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NEW YORK – At a festival in Germany, when six women walked by wearing specially-created “SpongeBob SquarePants” shirts, Stephen Hillenburg’s wife nudged him: Why don’t you tell them who you are?
Hillenburg, who created SpongeBob and all his undersea friends at the Krusty Krab, declined.
“I thought that it was so surreal, they probably wouldn’t believe me,” he recalled Monday.
Believe this: television’s favorite animated sponge is now 10 years old, and Nickelodeon celebrates this weekend with a blowout bash. Eleven new episodes and countdowns of fan favorites will air. A documentary on the series debuts Tuesday on sister station VH1.
“SpongeBob SquarePants” has been TV’s most popular animated show for children aged 2 to 11 for seven years now, and a not-so-secret factor to its appeal is that many parents — and even people without kids — love it, too. It’s a cash cow that has generated 8 billion in merchandising revenue for Nickelodeon.
The show is seen in 25 different languages and counts two world leaders, President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who say they watch with their children.
Hillenburg is an artist and also a scientist who taught, and the inspiration for many of his show’s characters came from a comic he wrote, “The Intertidal Zone,” designed to teach his students at the Ocean Institute about tidal pool characters.
Through 125 episodes and guest shots by the likes of David Bowie, LeBron James, Whoopi Goldberg and Ray Liotta, the series has evolved and explored other characters to avoid repeating itself. But the essence of the show remains SpongeBob and his sweet innocence, Hillenburg said.
“I never really imagined a show about a sponge going past our first season,” he said. “I thought maybe we’d have a cult following, and we’d be gone after one season. I’m in disbelief that we’re here talking.”
Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group, was one of four executives in the room when “SpongeBob SquarePants” was screened for the first time. Their immediate reaction was to see it again, both because they liked it and it was unlike anything they’d ever seen before, she said.
The show’s optimism, as it first appeared a few months after President Clinton’s impeachment trial, was key to its rise, she said.
“You can put all of the right ingredients into the pot when making a show like this, but there is some kind of magic ingredient that you can’t account for or predict, and that sends it into the stratosphere,” she said.
The first episode aired on July 19, 1999. A month later, the show’s first celebrity guest voices appeared — Ernest Borgnine and Tim Conway.
This weekend’s “SpongeBob SquarePants” marathon will include, besides the new shows, separate top-10 countdowns of favorite episodes as selected by fans and celebrities.
Nick currently has enough episodes on order to bring the total to 152 over the next year. The success of “The Simpsons” notwithstanding, that’s an unusually large amount of shows in a television genre where they usually come and go quickly.
Zarghami said she sees no end in sight.
“As long as we are able to sustain the integrity of the characters and the quality of the program, I think we should continue,” she said. “I don’t think there will be a point of diminishing returns.”
Since the “SpongeBob” movie in 2004, Hillenburg has stepped back into an executive producer’s role. He no longer writes or runs the show on a day-to-day basis, but reviews each episode and delivers suggestions.
He’s working on two other TV projects that he doesn’t want to discuss and does a fair amount of painting.
“I figure when I’m pretty old I can still paint,” he said. “I don’t know about running shows.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) –
A U.S. bankruptcy judge gave General Motors Corp permission on Monday to buy several assets of bankrupt auto parts supplier Delphi Corp as part of a deal with a private equity firm that could take Delphi out of bankruptcy.
Judge Robert Gerber of U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan gave “Old GM,” now known as Motors Liquidation Corp, permission to buy Delphi's steering business and a number of its plants, deemed essential to GM's ability to build cars.
Delphi is by far GM's largest supplier, accounting for approximately 11.3 percent of its purchases in 2008.
If GM's partner in the bid for Delphi, private equity firm Platinum Equity, won the auction for Delphi that is set for later this week, “New GM” or General Motors Co — which emerged from bankruptcy on Friday after the carmaker sold the bulk of its best assets to a U.S. government-led group — would reimburse Old GM and receive the Delphi assets.
Old GM, which now consists of the remainder of the automaker's assets, remains in bankruptcy court.
Delphi, which was spun off from General Motors Corp in 1999 and filed for bankruptcy in 2005, said last month that it had reached a deal to sell most of its global operations to Platinum, in a plan that with the participation of GM would allow Delphi to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
In a court document, GM had said it expected the transaction to cost $3.9 billion, including a payment of $1.1 billion to Delphi's creditors and a $2 billion equity stake in Parnassus, a unit of Platinum, which has submitted the only bid so far to take Delphi out of bankruptcy.
Platinum would invest $250 million in Delphi under terms of the plan.
But the deal still has to get approval from the judge overseeing Delphi's bankruptcy.
The deadline for other potential bids — “credit bids” by Delphi's lenders — is set for later this week, with the auction for Delphi scheduled for Friday. A sale hearing is scheduled for July 23 in federal bankruptcy court in Manhattan.
Under the terms of the deal, GM would buy Delphi's steering business, as well as plants in Kokomo, Indiana; Rochester and Lockport, New York; and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
The case is In re: Motors Liquidation Company, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, No 09-50026
(Reporting by Phil Wahba, editing by Gerald E. McCormick)

