Jetstar chief executive Bruce Buchanan said he expected the iPads to prove very popular onboard.

"Given the demand for the iPad so far, I anticipate it will have strong appeal amongst our passengers," Mr Buchanan said in the statement.

"Based on demand for the iPads as part of the trial, we'll be looking to roll out the devices across our entire domestic and international network later in the year."

The company says the system will even allows for the iPad to be used during take-off and landing, when other electronic devices have to be shut off.

It is currently under trial and if it is successful, it might become standard on all flights.

It does make you wonder if US Airlines will consider a similar trail? A lot of airlines have cut back on the in-flight entertainment on domestic flights. It does make sense to rent out iPads that are light and are, if not bigger, almost the same size as a standard in-flight tv screen.

Is anyone listening????

When you are looking in these photos your brain dont know how to react. Every time you see something different or something that you think its on a good place or real. Optical illusions are great thing. Enjoy in these photos, and check out the video 10 optical illusions in 2 minutes that will blow your mind. This guy is awesome and show us great skill with optical illusions. I cant figure how did he created some of the illusions in the video. Did you know the real meaning: An optical illusion (also called a visual illusion) is characterized by visually perceived images that differ from objective reality. The information gathered by the eye is processed in the brain to give a percept that does not tally with a physical measurement of the stimulus source. There are three main types: literal optical illusions that create images that are different from the objects that make them, physiological ones that are the effects on the eyes and brain of excessive stimulation of a specific type (brightness, tilt, color, movement), and cognitive illusions where the eye and brain make unconscious inferences.

Prince, Paris and Blanket are probably one of the happiest kids in America. Michael Jacksons estate is currently worth $300 Million and in his will, his kids get 40%, while Michaels mom Katherine Jackson will get another 40% and the remaining 20% will go to charities.

At the age of 21, each one of Michaels will be able to get their money in Trust.

The amount will increase over the years due to merchandise sales, estate auctions and interest from the bank. His ex-wife Debbie Rowe, father Joe Jackson and the Jackson brothers and sisters were not named in the documents.

As of now, the kids can only wait in anticipation to getting their hands on their trust. For all the evil things Michael might have done, we dont know if he did them or not since we were not there, but one thing is always been a sticking point and that is, he loves helping. Giving 20% of $300 Million, almost $60 Million, (not deduction taxes) to charities, is a gesture that will never be forgotten.

Celeb Tea

Singer Celine Dion, and music mogul husband René Angelil are expecting twins.  Early on during their marriage the couple had a hard time having kids, but since then, they have a son who is 9 year old and now are expecting twins.

The singer, 42, is pregnant with twins after undergoing her sixth in-vitro fertilization attempt and turning to acupuncture to improve her chances of a pregnancy, her rep Kim Jakwerth confirms.

“We’re ecstatic,” her husband/manager René Angelil tells PEOPLE. “Celine is just hoping for a healthy pregnancy. She was hoping for one baby and the news that we are having two is a double blessing.” !”

Celeb Tea

Obamas concern over dead terrorist supporters was expressed on the US Memorial Day, when Americans celebrate their own heroes, including those who killed terrorists and their civilian supporters.

Obamas reaction was apparently sufficiently severe that his much-touted meeting with Netanyahu was cancelled.

The UNSC assembled for emergency session. Routine deaths of thousands civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq drew no similar concern from the world powers.

Now the problem is, the incident may become to Netanyahu what was the Hebron market shooting during his first term. Then, an Israeli soldier opened fire at Arab civilians, with scores of TV cameras incidentally ready nearby. Immediately thereafter, Netanyahu abandoned his staunch refusal to cede the ancient Jewish capital to Muslims, and transferred Hebron to the PA jurisdiction.

The Gaza flotilla incident might be similar. Sending a few dozen Marines to take over a ship with 750 peaceniks, whose violent intent could not have escaped Israeli intelligence services, assured gunfight. After the peaceniks attacked the very first Marine who boarded their ship, the Navy did not change its tactics immediately, but continued sending inadequately armed Jews into the fight. It all smacks of a provocation by Israeli leftist establishment against Netanyahu. Admiral Eli Marom, who scarcely avoided discharge not long ago, would find it hard to resist the establishments pressure to stage such an incident.

Samson Blinded

How is it that a submarine of a fifth-rate power was able to penetrate a U.S.-South Korean naval exercise and sink a ship that was designed for anti-submarine warfare?

Could be huge lies are going on?

It was reported that an investigation in South Korea has determined the metal and explosive residues from the torpedo that sank their ship Cheonan, are consistent with that used by German manufacturers.

The metallic debris and chemical residue appear to be consistent with a type of torpedo made in Germany, indicating the North may have been trying to disguise its involvement by avoiding arms made by allies China and Russia, Yonhap quoted the official as saying.

Oops - says the little bird! Looks like things are coming unraveled in the North/South Korean issue. Looks like We have a probable German torpedo instead of a North Korean (Chinese) torpedo...

That means that the official report that has been so wonderfully exploited all over the internet becomes very worthless due to lack of any reality of facts!

Now it makes sense why Windows to Russia was attacked so early in the game. They had to keep the lie out long enough without opposition to set everyone's minds to the fact that North Korea is Super Evil and needs to be destroyed...

Windows to Russia!

The Umbrella singer was presenting a gig in the Holy Land as part of her Last Girl on Earth tour, which began three weeks ago in Europe.

However, the 22-year-old Barbados native wasn't afraid of showing of her best assets on stage, particularly when she had a minor wardrobe malfunction.

Rihanna spent the two days prior to her show touring Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, holding press conferences, and meeting some of her fans.

She said her time in Israel was an amazing, amazing experience, reports News.com.au.

Celebrity and World

Defence lawyers for former Liberian president Taylor, who is on trial for war crimes in an international court, filed papers opposing the prosecutions request to subpoena Campbell to force her to testify about allegedly receiving a handful of uncut stones from representatives of Taylor after meeting Taylor during a 1997 trip to South Africa.

Prosecutors have said that Taylor used uncut blood diamonds to buy weapons and fuel a bloody insurgency in Sierra Leone that cost thousands of lives.

According to the prosecution, a gift of such diamonds goes to the heart of their case, since they believe Taylor was in South Africa at the time to buy guns with diamonds.

However, Campbell has denied receiving diamonds and has refused to testify.

The prosecution wants to subpoena Campbell, and call as witnesses Carole White and actress Mia Farrow, who had earlier told the court she remembered Campbell telling her about receiving a gift of a huge diamond from Taylor's men.

Taylor has told the Special Court for Sierra Leone that he never gave Campbell any diamonds, calling the notion nonsense.

When asked if Taylor wants Campbell to testify, Taylors lawyer Terry Munyard refused.

No. We want relevant evidence only. This evidence is wholly irrelevant to the charges against him, ABC News quoted him as saying.

The whole application [for a subpoena] is misconceived as a matter of principle. No reasonable tribunal could possibly draw any useful inference about war crimes from this even if they were to find as a fact that our client had given a gift of a diamond to Ms. Campbell, he added.

Taylor is facing trial at the Special Court for Sierra Leone on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The trial, which is being held in the Netherlands, has been underway since 2006.

Celebrity and World

Tea Party-backed Kentucky Republican U.S. Senate nominee Rand Paul (right) isn't the only libertarian who's taken a dim view toward Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and other public accommodations. His father, Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) (left), is even more vehement in his opposition to Title II -- so much so that he was the only member of Congress who voted against a 2004 resolution celebrating the landmark law on its 40th anniversary. Meanwhile, in an interview on Russian television, Rand Paul called for stripping the American-born children of illegal immigrants of their U.S. citizenship -- despite the fact that the Constitution guarantees citizenship for all persons born in this country. (Photos courtesy House.gov and Politico.com)

(Posted 5:00 a.m. EDT Tuesday, June 1, 2010)

By SKEETER SANDERS

Like father, like son.

It turns out that Rand Paul, the Tea Party-backed Republican nominee for the Kentucky U.S. Senate seat now held by the retiring Republican Jim Bunning, isn't the only member of his family who has argued that Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act wrongfully interferes with the internal affairs of private businesses and property owners.

So does his father, Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas), who ran unsuccessfully for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination.

In fact, the elder Paul's opposition to Title II -- which outlaws discrimination in hotels, motels, restaurants, theaters, and all other public accommodations engaged in interstate commerce -- is so intense that he was the only member of Congress to vote against a 2004 congressional resolution honoring the landmark anti-discrimination law on the 40th anniversary of its passage.

Ron Paul stunned even his Republican colleagues when he delivered a speech on the House floor denouncing the Civil Rights Act, insisting that, contrary to the claims of its supporters, "the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not improve race relations or enhance freedom. Instead, the forced integration dictated by the [law] increased racial tensions while diminishing individual liberty."

Meanwhile, Rand Paul, who's maintained a low profile after igniting a firestorm of outrage on May 19 when he told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that he, too, opposed the law's ban on discrimination by private businesses, is in hot water again, this time for telling a Russian TV interviewer that the American-born children of illegal immigrants should be stripped of their U.S. citizenship.

The younger Paul -- whose comments on the Civil Rights Act were condemned as "absolutely appalling" on May 20 by House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-South Carolina), a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus and a veteran of the civil rights movement -- said that the U.S. is "the only country that I know that allows people to come in illegally, have a baby, and then that baby becomes a citizen. I think that should stop." Rand Paul made his assertions in spite of the fact that citizenship for all persons born in the U.S. is a right guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

RON PAUL DENOUNCES CIVIL RIGHTS ACT IN 2004 SPEECH ON HOUSE FLOOR. . .

It was on June 24, 2004 when the House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring the Civil Rights Act on the 40th anniversary of its passage. The vote was a nearly unanimous 414 to 1. Incredibly, Ron Paul was the only member of the House to have voted "no."

In his floor speech -- which is published in full in the June 23, 2004 edition of The Congressional Record -- the elder Paul said that the Civil Rights Act "gave the federal government unprecedented power over the hiring, employee relations, and customer service practices of every business in the country. The result was a massive violation of the rights of private property and contract, which are the bedrocks of free society."

Ron Paul asserted that under the landmark anti-discrimination law "bureaucrats began forcing employers to hire by racial quota. Racial quotas have not contributed to racial harmony or advanced the goal of a color-blind society. Instead, these quotas encouraged racial balkanization, and fostered racial strife."

The Texas congressman went on to say that "the federal government has no legitimate authority to infringe on the rights of private property owners to use their property as they please and to form -- or not form -- contracts with terms mutually agreeable to all parties."

He concluded his remarks by saying that, "While I join in sponsors of [this resolution] in promoting racial harmony and individual liberty, the fact is the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did not accomplish these goals. Instead, this law unconstitutionally expanded federal power, thus reducing liberty."

. . . AND AGAIN IN 2007 INTERVIEW ON 'MEET THE PRESS'

Shortly after declaring his candidacy for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination, the elder Paul made an appearance on the December 23, 2007 edition of NBC's "Meet the Press," during which, when pressed by then-host, the late Tim Russert, to clarify his remarks, insisted that Title II of the Civil Rights Act violated property rights.

"You're not compelled in your house to [invite] strangers you don't like," Paul said, referring to Title II's ban on discrimination in public accommodations. "So it's a property-rights issue. This idea that all private property is under the domain of the federal government I think is wrong."

When asked point-blank by Russert if he would vote against the Civil Rights Act today, the elder Paul replied, "Yes -- if it were written the same way, where the federal government has taken over property. It has nothing to do with race relations . . . It has to do with the Constitution and private property rights."

RON PAUL ALSO SAYS LINCOLN WRONG TO GO TO WAR TO END SLAVERY

When Russert confronted him with a 2006 Washington Post article that read, in part, that "According to [Paul], Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war; there were better ways of getting rid of slavery," the Texas congressman replied, "Six hundred thousand Americans died in a senseless civil war. No, [Lincoln] shouldn't have gone to war."

Russert interrupted Paul to say that "We'd still have slavery," to which he derisively answered, "Oh, come on, Tim! Slavery was phased out in every other country in the world and the way I'm advising is that it should have been done by doing what the British did -- You buy the slaves and then release them. How much would that cost compared to killing 600,000 Americans?

"Every other country in the world got rid of slavery without a civil war," the elder Paul continued. "That doesn't sound too radical to me. That sounds like a pretty reasonable approach."

In the wake of the elder Paul's public pronouncements on the Civil Rights Act and even on the Civil War to end slavery -- combined with racially inflammatory articles published in a series of early 1990s newsletters that bore his name -- is it any wonder that his 2008 presidential campaign drew support from avowed white supremacists, as The 'Skeeter Bites Report and other bloggers revealed in January of that year?

Is it also any wonder that, to this day, the 74-year-old Ron Paul has been steadfast in his refusal to either distance himself from the white supremacists who backed his 2008 campaign or to return their financial contributions? There are even reports that some of those same white supremacists who backed the elder Paul's run for the White House are now supporting his son's Senate candidacy.

RAND PAUL: ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS' AMERICAN-BORN KIDS SHOULD NOT BE CITIZENS

Meanwhile, the 47-year-old Rand Paul is in trouble yet again -- this time over controversial remarks made in a Russian TV interview. Appearing on the state-run, English-language Russia Today (RT) network shortly after winning the May 18 primary, the Kentucky Republican Senate candidate said that the American-born children of illegal immigrants should not automatically become U.S. citizens.

The younger Paul told RT's Dina Gusovsky that he believes that politics plays a big hand in the current immigration issue. "We shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship," he said. "A lot of this is about demographics. If you look at new [legal] immigrants from Mexico, they register [to vote by a] three to one [margin as] Democrat[s], so the Democrat Party is for easy citizenship and allowing them to vote.

"I think we need to re-address that," he said. He didn't specify how, but there is a bill pending in the House with 90 Republican co-sponsors that would deny automatic citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants.

The bill, however, would clearly violate the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which explicitly says that "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

Not surprisingly, Ron Paul also favors denying citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants. In his 2007 interview on "Meet the Press," the elder Paul shocked Russert when he called for a constitutional amendment to do so. "The Fourteenth Amendment wasn't in the original Constitution," he said, "There's a confusion on [its] interpretation.

"Individuals are supposed to have birthright citizenship if they're under the jurisdiction of the government," he continued. "Someone who illegally comes into this country -- say a drug dealer -- is he under [U.S.] jurisdiction and their [American-born] children deserves citizenship? I think that's awfully confusing, and I have a bill pending to change that, as well as a constitutional amendment to clarify that."

WHY ARE THE PAULS SO INTENT ON ALIENATING BLACKS, LATINOS?

So explicit is the language of the Fourteenth Amendment's Citizenship Clause that no attempt to deny citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants has ever succeeded in court. And a constitutional amendment to achieve that purpose would require two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of Congress for passage -- supermajorities which do not currently exist and are unlikely to exist even if Republicans took back control of Congress in November's midterm election.

A constitutional amendment would also have to be ratified by a three-fourths majority -- 38 -- of the 50 state legislatures before it can become part of "the supreme law of the land." Currently, the Democrats control a majority of 28 of the 50 statehouses. Chances for passage of such an amendment, therefore, is virtually nil.

Indeed, it would be politically suicidal in the long run for any politician to push for such measures. Already, Latinos are the fastest-growing voting bloc in the nation, especially in California and the Southwest. They're also the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population overall, according to the Census Bureau, with the Latino birth rate now outpacing that of whites for the first time in the nation's history.

Republicans in California already have been paying a severe political price with Latino voters -- who now make up 40 percent of the state's electorate -- in the 15 years since they successfully campaigned for Proposition 187, a 1994 ballot initiative designed to prohibit illegal immigrants from using the state's social services, health care, and public education, only to see it struck down by the federal courts as an illegal state intrusion into federal jurisdiction.

Next door in Arizona, a Latino voter backlash continues to grow against Arizona Republicans over the recent passage by the GOP-controlled legislature and signing into law by the state's Republican governor, Jan Brewer, of a measure to crack down on illegal immigrants in that state. Critics of the new law warn that it would lead to widespread discrimination against Latinos, including Mexican-Americans, who make up nearly a third of Arizona's population, according to the Census Bureau.

So why are Ron and Rand Paul -- who both swear they aren't racists -- nonetheless seemingly bent on alienating African Americans with their denunciations of the Civil Rights Act and on alienating Hispanic Americans with their calls to deny U.S. citizenship to the American-born children of illegal immigrants from south of the border?

And why has the elder Paul continued to turn a blind eye to the white supremacists who backed his 2008 presidential campaign -- some of whom are now reportedly supporting his son's Senate candidacy? Are the Pauls really that blind to the damage to racial and ethnic harmony that their positions -- and their controversial supporters -- are inflicting?

# # #

Copyright 2010, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon charged that the mission was simply an attempt to provoke the Israelis. That was certainly the case. The mission was designed to demonstrate that the Israelis were unreasonable and brutal. The hope was that Israel would be provoked to extreme action, further alienating Israel from the global community and possibly driving a wedge between Israel and the United States. The operations planners also hoped this would trigger a political crisis in Israel.

A logical Israeli response would have been avoiding falling into the provocation trap and suffering the political repercussions the Turkish NGO was trying to trigger. Instead, the Israelis decided to make a show of force. The Israelis appear to have reasoned that backing down would demonstrate weakness and encourage further flotillas to Gaza, unraveling the Israeli position vis--vis Hamas. In this thinking, a violent interception was a superior strategy to accommodation regardless of political consequences. Thus, the Israelis accepted the bait and were provoked.

In the 1950s, an author named Leon Uris published a book called Exodus. Later made into a major motion picture, Exodus told the story of a Zionist provocation against the British. In the wake of World War II, the British who controlled Palestine, as it was then known maintained limits on Jewish immigration there. Would-be immigrants captured trying to run the blockade were detained in camps in Cyprus. In the book and movie, Zionists planned a propaganda exercise involving a breakout of Jews mostly children from the camp, who would then board a ship renamed the Exodus. When the Royal Navy intercepted the ship, the passengers would mount a hunger strike. The goal was to portray the British as brutes finishing the work of the Nazis. The image of children potentially dying of hunger would force the British to permit the ship to go to Palestine, to reconsider British policy on immigration, and ultimately to decide to abandon Palestine and turn the matter over to the United Nations.

