a spokeswoman for the state's Emergency Management Agency. "It looks like a war zone," said university President David Dockery. "Cars and trucks thrown from one side of the campus to the other." Dockery said the women's dorms were destroyed, along with two academic buildings. Many other school buildings received lesser damage. Classes were canceled at least until February 18, he said. Nine students were hospitalized overnight, but there were no life-threatening injuries, according to university spokesman Tim Elsworth. To the west, a tornado swept through the southeastern section of Memphis in Shelby County. The storms yanked the roof off a hangar at Memphis International Airport, the National Weather Service said. Oaks said one person was killed at the Hickory Ridge Mall in Shelby County. Company officials believe a tornado hit a compressor station for the Columbia Gulf Transmission company in Hartsville, Tennessee, about 40 miles northeast of Nashville, setting off a spectacular natural gas fire. The blaze could be seen in the night sky for miles around, with flames shooting "400, 500 feet in the air," said Tennessee Emergency Management spokesman Donnie Smith. The station was damaged significantly, but there were no reports of injuries or fatalities, said Columbia spokesman Kelly Merritt. "We would not have had any employees there [overnight]." The blaze was put out early Wednesday morning, he said. The tornado cut a wide swath near the facility, flattening the home of Dara Reasonover. "It just took the house and everything and my horses and my dog," a shaken Reasonover said, as the glow of the fire lit the sky behind her. "I don't know if they're alive or dead, but we'll make it." In Arkansas, the storm killed 13 people in six counties, the state Emergency Management Agency said. In the city of Atkins, a man, woman and child in the same family were killed, county Judge Jim Ed Gibson told CNN. The storms overturned trucks and other vehicles along Interstate 40, closing the highway briefly, he said. Storms also ripped through Kentucky, killing at least seven people. A state of emergency was declared in Muhlenberg County, and Kentucky National Guard troops were deployed, state emergency spokesman Buddy Rogers said. In Alabama, the storms killed four people, three in Lawrence County and one in Jackson County, officials said. Resident Roger Riddle said that when he heard the tornado siren, he rounded up his children and took them to a community storm shelter. When he emerged, he saw the twister traveling away from them and "total destruction." "We've got things tore up, and the house across the road from us is completely gone," Riddle said. In Mississippi, the director of the state's Emergency Management Agency, Mike Womack, estimated that 20 to 30 tornadoes pounded the state in areas above the state capital of Jackson. "We have no reported fatalities, and that is extremely fortunate," he said, given the havoc the storm caused elsewhere. CNN's Saeed Ahmed, Mark Bixler and Ed Payne contributed to this report.
New devastation emerges in China
Mon Feb 4, 2008 -- Updated 0307 GMT (1107 HKT)
BEIJING, China (CNN) -- Monday brought welcome relief to millions of Chinese migrant workers desperate to see their families, as the nation's transportation system seemed to be getting back on its feet after being paralyzed by a historic winter storm.
A family has supper by the light of candles in Chenzhou, China, where power has been cut off.
Trucks are trapped at the Yunmeihua Exit on the Beijing-Zhuhai Highway in south China's Guangdong province.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao apologizes to thousands of people stranded in weather chaos.
I-Reporter Cindy Van Den Heuvel says there are few vehicles on the road in Nanjing, China.
Hundreds of thousands of passengers wait at the Guangzhou Railway station in Guangzhou, China, Friday. Still, as some roads became traversable, more and more images of devastation from the past couple of weeks became apparent. CNN saw an auto manufacturing plant -- perhaps half a kilometer long -- in Xiangtan, part of Hunan province, that had collapsed under the weight of snow and ice. The government has already estimated damage from the storm -- the worst in 50 years -- at more than $7 billion. And the more pressing concern was getting supplies such as heating oil and food to areas that had lost power and been cut off days ago. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said Monday that "electricity supply is gradually resuming and transport services are basically back to normal, and the country's production and life are in normal conditions," according to state-run Xinhua news agency. The storm struck 19 out of 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in the Chinese mainland, Xinhua said. It has been blamed for 63 deaths -- 25 of them when a bus slipped off a mountain in icy conditions in southwestern Guizhou province. On Tuesday, China said 11 electricians had died from efforts to restore power to parts of China hit hard by the snow and ice storms, The Associated Press reported. The Ministry of Civil Affairs said at least 223,000 homes have been crushed and another 862,000 damaged, according to Xinhua. Nearly 1.8 million people have been relocated in the past two weeks, Xinhua said. At Guangdong province's Guangzhou train station -- which had been one of the most heart-wrenching and dramatic scenes last week -- there was no longer a massive throng of travelers clamoring and screaming to get a coveted slot on a train. Instead, the tens of thousands who remained waited in organized fashion for their turn. To ensure no one tried to skip ahead, police in groups of four held hands and walked in front of rows of travelers. More than 300,000 soldiers had been dispatched to the southern Guangdong province, including 12,000 to help at the train station alone. More than 250,000 passengers made it safely onto trains in a 24-hour period, said Xian Wei Xiong, Guangzhou's transportation director. "When I see the passengers happily getting on their trains, I feel so happy," he said. Noting that he has barely slept since the crisis set in on January 26, he added, "This is the greatest national disaster we have ever met." And -- in a telling sign from a dedicated Chinese Communist Party official -- Xian added, "there are lessons to be learned." "We should reconsider how much pressure the transportation network in our nation can stand." Jiao Meiyan, director general of China's National Meteorological Center, predicted "fairly good weather in most of south China" through the end of the week, giving the nation a chance to clear clogged highways and move goods. Zhuhai-Beijing highway, China's major north-south transport artery, reopened Monday. It could also lift morale as the nation celebrates the Lunar New Year on Thursday. Many Chinese hope to make it home by Wednesday for Lunar New Year's Eve. Still, forecasters warned temperatures could be freezing at night. Another cold front is expected to sweep through China in the coming week, but is expected to be short and relatively mild. CNN Beijing bureau chief Jaime FlorCruz contributed to this report. Copyright 2008 CNN. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Associated Press contributed to this report.
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安華Annwa Comment : I sympathize these countries where hit by natural disasters, if they are friendly toward their neighbors of the Pacific no man-made disasters & didn't threaten schedule delayed by blaming weather, God bless them could get through these disasters soon. (Sent at 06.55am arrived slowly) January 31 Queen of senior citizensQueen of senior citizens
30 Jan 2008 Daily Telegraph
Photo 5 of 15 101-year-old Catalina Pineda wears a tiara after being crowned queen of senior citizens during a festival for elderly people in San Salvador. |
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