MEXICO CITY, MexicoTwo suspects have been arrested in this weekend’s coordinated attacks in at least 10 Mexican cities that killed three federal police and two soldiers, federal authorities said.
The attacks occurred after the arrest of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, a ranking member of La Familia Michoacan.
One attacker was killed in a shootout with police during the arrests Sunday in Michoacan state, said the federal Secretariat for Public Security. In addition to the five deaths Saturday, 18 federal officers were wounded, the state-run Notimex news agency reported, citing federal police official Rodolfo Cruz Lopez. The attacks were in retribution for the capture early Saturday of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, a high-ranking member of La Familia Michoacan drug cartel, Cruz said. Cartel members first attacked the federal police station in Morelia to try to gain freedom for Rueda, the public security office said. When that failed, drug gangs attacked police installations in other Michoacan cities: Zitacuaro, Zamora, Lazaro Cardenas, Apatzingan, La Piedad and Huetamo. Other rifle and grenade attacks took place in Guerrero and Guanajuato states, both of which border Michoacan, but no one was injured. The three officers were killed in Zitacuaro, police official Eduardo Moran told CNN en Español. The officers were attending to a motor vehicle accident when they were shot, Cruz said.
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In Zamora, the two soldiersa sergeant and a corporalwere shot by men in a passing car as they walked to their headquarters. Michoacan is in west-central Mexico, on the Pacific coast. Arrested Sunday were Antonion Farfan Sanchez, 20, and Rafael Antonio Gomez Perez, 25, authorities said. Police said they seized several weapons, including three AK-47 assault rifles, a .38-caliber pistol and ammunition for the firearms. Also seized were a bulletproof vest and a 2009 Suzuki pickup truck.
Source:CNN

PENSACOLA, Florida Police believe six to eight people were involved in the shooting deaths of a Gulf Coast couple known for adopting special-needs children, authorities said Monday.
Police are trying to identify the two men seen here with murder suspect Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., middle.
Those include three people already in custody for the deaths Thursday of Byrd and Melanie Billings. The crime was “a very well-planned and methodical operation,” said Escambia County, Florida, Sheriff David Morgan. “We are very hopeful that at least one more arrest and possibly two will occur today,” as two persons of interest were being interviewed, Morgan told reporters. Two others have yet to be identified, he said. Both of the Billingses were shot multiple times, Morgan said, but he would not release further details on their deaths. Authorities released two surveillance tapes taken from the front and rear of the Billingses’ home. Each shows a vehicle pulling up to the property, and five people dressed in black and wearing masks entering the home through two entrancesincluding through a utility door left unlocked, something Morgan said is not uncommon in the community. Authorities believe drivers remained in both of the cars. Investigators believe one motive in the deaths was robbery, but “we believe there are other motives,” Morgan said. He would not say what, if anything, was taken from the home. Melanie Billings’ biological daughter, Ashley Markham, told reporters the couple initially had 17 childrentwo biological children each for Byrd and Melanie Billings, with the rest adopted. Three have died over the years, she said. The couple had no biological children together. Watch Ashley Markham say, “Love was never scarce” in Billings home » Morgan, however, said the couple had a total of 16 children, with two that have died and others that have grown older and no longer live in the Billingses’ home. Nine of the couple’s children were home at the time of the incident, Morgan said, and police believe three of them saw the intruders. One managed to flee the home and seek help at a neighbor’s house, the sheriff said.
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Wayne Coldiron, 41; Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Jr., 35, and Leonard Patrick Gonzalez Sr., 56, were arrested over the weekend. Coldiron and the younger Gonzalez face charges of murder, robbery and residential home invasion; the elder Gonzalez faces charges of evidence tampering for allegedly trying to disguise a vehicle spotted at the home. Coldiron and the younger Gonzalez were being held on 1 million bond, according to records posted on the sheriff’s Web site. The senior Gonzalez was being held on 250,000 bond. One of the three in custody is believed to be the mastermind behind the crime, Morgan said, but would not say which one. Watch a report on the arrests in the complex case » Police also released a surveillance photo taken at a Wal-Mart in nearby Gulf Breeze, Florida, in recent weeks, showing three men. One is the younger Gonzalez, but authorities want to know who the other men are, Morgan said. The sheriff called the surveillance tapes “chilling.” He noted that the vehicles were at the home less than 10 minutes, and the five people were in the house less than four minutes. “It leads me to believe that this was a very well-planned and methodical operation,” Morgan said. Although the Billingses were well known in the community, the sheriff said authorities are still trying to unravel why they were targeted. He compared their deaths to the slaying of the Clutter family of Kansas, inspiration for Truman Capote’s novel “In Cold Blood,” noting the Clutter murders were something the community struggled with for years. “It will be a very long time, I believe, until we piece together the truth of why this family was selected,” Morgan said. Police believe the suspects might have bought the clothes they wore to the home and were reviewing surveillance tapes and photos from several stores, he said. Morgan said the crime’s complexity is frustrating for investigators, comparing it to a complicated mathematics word problem that lacks complete information. “It seems as though each phase we complete, while we answer a set of questions, it opens up an additional set of questions.” Earlier, he said the complete story, when revealed, is “going to be a humdinger.” Asked whether the suspects entered the home planning to kill the couple, Morgan said authorities do not know. Markham said earlier the family does not know any of the three suspects. She said the children “are coping very well” and are being cared for.
“They haven’t asked too many questions,” she said, noting that several have disabilities. While the investigation continues, the family is keeping the children’s whereabouts a secret. The Billingses lived in Beulah, west of Pensacola, near the Alabama state line.
Source:CNN