There was in fact a ship called Exodus, but the affair did not play out precisely as portrayed by Uris, who used an amalgam of incidents to display the propaganda war waged by the Jews. Those carrying out this war had two goals. The first was to create sympathy in Britain and throughout the world for Jews who, just a couple of years after German concentration camps, were now being held in British camps. Second, they sought to portray their struggle as being against the British. The British were portrayed as continuing Nazi policies toward the Jews in order to maintain their empire. The Jews were portrayed as anti-imperialists, fighting the British much as the Americans had.

It was a brilliant strategy. By focusing on Jewish victimhood and on the British, the Zionists defined the battle as being against the British, with the Arabs playing the role of people trying to create the second phase of the Holocaust. The British were portrayed as pro-Arab for economic and imperial reasons, indifferent at best to the survivors of the Holocaust. Rather than restraining the Arabs, the British were arming them. The goal was not to vilify the Arabs but to villify the British, and to position the Jews with other nationalist groups whether in India or Egypt rising against the British.

The precise truth or falsehood of this portrayal didnt particularly matter. For most of the world, the Palestine issue was poorly understood and not a matter of immediate concern. The Zionists intended to shape the perceptions of a global public with limited interest in or understanding of the issues, filling in the blanks with their own narrative. And they succeeded.

The success was rooted in a political reality. Where knowledge is limited, and the desire to learn the complex reality doesnt exist, public opinion can be shaped by whoever generates the most powerful symbols. And on a matter of only tangential interest, governments tend to follow their publics wishes, however they originate. There is little to be gained for governments in resisting public opinion and much to be gained by giving in. By shaping the battlefield of public perception, it is thus possible to get governments to change positions.

In this way, the Zionists ability to shape global public perceptions of what was happening in Palestine to demonize the British and turn the question of Palestine into a Jewish-British issue shaped the political decisions of a range of governments. It was not the truth or falsehood of the narrative that mattered. What mattered was the ability to identify the victim and victimizer such that global opinion caused both London and governments not directly involved in the issue to adopt political stances advantageous to the Zionists. It is in this context that we need to view the Turkish flotilla.

The Palestinians have long argued that they are the victims of Israel, an invention of British and American imperialism. Since 1967, they have focused not so much on the existence of the state of Israel (at least in messages geared toward the West) as on the oppression of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Since the split between Hamas and Fatah and the Gaza War, the focus has been on the plight of the citizens of Gaza, who have been portrayed as the dispossessed victims of Israeli violence.

The bid to shape global perceptions by portraying the Palestinians as victims of Israel was the first prong of a longtime two-part campaign. The second part of this campaign involved armed resistance against the Israelis. The way this resistance was carried out, from airplane hijackings to stone-throwing children to suicide bombers, interfered with the first part of the campaign, however. The Israelis could point to suicide bombings or the use of children against soldiers as symbols of Palestinian inhumanity. This in turn was used to justify conditions in Gaza. While the Palestinians had made significant inroads in placing Israel on the defensive in global public opinion, they thus consistently gave the Israelis the opportunity to turn the tables. And this is where the flotilla comes in.

The Turkish flotilla aimed to replicate the Exodus story or, more precisely, to define the global image of Israel in the same way the Zionists defined the image that they wanted to project. As with the Zionist portrayal of the situation in 1947, the Gaza situation is far more complicated than as portrayed by the Palestinians. The moral question is also far more ambiguous. But as in 1947, when the Zionist portrayal was not intended to be a scholarly analysis of the situation but a political weapon designed to define perceptions, the Turkish flotilla was not designed to carry out a moral inquest.

Instead, the flotilla was designed to achieve two ends. The first is to divide Israel and Western governments by shifting public opinion against Israel. The second is to create a political crisis inside Israel between those who feel that Israels increasing isolation over the Gaza issue is dangerous versus those who think any weakening of resolve is dangerous.

It is vital that the Israelis succeed in portraying the flotilla as an extremist plot. Whether extremist or not, the plot has generated an image of Israel quite damaging to Israeli political interests. Israel is increasingly isolated internationally, with heavy pressure on its relationship with Europe and the United States.

In all of these countries, politicians are extremely sensitive to public opinion. It is difficult to imagine circumstances under which public opinion will see Israel as the victim. The general response in the Western public is likely to be that the Israelis probably should have allowed the ships to go to Gaza and offload rather than to precipitate bloodshed. Israels enemies will fan these flames by arguing that the Israelis prefer bloodshed to reasonable accommodation. And as Western public opinion shifts against Israel, Western political leaders will track with this shift.

The incident also wrecks Israeli relations with Turkey, historically an Israeli ally in the Muslim world with longstanding military cooperation with Israel. The Turkish government undoubtedly has wanted to move away from this relationship, but it faced resistance within the Turkish military and among secularists. The new Israeli action makes a break with Israel easy, and indeed almost necessary for Ankara.

With roughly the population of Houston, Texas, Israel is just not large enough to withstand extended isolation, meaning this event has profound geopolitical implications.

Public opinion matters where issues are not of fundamental interest to a nation. Israel is not a fundamental interest to other nations. The ability to generate public antipathy to Israel can therefore reshape Israeli relations with countries critical to Israel. For example, a redefinition of U.S.-Israeli relations will have much less effect on the United States than on Israel. The Obama administration, already irritated by the Israelis, might now see a shift in U.S. public opinion that will open the way to a new U.S.-Israeli relationship disadvantageous to Israel.

The Israelis will argue that this is all unfair, as they were provoked. Like the British, they seem to think that the issue is whose logic is correct. But the issue actually is, whose logic will be heard? As with a tank battle or an airstrike, this sort of warfare has nothing to do with fairness. It has to do with controlling public perception and using that public perception to shape foreign policy around the world. In this case, the issue will be whether the deaths were necessary. The Israeli argument of provocation will have limited traction.

Internationally, there is little doubt that the incident will generate a firestorm. Certainly, Turkey will break cooperation with Israel. Opinion in Europe will likely harden. And public opinion in the United States by far the most important in the equation might shift to a plague-on-both-your-houses position.

While the international reaction is predictable, the interesting question is whether this evolution will cause a political crisis in Israel. Those in Israel who feel that international isolation is preferable to accommodation with the Palestinians are in control now. Many in the opposition see Israels isolation as a strategic threat. Economically and militarily, they argue, Israel cannot survive in isolation. The current regime will respond that there will be no isolation. The flotilla aimed to generate what the government has said would not happen.

The tougher Israel is, the more the flotillas narrative takes hold. As the Zionists knew in 1947 and the Palestinians are learning, controlling public opinion requires subtlety, a selective narrative and cynicism. As they also knew, losing the battle can be catastrophic. It cost Britain the Mandate and allowed Israel to survive. Israels enemies are now turning the tables. This maneuver was far more effective than suicide bombings or the Intifada in challenging Israels public perception and therefore its geopolitical position (though if the Palestinians return to some of their more distasteful tactics like suicide bombing, the Turkish strategy of portraying Israel as the instigator of violence will be undermined).

Israel is now in uncharted waters. It does not know how to respond. It is not clear that the Palestinians know how to take full advantage of the situation, either. But even so, this places the battle on a new field, far more fluid and uncontrollable than what went before. The next steps will involve calls for sanctions against Israel. The Israeli threats against Iran will be seen in a different context, and Israeli portrayal of Iran will hold less sway over the world.

And this will cause a political crisis in Israel. If this government survives, then Israel is locked into a course that gives it freedom of action but international isolation. If the government falls, then Israel enters a period of domestic uncertainty. In either case, the flotilla achieved its strategic mission. It got Israel to take violent action against it. In doing so, Israel ran into its own fist.

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"

Kozar Blog

Despite clear intelligence indicating that the boats were controlled by a militant crowd, the government sent Navy commandos rather than anti-terrorist units. The Marines have only basic training in friend-or-foe recognition during anti-terrorist operations. The governments choice of troops ensured indiscriminate deaths: 16 were killed, only two of whom had firearms.

The Israeli government put the Marines under stupid and dangerous orders to avoid shooting live ammunition. Only because of those criminal orders were the peaceniks able to snatch two shotguns from the Marines.

Only because of these criminal orders were the peaceniks able to attack the Marines with knives and pipes. Had the government not constrained the Marines from defending themselves, a few shots of live ammunition would have stopped the squabble immediatelyand caused no casualties.

The government made this confrontation possible by refusing to let the Navy ram the boats on sight. That waythe standard way, tried successfully in earlier encounters with peaceniksthe passengers would have been forced to abandon their boats, and the Navy could have picked them up from the sea safely.

The Israeli government is guilty of unnecessary interception of the boats, provoking the activists to fight by the well-known prohibition of the use of live ammo, andmost importantlyof endangering Jewish lives by enforcing unrealistic rules of engagement. Consequently, two Jewish Marines were severely wounded, and the government failed the halachic test of unresolved murder, We did everything in our power to ensure that he wouldnt be killed.

Many countries commonly kill illegal migrants at their borders, many more kill those who support their enemies. But Israel is assured of a wave of condemnations over the 16 dead Hamas supporters. Even Egypt, which thankfully kills scores of African migrants at our border, condemned Israel, and so will many other countries.

The country which makes a national sport of suing its PM over petty overbilling charges should pause and look for the real criminals in her government.

Samson Blinded

Hand tattoo. (Link)

Heart cancer tattoo designed by Leah Neuhauser. (Link)

This tattoo represents a nice chunk of skin removed to reveal the anatomy below. (Link)

Skeletal back tattoo. (Link)

Arm muscles tattoo. (Link)

Vein tattoo. (Link)

Brain tattoo. (Link)

Wrist anatomy tattoo illustrated by medical illustrator, Karen Bucher. (Link)

Chest muscle tattoo. (Link)
Kozar Cool Blog

In the past decade, even longer, the topic of anti aging has obtained a lot of awareness and is constantly being studied. Of course this topic is getting all of this attention, because everyone wants to look and feel younger. The aging process is something that cannot be stopped, but why cant the signs of it be reduced or even stopped? Many people have asked me about the secret to eternal youth. Well the solution to that is easy; it all has to do with your lifestyle, diet and exercise. Your diet is probably the most important because it will make you look and feel healthier and younger. Keeping up a healthy and well balanced diet, will make your skin more clear, fight illnesses, reduce wrinkles, and improve your bodys overall health. In recent years, a lot of research has been focused on the specific foods that contain the most anti aging properties.In the research findings, the foods with high anti oxidant content are responsible for eliminating free radicals, resulting in a more youthful you. Anti oxidants are key in the anti aging process. The antioxidants are very important and should also be accompanied with a healthy diet. This is a list of the top foods that promote anti aging.

Adjusting your diet to include the above foods along with light exercising and avoiding harmful routines such as smoking and excessive alcohol consumption will do wonders for your body and health. Consuming the right nutrients that promote anti aging is the ultimate solution. For myself, I enhance my diet with herbal supplements to boost my bodys ability to combat the signs of aging. There are thousands supplements to choose from and Ive tried many. I personally use a product called ResJuve because of its antioxidant content and its anti aging properties delivered through a substance known as resveratrol. More information on this can be found below in my recommendations.

Kozar Blog

The woman, whose name has not been released, alleges her husband, Faustino Utrera, abducted their then 3-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son and disappeared from their San Bernadino home, telling her she would never see her children again.

For 15 years, she didn't -- until recently, on a whim, she typed her daughter's name into the search field on Facebook. The woman was shocked to find her living in Central Florida. After "friending" the teen and messaging back and forth with her, the woman confirmed it was her long-lost daughter and contacted authorities.

"We did some additional investigation until we located Mr. Utrera and the children in Florida," San Bernadino District Attorney Kurt Rowley told Orlando's WESH-TV.

Utrera was arrested and custody of the couple's two children was turned over to the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). With their father jailed, the children will be returned to their mother. The family was reunited in Florida and will soon return together to California, but DCF staffer Carrie Hoeppner predicts it will be an adjustment for the children, who haven't known their mother since they were toddlers.

"There is no relationship there," Hoeppner told WESH-TV. "You don't have that immediate joyful reunification. If in fact that is what will progress, it will take time. These children will have to build a relationship, and that is something that will not happen overnight."

From - AOL

Vovkovinskiy was raised in the Ukraine, but moved to Minnesota when doctors at the Mayo Clinic attempted to remove the pituitary gland tumor that they believe is responsible for his great height. The new tallest man in America wears 24 10-E shoes, one size bigger than Bell's big boots. He lives in a house with cathedral-style ceilings, and sleeps in a 9-foot-long bed.

The story starts like this - the person who wanted to put the sign didn't know any Welsh, so he emailed the translator to translate -

"No entry for heavy goods vehicles. Residential site only"

He was surprised to get an instant reply to the sign which actually was his own email with the appended "out of office" message in Welsh which in English means -

"I am not in the office at the moment. Send any work to be translated"

Interestingly, he took the sentence as translated and painted it on the sign.

This is not the fist time that a wrong sign has been placed -

Other confusing signs

"We took it down as soon as we were made aware of it and a correct sign will be re-instated as soon as possible."

The blunder is not the only time Welsh has been translated incorrectly or put in the wrong place:

Cyclists between Cardiff and Penarth in 2006 were left confused by a bilingual road sign telling them they had problems with an "inflamed bladder".

In the same year, a sign for pedestrians in Cardiff reading 'Look Right' in English read 'Look Left' in Welsh.

In 2006, a shared-faith school in Wrexham removed a sign which translated the Welsh for staff as "wooden stave".

Football fans at a FA Cup tie between Oldham and Chasetown - two English teams - in 2005 were left scratching their heads after a Welsh-language hoarding was put up along the pitch. It should have gone to a match in Merthyr Tydfil.

People living near an Aberdeenshire building site in 2006 were mystified when a sign apologising for the inconvenience was written in Welsh as well as English.

Next time you send an email - email responsibly!

Mr. Makishimas achievement marked the first time a Japanese chef took the title, topping a field of 150 chefs in a Renzo Piano-designed mall-cum-leisure center within erupting distance of Mount Vesuvius, including representatives from Italy, Spain and the U.S.

Despite some huffing and puffing in the local press How Humiliating, The King of Pizza Is Japanese, moaned one site it was still, arguably, a very Italian win.

When it comes to Neapolitan pizza, a dish where loyalty to tradition is absolute and entertaining creative thoughts like fusion and deep pan are blasphemous, the only trace of Mr. Makishimas Japanese background is in his strenuous attention to minute detail, a strength to which he attributes his recent victory and the rise of Neapolitan cooking in Japan (the number of Japanese participating doubled to about 20 chefs in this years competition, now in its ninth year).

Japenese are known for their detail oriented attitude to work and it seems like it will yet again. So, it does prove - "its all in the details"!

Kudos to the winners! What next? Win the curry contest in India?

Since, Santos didn't score an outright majority, the election will go into the next stage with second round of polls on June 20.

His rival, Antanas Mockus of the Green Party, scored only 21% or 3.1 million votes which is far below than the opinion polls which had shown him as a tough competition. Despite the upset, he still hasn't given up.

The news of Santos going for a win is not a welcome news for neighbors Equador and Venezuela.

Profiles of the Candidates (from here and here)

JUAN MANUEL SANTOS

Juan Manuel Santos Caldern (born 10 August 1951) is a Colombian politician and former Minister of National Defense. He is a candidate in the 2010 Colombian presidential election.

He comes from an influential Colombian family. His great-uncle, Eduardo Santos, was president from 1938 to 1942 and owned the country's largest newspaper, El Tiempo. His cousin, Francisco Santos, is the current vice-president.

He served as defence minister under President Alvaro Uribe from 2006 until 2009. As such, he was instrumental in carrying out the president's "democratic security policy", aimed at increasing the presence of the security forces throughout the country and driving back Colombia's main left-wing rebel group, the Farc.

Many Colombians credit him with an increase in security, but others argue the victories he achieved came at too high a price.

He oversaw Operation Checkmate, the successful rescue by the military of 15 high-profile hostages, including the former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt.

Controversies

During his time as Colombian Defense Minister, several controversial events took place.

1. A military raid inside of Ecuador's territory to kill the FARC leader Raul Reyes. CNN news

2. Misuse of an International Committee of the Red Cross symbol during Operation Jaque. CNN News

3. On November 4, 2008, Santos admitted that the Colombian military had carried out extrajudicial executions and pledged to resolve the issue. Source El Espectador

These executions were labeled as 'false positives' referring to the fact that members of the military had purposely carried out these executions in order to artificially increase the number of guerrillas killed by the Army and claim rewards from the government.

In March 2010, Santos publicly stated that these executions had stopped since October 2008 and that this had been confirmed by the CINEP, one of Colombia's foremost human right defense institutions. Semana, a well respected Colombian journal, reported that a few days later the CINEP responded to Santos's declarations by issuing a press release which stated that, while the number of reported cases had been significantly reduced after the Defense Ministry's measures were announced, the period between November 2008 and December 2009 still saw 7 such executions and 2 arbitrary detentions

ANTANAS MOCKUS

Antanas Mockus, 58, is the presidential candidate for the Green Party.

"With education, everything is possible"

He is a mathematician whose parents emigrated to Colombia from Lithuania. Twice-mayor of Bogota and former rector of the National University, he is known for his commitment to education and his grass-roots approach to politics.

He is sometimes ridiculed for the stunts he uses to grab people's attention. He once mooned his students when they became too raucous and dressed up in a spandex suit as "Supercitizen" in an effort to convince Bogota residents to abide by traffic rules.

Asked on national radio what his biggest vice was, he replied "Coveting the wives of others". His answer shocked some conservative listeners, but was characteristic of what his supporters say is his direct and honest approach to politics.

He also disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, but stressed that it would not impair his ability to lead the country.

His focus on education appeals to many young voters who have played a big role in promoting his campaign through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. But some older voters say he lacks the toughness necessary to confront the criminal gangs which in many areas have taken over the drugs trade from dismantled paramilitary groups.

Mr Mockus says Colombians need to be convinced that drug-trafficking does more harm than good. He argues that a cultural change is needed before the war on drugs can be won.

Band leader Kevin Eubanks is no longer part of The Tonight Show. At 52 years old, Eubanks has been with Jay Leno when he came to NBC in 1992.

I dont think weve ever had an argument, Leno said, bidding Eubanks farewell on Fridays show. Weve had a lot of fun.

Eubanks joined Leno last fall for the short-lived The Jay Leno Show in prime time, then came back to Tonight when Leno reclaimed the show from Conan OBrien in March. OBrien left NBC rather than move Tonight to a later slot to make room for Leno in late night.

In April, Eubanks announced his plans to depart, but he insisted the recent turmoil had played no part in his decision. He said he was seeking a career change of pace.