Controversy to surround Goldman success
By Simon Atkinson
Business reporter, BBC News
When Goldman Sachs unveils its latest results, they are are widely expected to reveal a hefty profit.Reports suggest it will have made more than 2bn (1.23bn) between March and June – pretty staggering given that just six months ago it was seeing its first quarterly loss since going public in 1999. Along with its rivals, it had been battered by an economic crisis not seen since the Great Depression and the Wall Street institution was forced into taking 10bn in federal aid. That loan, under the Troubled Asset Relief Programme (TARP), has now been paid off as Goldman begins to operate free from state shackles.
Conspiracy theories abound about how it has managed to turn things around. But after a fairly successful first three months of the year, it seems that it has continued to capitalise on the turmoil in the markets – making bets in the right direction on commodities and volatile currencies as well as shares – and profiting handsomely. And its share price, while still well off its high, has gained about 75% in 2009. “It is, in many respects, business as usual at Goldman,” Barclays Capital analyst Roger Freeman told The Boston Globe. Too much risk?But while the business model and the tales of success may be familiar, the context in which it is trading is quite different. While once there was little but applause for huge returns, Goldman and its rivals are operating in a different sphere from 18 months ago. Today, if profits are too good, the bank is likely to be criticised for taking too much risk – gambles that may have paid off this time but which could have left them vulnerable. There will be complaints too that they are now operating in a much smaller marketplace – that the likes of Lehman Brothers were allowed to fail, while other institutions could prosper and now profit thanks to the taxpayer. However investors – who have come to expect Goldman to outwit its rivals – are unlikely to be impressed if they see profits as being too low.
“They are between a rock and a hard place,” said Walter Todd, of Greenwood Capital Associates, which owns shares of rival Morgan Stanley. Headline grabbingThere is also inevitably going to be a backlash form those who saw their investments crumble because of the actions of big banks, especially when it comes to bonus time. Analysts have estimated that Goldman is going to split about 18bn between its 28,000 employees – something that it would have struggled to do had it not got approval to exit the TARP scheme – after raising cash through the sale of debt and equities. And if that is not controversial enough, there has been plenty of other publicity in recent weeks – including allegations of employee theft and an unflattering feature of the firm in Rolling Stone magazine accusing it of playing an important role in market bubbles. All this ensures that while JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America will also be revealing more about their financial performance in the coming days, it will be Goldman that is likely to grab the headlines.

Source:BBC

The meaning of N Korea’s strange jibes
By John Sudworth
BBC News, Seoul
South Korea has even begun to keep count.A government official recently claimed that North Korea’s official state media has insulted the South Korean president more than 1,700 times this year alone. That is an average of 10 insults a day. He is variously called “a lackey”, “a stooge”, “a dictator” and the leader of “a gang of traitors”. The official admitted that the jibes were sometimes “downright silly”. But the language chosen by North Korea to attack its opponents can border on the terrifying. Last year, for example, it threatened to reduce South Korea “to ashes” and, more recently, warned of a “fire shower” of nuclear retaliation. So, just how much attention should we be paying to this kind of rhetoric? Is it mere bluster, or is there a real risk that the bombastic outbursts will be translated into action? ‘Wolf in sheep’s clothing’Michael Harrold has an unusual claim to fame. In 1987 he became the first British citizen to be employed by the North Korean government in Pyongyang.
His mission was to offer advice on the correct use of English for the translations of North Korean propaganda. At the start of his seven-year posting, having arrived in a strange and bewildering city, he remembers buying himself a Korean phrase book. “The second from last chapter was called ‘useful phrases’,” he tells me. It included such choice essentials as: “The American Yankee is a wolf in sheep’s clothing”, and “the US imperialists are the greatest threat to humanity in the 20th Century”. Unlikely to trip off a beginner’s tongue perhaps, but the run-of-the-mill phrase book was his first lesson in how all pervasive this kind of language is inside the reclusive country. External enemySo does the average North Korean go about his daily life peppering his speech with such casual insults? Is North Korea really one of the angriest places on the planet?
Joo Sung-ha, who defected from North Korea seven years ago, thinks it might be. He is now a journalist working on the foreign desk of the Dong-A Ilbo, a South Korean broadsheet, with regular cause to analyse the propaganda coming out of Pyongyang. “It is a unique aspect of socialist societies in general,” he tells me. “People learn to use this kind of strong language, even in everyday life. It is instilled into society.” The state-run newspapers are certainly full of it, a constant hard-blowing of warnings and threats aimed at an external enemy kept constantly in the forefront of people’s minds. But if the rhetoric is designed to rally citizens to the leadership’s cause, it may have limited effect, according to Mr Joo. “People are too used to it. They learn to read between the lines for the real meaning, and the often repeated words like ‘war’ don’t even register.” ‘Nuclear maniac’They register in South Korea though. So much so that North Korean propaganda is still illegal here, banned under the country’s national security laws. To read a North Korean newspaper you need special permission to access one of the secure collections, like the one held at the Sejong Institute, a private think-tank, located just outside Seoul. Professor Paik Hak-soon shows me round, and pulling a large volume of the Pyongyang Times off the shelves, it falls open at an edition from March 1988.
Little has changed, it seems. Right there in the first paragraph is the talk of the “US imperialists” and the South Korean “military fascist clique”. The individual words might not tell you much, but according to Professor Paik, it is worth trying to follow the trend, the rising and falling tone of North Korean rhetoric. “There are ups and downs,” he says. “At times when the relationship with the outside world is more peaceful, they use softer language. But when relations get worse, that’s when it gets much tougher.” North Korean propaganda, the theory goes, can be used like a barometer, giving clues about the current thinking of the leadership in Pyongyang. President George W Bush was “a gangster” and “a nuclear maniac”, but despite the abuse heaped on current US policy, no personal insult has yet been levelled at President Barack Obama. If and when it comes, it might tell us something about North Korea’s assessment of the prospects for dialogue and engagement with his administration. ‘Piles of manure’At times of extreme hostility the language turns flamboyant, even poetic. America sank so low in 2003, according to state radio, that even the “piles of manure in the fields” were “fuming out the smoke of hatred.” It is strong stuff, no doubt, but sometimes the outside world can be tempted to analyse too deeply.
‘Great Leader’ became a bit repetitious, says Michael Harrold
Michael Harrold has written a book about his seven years in Pyongyang, entitled Comrades and Strangers: Behind the Closed Doors of North Korea. “One very senior translator once asked me whether using the title Great Leader every time we referred to Kim Il-sung was perhaps too repetitive and limited its impact, and I agreed,” he tells me. So, for a time, the term was occasionally dropped from North Korea’s English language news reports, much to the excitement of foreign journalists. Speculation began to run rife, Mr Harrold recalls, that the leader was losing his grip on power. “I think they were somewhat disappointed when I told them it was simply a translation issue,” he says. Brigandish?The anecdote helps explain why North Korea’s statements sometimes read so strangely. Mr Harrold was employed as a proof-reader, but the English translation itself is always done in-house by North Korean nationals.
Joo Sung-ha says North Koreans use angry rhetoric on a daily basis
And it is the English language news reports from the country’s state-run news agency that make up the bulk of what appears in the foreign press. Joo Sung-ha, the defector turned South Korean journalist, says there is an easy explanation for North Korea’s use of seemingly antiquated words like “brigandish” to refer to its opponents. “They’re using old dictionaries,” he says. “Many were published in the 1960s with meanings that have now fallen out of use, and there are very few first-language English speakers available to make the necessary corrections.” So, while North Korea’s rhetoric is certainly worthy of analysis, perhaps we shouldn’t be too alarmed by every outburst. To be fair, even its most inflammatory statements are not always what they seem. That “fire shower” of nuclear attack made a great headline for journalists, but many gave less emphasis to an important proviso: as so often with North Korea, the warning was conditional, to be acted upon only if someone else started the fight.

Source:BBC

WASHINGTON (AFP) –
US President Barack Obama on Monday named rural southern doctor Regina Benjamin as his pick to be the country's surgeon general.
“I am honored and I am humbled to be nominated to serve… this is a physician's dream,” the Alabama doctor said after being introduced by Obama in the White House Rose Garden as his choice for the post, which oversees 6,000 staff charged with informing US citizens about questions of health.
Benjamin, who chairs the Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States, has been lauded in recent years for her dogged determination in overcoming repeated disasters to run her rural clinic on the hurricane-battered Gulf coast.
The Bayou La Batre Rural Health Clinic in Alabama, which she founded, has been repeatedly hit by massive storms, most recently in 2005 by Hurricane Katrina.
In accepting the nomination, Benjamin pledged to be “a voice in the movement to improve our nation's healthcare,” as she thanked Obama for putting healthcare reform at the head of his domestic agenda.
“As a nation, we have reached a sobering realization: Our healthcare system simply cannot continue on the path that we're on,” Benjamin said, lamenting the millions of Americans without health insurance
She also said that if confirmed by the US Senate, she wanted to use her role as surgeon general to “ensure that no one — no one — falls through the cracks as we improve our healthcare system.”
While the surgeon general acts as the government's chief spokesperson on health issues, they have little direct role in policy-making.
Obama wants Congress to approve his healthcare reform proposals by the end of the year in order to fulfill one of his key campaign promises — providing healthcare to the 46 million Americans, some 15 percent of the population, who currently do not have any medical coverage.
Obama's healthcare plan includes a government insurance option, which has been fiercely criticized by Republicans.
Providing insurance is a millstone for businesses and carves a hole in the budget of many Americans, and Obama has said it is a moral and economic imperative for his administration to push reform at a time of deep economic crisis.
“The status quo on healthcare is no longer an option,” Obama said on Monday before introducing Benjamin.
“This country can't afford to have healthcare premiums rise three times faster than people's wages, as they did over the last decade. We can't afford 14,000 Americans losing their healthcare every single day,” he said.
Benjamin, who was the first African American to become the president of a US state medical society, wrote about her calling to medicine on the National Institutes of Health web site.
“I believe it was divine intervention,” she said about her time in medical school at the University of Alabama.
It was at that point Benjamin said she realized “there was nothing else I'd rather do with my life than to be a doctor.
“I had never seen a black doctor before I went to college, so I did not have an idea that I wanted to be one. I never thought that I couldn't, but I never really thought about it at all.”
Earlier this year high-profile CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta withdrew for consideration as Obama's surgeon general, citing family and career reasons.

LOS ANGELES (AFP) –
The father of Michael Jackson slammed the gruelling 50-date schedule drawn up for his son's comeback on Monday, saying the star was not capable of completing the series of sold-out concerts.
In an interview aired by ABC News, Joe Jackson said he had harbored concerns about his son's schedule, which had been due to get underway in London on July 13 until the tragic King of Pop died on June 25.
Jackson, 79, said his son had initially only wanted to perform in 10 concerts before more dates were added.
“Michael only agreed to 10 shows. Then they went and added all these shows,” Joe Jackson told ABC News.
“I was worried about his health because all the shows I'm seeing, no artist can do all those shows, back-to-back like that. I knew Michael couldn't do all those shows without a rest in between.”
Jackson's misgivings were echoed by his son's financial advisor Leonard Rowe, who also told ABC News that the star was in no condition to make a comeback, describing reports that he was in good shape as “totally untrue.”
“Michael Jackson was not ready. He was not fit. If you can call weighing about 110 to 115 pounds fit. Besides that MJ told me himself that he never wanted to do 50 shows he only wanted to do 10,” Rowe told ABC.
Randy Phillips, chief of concert promoters AEG Live, told ABC that it had been Michael Jackson's idea to increase the original run of concerts from 31 to 50, saying the singer would have been averaging under three shows a week.
“If that was too many, then one would have been too many,” Phillips said.
Jackson's physical condition in the days leading up to his death last month has been the subject of intense debate, with sharply different versions offered by the singer's associates.
Phillips had earlier said Jackson, 50, appeared to be in “fantastic” shape at a concert rehearsal on the eve of his death.
Another member of the rehearsal, magician-comedian Ed Alonzo, said Jackson “looked great and had great energy.”
However reports detailing alleged findings from Jackson's autopsy have painted a different picture, with CNN and ABC both reporting the star's body was riddled with needle marks and had several collapsed veins.