Exiting with Eubanks will be the other five members of the Tonight Show Band. They include vocalist and percussionist Vicki Randle, keyboardist Gerry Etkins, bass guitarist Derrick Dock Murdock, saxophonist Ralph Moore and drummer Marvin Smitty Smith.

We have gone through all this together, said Eubanks, introducing and thanking them.

He will be replaced by former American Idol music director Rickey Minor, who arrives with his own troupe June 7.

Celeb Tea

We understand the pressure celebs go through to stay relevant or even break into Hollywood, but comparing fame to rape is way off base.

Twilight star, Kristen Stewart did exactly that. During a recent interview, the 20-year-old actress reportedly expressed her dislike for the paparazzi.

Its soThe photos are soI feel like Im looking at someone being raped. A lot of the time I cant handle it. I never expected that this would be my life, Stewart reportedly said.

Kristen added: What you dont see are the cameras shoved in my face and the bizarre intrusive questions being asked, or the people falling over themselves, screaming and taunting to get a reaction. All you see is an actor or a celebrity lit up but a flash.

The actress also made another interesting statement: Your little persona is made up of all the places that people have seen you and what has been said about you. And usually the places that I am are so overwhelming in the moment and fleeting for me like one second where Ive said something stupid, thats me, forever.

No offense Kristen, but no one forced you to become a movie star. But while you whine about the rigors of Hollywood, we see you dont complain about the money you make, or the places you get to go, or people you meet or the numerous vacations you take. Since you are 20 years old, we will let this one slide, but comparing fame to been raped is just downright stupid.

Celeb Tea

"As of the moment, we have reports of 73 people killed throughout the country, the majority from landslides," Guatemala's emergency management agency (Conred) chief David de Leon told AFP.

The Prensa Libre newspaper on its website gave an unofficial death toll of 80.

Guatemala had been under a state of emergency since Saturday, while Honduras declared a nationwide state of emergency Sunday.

Despite the weakening storm, El Salvador's President Mauricio Funes put his country under a state of emergency, due to high risk due to landslides.

Agatha represents the first tropical storm of the season starting with the letter "A" and with the agencies forecasting it to be a bad season for these storms, only time can tell the accuracy of the forecasts. Till then, let us hope that they are wrong and the season doesn't get bad for anyone!

Race Review

The race temperatures were hot as we got the first anti-clockwise race event of the year underway. There was little incident into the first corner, a surprise considering recent activity. Perhaps because Jarno Trulli was so far back this year, or maybe because of Giancarlo Fisichellas absence.

Drivers traded places through the first few turns with little or no overtaking moves sticking, most notable was Rubens Barrichello who went down to 20th place. Sebastien Buemi and Adrian Sutil had a slight coming together around turn 3, the Swiss driver had to pit immediately for emergency repairs but the Force India driver kept on going.

The first part of the race was relatively quiet, and somewhat boring in a similar fashion to the lacklustre Spanish Grand Prix a month ago. The Ferrari of Fernando Alonso pitted early onto the harder compounds, the under-peforming in qualifying Spanish driver was set in for a long run.

Lewis Hamilton, at this point in 2nd place thought the pitstops would give him an advantage, instead he didnt have a clean stop and ended up behind Vettels Red Bull, now 3rd place was all he could hope for as the Red Bulls held a theoretical 1st and 2nd. Only Button stayed out slightly longer, but the World Champion ended up in 4th after his stop behind his team mate.

Rain was predicted but never arrived, the drivers who were stuck behind Nico Rosberg would have been after that shower if only to move the mobile Mercedes chicane. Rosberg was lapping slower than Kovalainen and Alguersuari at one point, not catching his team mate Michael Schumacher who was having a quiet and consistent race in 5th. It hampered the chances of Kubica, Massa, Petrov and Alonso.

Unfortunately for the best new team Lotus, both of their cars retired on laps 33 and 34 thanks to hydraulic failure. It had been a positive weekend for the Norfolk/Malaysian based outfit who were within half a second of Scuderia Toro Rosso in practice.

Lap 40 was the exciting one however. On the back straight, the Red Bull of Sebastian Vettel slipstreamed team mate Mark Webber, the young German slotted his car down the inside but as they both hit the rev limiters in 7th gear, Vettels rear flew over Webbers car sending them both spinning off onto the run off area. Vettels arms flew out of the car with surprise, anger and shock he was to retire with a rear puncture. Webber narrowly avoided the spinning German and had to pit for emergency front wing repairs.

Hamilton and Button, who traded places in a beautiful turn 10 to turn 2 set of moves could hardly believe their luck. However with Hamilton ahead, it was revealed the cars were low on fuel due to the heat and the laps where they attempted to match Red Bull pace. The pairing would have to limp to the end of the race on an economy run.

Alonso and Petrov got ina tangle around turn 3, with Alonso grabbing 8th place while Petrov got a puncture for hitting the Spaniard. Kamui Kobayashi and Adrian Sutil traded places for 9th and 10th, the Japanese driver ending up with 10th place and a point at last!

Classified Results

Retirements

Post Race Interviews

L. Hamilton McLaren Mercedes (1st): Red Bull made it tough for us and we put up a good fight. You can see how close it is between the four of us. Its down to momentum, and we will do the best we can to win both championships. We have been ragging their tails for some time. Its such an achievement for us, to really be able to take the battle to them. They had one strength that was particularly good here, we had a strength here, and we didnt know how it would pan here. Me and Jenson were able to compete with them and push our hardest to be on their tails. To get our second 1-2 is fantastic.

J. Button McLaren Mercedes (2nd): The pace of our car was very good and it was great to be battling with the Red Bulls. So many times we have seen them disappear into the distance. I had a battle with Lewis at the end, added the Briton, who also made contact with his team-mate while battling for the lead. We were both told to save fuel but its always difficult to know how much and when Lewis got back past me I was told to keep saving and I think it got a bit critical towards the end.

M. Webber Red Bull Renault (3rd): Seb had good a top speed advantage and he went down the inside. We were side by side and then looks kike he turned pretty quickly to the right and we made contact. It definitely happened fast. Its a shame for the team, but not an ideal day. The McLarens were solid today. It was good race between all four of us up until then. Neither want to make contact but it can happen sometimes when both are in front. It is never ideal but it happened.

M. Schumacher Mercedes Benz (4th): My race started as I had hoped when I was able to catch Jenson right at the start. Unfortunately, I did not have a lot of grip with the tyres as the formation lap was quite slow and the pressures had gone down which, combined with the top speed of the McLarens, meant that I could not hold Jenson behind me for long. I was even struggling to keep the car on the track during the first lap. From there onwards, I was in my starting position and when Sebastian retired, we were able to pick up a place. That was about it. It was a straightforward race for me without any more possibilities.

F. Alonso Ferrari (8th): We have been a bit surprised, as both in Barcelona and here we were not too competitive. All race Felipe fought with Rosberg and I fought with Petrov, so we are at Renaults level, which is obviously not enough. We have an improvement for Canada and then for Valencia we have a bigger package. But we know McLaren and Red Bull are very far away, and we dont know if thats enough, so we have to work very hard.

K. Kobayashi Sauber Ferrari (10th): I am very happy that we finished the race with both cars and got the first point. In the end I could see from the car the canvas on the front right tyre. Therefore I started to be very careful, especially in turn 8, and thats also the reason why I didnt defend any harder against Adrian Sutil.

V. Petrov Renault (15th): Although Im disappointed to miss out on points today, I really enjoyed the race and the car felt really good. During the race I thought there was a chance of rain, which would have made things interesting, but in the end it was very light and didnt have a big impact on things. At the end of the race my tyres were really worn when I was fighting with Alonso.

S. Vettel Red Bull Renault (Ret): Obviously, I think if you look at the pictures it was clear I had the inside. I went on the inside, I was ahead and just going down to focus on the braking point and honestly, you can see we touched and he touched my right rear wheel and I went off. There is no fight. This is something that happens. We do not need it but there is nothing we can do now. Obviously I am not very happy, I was inside focusing on the braking point, we touched and that was it.

F1 Fanatics

That can only mean that Netanyahu abandoned any plans to strike Iran, and turned to the deterrence option.

The deterrence would be fake. In the small Persian Gulf, Iran would have no trouble locating and destroying Israeli submarine. Nuclear-armed cruise missiles deployable on the submarines are not very effective: they detonate at too low altitude. Iran has sufficient means, including TOR-1M and Chinese S-300 batteries, to intercept low-flying cruise missiles. Most importantly, ayatollahs might not mind exchanging Tehran for Tel Aviv in a series of nuclear explosions.

Samson Blinded

Former managers of pop star Ke$ha are trying to recoup some money after she broke her contract. Ke$ha, who had the No. 1 song in the country with TiK ToK earlier this year, signed up with ex-managers DAS Communications Inc.

When she was an up-and-comer in 2006. Their agreement called for her to pay the New York-based firm 20 percent of her music income, but it gave her the option of ending the relationship if DAS didnt get her a major-label record deal in a year, according to a copy of the contract attached to a lawsuit DAS filed Wednesday.

A year later, there was no deal. DAS says Ke$ha waived the deadline, and the firm went on to line up a deal for her with Warner Bros. Records in 2008 until Dr. Luke interfered with that arrangement and induced, intimidated and convinced Ke$ha to cut ties to DAS in September 2008.

She ultimately signed with RCA/Jive Label Group, which released her first album, Animal, in January. Dr. Luke co-produced it.

Ke$has lawyer are singing a different tune, they revealed on Friday that, she simply exercised her rights to fire the managers when they didnt perform.

Celeb Tea

Movie veteran Dennis Hopper has succumb to cancer as he passed today. The legendary actor died about 9 a.m. Saturday surrounded by family in his Los Angeles home.

Taken ill with flu-like symptoms last September, Hopper later said he was suffering with prostate cancer. Family members told PEOPLE that the disease had spread to other organs in his system.

The two-time Oscar nominee, who appeared in more than 100 films, last March got a star on Hollywoods Walk of Fame, saying he came to Hollywood from his native Kansas at 18, so that was my college.

Everything Ive learned, Ive learned from Hollywood, he said. This has been my home and my schooling.

RIP Dennis Hopper.

Celeb Tea

Early windshield wipers had only one speed, and this made them distracting and even dangerous in certain conditions. The intermittent windshield wiper solved this problem by letting drivers adjust the speed of their wiper blades, allowing for lag time and slower action when driving in light rain. American inventor Robert Kearns filed a patent for the intermittent wiper in 1964. He shopped his new invention around to the Big Three auto manufacturers, but he had no luck getting them to license it as a product. A few years later, though, a form of intermittent wiper nearly identical to Kearnss prototype began appearing as a standard feature on most of their cars. Kearns sued Ford for patent infringement in 1978, and took Chrysler to court four years later. The companies argued that the intermittent wiper was obvious and had no new components, and therefore didnt meet the standards of being a novel, patentable invention. Kearns disagreed, and would eventually spend nearly 15 years and over $10 million in legal fees in his fight to be compensated.

Who Deserves the Credit?

According to the American court system, Kearns deserves the credit for inventing the intermittent wiper. He settled out of court with Ford for $10 million in the early 90s. Meanwhile, the Chrysler case became a high profile lawsuit, which Kearns won in 1995 to the tune of $30 million in overdue compensation. Kearns died in 2005, but his fight with the big auto manufacturers remains one of the most famous patent infringement cases in U.S. history, and his story was even made into a movie called Flash of Genius in 2008.

Peary at the North Pole

The first person to make a claim on having reached the North Pole was the American adventurer Frederick Albert Cook, who in 1909 said hed made the journey with two Inuit companions in April of 1908. According to Cook, harsh weather conditions had made a return too dangerous, and he had been forced to spend the winter in the Arctic. But Cook was able to produce little proof of his accomplishment, and he was immediately regarded by some as a fraud. Perhaps his harshest critic was the explorer and Naval engineer Robert Peary, who surfaced only five days later with the claim that he had just returned from a successful polar expedition in April of 1909. Peary was a master of working the media, and he and his supporters soon began questioning Cooks claim. The argument turned personal after both men sold their expedition stories to rival newspapers, and what followed was muckraking on an epic scale. Peary and company began researching all of Cooks previous accomplishmentsincluding a summit of Mt. McKinley a few years priorand they even questioned his sanity. Cook eventually left the country, an act that was seen by many as an admission of guilt, and the National Geographic Society subsequently awarded Peary the credit for being the first to reach the North Pole.

Who Deserves the Credit?

As it so happens, most of Pearys charges against Cook were largely justified. There is no historical evidence that Cook made it to the Pole, and today most historians have cast his claim aside. Whats surprising, though, is that the same can be said of Peary. Modern researchers have found countless holes in his storychief among them that his party contained no navigator skilled enough to lead them to the Poleand all attempted recreations of his journey have found many of his claims about how fast he progressed to be completely baseless. There have been many other claims since then, but amazingly no one was able to indisputably reach the Pole via an overland route until 1968, when a group led by Ralph Plaisted made the journey on snow mobiles.

In the early 18th century, calculus was at the center of a years-long controversy that raged between two of the worlds most famous mathematicians: Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz. Both men had been experimenting with the new branch of mathematics for much of the late 1600s. Leibniz was the first to publish an official paper on the subject in 1684 (Newton would take until 1693), but friends and associates of Newton were quick to point out that Newtons notebooks made reference to calculus as far back as 1666. Moreover, they argued that Leibniz was privy to Newtons early work, and some even accused him of plagiarism. Leibniz and his supporters argued that his calculus discovery came independently of any of Newtons work. Despite these protests, the majority opinion was always on the side of Newton. At best, Leibniz was credited with having invented an alternate (albeit superior, in many ways) form of notation for Newtons discovery.

Who Deserves the Credit?

A 1713 review by the Royal Society found Newton to be in the right, and he was widely regarded as the inventor of calculus for the next 100 years. Today, though, it is widely believed that both men contributed different pieces of the puzzle independently of one another. Newton is regarded as the founder of infinitesimal calculus, while Leibniz is considered the father of integral and differential calculus.

The planet Neptune was first observed in the early seventeenth century by Galileo, who hypothesized that it might be a star. But it was not until the 1800s that a serious search for it began, after scientists noticed that Uranuss orbit seemed to be affected by an outside gravitational force. The British mathematician John Couch Adams was the first to hypothesize that this object might be a new planet, and in 1843 he made the first calculations of its possible orbit and size. A couple years later, the French astronomer Urbain Le Verrier undertook the same investigation independently of Adams and came up with similar calculations. Both men had trouble getting their colleagues interested in the search, so Le Verrier wrote a letter to an observatory in Berlin asking them to use their telescope to search the skies for his hypothetical planet. Le Verriers letter arrived on September 23, 1846, and using his calculations, a student at the observatory discovered Neptune that very same night. Almost immediately, there was a controversy over whoAdams or Le Verriercould claim the discovery as his own. The rivalry eventually took on nationalistic overtones, with both the French and the British claiming their scientist was responsible for finding Neptune.

Who Deserves the Credit?

After some squabbling between rival groups, it was decided that Adams and Le Verrier would share the credit for discovering Neptune. But despite this consensus, all evidence points to Le Verrier as the more deserving of the two. Not only did he encourage the search that found the planet, but it was also his calculations that made it possible, as they were within one degree of the planets actual location. Adams, meanwhile, was as many as 12 degrees off course.

Who invented a particular technology often varies depending on where you are in the world, and the movie camera is a perfect example. In the U.S., as with many inventions, the credit has always gone to Thomas Edison, who first made moving pictures in the early 1890s. In the U.K., the honor goes to William Friese-Greene, who issued one of the earliest camera patents in 1889. In France, the fathers of the cinema are considered to be Louis and Auguste Lumiere, who invented the cinematographe and first began shooting and exhibiting films in 1895. Looming over them all is Louis Le Prince, a largely forgotten Frenchman who designed a motion picture camera and projection system in 1888 before disappearing without a trace. Just who deserves the most credit among these inventors has always been a subject of contention. Patent controversies abound, especially in the case of Le Prince, who was denied a patent on a single lens camera in the U.S., only for Edison to be given a remarkably similar patent a few years later. In addition, there is still a debate about what really constitutes a moving picture camera. Modern movies run at 24 frames per second, but most of these proto-films were lucky to achieve a rate half that fast. This has frequently been a source of criticism against Friese-Greene, whose camera only ran at ten frames per second, which is such a low rate that some have argued it doesnt even qualify.

Who Deserves the Credit?

Louis Le Princes mysterious disappearance meant that he wasnt able to exhibit his invention as much as the others, so he never built the same reputation as people like Edison or the Lumieres. Still, as more information is uncovered, it seems that film historians are continually moving towards Le Prince as the true inventor of the film camera. His patent from 1888 was the first of all these inventors. Meanwhile, the worlds oldest surviving film, the two-second Roundhay Garden Scene, was shot with his camera. Theres little doubt that the other inventors deserve some credit, especially the brothers Lumiere, who were pioneers in perfecting modern film projection systems. But when talking about who really invented the first film camera, the evidence points to Louis Le Prince.

There were a number of scientists who played crucial roles in the race to first transmit and receive radio signals, but the main invention controversy has always centered on the famed Serbian-Croatian inventor Nikola Tesla and the Italian Guglielmo Marconi. As early as 1891, Tesla was giving speeches on the possible practical uses of radio waves in mass communication, and he was even said to have demonstrated a wireless system in 1893. But Tesla, always hampered by a poor business sense, failed to capitalize on radio as a marketable tool, and though he claimed to have made 50-mile radio transmissions as early as 1895, none were ever verified. Marconi, meanwhile, applied for a patent on a radio system as early as 1896. In 1897, he formed his own wireless company and became the first man to commercialize radio. He was also the first to make a transatlantic radio transmission in 1901, though this claim has been disputed. Whats more, Marconi is believed to have based most of his radio designs on ideas that had already been widely described by Tesla and another inventor named Oliver Lodge. Tesla was the first of the two to receive a patent for his radio transmitter, but this was later overturned in a controversial decision and given to Marconi. Over 40 years later, this decision was itself overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court after countless legal challenges. Tesla had died only months earlier.

Who Deserves the Credit?

To give sole credit to either of these men is a grand generalization, but of the two, Tesla certainly seems the more important figure. Theres no argument that Marconi was the more business savvy of the two inventors, and his practical implementation of radio definitely makes him a major player in its creation. But it was Tesla who was most responsible for the ideas and the technical expertise that truly made radio transmission possible, and if anyone deserves the title of the father of radio, its him.