Problem drinking ‘hits elderly’
Alcohol misuse in people aged over 60 is becoming a widespread problem, research suggests.A survey for charity Foundation66 found over one in eight (13%) admitted to drinking more following retirement. Of these, one in five (19%) uses alcohol because of depression, and one in eight (13%) drinks to deal with bereavement. The charity is urging government to fund more services to tackle problem drinking among older people.
The survey of 857 people aged 60 and over also found that one in eight (12%) older drinkers is most likely to drink alone at home. A separate poll carried out for the charity revealed widespread concern over the issue, with one in 10 adults worried about the amount of alcohol consumed by a friend or family member aged 60 or over. The dangers of alcohol are increased among older drinkers, particularly because of medication, frailty, and other health problems. Heavy drinking is associated with a raised risk of high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes and dementia. And drinking too much can also lead to falls – which are more likely to seriously injure an older person. Pensioners accounted for 357,300 alcohol-related hospital admissions in England in 2007/8 – a 75% rise in five years. Sally Scriminger, chief executive of Foundation66, said: “The older people we see with drink problems come from all walks of life. “Many are retired professionals, who never had issues with alcohol in the past. “They don’t even have to leave home to buy alcohol – supermarket delivery services will bring it straight to their door. “Because they don’t fit the stereotypes people hold about alcohol misuse, and because they often keep their drinking hidden, there just aren’t enough services out there to offer them the help they need. “Without urgent intervention this will become a major issue, costing the NHS and our society a great deal.” Way of copingLast year Foundation66 piloted a project to provide help to older drinkers in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Demand was so heavy that the scheme is now being rolled out in a neighbouring area. Helen, 75, a retired magistrate from London, started drinking heavily after she stopped working and was looking after her disabled husband. On average, she was drinking a bottle of vodka and two or three glasses of wine every day. She was referred to Foundation66 by her GP after going to him about another health issue. She said: “I hadn’t prepared myself for retirement and found the loss of status hard to bear. “My husband’s illness added to the strain, and my own health stated to deteriorate. Drinking was just a way of coping. “My counsellor helped me understand the dangers it posed, and with their support I’ve dramatically reduced the amount I drink.” Social isolationDon Shenker, chief executive of the charity Alcohol Concern, said: “If the high number of older drinkers seems shocking, it’s because these are a group of drinkers who hide their problems in the home. “Unfortunately, the figures are backed up by an increasing number of alcohol-related hospital admissions in older people in recent years. “Social isolation, physical ill health, bereavement and a variety of social factors can play a part in an older person developing alcohol misuse problems and the associated health risks. “Currently, some treatment services will not treat over 65s, and it can be difficult for older people to access appropriate treatment. “The government needs to develop a strategy for reducing alcohol harm among older people, to identify those at risk and provide specialist treatment.” A Department of Health spokesperson said: “Alcohol is one of the most challenging public health issues we face and it affects people of all ages. “We are working harder than ever to reduce alcohol-related hospital admissions, and to help people of all ages who regularly drink too much or are dependent on alcohol.”

Source:BBC

Battle raging in US mining country
Opinion is divided in West Virginia’s coal belt over a controversial mining technique, reports Jean Snedegar for the BBC’s Americana programme.For years, a battle has been raging in the Appalachian Mountains over a coal-mining practice known as “mountaintop removal mining”. In the last three decades this kind of mining has flattened some 2,500 square miles, and buried more than 1,200 miles of mountain streams. With a new administration in Washington, the battle over mountaintop removal mining is heating up, most notably in southern West Virginia – and grassroots activists are at the forefront. Blasting and dumpingMaria Gunnoe, 41, lives with her husband and two children in a tiny community called Bob White, in Boone County, which produces more coal than any other county in the state. Her family has lived in the area for more than 200 years, and coal mining has been in her family for generations. Two of her brothers are underground miners. But over the last 10 years, coal has started to threaten her land, and her life. Three different mountaintop removal operations surround Ms Gunnoe’s home, which sits in a steep, narrow hollow. The first mine started in 2001. “To begin with I heard chainsaws,” she tells me. “When I went back, I seen massive clear-cutting on the mountain behind where I live at. All of the trees and timber that weren’t of value went into the valley behind me.”
Shortly afterwards, the mining company began blasting the top off the mountain, and dumping the rock and debris – called “overburden” – that it had removed from above the coal seam into the valley as well. When she walked up the stream that flows by her house – also her main water source – she noticed it was plugged. “This is known as a valley fill,” Ms Gunnoe explains. The valley fill contained two ponds full of waste water from the mine. In 2003, some of that waste water broke through and flooded the narrow valley where Ms Gunnoe lives. “The flooding devastated our property. In places it was 20ft deep and 60ft wide – almost like a mini-tsunami. It literally washed live standing trees by myself and my family. We were trapped in. We had no way out.” And emergency services had no way in. In the flood’s wake, Ms Gunnoe and her husband lost five acres of land, the access road to their property and the stream which served as their water supply. Today it contains toxic levels of selenium. Disappearing communitiesRegular blasting continues above her property. “I have coal dust inside of my computers, my TVs, my refrigerator – everything in my home is inundated by coal dust. My kids shouldn’t have to be breathing this. Our community members shouldn’t have to be breathing this.” Ms Gunnoe’s experiences turned her into an activist and community organiser against mountaintop mining. Since 2004, she has testified at hearings for mountaintop removal permits and in lawsuits against coal companies. As a result, she faces regular intimidation from angry miners who feel she is taking away their jobs. But Ms Gunnoe is eager to show anyone who will listen what the mining has done to the community where she grew up – to the homes, air and water. From her house, we drive about 10 miles along a narrow, twisty road that used to be populated with small mining communities.
But with mountaintop mines on either side of the road, many of the mountaintops have disappeared. Pointing to one flattened summit, Ms Gunnoe says: “I had the opportunity to sit and watch the sun set on this mountain for the last time last year – for the last time ever. It’ll never happen again – the mountain has been blasted down now.” Most of the small communities have disappeared too. Residents have been bought out, or driven out by the noise of blasting and large mining machines. Despite the obvious environmental impact on land and water, many people in West Virginia support mountaintop mining. Coal brings 20,000 mining-related jobs and earns 8bn (5bn) a year. Of that, the state gets more than 400m in taxes – a major source of income in the state. Job generationAbout 25 miles from Maria Gunnoe’s home, Roger Horton drives a lorry at Guyan Mine, owned by St Louis-based Patriot Coal and the sixth largest mountaintop mine in West Virginia. In January, he started a pro-mountaintop mining group called Citizens for Coal. “I decided that we should be pro-active,” Mr Horton says. “We should come forward and tell the entire world what it is that we do here and how it benefits America. Over half of the electrical energy that we use in this country is derived from coal.” Mr Horton points out the clear economic benefits: that miners earn two to three times the average wage of the area, and how some former mining sites have been reclaimed. On one site near his home is a new regional jail. On another, an industrial park, and on a third, a new NASCAR racetrack is being built. “On top of that, for every mining job that’s out here, there’s approximately four or five other jobs that are generated by that one miner working,” Mr Horton says. “And we buy cars, we buy homes, we buy clothing, food – it’s just in the best interest of everybody for us to continue working. It really is.” In late June, Maria Gunnoe and Roger Horton took their battle to Washington – to a Senate sub-committee hearing on “The Impacts of Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining on Water Quality in Appalachia”. At the hearing, Maria Gunnoe told her story, and Roger Horton and 200 other miners and their families were there to show their support for mountaintop mining. Two senators – Democrat Ben Cardin of Maryland and Republican Lamar Alexander of Tennessee – are planning to introduce legislation that could effectively ban mountaintop removal mining. This is music to the ears of those like Ms Gunnoe who believe passionately that it should be stopped, and anathema to those who support mountaintop removal mining. Though Maria Gunnoe’s work recently brought her the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize for North America – sometimes referred to as the “Green Nobel” – Roger Horton remains confident that mountaintop removal mining will not be stopped any time soon. “I believe that in the end that we will be victorious, and continue to mine coal,” he said. This article is an adaptation of a feature that was originally broadcast on
Americana is broadcast at 1915 BST every Sunday on BBC Radio 4 FM.