Sometimes the controversy isnt just over who invented a certain technology, but over what it was they invented. Such is the case with the so-called first flying machine, the exact definition of which has never been agreed upon. Some would charge that any craft that got airborne should be considered a flying machine, including hot air balloons and airships. On this basis, the true father of flight would be Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier, who became the first person to make a manned balloon flight in 1783. Others argue that a true flying machine must be heavier than air, which would disqualify balloons. By these terms, the honor would probably go to Englands George Cayley, who first flew a glider in 1853. Still, the most common definition of an actual flying machine is any manned aircraft that is powered and controlled by onboard mechanics, in which case Orville and Wilbur Wright are usually given the credit for their 1903 flight in North Carolina. But even then there is room for debate. Germanys Karl Jatho and Gustave Whitehead and New Zealands Richard Pearse each made their own manned flights in the early 1900s, all before the Wright brothers.

Who Deserves the Credit?

According to the modern definition of a flying machine, it would seem that the Wright brothers are correctly considered to be flights true pioneers. They might not have been first in flight, as North Carolina license plates like to proclaim, but they did perfect a lot of the technology that is still used in aviation today. What ultimately sets them apart from the others is how controlled and prolonged their flights were. Richard Pearse got airborne before the Wright Brothers, but his plane crashed into a hedge. Meanwhile, Jathos plane only got ten feet off the ground, and Whiteheads claims, while interesting, are largely unsubstantiated. If anyone deserves to share some of the honor with the Wrights it is the British glider pilot Cayley, who discovered many key aviation forces like drag and thrust, and who has often been called the unsung father of aviation.

French scientist Luc Montagnier and Robert Gallo

In the early 80s, AIDS was already recognized as a serious epidemic, and research teams were soon formed to try and isolate the particular virus that caused it. Of these, two groupsone led by the French scientist Luc Montagnier and the other by the American Robert Gallonearly simultaneously published papers in 1983-4 describing the virus we now know as HIV. A controversy soon erupted in the scientific community over which group had more of a claim to the discovery. Montagniers group had published first, but Gallos description was more detailed and specifically linked the virus to AIDS. The fervor over ownership of the discovery centered on more than just prestige, since the country responsible would be able to claim the patent for an AIDS test. Soon, both the French and American governments were involved in what was often a bitter dispute. There were even cries of foul play, as Gallo and company were charged and later cleared of having misappropriated a sample of the virus they received from Montagniers institute.

Who Deserves the Credit?

Today, its widely agreed that both parties made major contributions to the discovery of HIV. Montagniers group published first, and as such they are commonly regarded as having first isolated the virus, but Gallo is credited with developing a great deal of the research and technology that linked it to AIDS. The two scientists themselves are now on amicable terms, and theyve frequently worked together over the years. Still, this hasnt stopped awards committees from picking favorites: in 2008, only Montagnier was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in the discovery of HIV, an honor which even he noted should have been shared with Gallo.

Americas Thomas Edison is popularly regarded as the pioneer of the incandescent light bulb, but the list of other possible contenders is long and goes back more than 70 years before his 1879 patent. The British inventor Humphry Davy is said to have created a crude electric light in 1802, and by 1840 inventors like Warren De la Rue were already using vacuum tubes and experimenting with different types of filaments. Just who of these early pioneers deserves to be called the father of the light bulb has always been hard to say. From 1840-1880, patents were filed for a number of different prototypes. Of these the most famous undoubtedly belong to Edison and Englands Joseph Wilson Swann, who first began researching the light bulb in the 1870s. Swann caused in stir in 1878, after his light bulb prototype was demonstrated in Newcastle, and he holds the honor of owning the first house to ever be illuminated with electric lights. Edison, meanwhile, didnt even begin to address the issue of inventing a light bulb until 1878, but when he did, he had soon made major breakthroughs. Chief among them was his discovery of a longer lasting filament, first made from carbon and later from carbonized bamboo. It was only then that light bulbs went from lasting mere hours to days and even months.

Who Deserves the Credit?

Edisons discoveries undoubtedly led to more modern and efficient light bulbs, but to list him as their sole inventor is a vast overstatement. Even his own patents describe his invention as merely an improvement in electric lights. His was the first reliable light bulb, but when talking about who invented the first light bulb, the credit must go to Englands Warren de la Rue, who was the first to run electricity through filament in a vacuum sealed tube, a feat he accomplished some 38 years before Edison in 1840.

Your elementary school teacher might have told you that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone in 1876, but the true story is much more complicated, and stands as the most famous of all these controversies. There are a number of inventors involved in the mix, among them the Italian Innocenzo Manzetti, who some say might have built a prototype phone in the 1860s, and Johann Philipp Reis, who made an early microphone that could transmit sound called the Reis Telephone in 1861. But the main competition has always been between Scotlands Bell, an Italian inventor named Antonio Meucci, and the American Elisha Gray. Meucci invented a communication device in the 1850s, and his 1871 patent is one of the earliest for any kind of voice transmitter. The real controversy, though, has always been between Bell and Gray, both of whom filed patents for a telephone on the exact same day in 1876. Critics of Bell often cast him as a shrewd businessman (which he undoubtedly was) who stole several of Grays ideas, and it has even been argued that Bell bribed a patent office employee and added in several key parts to his inventions days after he first filed it. These claims were partly vindicated in the 1880s, when a patent officer testified in court that Bell had paid him in order to look at Grays plans.

Who Deserves the Credit?

Today, popular opinion on who really invented the telephone depends on where and who you ask. In the U.S., its either Gray or Bell; in Italy, its Meucci. The controversy eventually led to lawsuits, and it was still being argued as recently as 2002, when the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing the contributions of Meucci in the invention of the telephonea resolution which was countered only days later when the Canadian government officially recognized Bell. In the end, this is yet another case where several inventors deserve partial credit. Bell was the savvy businessman who was able to perfect and market what would become a world-changing invention, but theres little doubt that Gray and Meucci both deserve to be recognized with him as the real inventors of the telephone.

Kozar Cool Blog

Whether or not you agree with Chris and think it's a Bad Bad Film, or you agree with johnny thunder in that it's an action masterpiece by the brilliant writer/director Sly Stallone, it's irrelevant at this point because let's face it, we are men and we like explosions and we like action! The Expendables is going to be an explosive action-fest of pure carnage starring all of our favorite action heroes from the last 2 decades of film.

If you're in the dark about The Expendables and need a refresher, you can check out the first trailer here and read about the film's synopsis here. Check out the brand new TV Spot that was released yesterday that gives us a little more details about the film and a way better soundtrack: "The Boys Are Back in Town" by Thin Lizzy. And the image above is the brand new banner that was released that shows all of the actors we've come to know and love to see beat people up. Enjoy.

Truth on Cinema

The actors will be shooting the final scenes of the eighth and last film in London next week.

Actress Emma Watson, 20, said she would like to hold a dinner party for cast and crew, while actor Daniel Radcliffe, 20, said a big shindig is the way to celebrate its end.

Well have a huge party. Its the perfect way to end it all, the Sun quoted him as saying.

Celebrity and World

James, 41, revealed on ABCs Nightline that a string of abuses by his father, Larry James, instilled a lack of self-worth in him.

He beat my ass pretty good a bunch of times. I just remember, like, clinched teeth, strained-neck look on his face, the New York Daily News quoted James as saying in the highly publicized sitdown.

My whole childhood, I never had a chance to be a kid. I was always scared.

I cheated because, you know, Ive basically never felt good enough for anyone, he added.

In the wake of James claims, his family has issued statements regarding the alleged abuse.

According to TMZ.com, James sister, Julie, supported her brothers story in an interview in which she claims that the elder James was very abusive to their mother.

Julie said their father forced a young Jesse to retrieve a ball from a neighbours yard one night an incident that led to him breaking his arm as he tried to climb a fence at his fathers insistence.

But James estranged father has however, denied his sons allegations in an interview with RadarOnline.com.

I never even remember spanking my kids. He was the apple of my eye, he told the site.

Celebrity and World

Watch it:

Originally on SNAFU-ed

In the preview of their show, Kourtney and Khloe Take Miami, E! brought us an inside look into the sisters bickering and believe me folks they really get into it. Cameras captured them during a photo shoot for their store, DASH. Apparently Khloe wasnt giving the photographer what he wanted and Kourtney wasnt going to have it. When she expressed her anger towards Khloe, the latter got pissed.

Oh I forgot youre such a mom. Youre so perfect now, youve never been drunk. You used to be the party queen of life, so shut the f*ck up, you hypocrite, Khloe said.

The war of words got so bad that the photographer had to stop to check and make sure the sister were fine and wouldnt start throwing bows.

Check out the video.

Celeb Tea

It is unfortunate but child star Gary Coleman is no-longer with us. Coleman died of a brain hemorrhage at a Provo, Utah hospital, Friday afternoon, according to a hospital spokeswoman. The actor fell ill at his Santaquin, Utah, home Wednesday evening and was rushed by ambulance to a hospital, Colemans spokesman had said in a statement earlier Friday.

He was then taken to another hospital Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo later Wednesday night. All day, the message was Gary was on life support, and chances of him making it out of the hospital were slim.

At 42 Coleman has lived a strenous life. Suing his parents for funds mismagament in 1993 or the numerous headlines that followed him. Headlines like, Gary Coleman cited for disorderly conduct (2007), Gary Coleman in alleged bowling alley scuffle (2008), Gary Coleman charged with reckless driving (2008), Gary Coleman hospitalized for another seizure (2010).

Hopefully now Gary, you can find peace. And in remembering you, we utter the words, what you taking about Willis.

RIP Gary Coleman.

Celeb Tea

Wait a minute! you might be thinking, I dont remember having 4 different dreams in one night, and I certainly dont remember having over 1,000 dreams this year. The fact of the matter is, you forget between 95% to 99% of all the dreams you have. That may seem kind of high, but most of your dreams dont really interest you enough to make you want to remember them.

Dreams are commonplace and dont require enough concentration to force you to remember them. In that sense, they are similar to other routine actions you do throughout the day like driving or tying your shoes. You dont remember most of the time you do those things either.

Kozar Cool Blog

The Titanic star has teamed with the World Wildlife Fund to launch Save Tigers Now.

The aim of the organization is to raise 13 million pounds for the cause.

DiCaprio is presently in Asia learning about decreasing tiger population.

Tigers are endangered and critical to some of the worlds most important ecosystems. Key conservation efforts can save the tiger species from extinction, protect some of the planets last wild habitats and help sustain the local communities surrounding them, the Daily Express quoted him, as saying.

The organization hopes to double the population of tigers by 2022.

Celebrity and World

Lindsay has been ordered to wear the alcohol-monitoring device and submit to random weekly drug testing until her next court date.

According to People.com, LiLo was spotted at Los Angeles hotspot Las Palmas.

She reportedly kept away from alcohol but chain-smoked and danced with friends, reports New York Daily News.

Red Bull and Waters and Work my new bff's. Everyone should try it! Its more fun you'll see, Lohan tweeted.

Celebrity and World

They get square watermelons by growing them inside of square glass cases. That way they can fit easily into a refrigerator, and you can stack things on them. Square watermelons are expensive though (10,000 yen or about $82). Compare that to regular round watermelons which cost about $15-20 in Japan.

Kozar Cool Blog

Well, the Palestinians have a right to resist what they see as occupationand indeed, what the Israeli government and media call occupation.

The economic effect of a boycott would be negligible. If the Israeli government had really wanted to press the PA to stop the boycott, it could have done so easily: just cancel permits for all those Palestinians who work in the settlements.

Samson Blinded

A horde of frogs caused the closure of one of Greece's major highways near the city of Thessaloniki. The city's traffic police chief said that the "millions" of frogs were likely looking for food. Three accidents resulted, as drivers attempted to dodge the tiny amphibians. "There was a carpet of frogs," he said.

It is a well known fact that when frogs flood an area then there is a major earthquake on the way, at least that is what history shows us. Last year in Italy frogs started to gather days before a major earthquake hit Italy and killed almost 300 people. In 2008 frogs also predicted a major earthquake when they moved in the millions, a few days later parts of China experienced a massive earthquake that killed more than 10 000 people.

Studies found that frogs do indeed "predict" earthquakes. In 2009 when the earthquake hit Italy. Scientists in UK studied the frogs in the area just before the earthquake hit and found that the toads fled to places of safety where they wont be washed away by floods or be injured by falling trees and other dangers.

So does this mean a earthquake is about to hit Greece? Turkey being a close neighbor is worried about being affected as well, if an earthquake is to occur. Let us hope no such natural disaster occurs.

Ah, the young and the naked. I must say, Hayley Williams of Paramore has some nice breasts. Its unfortunate that there is only one such picture, but I guess its better than nothing.

This picture was originally posted to Hayley Williams' Twitter profile, but she denies posting it. She claims that a hacker got on her machine and posted it via her account. Somehow, I doubt it. If I had to guess, I would say that drugs were involved and she thought it a good idea at the time. Regardless, I think its a good idea, any way it came about.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Gemma Arterton, Ben Kingsley
Director: Mike Newell

Sex and the City 2 (2010)
Starring: Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall, Kristin Davis, Cynthia Nixon
Director: Michael Patrick King

Agora (2010)
Starring: Rachel Weisz, Max Minghella, Oscar Isaac, Michael Lonsdale
Director: Alejandro Amenbar

Mademoiselle Chambon (2010)
Starring: Sandrine Kiberlain, Vincent Lindon, Aure Atika
Director: Stephane Brize

Micmacs (2010)
Starring: Dany Boon, Andr Dussollier, Nicolas Marie, Jean-Pierre Marielle, Julie Ferrier, Omar Sy, Dominique Pinon, Yolande Moreau
Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Picasso and Braque Go to the Movies (2010)
Starring: Julian Schnabel, Martin Scorsese
Director: Arne Glimcher

Survival of the Dead (2009)
Starring: Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh, Kathleen Munroe, Devon Bostick, Richard Fitzpatrick
Director: George A. Romero

Reviews are appreciated. Add a mizozo for a review.

Bride Kidnappings
Practiced in: The Roma communities (all over the world)

Most unions can trace their beginnings to that one special night at a frat kegger when the couple first met their gaze in a crowded room and forever cemented their fate by a quicky in the backseat and a broken condom. Some cultures however decided to skip all this romantic crap and go from the total strangers phase straight to marriage in one messed-up leap of criminal activity: kidnapping the bride.

The Romani, also known as Gypsies, for centuries have had this tradition, that if you manage to forcefully kidnap a girl and keep her by your side for 2-3 days, she officially becomes your wife. Long ago this probably made a lot sense, as it helped you avoid buying the bride off the parents or having Thanksgiving dinner with them every year. But even in this day and age its not viewed as anything strange in the Roma culture, and many women simply go with the fact that the overweight guy, who cornered them with a bottle of chloroform at a McDonalds ladys bathroom, is now the love of their life.

Some of you are probably wondering, how in the f**k is this legal? Well, its a cultural practice of a large ethnic minority and most governments would rather start flossing with razor wire than to commit the PR equivalent of suicide by banning a minority tradition.

Other parts of the world -

Bride kidnapping, also known as marriage by abduction or marriage by capture, is a practice throughout history and around the world in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry. Bride kidnapping still occurs in countries spanning Central Asia, the Caucasus region, and parts of Africa, and among peoples as diverse as the Hmong in southeast Asia, the Tzeltal in Mexico, and the Romani in Europe. Some versions of it may also be seen as falling along the continuum between forced marriage and arranged marriage. However, even when the practice is against the law, judicial enforcement remains lax, particularly in Kyrgyzstan, and Chechnya.

Marrying animals to exorcise ghosts
Practiced in: some regions of India

The Western culture is no stranger to superstition, especially during a wedding. Most brides would sooner set fire to the church and postpone the ceremony than to get married without something old, new, borrowed and blue. And dont even think about trying to catch a glimpse of your wife-to-be before the nuptials or thats 3 stitches to the temple right there on the spot.

But the Santhal tribe in India decided to one-up us all and cranked the wedding-crazy dial all the way up to 11. They believe that if a baby girl has a tooth rooted to her upper gum, its the obvious sign she will be eaten by a tiger or something in the near future, because ghosts hate her. Therefore, she must marry a dog. Such was the story of Karnamoni Handsa, a 9-year-old Indian girl who married the local stray Bacchan amidst the dancing and cheers of her 100 guests getting shitfaced on home-made booze. Huh Somehow the presence of moonshine in a cross-species wedding is not surprising in the least

The good news is, this is nothing but a mock ceremony and the couple dont have to consummate the wedding. Its just to ward off the evil spirits so the girl can marry a real boy some time later. Thank God, otherwise this exorcism ritual between a child and a canine would have been really weird.

Blackening of the bride
Practiced in: Scotland

In many ways the Scottish people are just like your typical Europeans but with a few notable quirks: they eat sheep entrails, wear male-skirts and instead of rice, they throw stinking crud like eggs and sauces on their brides.


This custom is called the blackening of the bride, a very old Scottish tradition; some say even older than Sean Connery himself. Its part of a hazing ritual that actually happens before the wedding. The bride is taken by surprise, by hands down the crummiest friends you could have, and covered from head to toe with all kinds of crap. It can be anything: spoiled milk from the back of your fridge right down to tar and feathers. It serves 2 possible purposes. Either it gets the men in the proper mood, (assuming all Scots have a fetish of homeless chicks who never bathe), or it helps the women deal with the prospect of marriage, because nothing that will happen to them from that point on will be as cruel or humiliating as the blackening.

Its sort of like punching your bride right before saying I do. No amount of douchebaggery you pull off later in life will ever amount to that, so your lady will at least not be disappointed or, at best, pleasantly surprised. Man, the Scots have this marriage thing figured out.



Fat Farms
Practiced in: Mauritania (Africa)

There are different standards of beauty in every part of the world. For example, despite the majority of Western brides stopping short of having their kidneys removed to lose weight before the big day, some cultures actually find huskier women more attractive. and are prepared to go to disturbing lengths to put more junk in their womens trunks. Enter the Mauritanian Fat Farms.


Fat Farms are sort of the opposite of Fat Camps a place where brides as young as five are sent to gain weight under the watchful eyes of wrinkled old crones, in order to become more attractive and get married as soon as possible. In the practice known as Leblouh, the girls are force fed a truckload of foodwhich might include more than 4 pounds of millet and 5 gallons of camel milk a dayand if they vomit, the supervising hags force them to eat it up. Failure to comply is reportedly often met with torture. So OK, maybe those places are not that different from Fat Camps.

The sad part is, this practice has virtually disappeared until a couple of years ago when a military junta took over the country and reinstated it, probably hoping that fatter women will be easier to catch or something. Not like anyone would sleep with them otherwise, being a bunch of civilian-terrorizing assholes with grenade launchers.



No shitting for 72 hours
Practiced in: parts of Malaysia

There is nothing more beautiful than a wedding. It is after all the couples first day as two happily married people, surrounded by friends, flowers and fancy foods. But for the tribes of the Tidong community in northern Borneo, a wedding is the first day of a grueling journey to the deepest levels of Hell and back. Its the day when the couple must stop pooping for 72 hours.

The Tidong tradition dictates that a newly married couple be confined to their house and not empty their bowels or urinate under any possible circumstances for the entirety of 3 nights and 3 days. Thats why they are often carefully watched over by family members and given very little food or water. The Tidong people believe that if the couple makes it, they will lead a happy and long life with lots of non-dead children, so the stakes are pretty high here.

When you think about it, there is a spark of genius in this practice. Nothing binds 2 people for life like going through difficult times together, and there is nothing more difficult than being denied to go to the bathroom for nearly half a week. When the 3 days are up, these people will be closer to each other than ever before, because they will no longer be just husband and wife They will be poop buddies.

For a beautiful happily ever after -

Inspired from weird worm

1. Eating too much fruit will lead to blood sugar problems

If you are eating healthy food, you must be eating some fruits too. Many people believe that since these fruits contain natural sugars, they will instantly have blood sugar problems. They feel that if they eat too much fruit, they will get a sugar rush that will subside soon, leaving them empty. This is not true. Fact is that if your blood sugar is high, it has nothing to do with the fruit.

2. Fruit can lead to Candida

Many people believe that if they eat too many mangoes, bananas or apple, they will get Candida. They self-diagnose themselves and panic to no extent. Fact is that this is not true and if they do not believe it, they should visit a doctor.

3. Carrots will improve your eyesight

Many people who have thick glasses and those who find it difficult to even recognize themselves in the mirror without their contacts start nibbling on carrots day in and day out with the hope that it will improve their eyesight. However, while carrots are definitely good for you as they are healthy, they will not change your eyesight. Therefore, keep those glasses on and stop overdosing on the carrots.

4. Eating too many bananas will lead to an overdose of potassium

While too much of supplemental potassium will definitely cause problems, natural potassium is completely safe. Even though bananas contain about 1,200 mg of this element, you do not need to worry.

5. Fruit can lead to the development of cancerous cells in the body

This myth is completely untrue. In fact, the more fruit you eat, the more you will keep cancer at bay. Therefore, those patients who have cancer should munch on a whole of fruits through the day instead of avoiding it. People believe that since cancer cells expand after feeding on sugar, fruits are dangerous. However, this is simply not true.

6. Frozen fruits and vegetables are not as nutritious as fresh ones

Many people believe that the fruits they purchase from the grocery store are much safer than those that are canned. However, this is not true because who knows how long these fruits and vegetables have been sitting around? Even though fresh fruits may taste better than frozen ones, there is absolutely no difference in their nutrition value.

7. When choosing between butter and margarine, always go the latter

People try to avoid butter because they feel that by consuming it, they may increase the risks of cholesterol problems. However, what they dont realize is that margarine is as bad, if not worse because it has double the effect as it contains harmful trans fats.

8. Bananas are fattening

Just because this fruit is sweet, people believe that it is fattening as well. However, one medium-sized banana contains only 105 calories. They are good for your health because they contain healthy doses of fiber, potassium and magnesium which together make the immune system stronger and more powerful.

9. If you cook vegetables, you take away their vitamin content

This is definitely not true as cooking the vegetables will actually help your body absorb the vegetable nutrients. However, if you over boil them, the vegetables will eliminate themselves.

10. Whole grain bread is better than the rest

While this can be true, always be sure to go through the fiber content mentioned behind the packaging to be completely sure.

Kozar Blog

Grammy winner Alicia Keys is ready to begin her family. Not only is the multi-talented singer engaged to music producer Swizz Beatz, she is also pregnant with her first child.

No rumors here as reps for Alicia confirmed the story to US magazine. A pal tells Us, They are very happy. Its the first child for the singer; Beatz, 31, is father to sons Kaseem Jr. and Prince, both from prior relationships.

[Alicia] is with the man who has inspired so much of her music and her album [The Element of Freedom], another friend revealed about Beatz back in January.

Of motherhood, Keys recently admitted, I absolutely am very interested in starting a family. It is one of the most beautiful experiences to have in this life and I am looking forward to it when it is my time.

Celeb Tea

Since Megan Fox was fired from the third installment of Transformer, everyone has been speculating who would take Megans spot. Americas favorite pin cushion, Heidi Montag even filmed herself shooting targets, so director Michael Bay could see her in action.

Well now, Access Hollywood is reporting that, Rosie Huntington-Whitely will step in for Megan Fox in Transformers 3. According to a confidential source, the 23-year-old Victorias Secret model, dubbed ELLE magazines 2009 Model of the Year, is a newcomer to acting but not to Transformers director Michael Bay, who directed his latest starlet in a commercial for the lingerie line last year.

Rosie will play a new character opposite Shia LaBeoufs character, Sam Witwicky, in the summer 2011 sequel.

Celeb Tea

What is unclear is why the news of Cabrera's cancer took so long to reach Liew's New York City transplant surgeon, Dr. Thomas Diflo. Liew's transplant was Feb. 25, 2002; the news did not reach Diflo until April 17, 2002.

Kimberly Liew, his widow, is suing the transplant hospital, NYU Langone Medical Center, saying doctors there should have removed the kidney as soon as they learned of the donor's cancer. However, Diflo testified that he told Liew the safest route was to remove the kidney, although he did tell Liew the odds of developing the cancer were slim, as it was uterine cancer.

As such, Liew himself made the decision to keep the kidney. Tests given from May to August found no indication of cancer in the kidney. It was later that year, suffering from Back Pain, that Liew had Diflo remove the kidney, on Aug. 29, 2002. Once removed, it was apparent the kidney was laden with tumors; Liew died within a month.

Originally on SNAFU-ed

Alexander Lukashenko the president of Belarus said in a televised statement on Thursday that his country is ready to give full control of the its pipelines, (which also ship Russian gas to Europe) in return for Russian internal market prices on gas.

Windows to Russia!

No, there was no celebration, The New York Post quoted personal assistant Liat Baruch telling a Manhattan Supreme Court jury, testifying in the burglary re-trial of Brooklyn car mechanic James Jimenez, charged with sneaking into the SoHo Grand hotel three years ago and swiping the Balenciaga handbags of both Baruch and Dunst.

I have no knowledge for any wrap party planned, agreed the second assistant, Henry Mackintosh.

Defense lawyer, Robert Parker has argued that Jiminez had express permission to be at the hotel, because he was there with a man they're claiming was the on-location drug dealer, Jarrod Bienerman.

Dunst's assistant said she refused to tell the police that she had a little marijuana, but she admitted was ridiculously expensive but said she hadn't mentioned it to cops at first because I was embarrassed and scared.

Celebrity and World

She is not doing the movie because her doctor advised her not to, her rep told UsMagazine.com. More than that I cannot comment further.

Earlier this month, Cannon had hinted that a baby is not out of the question after sometime, reports The New York Daily News.

Her schedule is starting to calm down, you never know he told usmagazine.com. In the next year or two, the rumors might come true.

Carey and Cannon, 29, have been married for two years.

Celebrity and World

A source close to the film explained that the chemistry between the two actors so far is magic, reports the FOXNews.com

Rob worked with Reese seven years ago on Vanity Fair. He had a tiny part and he joked with Reese that of course she didn't remember him from their time together then, They joke a lot and Rob has her blushing and laughing all the time. He's very charming, said the source.

He went on about how she is this beautiful, super-famous Academy Award winner, and Reese loved it. She was flattered and giggling while he teased. It's cute and it makes for a great movie set. Everyone is excited because they fit so well together, the source concluded.

Celebrity and World

We do take a lot of our senses for granted. The video does also make you realize the marvels that medical research has brought us.

Amazing video!

The X-51A was carried to about 49,500ft under the wing of a Boeing B-52H before release. Four seconds later an Army Tactical Missile solid rocket booster accelerated the X-51 to about M4.8 before it and a connecting interstage were jettisoned.

Air Force Research Laboratory X-51A programme manager Charlie Brink says preliminary data shows that the separation from the B-52H was "phenomenal" and the solid booster light was "perfect". At 65,000ft the booster separated from the vehicle as planned, followed by the start of the scramjet engine with an ethylene mix and switchover to JP-7 fuel.

While the programme had a goal for a 300s flight to M6, Brink says that at roughly 140s of powered flight, engineers "started noticing some anomalies with some sensors". The engine continued to run, but the telemetry stream to the ground was interrupted, requiring controllers to activate the self-destruct function.

Despite the shorter flight, the team was exhilarated over the results. "Up until 140s, everything was working textbook, per calculations", says Joe Vogel, Boeing's X-51A programme manager.

One specific application is in missiles and the other might be in space travel where we need faster space ships to reach further areas of the universe.

Kudos to the team!

The quake prompted the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to issue a regional tsunami warning for Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and New Caledonia.

"It is not known that a tsunami was generated," the Warning Center said in a bulletin. "This warning is based only on the earthquake evaluation. An earthquake of this size has the potential to generate a destructive tsunami that can strike coastlines in the region near the epicenter within minutes to hours."

Earthquake Details

We will keep you posted.

Human rights groups and members of the US Congress have accused technology giants including Microsoft and Yahoo! of abetting China's Web censorship machine, dubbed the "Great Firewall of China."

Ballmer, visiting Singapore on an Asian tour, told journalists: "Google made another choice, I respect that they made another choice. "We think we are trying to help reduce the possibility of censorship by being there. I think our choice will do more to help promote free speech than the choice they've chosen."

He said that in the event of a formal directive by China's government to remove information on its site, Microsoft's policy was to comply, out of consideration for its workers' safety.

In April, Google stopped censoring results on its Chinese search engine and began redirecting users to an uncensored site in Hong Kong, a move praised by its shareholders despite the danger of a Chinese backlash.

Ballmer said every country had its own regulations governing the Internet and China was no different in this regard. "The fact of the matter is, cybersecurity is an important issue," said Ballmer. "It's an important issue to China, to the US, Singapore, everywhere in the world and we work on those issues with the relevant authorities in all countries."

On Microsoft's prospects in the Chinese market, Ballmer said software piracy remained a challenge and was one factor driving the firm to focus more on other Asian countries offering better intellectual-property protection.

From Samachar.com

Schumacher overtook Alonso on the final corner at Monaco, in breach of rule 40.13 as he overtook the Spaniard while still technically under safety car conditions, despite the car pulling into the pits as it was the final lap.

The rules have been adjusted slightly to make this clearer after Schumacher told reporters he was told to race to the line.

There is no point to get into past incidents, said Schumacher in an interview with Sky Italia.

But the point is that if I understand the situation correctly, the FIA has identified something that happened in Monaco and they want to improve the situation.

That is something good for the sport and I am quite happy for this to happen.

F1 Fanatics

Raikkonen quit Ferrari at the end of last season so the team could take on Fernando Alonso. After failing to agree terms with McLaren, the former champion Raikkonen went off to race in the World Rally Championship for the Citroen Junior Team. At the time there was speculation he had a return to F1 contract signed with Red Bull, following the drink manufacturer becoming the Finns title sponsor with Citroen.

When asked about Kimi returning was a possibility Horner said No. Kimi has committed himself to rallying, and he seems to be enjoying that environment.

We have been happy with the job that Mark is doing, so why would you change?

Mark Webber now looks set to recieve a big contract to stay with the team for another year, as the 2011 silly seasons big movers are set to stay in their current environments. Felipe Massa is set to be offered another contract by Ferrari and Robert Kubica will commit himself to another season with Renault.

When we sit down and talk about it, it will be very straightforward, said Horner. Mark is an important member of the team, he enjoys driving for the team and we have a great balance between our two drivers. So, it is the usual thing if it is not broken, dont fix it.

I think that it is clear where our intent is, it is clear where his intent is. It is just a matter of sorting out the paperwork with his management, but in the coming weeks I am sure that will be sorted.

F1 fanatics

Vitantonio Liuzzi told reporters that the Force India team were very confident of their system, a system which is operated by the drivers wrist.

We are really optimistic about it, Liuzzi said. You can never know. It might change tomorrow, but the team has done a big work in the wind tunnel for the last two weeks to test it and it seemed to work pretty well.

Tomorrow well get the confirmation because on track you never know, but we are pretty optimistic that it should be spot on.

We made a simple system with the wrist so we dont have to take the hand off the steering wheel, he added.

Meanwhile Red Bull Racings man of the moment Mark Webber told reporters in the pre-race press conference that Red Bull were to evaluate their own F-Duct system as they try and maintain their recent dominance.

Yes, we will give the F-duct a go tomorrow, Webber said during a pre-event press conference in Turkey. We will give it a chance.

Ferrari, who were one of the first teams to use the system are going to try a variation on the position of the hole that needs to be covered in order to stall the air during practice.

F-Duct air vent

F1 Fanatics

Americans desperate to trim their waistlines are opting for a new cosmetic procedure that freezes off the body's fat cells. Cryolipolysis has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for other uses, but the agency has yet to endorse it as a means of fat loss. This has got some critics wondering whether cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists are moving too quickly. Such off label use is legal, provided a doctor is exercising good judgment and doesn't violate any laws. Nevertheless, it is often a subject of debate.

The association does not condone the use of non-FDA-approved devices, said Dr. Phil Haeck, president-elect of the American Association of Plastic Surgeons. Only a handful of doctors are using cryolipolysis for fat removal, and they say they only go ahead after carefuly examination of clinical data that gives them confidence in the proceedure. Dr. Arielle Kauvar, director of the New York Skin Laser Center and her colleagues have performed the procedure on 60 clients so far, and have apparently been satisfied with the results. Procedures cost anywhere from $750, for a one-hour session at a clinic in Denver, to $1,500 to do away with a woman's stomach pooch in New York.

Cryolipolysis was developed by dermatologists at Massachusetts General Hospital. It is non-invasive and quick. It works by cooling fat cells, using a device similar to a suction cup, which leads to their breakdown by lipolysis. Fat cells are particularly vulnerable to cold and wither away following the exposure.

Dr. David J. Goldberg, who is doing FDA-sponsored clinical trials on the procedure said that, The heat that gets sucked out of the fat layer is deposited in the outer layer on its way out, so the skin is protected. Goldberg and his colleagues tested 200 patients, and none exhibited any side effects. A single treatment of a few hours can yield a 25 percent reduction in fat cells over the next two to four months. Of course, the method has its limitations. It cannot make an obese person thin all of a sudden. The idea is to target ceratin areas that do not respond well to exercise.

Patients will be footing their own bill as cryolipolysis is not covered by insurance. Side effects inlcude being sore and bruised for about two weeks after the procedure. Well, lucky for all those who want the perfect body this summer, this proceedure came out just in time for bikini season and is also becoming increasingly popular!

The newest issue of Star magazine goes in-depth about Prince William and his bride to be Kate Middletons wedding. The gossip magazine reveals that their wedding would even be more outlandish than that of Prince Williams parents. The price tag currently sits at $40 million.

William has always said he will be ready for marriage after his 28th birthday thats next month, royal expert Nicholas Davies, author of William: King for the 21st Century, tells Star. The timing is perfect for a wedding this year.

Insiders estimate that as many as 3 billion awestruck viewers could tune in and the audience will not be disappointed by the ceremony with the couture gowns, lavish bouquets and priceless jewelry, including the 18-karat sapphire and diamond engagement ring William inherited from his late mother, Diana, which he plans to give to his bride-to-be.

Now, we here at Celeb Tea called 2010 the year of marriages and so far our prediction has been coming true as celebs keep tying the knot. But our question now is, has the royal family gone mad?

If this report is true, then the royal family of England needs to be dethroned. Call me crazy or isnt the EU currently in a deep recession. I mean, its like, while Americans were going through tough times, if President Obama announced he was spending such a huge amount on a personal matter.

Dont get me wrong, it is their money, but it money they gained from the working people of England for centuries. So to throw such an expensive wedding at this time is just insane. This price tag sends a bad message to the people of England and that is, while most of you are struggling to make it, you can always count on your Queen to shove her wealth in your faces.

Where is Robin Hood when you need him?

Celeb Tea

The most recent development is the interview with the American-born Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki that was released to jihadist Internet chat rooms May 23 by al-Malahim Media, the public relations arm of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). In the interview, al-Awlaki encouraged strikes against American civilians. He also has been tied to Maj. Nidal Hasan, who was charged in the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the perpetrator of the failed Christmas Day 2009 airline bombing. And al-Awlaki reportedly helped inspire Faisal Shahzad, who was arrested in connection with the attempted Times Square attack in May.

The second link in our chain is the failed Christmas Day and Times Square bombings themselves. They are the latest in a long string of failed or foiled bombing attacks directed against the United States that date back to before the 9/11 attacks and include the thwarted 1997 suicide bomb plot against a subway in New York, the thwarted December 1999 Millennium Bomb plot and numerous post-9/11 attacks such as Richard Reids December 2001 shoe-bomb attempt, the August 2004 plot to bomb the New York subway system and the May 2009 plot to bomb two Jewish targets in the Bronx and shoot down a military aircraft. Indeed, jihadists have not conducted a successful bombing attack inside the United States since the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Getting a trained bombmaker into the United States has proved to be increasingly difficult for jihadist groups, and training a novice to make bombs has also been problematic as seen in the Shahzad and Najibullah Zazi cases.

The final link wed like to consider are the calls in the past few months for jihadists to conduct simple attacks with readily available items. This call was first made by AQAP leader Nasir al-Wahayshi in October 2009 and then echoed by al Qaeda prime spokesman Adam Gadahn in March of 2010. In the Times Square case, Shahzad did use readily available items, but he lacked the ability to effectively fashion them into a viable explosive device.

When we look at all these links together, there is a very high probability that jihadists linked to, or inspired by, AQAP and the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and perhaps even al Shabaab will attempt to conduct simple attacks with firearms in the near future.