Source:BBC

Migrant wave wanes with Spain’s economy
By Steve Kingstone
BBC News, Canary Islands
The sea is calm and the skies clear, as the Spanish coastguard boat speeds out into the Atlantic.Behind us are the Canary Islands – vast, volcanic hunks of rock, dotted with hotels. Ever popular with tourists, the archipelago has also long been a destination of choice for African migrants hoping to reach the European Union.
The benign summer weather offers perfect conditions for “cayucos”, the fragile, single-engined boats which make the crossing from Senegal or Mauritania. But today, like most days in 2009, the horizon and the radar screen are blank. There is not a vessel in sight. “This year, the numbers have more than just stabilised – they’re falling,” explains Orlando Ramos Alayon, the coastguard skipper. “There’s permanent vigilance now, both by police and coastguard, at the national and EU level.” Improved vigilanceThe tide of illegal migration peaked in 2006, when 600 boats brought 31,678 desperate people to the Canaries in search of better times. Often, the cayucos would be crammed full with up to 90 migrants, who had paid handsomely to make the perilous journey.
Many more – certainly hundreds, and perhaps thousands – died during the crossing. The figure is a matter of guesswork. But over the past three years, numbers have been falling steadily. In 2008, 9,181 migrants made it to the Canaries, a 71% drop compared with 2006. And during the first five months of 2009, numbers were down by half again on the same period last year. “In April and May, we didn’t have a single boat,” explains Mr Alayon proudly. Without doubt, the fall is partly down to improved vigilance. Under the EU’s Frontex programme, Spain’s Civil Guard police patrol the waters off West Africa, in partnership with the authorities from Senegal and Mauritania. In the first six months of 2009, these patrols diverted 762 migrants back to their points of departure. Additionally, a single, satellite communications network, called Sea Horse, pools information between the two continents. Jail termsIn Tenerife, the largest of the islands, I was given rare access to the Guardia Civil’s newly-upgraded control room, where radar screens show the real-time locations of all boats approaching the Canaries.
On another bank of screens, long-range cameras can offer live images of vessels within five miles (8km) of the coast. “Legitimately registered craft generally send out a satellite signal identifying themselves,” says Sgt Miguel Angel Moreno. “If a boat doesn’t, that puts us on alert.” “So far this year we’ve had only five migrant boats arrive in Tenerife, and all were detected and intercepted using this technology.” At this range, within Spain’s territorial waters, the cayucos will receive assistance to come ashore, rather than be diverted back. But Sgt Moreno stresses that the new technology has given the police unprecedented levels of information about incoming boats. “In the past, the first we knew of them was often when they landed on a beach, but now we can control them from much further out,” he says. Part of that control includes attempting to identify and detain the traffickers, who often travel with their paying customers, piloting the boats.
Police now have unprecedented levels of information about incoming boats
Using cameras equipped with night-vision and infrared technology, the police study the body language of those on board, looking for anyone who appears to be at the helm or otherwise giving orders. Once on dry land, the passengers are processed and where possible repatriated. But increasingly, the traffickers face jail terms. “Previously, everyone arriving on a cayuco was treated the same, but now we are actively looking out for the traffickers,” explains Jose Antonio Batista, the Spanish government’s representative in Tenerife. “This is an important deterrent, because instead of coming here and knowing they’ll be sent home, they now know they’ll be sent to prison.” Mr Batista points out that 22 people are currently serving sentences for people-trafficking, while a further 169 suspects are in prison awaiting trial. UnemploymentBut besides heightened surveillance and tougher penalties for traffickers, there is another deterrent at work – the recession. For just as the tide of migrants rose when Spain’s economy was booming, so it has fallen in line with the slowdown, which has left the country with an 18.7% unemployment rate – the EU’s highest.
Earlier, in the capital, Madrid, I found a group of around two-dozen African migrants killing time in a plaza by playing cards. When the Spanish authorities failed to repatriate them within 40 days of their arrival, they were allowed to stay here. But without work permits, they live in administrative limbo; and even if they could work, they would be competing with Spain’s 3.5 million official unemployed. “I don’t recommend Spain at this moment,” sighs a 28-year-old migrant, who came here from Cameroon in 2004.
Spanish unemployment rate has reached 18.7%, the EU’s highest
“To me, it’s like Africa, only civilised. And in some ways, it’s worse than in Africa – because here, you have to pay for everything you eat.” Another migrant, aged 27 from Nigeria, describes the growing difficulties in finding work on the black market. “When I came here three years ago there was lots of construction work,” he says, “but when the crisis started, things got difficult for immigrants. Now, I’m lucky if I get one day’s work a week.” So what would he say to someone back home in Nigeria who was thinking of coming to Spain now? “My advice is that they’re better not to even think of coming to Europe,” is the terse reply. “For now, it’s really hard here.” Continued attractionIn an age of mobile phones and instant messaging, that downbeat assessment seems to have filtered back to would-be migrants back home, and it may be a factor in the sharp drop in cayuco numbers.
But many others will continue to risk their lives. On Monday this week, a boat carrying 68 migrants made landfall on the tiny Canarian island of El Hierro. A further passenger had perished during the crossing – a grim reminder of the dangers involved. “It’s a relief to see that fewer people are coming, but it doesn’t mean the need to make the journey has disappeared,” explains Austin Taylor Wainwright, an emergency relief co-ordinator with the Spanish Red Cross. “If you look at the unemployment rate in Senegal, it’s around 50%,” he adds. “It doesn’t matter how bad the economic crisis is here, it’s always going to be worse in Africa – and people will continue to risk their lives.”