Threats and Motives

In the May 23 al-Malahim interview (his first with AQAP), al-Awlaki not only said he was proud of the actions of Hasan and Abdulmutallab, whom he referred to as his students, but also encouraged other Muslims to follow the examples they set by their actions. When asked about the religious permissibility of an operation like Abdulmutallabs, which could have killed innocent civilians, al-Awlaki told the interviewer that the term civilian was not really applicable to Islamic jurisprudence and that he preferred to use the terms combatants and non-combatants. He then continued by noting that non-combatants are people who do not take part in the war but that, in his opinion, the American people in its entirety takes part in the war, because they elected this administration, and they finance this war. In his final assessment, al-Awlaki said, If the heroic mujahid brother Umar Farouk could have targeted hundreds of soldiers, that would have been wonderful. But we are talking about the realities of war, meaning that in his final analysis, attacks against civilians were permissible under Islamic law. Indeed, he later noted, Our unsettled account with America, in women and children alone, has exceeded one million. Those who would have been killed in the plane are a drop in the ocean.

While this line of logic is nearly identical to that historically put forth by Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the very significant difference is that al-Awlaki is a widely acknowledged Islamic scholar. He speaks with a religious authority that bin Laden and al-Zawahiri simply do not possess.

On May 2, the TTP released a video statement by Hakeemullah Mehsud in which Mehsud claimed credit for the failed Times Square attack. In the recording, which reportedly was taped in early April, Mehsud said that the time was approaching when our fedayeen [suicide operatives] will attack the American states in their major cities. He also said, Our fedayeen have penetrated the terrorist America. We will give extremely painful blows to the fanatic America.

While TTP leaders seem wont to brag and exaggerate (e.g., Baitullah Mehsud falsely claimed credit for the April 3, 2009, shooting at an immigration center in Binghamton, N.Y., which was actually committed by a mentally disturbed Vietnamese immigrant), there is ample reason to believe the claims made by the TTP regarding their contact with Shahzad. We can also deduce with some certainty that Mehsud and company have trained other men who have traveled (or returned) to the United States following that training. The same is likely true for AQAP, al Shabaab and other jihadist groups. In fact, the FBI is likely monitoring many such individuals inside the United States at this very moment and in all likelihood is madly scrambling to find and investigate many others.

Fight Like You Train

There is an old military and law-enforcement training axiom that states, You will fight like you train. This concept has led to the development of training programs designed to help soldiers and agents not only learn skills but also practice and reinforce those skills until they become second nature. This way, when the student graduates and comes under incredible pressure in the real world like during an armed ambush their training will take over and they will react even before their mind can catch up to the rapidly unfolding situation. The behaviors needed to survive have been ingrained into them. This concept has been a problem for the jihadists when it comes to terrorist attacks.

It is important to understand that most of the thousands of men who attend training camps set up by al Qaeda and other jihadist groups are taught the basic military skills required to fight in an insurgency. This means they are provided basic physical training to help condition them, given some hand-to-hand combat training and then taught how to operate basic military hardware like assault rifles, hand grenades and, in some cases, crew-served weapons like machine guns and mortars. Only a very few students are then selected to attend the more advanced training that will teach them the skills required to become a trained terrorist operative.

In many ways, this process parallels the way that special operations forces operators are selected from the larger military population and then sent on for extensive training to transform them into elite warriors. Many people wash out during this type of intense training and only a few will make it all the way through to graduation. The problem for the jihadists is finding someone with the time and will to undergo the intensive training required to become a terrorist operative, the ability to complete the training and critically the ability to travel abroad to conduct terrorist attacks against the far enemy. Clearly the jihadist groups are able to train men to fight as insurgents in Afghanistan and Iraq, and they have shown the ability to train terrorist operatives who can operate in the fairly permissive environments of places like the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. They also have some excellent bombmakers and terrorist planners in Iraq and Pakistan.

What the jihadists seem to be having a problem doing is finding people who can master the terrorist tradecraft and who have the ability to travel into hostile areas to ply their craft. There seems to be a clear division between the men who can travel and the men who can master the advanced training. The physical and intelligence onslaught launched against al Qaeda and other jihadist groups following the 9/11 attacks has also created operational security concerns that complicate the ability to find and train effective terrorist operatives.

Of course, were not telling the jihadists anything they dont already know. This phenomenon is exactly why you have major jihadist figures like al-Wahayshi and Gadahn telling the operatives who can travel to or are already in the West to stop trying to conduct attacks that are beyond their capabilities. Gadahn and al-Awlaki have heaped praise on Maj. Hasan as an example to follow and this brings us back to armed assaults.

In the United States it is very easy to obtain firearms and it is legal to go to a range or private property to train with them. Armed assaults are also clearly within the skill set of jihadists who have made it only through basic insurgent training. As weve mentioned several times in the past, these grassroots individuals are far more likely to strike the United States and Europe than professional terrorist operatives dispatched from the al Qaeda core group. Such attacks will also allow these grassroots operatives to fight like they have been trained. When you combine all these elements with the fact that the United States is an open society with a lot of very vulnerable soft targets, it is not difficult to forecast that we will see more armed jihadist assaults in the United States in the near future.

Armed Assaults

Armed assaults employing small arms are not a new concept in terrorism by any means. They have proved to be a tried-and-true tactic since the beginning of the modern era of terrorism and have been employed in many famous attacks conducted by a variety of actors. A few examples are the Black September operation against the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics; the December 1975 seizure of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries headquarters in Vienna, led by Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal; the December 1985 simultaneous attacks against the airports in Rome and Vienna by the Abu Nidal Organization; and the September 2004 school seizure in Beslan, North Ossetia, by Chechen militants. More recently, the November 2008 armed assault in Mumbai demonstrated how deadly and spectacular such attacks can be.

In some instances such as the December 1996 seizure of the Japanese ambassadors residence in Lima, Peru, by the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement the objective of the armed assault is to take and intentionally hold hostages for a long period of time. In other instances, such as the May 1972 assault on Lod Airport by members of the Japanese Red Army, the armed assault is planned as a suicide attack designed simply to kill as many people as possible before the assailants themselves are killed or incapacitated. Often attacks fall somewhere in the middle. For example, even though Mumbai became a protracted operation, its planning and execution indicated it was intended as an attack in which the attackers would inflict maximum damage and not be taken alive. It was only due to the good fortune of the attackers and the ineptitude of the Indian security forces that the operation lasted as long as it did.

We discussed above the long string of failed and foiled bombing attacks directed against the United States. During that same time, there have been several armed assaults that have killed people, such as the attack against the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles International Airport by Hesham Mohamed Hadayet in July 2002, the shooting attacks by John Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo in the Washington area in September and October 2002 and the June 2009 attack in which Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad allegedly shot and killed a U.S. soldier and wounded another outside a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting center. The most successful of these attacks was the November 2009 Fort Hood shooting, which resulted in 13 deaths. These attacks not only resulted in deaths but also received extensive media coverage.

Armed assaults are effective and they can kill people. However, as we have noted before, due to the proficiency of U.S. police agencies and the training their officers have received in active shooter scenarios following school shootings and incidents of workplace violence, the impact of armed assaults will be mitigated in the United States, and Europe as well. In fact, it was an ordinary police officer responding to the scene and instituting an active shooter protocol who shot and wounded Maj. Hasan and brought an end to his attack in the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood. The number of people in the American public who are armed can also serve as a mitigating factor, though many past attacks have been planned at locations where personal weapons are prohibited, like the Los Angeles International Airport, Fort Hood and Fort Dix.

Of course, a Mumbai-like situation involving multiple trained shooters who can operate like a fire team will cause problems for first responders, but the police communication system in the United States and the availability of trained SWAT teams will allow authorities to quickly vector in sufficient resources to handle the threat in most locations especially where such large coordinated attacks are most likely to happen, such as New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Therefore, even a major assault in the United States is unlikely to drag out for days as did the incident in Mumbai.

None of this is to say that the threats posed by suicide bombers against mass transit and aircraft will abruptly end. The jihadists have proven repeatedly that they have a fixation on both of these target sets and they will undoubtedly continue their attempts to attack them. Large bombings and airline attacks also carry with them a sense of drama that a shooting does not especially in a country that has become somewhat accustomed to shooting incidents conducted by non-terrorist actors for other reasons. However, we believe were seeing a significant shift in the mindset of jihadist ideologues and that this shift will translate into a growing trend toward armed assaults.

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"

Tom drove a 320d on a full tank from UK to Munich and back and he managed to travel a whopping 1013 miles. Calculate those numbers a little better and you get 68.9 mpg and do not miss out on the fact that Tom also reported CO2 emissions of only 109g/km. Tom did drive carefully but he mentioned that he wasnt conscious of the economy run factor and there were times when he even bagged 75.9mpg. He was thoroughly impressed by the 320d as he mentioned that the dubbing EfficientDynamics isnt merely efficient by its name, only.

Car Blog

The horrific incident took place during the Festival of Saint Isidro, considered to be the most important event in the bullfighting calendar, at the Plaza de Toros las Ventas bullring, which can seat up to 24,000 people.The horn went through Aparicio's tongue and penetrated the roof of his mouth, fracturing the jawbone. Aparicio was waving his cape around to tease the bull when he fell on his rear. In an instant, the 1,168-pound animal drove his horn into Aparicio's mouth, causing the pierced tongue and palate damage. The accident occurred when Aparicio was going in for the "faena," a series of passes using a cape and sword. It usually happens right before delivering the death blow -- or "estocada" -- to the wounded animal.

The dreadful event left Aparicio in a critical condition. However, it appears that leading surgeon Maximo Garcia Pedros has managed to save his life after two tedious operations. The bull was promptly killed by other matadors. The hospital says Aparicio's condition is "evolving favorably" and that the prognosis was "less serious." Still, doctors initially considered a CAT scan to rule out brain damage, and there is no date set for his release. This incident marks the second major goring in the bullfighting world in the last five weeks.

Rapper 50 Cent has gone from studly to eerie. The muscle bound rapper, who is use to taking his shirt off to show the ladies what he working with, has been unrecognizable lately.

The rapper lost 50 plus pounds to go from 214 to 160 for his new movie. In the movie called Things Fall Apart. The 34-year-old rapper and actor plays a football player diagnosed with cancer. Looking at that picture of 50 Cents, he reminds us of one of the characters from the Chapelle Show, anyone remember Tyrone Begums.

50 did speak on his weight loss regiment. He used the liquid diet and three-hour-a-day treadmill walks for nine weeks. Wow! I was starving, he admitted. We just hope he didnt do all this for nothing. His last movie Streets Of Blood, which starred Sharon Stone, and Val Kilmer, went straight to DVD. So hopefully, he didnt go through that for nothing.

But, 50 is getting back to his normal routine, hes back on tour and performing. He reveals, Ive been eating. Ill be back in shape in no time!

Celeb Tea

Amid much criticism, we would reiterate our position:

Anyone with a cross tattooed on his forehead is not a Jew.

Speaking the Geez language means nothing: the Ethiopian Christian Church also uses it for liturgy.

Falashas read the Torah, true, but they also read the non-canonical books of Ethiopian Christianity.

Falashas practice circumcision, true, but they also practice female excision.
Falashas have monksa typical Christian habit. In Judaism, permanent nazirites are expressly forbidden.

If anything, Falasha beliefs resemble monastic Christianity, with an emphasis on purity. Fundamentalist quasi-Judaic leanings are typical of the Ethiopian Church.
The Falashas opposition to the Church rests on their tribal opposition to the state, whose backbone is the Church.

The Falashas have never tried to establish contact with nearby Yemeni Jews.

Rabbinical confirmations of the Falashas Jewishness are completely baseless. What conceivable basis could there be for pronouncing them the descendants of the Dan tribe or King Solomon? The diversity of their origin myths shows their falsity.

Samson Blinded

This time the Russian news is abuzz with this information: Konstantin Pulikovsky, is a rare person who has spent time with North Korea's secretive leader and has traveled extensively with Kim Jong Il. This leading Russian expert on North Korea said on Thursday, that he had serious doubts about Pyongyang's involvement into the sinking of South Korea's Cheonan warship.

Konstantin Pulikovsky who maintains official contacts with Pyongyang, because he was presidential envoy to Russia's Far East in 2000-2005. Has broken the Russian silence, he said,

This is the start of the summation of what Russia is thinking...

Windows to Russia!

Oasis members had parted ways after guitarist Noel Gallagher separated before a concert in Paris over differences with brother Liam.

The group has uploaded their new pic on the Oasis website, reports the Telegraph.

Liam had said last year: "If we don't come up with something else by the time we're ready to release the album it'll be Oasis.

"I'm not going to call myself something ridiculous just for the sake of it."

Celebrity and News

Movie bosses are reportedly looking for an actress to play a sexy mermaid in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which stars Johnny Depp as pirate Captain Jack Sparrow.

And Megan, whose exit from the Transformers franchise has recently been announced, is keen to land the role.

Megan is mulling over a number of big movie offers including another sci-fi franchise and a role in the next Pirates of the Caribbean, Stuff.co.nz quoted a source, as saying.

The insider added: She would play a mermaid who charms Captain Jack but she has a dark motive.

Also, teaming up with Depp is something Megan has always dreamt of.

Megan has always loved Johnny and is desperate to work with him. She's grateful to Transformers for making her name but she's ready to move on to better and bigger things, said the snitch.

Celebrity and World

Reports are rife that The Curious Case of Benjamin Button star is planning to make a bid for the White House with partner Angelina Jolie by his side, reports English.news.cn.

Theres not much left for him to do in Hollywood, a source close to Pitt says. Brad will run for Senate and if all goes well will mount a bid to become President in 2016.

Celebrity and World

Solar physicists have for the first time captured images of the collision of a comet with the Sun.

This comet apparently survived the heat of the corona and disappeared in the chromosphere, evaporating in the 100,000-degree (Kelvin) heat.

A corona is a type of plasma atmosphere of the sun or other celestial body, extending millions of kilometres into space.

The chromosphere is a thin layer of the suns atmosphere just above the photosphere the ball shaped surface that emits light, roughly 2,000 km deep.

Using instruments aboard NASAs twin STEREO spacecraft, four post-doctoral fellows at University of California, Berkeleys Space Sciences Lab were able to track the comet as it approached the sun and estimate an approximate time and place of impact.

STEREO (Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory), launched in 2006, consists of identical spacecraft orbiting the sun, one ahead of earth and one behind earth, providing a stereo view of the Sun.

The researchers then looked at data from the ground-based Mauna Loa Solar Observatory in Hawaii, and found images in the predicted spot of what appears to be a comet approaching the edge of the sun from behind the solar disk.

We believe this is the first time a comet has been tracked in 3-D space this low down in the solar corona, said Claire Raftery, post-doctoral fellow newly-arrived at University of California, Berkeley from Dublins Trinity College.

The team presented its data and images Monday, at the Miami, Florida meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Sungrazing comets, comprising dust, rock and ice, are seldom tracked close to the sun because their brightness is overwhelmed by the solar disk.

Based on the comets relatively short tail, about three million-km-long, researchers believe that the comet contained heavier elements that do not evaporate readily, a University of California, Berkeley release said.

This would also explain how it penetrated so deeply into the chromosphere, surviving the strong solar wind as well as the extreme temperatures, before evaporating.

Kozar Cool Blog

The move is seen as a step to compete with other premium brands in the US which offer a wide variety of commuters for each of their lineage unlike Mercedes Benz. The CEO of Mercedes-Benz USA, Ernst Lieb mentioned that the C-Class will get a coupe version as early as next year to compete with the BMW 3 Series. Sometime later in the future, the C-Class will also get a sedan, a convertible and even an estate wagon. As far as the B-Class is concerned, the expansion will begin in 2012 which will again include a coupe, a convertible and a sedan. The B-Class expansion will be a move to target the likes of the BMW X1 and the Audi Q3.

Car Blog

"We is so happy!" exclaimed Jill Duskers, wife and sister of Scooter Duskers, a farm hand and avid racoon necrophiliac from central Kentucky. "Junior is going to have a banjo and he's going to learn it so her can go off to be famous and rich. It's a real good governmental help for us."

Junior is the Duskers 17th kid in the last 7 years and the first baby in the state to be given the newest state benefit.

Not all state leaders are happy with the new program. Many private sector professionals are livid with the government's actions, but Kentucky's governor brushed aside criticisms as if he had a magical broom designed specifically for critiques. As if he had something like the Vroom Broom that is advertised with the moto: "Zoom those nasty critiques out of your way!"

"I know that there are a number of highly-educated people that feel we're using state funds incorrectly," said Governor Steve Beshear. "But they have to think of the thousands of babies brought into this life surrounded by toothless grins, baby rattles made out of bull scrotums and having to breast feed off of their sister's tit. We need to give them something to help cope with the rest of their life. Mastering the banjo is their only hope."

The nation-wide association known as the Banjo Brothers Gang was delighted with Kentucky's move and have been licking their chops as they envision thousands of new paying members in the future.

"They can join our gang and pay us, YEEEE HAW!" screamed association president, Clem Thorns. "Tonight, I'm having BBQ and I'm going to play my sweet banjo until I'm naked! Whoop, Whoop, Hollerin Suckataz!"

A third group of mothers who are extremely overbearing have expressed their safety concerns as they feel giving a baby a real banjo could be very dangerous.

"A string could snap and hurt the baby," said group leader, Melanie Brown. "This is a very real danger that our state should have though about. People don't think about things. I do. I think about how my relationship is void of companionship. My husband is always traveling or meeting up with his friends. I think about things. I think about killing myself sometimes. Or, I think about having sex with his best friend. You see, I think about things before I do them... like how I could maybe kill him, and start over... move to like Seattle... whore around for a bit, but then settle down with a sensitive man, someone well-endowed and nice."

As for Junior Duskers, the first banjo baby who happens to already have one huge tooth on his lower jaw and an extra nipple, he seems to like his first gift.

"Goo goo. Gaah," said the little freak. "Goo, whaaa! Goo ga ga!"

Scoop Gods

Like so many Mexicans he seems to believe that the United States is Atzlans La Provincia del Norte.

The Mexican Embassy to the United States has released A statement of their demands and expectations for the use of our National Guard soldiery within our borders:

Washington D.C, May 25th, 2010

Regarding the Administrations decision to send 1,200 National Guard servicemen to the US Southern border, the Government of Mexico trusts that this decision will help to channel additional US resources to enhance efforts to prevent the illegal flows of weapons and bulk cash into Mexico, which provide organized crime with its firepower and its ability to corrupt.

Additionally, the Government of Mexico expects that National Guard personnel will strengthen US operations in the fight against transnational organized crime that operates on both sides of our common border and that it will not, in accordance to its legal obligations, conduct activities directly linked to the enforcement of immigration laws.

Mexico is determined to continue working on its side of the border to enhance the security and well-being of border communities, and to deter and dismantle organized crime and its links to drug trafficking and human smuggling.

As part of our joint strategy in the fight against transnational organized crime, there are actions that our two governments have undertaken together, and there are other measures taken independently by Mexico and by the US within their respective territories. In this regard, the Mexican Government fully respects the sovereign decisions of the US Government, but underscores that joint responsibility must continue to underpin our joint efforts in rolling-back transnational organized crime operating on both sides of the border.

Firstly it is rarely, if ever, a good idea for the government of one nation to attempt to dictate to another sovereign state how they will deploy and use their own troops within in their own borders to secure that border. This is especially true of any attempt to dictate such terms to a nation that can, at whim or will, raze your country to the ground and has certain empirical reasons for doing so already.

Secondly The Mexican government has already failed. The cartels control more of the country than the government does and are filled with members of the Mexican army who decided that outright banditry and the drug trade were more profitable than the normal graft and corruption commonplace in Mexico. The Mexican governments only hope of survival is US intervention. Its just plain stupid to piss off the people who you need to save your filthy asses.

Third and finally Felipes head is swelling up too big for his sombrero if he think he has right or privilege to speak to his betters in that fashion or to have his subordinates do so for him. He need to correct that failing pronto before an American decides to let the gas out of his head with .338 Lapua or .50 BMG round.

~*~

Mantenga sus ojos abiertos. Viaje ligero pero pesado de carga, y siempre dicho de otra bala en el enemigo una vez que ests abajo. ;)

Reflections From a Murky Pond

Samson Blinded

One of ARTs manager, Nicolas Todt the son of FIA president Jean announced the intentions to Autosport.

The news that we have proposed ART is real, but at the moment its just a request, there is no certainty well take the start next season, he said.

Realistically, I think it wont be easy to take part in the 2011 F1 championship, because its not easy to set up a programme with very high costs.

In light of this, I didnt want to make bold statements over something that still needs to be defined. If we dont make it, then it wont be a drama. Well carry on working over this project, and if it doesnt happen next year, then well try again in the future.

The team took Lewis Hamilton to a world title among other drivers and have sufficient experience to be a successful name within the sport.

Also announcing their intentions for an entry is a revised edition of the failed USF1 team project, with Chad Hurley and Parris Mullins two of the former board members of the team wanting to come into Formula One.

The team is based around a team known as the Cypher Group.

I am part of a project right now that is trying to enter the sport, Mullins told AUTOSPORT, in his first full-length interview since the end of US F1. I cant give away any specifics right now, but I can say I dont believe a start-up team is possible.

That is definitely a topic that will be debated for some time until a practical solution is found, but I think personally, given the current state of the sport and its rules, then a competitive start-up team simply isnt possible.

This sport is all about knowledge and you need to apply the experience gained from the previous years of competing in the sport, and the team needs to be operating in a cohesive environment.

I think a great example is the Honda/Brawn situation last year. Here was an existing team that was taken over, the necessary changes were made and it was turned into a championship-winning team the following year. And that is no different from what we have seen in the past with Red Bull Racing, Force India and Toro Rosso.

Ferrari could throw the team a lifeline into Formula One by suggesting it wants to outsource two cars to use as a junior team for Ferrari in a similar fashion Toro Rosso are used by Red Bull.

I dream of a third Ferrari managed by an American team, with the stars and stripes flag, Luca di Montezemolo the boss of Ferrari told Gazzetta dello Sport.

Parris Mullins

F1 Fanatics

Check out her pictures before the surgery -

After the surgery -

She is not the first to undergo the procedure for reason. Australian 400m hurdler Jana Pittman-Rawlinson, 27, got her breast implants removed for a better chance at the London Olympics.

I wonder if Simona Halep's male fan base has reduced now?

The flight ended up landing at Montreal (Canada) around 1:15 p.m. and aircraft was taken out of service. United Airlines provided another aircraft from passengers to be flown from Montreal to Los Angeles.

So, please whenever you are flying keep the seat belts on!

Despite the fact that it is a great news, it doesn't really much since the increase can be all credited to the tax credit incentive to new and second home buyers that expired April 30th. First-time home-buyers qualified for a tax credit up to $8,000, while repeat buyers could get as much as a $6,500 break.

Now, as the incentive has expired, would the sales curve still look bullish or it would tank? It is not rocket science to assume that the market will tank for the month of May.

Maybe another incentive extension? I don't think so!

There are calls by leaders to remove the advertisement which seems to be encouraging younger people not follow crowd for fashion choices.

City bigwigs have reacted with fury to the campaign, which was created by local ad agency Zerocento. Councillor Rosario Filoramo, who has complained to Palermo's mayor, said: "The use of an image of a person responsible for the worst chapters of the last century is offensive to our country's constitutional principles and to the sensitivities of citizens."

Another council official, Fabrizio Ferrandelli, said: "Having Hitler's face on a poster cannot be passed off as an innocent advertising message."

Zerocento insists the campaign "ridicules" Hitler and that its critics are over-reacting. Agency executive Daniele Manno said the campaign "invites young people to create their own style and not to be influenced by their peers".

Owner Diane Rains, 54, from Hudson, Wisconsin, says Jor Jor is able to time her aquatic interventions perfectly by listening to the tune.

She said: "Jor Jor certainly is a unique musician. She likes to listen closely until a particular moment inspires her to contribute.

"At precisely the right time, she will play her bells or chimes for a few seconds only, then swim off satisfied.

"Moon River has an instrumental intro and then Streisand comes in. Nearly every time, Jor Jor listens for several bars, then just before the vocals began, exactly on the beat, she rings her F bell once."

Check the video -

Diane has been training the fish for the last 1.5 years using technique called positive reinforcement as used by dog trainer. The fish is rewarded when it performs a certain act and so is trained to do that act more regularly.

Next on my list - a frog that can sing!

Willis, a highly experienced aerodynamicist and engineer has worked with various teams including Red Bull Racing, and was drafted into Hispania HRT to provide the team with advice on how to advance their 2010 car, and help design the 2011 machine. Willis described the 2010 car as a dog, absolutely awful previously.

However Chandhok believes his input is going to be absolutely vital.

Speaking about how he sees the next few months panning out, Chandhok told Autosport Magazine: As long as there is a car in the pitlane and my seat in it, I will go drag the arse out of it.

I have to look at it with a slightly long-term view. If the team improves I would love to be here, and if they can give Geoff the opportunity and budget to build a good car for 2011, he could do a good job.

He has done it in the past, he has a capable team of aero people that he is pulling together from other teams and, if he does have the right financial possibility and the right infrastructure, it wont be a bad place to be next year.

I want to be in the best possible place for 2011, and I reckon this team has the potential if Geoff is given the right opportunity he is key to where we go.

Speaking about his own performance in an honest and frank interview with Autosport this week, he said he was rather happy.

At the end of the day, you give me a car that is capable of doing a certain lap time and my job is to do that lap time, he said. And as long as I am quicker than Bruno [Senna], as I have been so far, and people see that I am doing well in the car, then it is good for me.

They put Christian Klien in the car in Spain and within three laps I went quicker than him, with the same tyre and same fuel. So you can argue all you want, but I feel I am extracting the maximum I can out of this car.

It is really down to the team to develop it. There is only so much I can do.

There has been significant rumour that Hispania will replace one of their drivers with Christian Klien in the very near future, and although Karun is faster than Bruno Senna you can be your bottom dollar that if one of those two is to lose their seat it will be Chandhok.

F1 Fanatics

Tom Cruise opens up to Esquire Magazine about the distant relationship he shared with his father growing up. Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was his father, the same man whose name he shared.

Here are some of the things Thomas said about his father:

He was an electrical engineer moving between jobs, and we moved a lot. My mother basically did all the work, and then they got separated and I didnt see him for a long time. He didnt try to help the family financially or spiritually, and I lived with the effects of the chaos.

I remember looking at my dad and wanting to understand him, the actor told Esquire. I didnt want to just write the guy off. He was lost. I cant speak specifically in terms of why and how he got to where he was that was his journey. All I can tell you is, he was overwhelmed by life.

In the emotional interview, which is entirely made up of Toms words, the Knight and Day star revealed that after he became successful, and following the release of Risky Business, he saw his father, who was dying in a hospital.

I hadnt seen my father in about 10 years. I found out he was dying, and I went to see him in the hospital, Tom revealed to the mag. He knew that hed blown it. There was deep regret. I think he was torturing himself. We tend to do that. All I could do was tell him, Look, its okay. I wasnt going to live in blame and regret.

In a lighter moment in the Esquire interview, Tom also opened up about the infamous couch-jumping incident on The Oprah Winfrey Show, a moment that expressed his excitement at having fallen in love with his now wife, Katie Holmes.

Perception and reality are two different thing, Tom said. Yeah, the point can be made that I wanted the audience to be happy just like I wanted to make my sisters and my mother happy when I did those skits as a kid. But Ill take responsibility for my actions.

Celeb Tea

After dating for a couple of years, Mario Lopez and girlfriend Courtney Mazza are expecting a baby. At the moment the couple doesnt even want to know the sex of their baby. Thats a surprise they will wait for on the delivery day.

Courtney has a maternal instinct as to whether shell be buying blue or pink. I feel like its a boy! she told In Touch at a Svedka Vodka event in Hollywood on May 22. But her TV star beau has a different idea.

That means its probably going to be a girl, he laughed. For now, the couple is focused on nesting and preparing for their bundle of joys September arrival. We got a new place, my sister is moving into town with her three kids and we got a new little dog, Mario says.

It seems Mario is ready to begin his own family, but still no word on when he and Courtney will tie the knot.

Celeb Tea

A robotic lander that confirmed the presence of ice on Mars was confirmed dead by NASA scientists Monday.

The Phoenix Mars lander was damaged by harsh conditions during the Martian winter and repeated attempts to contact it have been unsuccessful, the US space agency said.

The lander had wrapped up its mission in 2008 and had not been expected to survive the harsh winter, which is twice as long as that on Earth. But scientists needed to make last attempts to contact it in good weather before officially writing it off.

The Mars Odyssey orbiter flew over Phoenix last week, but could not pick up any signals and photographed what appeared to be ice damage to its solar panels.

Phoenix found water in a soil sample during its five months spent examining the red planet for evidence that it could support life. It dug several trenches in the Martian soil near the planets north pole and heated soil samples in a series of small ovens.

Although orbiting spacecraft had picked up evidence of water, Phoenix for the first time found water inside the planets soil. Phoenix also identified minerals necessary for life in soil samples and found perchlorate, a chemical that could feed some microbes and be poisonous to others.

Kozar Cool Blog

Kozar Cool Blog

I heard that the housing market being low in sales and with the forclousure market crashing, it is affecting investors so much that they are moving money out of equities (stocks) and investing more in safer investments. Thats why the stock market has been down so much in the past week.

How does this happen? I was reading about it, but I didnt really understand. Are investors pulling out their stocks from big lenders? how exactly does it affect the stock market? I need help understanding it in normal terms that make sense.

Please advise, thank you!!

How does the housing market affect the stock market so much?

Super Stock Blog

Erica Blasberg - pictures of a increasing star

Erica Blasberg pictures may be a hot online search, but consider the person and what she could have meant to the game of women's golf. Erica Blasberg's death not to mention the whole Tiger Woods fiasco are damaging to golf television ratings and sponsorship, to the point that they could possibly be left in need of debt relief. The ache is felt strongest on the LPGA Tour, particularly because you will find too few prospects who are both top-flight winners and highly marketable. Marketing the league is becoming increasingly difficult in America, with few native daughters within the rankings, according to fan sentiment at The Golf Channel website. As one golf fan voiced his displeasure concerning America's current state on the LPGA Tour: "There has not been an American POY or an American who won the Vare Trophy (scoring title) since 1994. There has not been an American leading the money list since 1993. In the last 15 years, only four ROY titles have gone to Americans. Of the last 41 majors (dating back to the year 2000), only nine have been won by Americans. This has pretty consistently been about one major a year one by Americans".

Such underwhelming returns have prompted numerous sponsors to cancel their LPGA ties, indicates the New York Daily News. Names like Paula Creamer and Michelle Wie speak a lot more of unfulfilled potential than hope any more.

Erica Blasberg played her first LPGA Tour event two weeks ago

Blasberg finished in a tie for 44th at an event in Mexico. Clearly, she was not the top American player on the tour, but she did make the cut and finish Top-50. It has simply a sign of things to come from the previous University of Arizona golf star.

As LPGA spokesman David Higdon said in a press conference, Erica Blasberg's premature death is a "tough hit" for the LPGA. Blasberg was popular and well-liked, qualities that carry a great deal of currency in a tight-knit group like the American LPGA sorority. The beaming young woman her college teammates nicknamed "Skipper" can be missed by all who knew her and those who wish they'd had the chance to make her acquaintance. The loss can be strongly felt by the LPGA, who'll miss Erica the person and Erica the potential car to key an American resurgence.

Citations

http://www.mcall.com/sports/sns-lpga-erica-blasberg-pictures,0,7539433.photogallery

http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news;_ylt=AkXqsIj2BVWYCMcjJoBbjDIogsUF?slug=ap-obit-blasberg

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2009/07/09/2009-07-09_lpga_players_teed_off.html

I am honestly afraid to write this review. This is sacred ground, er, film, we're talking about. How could anyone but Dan the Man write this review? Opinions about the new installment in the Iron Man franchise are as common and prevalent as PB and J sandwiches in an elementary school lunchroom. That's a daunting thought for me at first. And then I realize that nobody in elementary school cared about my PB and J sandwich. They were all busy eating their own. I suspect this review will be the same way. I will, in fact, be surprised if anyone even reads it. Iron Man 2 is one of those movies that everyone is going to go see regardless of what anyone else says. I think that's a good thing.

It's becoming a rule that Iron Man movies have to open in a country that's not America. I'd complain about the overuse of Russian and Middle-Eastern stereotypes for villains but it isn't really anybody's fault, given that the Marvel Universe has been around a while. Villain choices are also often fueled by current events and therefore typically prone to the use of stereotypes and representations of whoever America was at war with when the latest issue rolled out. All of this comes to a single conclusion: Mickey Rourke does a mind-blowing job as Ivan Vanko/Whiplash. It's been a while since a comic book movie has served up a villain unique and compelling enough to care about and sinister enough to love hating. As far as the cast of Iron Man 2 is concerned, I had little doubt that everyone would do at least a moderately good job. I had only a few concerns, and most of those proved irrelevant.

Robert Downey Jr. did exactly as well as anybody who has seen the first Iron Man (e.g. everyone who owns a television plus a few people who sat around in Wal-Mart all day when they were using it to show off televisions) would expect him to. What's impressive is that he didn't carry the movie the way he did the first go-around. That's not to say that he wasn't good, he just had a lot of excellent support. Think Kevin Garnett as a part of the Boston Threeparty rather than a lone Timberwolf. For those of us not as inclined to NBA metaphors, I'm saying that RDJ simply didn't have to outshine everyone else to make this a movie.

I will be the first (and possibly only) to admit that I was a little nervous about Don Cheadle replacing Terrance Howard. I absolutely hate when an actor or actress is traded out in the middle of a franchise and we are asked not to notice. What if Matt Damon had suddenly been Aragorn in The Return of the King? Extreme scenarios aside, I think the point has been made: don't mess with me once I've adjusted. Howard was a great fit for that role and I was a little skeptical about Cheadle's relaxed delivery style being the proper replacement for the fast-talking, loyal Lt. Col James Rhodey Rhodes. I may be marooning myself by saying this, but at times I feel I was justified. I really wasn't completely sold on Cheadle as an Air Force officer. But those times were few and far between as Rhodey delivered scene after scene. Scenes involving RDJ and Cheadle playing off of each other are truly a pleasure to watch, especially during his first combat as War Machine, wherein some very entertaining dialogue involving the difference between a big gun and the big gun takes place.

So War Machine was great, Mickey Rourke blew my mind into tiny pieces that he reassembled and blew up again with an arc reactor, RDJ was fantastic as expected, and the rest of the cast was pretty much unchanged. Any problems here? Not really. Samuel L. Jackson did his usual odd bit as Nick Fury and managed not to distract me too much, the interplay between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts (Gwenyth Paltrow) was up to and beyond par, and new rival Justin Hammer (Sam Rockwell) managed to keep a perfect balance between amusingly eccentric and fascinatingly evil. Those of you going over the checklist at home will note that I've covered every base but one: That empty box next to Introduction of Black Widow is screaming for attention, isn't it?

Ok, I'll say it. She wasn't bad. I mean that. I even went in expecting it to be your typical Hollywood insert-random-attractive-actress-in-seemingly-unnecessary-role-in-order-to-attract-male-audience maneuver. Honestly, they probably didn't actually need Black Widow (who, like War Machine, is never actually identified by anything other than her alter-ego's name and the occasional alias... now that I think about it, did we ever actually call Ivan Vanko Whiplash? No, actually. Clearly Marvel knows their target audience.). Parenthetical rants aside, I came in with a point. Scarlett Johansson was a relatively unimportant and under-characterized piece of eye candy. But not distractingly so. There were a few points where she felt out of place, where she was clearly trying too hard to fit into the relatively unfamiliar role of a super spy. Please, Scarlett, don't try to act tough. If your character is tough, then be tough. You aren't really fooling anybody simply by replacing your normal voice with a growl when you get angry, and they already made a Hulk movie. For the most part, though, Johansson did a good job of blending into the admittedly ludicrous and complex world of Marvel superheroes, a theme which Iron Man 2 pushed to its limit.

I realize that we're building up for The Avengers, I really do (stick around after the credits for a brief glimpse of what's to come, as usual). The Avenger Initiative was just a little too central for me. This script had a lot of cool ideas and subplots, from the mysterious work of Tony's father to the background of disgruntled scientist Ivan Vanko with stops along the way to include Tony's personal life, the disturbing truth about what wearing a high-energy device in your chest cavity can do to your health, the birth of an awesome partnership between Iron Man and War Machine, and the future of a powerful weapons and technology industry. I don't really think we needed S.H.E.I.L.D. as much as they were involved. I feel like there was a bit of laziness in the writing room whenever the script hit a roadblock and the standard fallback was and then Nick Fury said... There was a lot going on in this film, and I wish it could have been slightly more focused, but the overall effect was still dazzling.