Source:BBC

Private schools charity threat
Independent schools in England are protesting about “too narrow” rules for charitable status – as two out of five test-case schools fail to qualify.The loss of charitable status threatens tax benefits for independent schools. The Independent Schools Council says the rulings rely too much on the number of bursaries, with fees likely to have to rise to fund subsidised places. The Charity Commission says charities must “demonstrate how they bring real benefit to the public”. The publication of thesrulings is the latest stage in determining how fee-paying schools can retain charitable status . ‘Deeply disappointed’The refusal of this status for two of the first test-case schools – St Anselm’s in Derbyshire and Highfield Priory, near Preston, Lancashire – has angered the independent school sector. The Independent Schools Council says that the Charity Commission’s decision has been based too much on the level of bursaries available – without taking into account contributions such as sharing facilities with other local schools. “We are deeply disappointed with the approach taken by the Charity Commission, which focuses on the amount of means tested bursaries provided by each school,” said David Lyscom, chief executive of the Independent Schools Council. “The implication of the commission’s findings appears to be that many schools must now aim to provide a significant, but still unspecified, proportion of their turnover in full bursaries. This will inevitably lead to fee increases.” Mr Lyscom also challenged the Charity Commission to recognise the collective benefit of the independent school sector, which he says saves the taxpayer 3bn per year. And he said there was still the possibility of legal challenge over the rulings. The requirement for charities to show a “public benefit” was introduced in the Charities Act 2006. Implementing this legislation has raised questions about what this requirement means for fee-charging schools. ‘People in poverty’This first round of assessments of private schools has seen the approval of charitable status for three schools, Manchester Grammar School, Pangbourne College and Moyles Court School. But for Highfield Priory, in Fulwood, Preston, the Charity Commission concluded that sharing facilities, running a holiday club and hosting sports events for local state schools was insufficient. The school, which has about 230 pupils between the ages of two and 11 and charges 5,795 per year, failed to meet the “public benefit requirement”. The assessment says the school “does not ensure that people in poverty are not excluded from the opportunity to benefit”. In response, the governors of the school said: “As an established charity, we are confident that we will be able to meet the necessary criteria to maintain our current status.” Simon Northcott, head teacher of St Anselm’s in Bakewell, Derbyshire, which also failed to qualify, said that smaller primary schools in particular would be “nervous at the findings”. “Simply in terms of the scale and size of the bursaries, they don’t have what senior schools have in terms of resources,” said Mr Northcott, whose school teaches about 250 three to 13 year olds. These schools will now have to work with the Charity Commission on changes they can make to meet the requirements, although the rulings are confirmed as final and not open to appeal. Dame Suzi Leather, chair of the Charity Commission, said: “Charities do a fantastic amount of good and have a unique place in society, which is why they enjoy such high levels of public trust and confidence. “They receive the reputational benefits of being charities, as well as tax breaks, so in return it’s right that they demonstrate how they bring real benefit to the public. “The majority of the charities we’ve assessed are already providing public benefit in a variety of ways. The other charities are capable of doing so and remain registered, but they must now agree with us in the next twelve months the changes that are needed.”