But Marvel truly is aiming at a specific target audience. As a bit of a geek with Friends in Nerd Places, I enjoyed the casual references dropped throughout the film (keep an eye out for Captain America's shield, it's not hard to miss this time around). I don't mind being made to jump through increasingly strenuous imagination hoops to follow a storyline, and I really didn't have to as much as I could have. God help us when the alternate universes get involved. I pray they never do. What I'm getting at here is that Iron Man 2 could be a bit difficult to digest. But so are 87% of the items on an American menu. That doesn't make them not worth eating.

Truth on Cinema

The stunner, who has been wearing her hair in a tight ponytail for months,

showed off the new wavy brunette do at an LA fashion party, outshining co-host Eva Longoria, 35, reports The Sun.

Celebrity hairdresser Stavros Konstantinou, 40, said her beachy summer look would be easier for fans to copy than the previous poker-straight version.

He said: It's a very flattering, refreshing, under-styled look.

This looks like you've spent a day on the beach and got sea salt in your hair.

It will simply have leave-in conditioner in it and has been twisted by hand, then dried with a diffuser.

Celebrity and World

The photograph, in which he wore a German S.S. officer's hat and posed in a Nazi salute, had been published in US Weekly while he was in rehab after it was revealed that he'd been cheating on actress Sandra Bullock.

The biker said that the photograph didnt really portray what he was.

I don't even remember taking the photo. I could tell by the look on my face it was a joke that was funny then, probably for a minute, but then looking at it in the context of now and in my life, it's not funny, New York Post quoted him as saying in an interview that aired this morning on ABC's Good Morning America.

There's not a racist bone in my body.

After months of keeping a low profile, James said one of the reasons he sat down for the interview was to dispel such rumours.

I think out of everything, this is why I'm doing this interview the most, because you know, dealing with losing my marriage and my son and embarrassing everyone and decimating my life, but to be called a racist on top of that is, it makes me really sad, he said.

Celebrity and World

GfK study leader Christine Buchebner said today (Tues): "That 26 per cent of Austrians think that AIDS is a disease only homosexuals and people addicted to drugs can get infected with is a worrying fact."

Buchebner said her team interviewed 1,000 Austrians aged 15 and older for the representative survey.

The poll also revealed that 41 per cent thought "those who lead a normal life" could not get AIDS and HIV.Source: austriantimes.at

Also interesting was the fact that -

Out of all infected in Austria - 40% are heterosexuals, 16% were caused due to the shared usage of a syringe and 35% were infecting during gay sex.

HOW DO YOU GET AIDS? (from here)

You don't actually "get" AIDS. You might get infected with HIV, and later you might develop AIDS. You can get infected with HIV from anyone who's infected, even if they don't look sick and even if they haven't tested HIV-positive yet. The blood, vaginal fluid, semen, and breast milk of people infected with HIV has enough of the virus in it to infect other people. Most people get the HIV virus by:

Getting a transfusion of infected blood used to be a way people got AIDS, but now the blood supply is screened very carefully and the risk is extremely low.

There are no documented cases of HIV being transmitted by tears or saliva, but it is possible to be infected with HIV through oral sex or in rare cases through deep kissing, especially if you have open sores in your mouth or bleeding gums. For more information, see the following Fact Sheets:

Frank Rees was first stopped and arrested for drunken driving shortly before 2:30 a.m. on Saturday, but posted a $500 bond several hours later, at 5:22 a.m.

At 7:03 a.m., police responded to a report of a hit-and-run crash on the 1500 block of Phillips Street, where Rees allegedly struck a parked car and drove off. He then went to the hospital because of injuries from the crash, and police charged him with a second DUI.

I don't think Frank got the message with the first arrest - that he needed to park the car and call it the night, rather than continuing on testing his drunken-driving skills.

Di Resta has been used in place of one of the race drivers at various race free practices on Fridays this season as the team evaluate the DTM racer for a potential future race seat.

However the bosses at Force India have decided they want Adrian Sutil and Vitantonio Liuzzi to give them experienced feedback on new parts being put on the car this weekend.

Speaking about the decision, di Resta said: It was a late call from the team but I completely understand their decision as there are some new upgrades coming through this race that really need the drivers and the teams attention.

Ill still be there in the garage, trying to learn as much as I can as the developments are pretty exciting. Ive still done all the groundwork, going in the simulator for some running as Ive never driven Istanbul Park before.

Its a pretty busy time of the year for me as well with the DTM race in Valencia between Monaco and Turkey. But its keeping me sharp and focused on racing, which is the best possible situation for me right now.

F1Fanactics Blog

Montezemolo stated his happiness with the two time world champions driving following some criticsms following a jump start and the bad accident he had in Monaco. Some Itlaian media had suggested Luca was unhappy with Fernando and wanted Michael Schumacher back.

Montezemolo dismissed these claims however.

Not one bit, di Montezemolo said when asked by Gazzetta dello Sport if there were regrets. It was good with Michael but its over. No regrets. Today Im very happy with Alonso, both on and off the track.

Alonso has team spirit, conscientiousness, attachment to the team. And when he races hes a fantastic fighter.

I consider a mistake only what happened at Monte Carlo, due to excessive confidence, he said. He wanted to test the limit while thinking of pole, and he crashed. The jump start in China was down to the tension. But we are in a great position for the championship the game is on.

Montezemolo also hinted to La Gazetta Dello Sport that Felipe Massa could keep his seat with the Scuderia.

[He needs to]Carry on working with the same spirit while taking care of himself and the team.

Some rumours in the German and Italian media have been suggesting Ross Brawn and Michael Schumacher could make a sensational return to Ferrari.

F1Fanatics Blog

Check out the owners of the number and their stories -

1 - Vladimir Grashnov - the former CEO of Bulgarian mobile phone company Mobitel

Death - Died of Cancer in 2001 at 48. Rumors claim that the rivals caused the cancer by radioactive poisoning.

Yesterday afternoon, the rumor flying around was that, Joe Jonas broke up with Demi Lovato by phone. Another gossip site revealed that, Joe actually had his dad break up with Demi for him. The ex couple are now trying to set the record straight.

They admit that yes, they are broken up, but they will remain friends.

Demi and I knew going into our romantic relationship that it may not be an easy one, Jonas, 20, tells PEOPLE. I realize over the time we have shared together that I feel I care more about our friendship right now. It was my choice to break up but I love her as a friend. Shes been there for me when I needed her. I will continue to be her friend and be there for her.

Demi took to Twitter, to shoot down rumors that she was dumped by phone. There are so many crazy rumors flying around today, she writes. Id like to clear a few things up. First, Joe and I did split but it wasnt over the phone. Things didnt work out but well remain friends. Secondly, I am NOT dating anybody already. Nothing is more important to me than the relationship I have with my fans. Just thought you guys should know this.

Celeb Tea

So much for Kim Kardashian being real. The reality star beauty, finally admitted to getting work done. In an interview for ABC News Nightline airing Monday night, the 29-year-old star along with sisters Khloe and Kourtney and mom Kris Jenner confronts the plastic surgery rumors head on.

Im totally not against plastic surgery, she explains to reporter Cynthia McFadden. Ive tried Botox before. Thats the only thing that Ive done.

Ive never had my nose done, she clarifies.

Adds her mom Kris: None of us have had our nose done.

Still, Kim admits: Whats funny about my nose, its my biggest insecurity. I always want to get my nose done . . . I went to the doctor, I had them take the pictures, he showed me what it would look like and it just didnt I wouldnt look the same.

One Kardashian who did have work done: big sister Kourtney, 30. I have had breast implants, but its so funny cause its not a secret, I could care less, said Kourtney. The new mom jokes: My boobs have like tripled since breastfeeding baby Mason, 5 months.

Kim we really want to believe you, really we do, but when we see pictures of you from a few years back and we compare them to your recent pictures, we see a big difference Kimmie.

Celeb Tea

Russia and the Polish Patriots

For example, the Polish government recently announced that the United States would deploy a battery of Patriot missiles to Poland. The missiles arrived this week. When the United States canceled its land-based ballistic missile defense system under intense Russian pressure, the Obama administration appeared surprised at Polands intense displeasure with the decision. Washington responded by promising the Patriots instead, the technology the Poles had wanted all along. While the Patriot does not enhance Americas ability to protect itself against long-range ballistic missiles from, for example, Iran, it does give Poland some defense against shorter-ranged ballistic missiles and substantial defense against conventional air attack.

Russia is the only country capable of such attacks on Poland with even the most distant potential interest in doing so, and at this point, this is truly an abstract threat. In removing a system that was really not a threat to Russian interests U.S. ballistic missile defense at most can handle only a score of missiles, meaning it would have a negligible impact on the Russian nuclear deterrent the United States ironically has installed a system that could affect Russia. Under the current circumstances, this is not really significant. While much is being made of having a few U.S. boots on the ground east of Germany within 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) of the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad, a few hundred technicians and guards are simply not an offensive threat.

Still, the Russians with a long history of seeing improbable threats turning into very real ones tend to take hypothetical limits on their power seriously. They also tend to take gestures seriously, knowing that gestures often germinate into strategic intent. The Russians obviously oppose this deployment, as the Patriots would allow Poland in league with NATO and perhaps even by itself to achieve local air superiority. There are many crosscurrents in Russian policy, however.

For the moment, the Russians are interested in encouraging better economic relations with the West, as they could use technology and investment that would make them more than a commodity exporter. Moreover, with the Europeans preoccupied with their economic crisis and the United States still bogged down in the Middle East and needing Russian support on Iran, Moscow has found little outside resistance to its efforts to increase its influence in the former Soviet Union. Moscow is not unhappy about the European crisis and wouldnt want to do anything that might engender greater European solidarity. After all, a solid economic bloc turning into an increasingly powerful and integrated state would pose challenges to Russia in the long run that Moscow is happy to do without. The Patriot deployment is a current irritation and a hypothetical military problem, but the Russians are not inclined to create a crisis with Europe over it though this doesnt mean Moscow wont make countermoves on the margins when it senses opportunities.

For its part, the Obama administration is not focused on Poland at present. It is obsessed with internal matters, South Asia and the Middle East. The Patriots were shipped based on a promise made months ago to calm Central European nerves over the Obama administrations perceived lack of commitment to the region. In the U.S. State and Defense department sections charged with shipping Patriots to Poland, the delivery process was almost an afterthought; repeated delays in deploying the system highlighted Washingtons lack of strategic intent.

It is therefore tempting to dismiss the Patriots as of little importance, as merely the combination of a hangover from a Cold War mentality and a minor Obama administration misstep. Indeed, even a sophisticated observer of the international system might barely note it. But we would argue that it is more important than it appears precisely because of everything else going on.

Existential Crisis in the EU

The European Union is experiencing an existential crisis. This crisis is not about Greece, but rather, what it is that members of the European Union owe each other and what controls the European Union has over its members. The European Union did well during a generation of prosperity. As financial crisis struck, better-off members were called on to help worse-off members. Again, this is not just about Greece the 2008 credit crisis in Central Europe was about the same thing. The wealthier countries, Germany in particular, are not happy at the prospect of spending taxpayer money to assist countries dealing with popped credit bubbles.

They really dont want to do that, and if they do, they really want to have controls over the ways these other countries spend their money so this circumstance doesnt arise again. Needless to say, Greece and countries that might wind up like Greece do not want foreign control over their finances.

If there are no mutual obligations among EU member nations, and the German and Greek publics dont want to bail out or submit, respectively, then the profound question is raised of what Europe is going to be beyond a mere free trade zone after this crisis. This is not simply a question of the euro surviving, although that is no trivial matter.

The euro and the European Union will probably survive this crisis although their mutual failure is not nearly as unthinkable as the Europeans would have thought even a few months ago but this is not the only crisis Europe will experience. Something always will be going wrong, and Europe does not have institutions that could handle these problems. Events in the past few weeks indicate that European countries are not inclined to create such institutions, and that public opinion will limit European governments ability to create or participate in these institutions. Remember, building a super state requires one of two things: a war to determine who is in charge or political unanimity to forge a treaty. Europe is vividly demonstrating the limitations on the second strategy.

Whatever happens in the short run, it is difficult to envision any further integration of European institutions. And it is very easy to see how the European Union will devolve from its ambitious vision into an alliance of convenience built around economic benefits negotiated and renegotiated among the partners. It would thus devolve from a union to a treaty, with no interest beyond self-interest.

The German Question Revisited

We return to the question that has defined Europe since 1871, namely, the status of Germany in Europe. As we have seen during the current crisis, Germany is clearly the economic center of gravity in Europe, and this crisis has shown that the economic and the political issues are very much one and the same. Unless Germany agrees, nothing can be done, and if Germany so wishes, something will be done. Germany has tremendous power in Europe, even if it is confined largely to economic matters. But just as Germany is the blocker and enabler of Europe, over time that makes Germany the central problem of Europe.

If Germany is the key decision maker in Europe, then Germany defines whatever policies Europe as a whole undertakes. If Europe fragments, then Germany is the only country in Europe with the ability to create alternative coalitions that are both powerful and cohesive. That means that if the European Union weakens, Germany will have the greatest say in what Europe will become. Right now, the Germans are working assiduously to reformulate the European Union and the eurozone in a manner more to their liking. But as this requires many partners to offer sovereignty to German control sovereignty they have jealously guarded throughout the European project it is worth exploring alternatives to Germany in the European Union.

For that we first must understand Germanys limits. The German problem is the same problem it has had since unification: It is enormously powerful, but it is far from omnipotent. Its very power makes it the focus of other powers, and together, these other powers can cripple Germany. Thus, Germany is indispensable for any decision within the European Union at present, and it will be the single center of power in Europe in the future but Germany cant just go it alone. Germany needs a coalition, meaning the long-term question is this: If the EU were to weaken or even fail, what alternative coalition would Germany seek?

The casual answer is France, as the two economies are somewhat similar and the countries are next-door neighbors. But historically, this similarity in structure and location has been a source not of collaboration and fondness but of competition and friction. Within the European Union, with its broad diversity, Germany and France have been able to put aside their frictions, finding a common interest in managing Europe to their mutual advantage. That co-management, of course, helped bring us to this current crisis. Moreover, the biggest thing that France has that Germany wants is its market; an ideal partner for Germany would offer more. By itself at least, France is not a foundation for long-term German economic strategy. The historic alternative for Germany has been Russia.

The Russian Option

A great deal of potential synergy exists between the German and Russian economies. Germany imports large amounts of energy and other resources from Russia. As mentioned, Russia needs sources of technology and capital to move it beyond its current position of mere resource exporter. Germany has a shrinking population and needs a source of labor preferably a source that doesnt actually want to move to Germany. Russias Soviet-era economy continues to de-industrialize, and while that has a plethora of negative impacts, there is one often-overlooked positive: Russia now has more labor than it can effectively metabolize in its economy given its capital structure. Germany doesnt want more immigrants but needs access to labor. Russia wants factories in Russia to employ its surplus work force, and it wants technology. The logic of the German-Russian economic relationship is more obvious than the German-Greek or German-Spanish relationship. As for France, it can participate or not (and incidentally, the French are joining in on a number of ongoing German-Russian projects).

Therefore, if we simply focus on economics, and we assume that the European Union cannot survive as an integrated system (a logical but not yet proven outcome), and we further assume that Germany is both the leading power of Europe and incapable of operating outside of a coalition, then we would argue that a German coalition with Russia is the most logical outcome of an EU decline.

This would leave many countries extremely uneasy. The first is Poland, caught as it is between Russia and Germany. The second is the United States, since Washington would see a Russo-German economic bloc as a more significant challenger than the European Union ever was for two reasons. First, it would be a more coherent relationship forging common policies among two states with broadly parallel interests is far simpler and faster than doing so among 27. Second, and more important, where the European Union could not develop a military dimension due to internal dissensions, the emergence of a politico-military dimension to a Russo-German economic bloc is far less difficult to imagine. It would be built around the fact that both Germans and Russians resent and fear American power and assertiveness, and that the Americans have for years been courting allies who lie between the two powers. Germany and Russia would both view themselves defending against American pressure.

And this brings us back to the Patriot missiles. Regardless of the bureaucratic backwater this transfer might have emerged out of, or the political disinterest that generated the plan, the Patriot stationing fits neatly into a slowly maturing military relationship between Poland and the United States. A few months ago, the Poles and Americans conducted military exercises in the Baltic states, an incredibly sensitive region for the Russians. The Polish air force now flies some of the most modern U.S.-built F-16s in the world; this, plus Patriots, could seriously challenge the Russians. A Polish general commands a sector in Afghanistan, something not lost upon the Russians. By a host of processes, a close U.S.-Polish relationship is emerging.

The current economic problems may lead to a fundamental weakening of the European Union. Germany is economically powerful but needs economic coalition partners that contribute to German well-being rather than merely draw on it. A Russian-German relationship could logically emerge from this. If it did, the Americans and Poles would logically have their own relationship. The former would begin as economic and edge toward military. The latter begins as military, and with the weakening of the European Union, edges toward economics. The Russian-German bloc would attempt to bring others into its coalition, as would the Polish-U.S. bloc. Both would compete in Central Europe and for France. During this process, the politics of NATO would shift from humdrum to absolutely riveting.

And thus, the Greek crisis and the Patriots might intersect, or in our view, will certainly in due course intersect. Though neither is of lasting importance in and of themselves, the two together point to a new logic in Europe. What appears impossible now in Europe might not be unthinkable in a few years. With Greece symbolizing the weakening of the European Union and the Patriots representing the remilitarization of at least part of Europe, ostensibly unconnected tendencies might well intersect.

"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"

Back in 2008, Livni failed to create a government coalition to replace Olmert. She claimed at that time that she refused to give in to haredi blackmail: religious parties wanted extra funding for their constituencies.

Apparently, it was merely a misunderstanding. Livni had offered the haredim a huge increase in budget allocations over what they got under Olmerts government. The amount was so huge that the haredim thought it would be their total budget rather than an additional amount, and they refused.

Samson Blinded

Kozar Cool Blog

On Monday afternoon, the pop star had 4,955,768 followers, while Kutcher had 4,944,221 followers.

The Just Married star once famously beat CNN to 1 million followers, reports People.

WOW!!!!! #1 on Twitter, Spears wrote. Thank you! Tweet me some questions this morning! xoxo Brit.

I don't care, Kutcher Tweeted after being informed about the news.

Spears, meanwhile, took to her Twitter account to personally thank fans. This is really amazing! I love you all! I better get busy writing 4,947,608 thank you notes! U guys make me sooo happy! -Brit, she wrote.

Celebrity and World