Source:BBC

‘Care insurance’ planned for old
Older people in England could be asked to take out insurance to pay for long-term care in their old age, it is reported.The idea is thought to be one option proposed by ministers in a green paper due on Tuesday on reform of funding of residential and home-based social care. The current system of means tested social care for elderly and disabled people is widely regarded as unfair. Experts also warn it is unfit for our ageing society. Ministers admit the current system is struggling to cope with the huge pressures already being put on existing care services. And experts warn demand for social care is likely to intensify. Already it is estimated that half of women and a third of men over 65 will need long-term care at some point. And the number of people aged 85 and over is predicted to double over the next 20 years. At present, there are four people earning for each one who is retired, but in 40 years that ratio will fall to just two to one. In Scotland the provision of free personal care has proved popular, but very expensive. It is thought unlikely that ministers in England will adopt a similar policy. But they concede that a new system is required to deal with a situation that threatens to create a 6bn black hole in finances over the next 20 years. Losing their homesUnder the present system anyone with a home or savings of 23,500 or more is not given state funding for a care home, or help from social services. This means that thousands of pensioners each year have to sell their homes or use their savings to fund their long-term care, which critics say is unfair and unsustainable. The new green paper is thought likely to propose the current system is replaced. One option thought to be under consideration is for an insurance-based scheme which would allow people to protect their homes and savings. A range of payment options is likely to be set out, including deducting a single payment from the patient’s estate after their death, or making several payments in advance during their working life. Other possible options could be a co-payment system, where the state pays for the first chunk of care, then the rest is means tested; or a social care tax, working in the same way as national insurance. Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said the green paper had been much delayed, and was unlikely to provide any firm conclusions. “This publication will come after 12 years of broken promises to look at this issue. “If the government merely plan to publish an options paper, then the problem will be kicked into the long grass once again. “If that happens, then the Conservative Party will bring forward its own proposal for the funding of long-term care. “Unlike the government, we will set out a clear plan for change for both the providers of social care and the 45,000 people who are forced to sell their homes every year to pay for it.”

Source:BBC

WASHINGTON – The plaintiff in the landmark abortion-rights case Roe v. Wade, who became an abortion protester in recent years, was among four demonstrators arrested Monday for disrupting Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination hearing.
Norma McCorvey, 61, of Texas, better known as “Jane Roe,” began screaming that Sotomayor was “wrong” about abortion during the opening statement of the newest member of the Senate, Al Franken, D-Minn.
McCorvey’s suit led to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. But in recent years, she switched sides to speak out against abortion.
Capitol Police identified the other three arrested as: Robert James, from Virginia; Andrew Beacham of Indiana; and Francis Mahoney of Florida. Police did not provide their hometowns.
The first outburst came during Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s opening statement. A man in the back of the room interrupted the California Democrat’s remarks by shouting: “Senator! What about the unborn!” He called abortion “genocide.”
Sotomayor briefly turned her head toward family and friends seated in the front row as the first protester was taken away and his shouts faded.
The initial episode prompted a warning by the Judiciary Committee chairman, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., that no displays for or against the nominee from observers would be tolerated.
McCorvey was among a group that had been in seats reserved for the public. She began shouting as the group was escorted out so a new group could enter. Another man protested in Spanish.
Franken had been praising Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., a longtime Judiciary Committee member who is ill and was not at the hearing.
“We’ll show respect to everybody who is here, we will show respect to everybody, including to Judge Sotomayor, to the senators on both sides of the aisle, and we will have order in this room,” Leahy said in another attempt to stop the disruptions.
Those arrested were charged with unlawful conduct-disruption of Congress.
Anti-abortion activists demonstrated outside the Hart Senate Office Building throughout the hearing.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland – Masked and hooded Belfast Catholics hurled gasoline bombs, fireworks and other makeshift weapons at police Monday as the most bitterly divisive day on the Northern Ireland calendar reached an ugly end.
Several rioters and at least seven officers were injured, none seriously, when Irish nationalists in Ardoyne, a militant Catholic enclave of north Belfast, tried to block a parade by the Orange Order, Northern Ireland’s major Protestant brotherhood.
Tens of thousands of Orangemen spent Monday mounting hundreds of similar parades across this British territory, almost all of them trouble-free, in an annual stress test for the province’s fragile peace.
More than 1,000 Orangemen and their accompanying bandsmen eventually did march down the main road past Ardoyne to the beat of a lone drum — but only after riot police fought an hourlong street battle backed by a surveillance helicopter and three massive mobile water cannons.
At one point, masked Catholic rioters on store rooftops directed a deluge of Molotov cocktails, bricks and golf balls on riot police below. The officers were protected with flame-retardant suits, helmets and shields.
Later, as the water-cannon gunners sought to take rioters’ legs out from under them, Catholics wearing scarves over their faces took cover behind low brick walls and post boxes. They threw rocks, bricks, bottles and even planks of wood that bounced harmlessly off the armored sides and metal-grilled windows of the water-cannon vehicles.
The Ardoyne Catholics’ showdown with police continued long after the Orangemen had passed through.
Police said a gunman fired at least one live round at police lines but missed. Rioters also stole at least two vehicles, set them on fire and pushed them toward police lines. Officers responded with plastic bullets.
A senior Belfast policeman, Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay, condemned the anti-Orange rioters as offering “the worst possible face of Northern Ireland — a face of bigotry, sectarianism and intolerance.”
These were the worst riots in Belfast since 2005, when the same Protestant parade triggered much more intense and dangerous riots on the same road. Then, more than 100 police officers were wounded amid a hail of homemade grenades.
But the aftermath of that violence also illustrates how street clashes rarely rattle wider peacemaking politics in Northern Ireland. Weeks after those 2005 riots, the outlawed Irish Republican Army disarmed and renounced violence, paving the way for the 2007 formation of a new Catholic-Protestant government here.
Northern Ireland’s “Twelfth” holiday typically raises community tensions to their highest point of the year as British Protestants celebrate centuries-old victories over Irish Catholics.
The often elderly, conservatively dressed Orangemen are accompanied by so-called “kick the pope” bands whose hard-faced, tattooed members play an odd mix of Gospel and sectarian tunes on shrill flutes and deafening drums.
Monday’s parades were preceded by a string of overnight attacks northwest of Belfast that damaged two Orange halls and two Protestant homes, one of them gutted by fire. Catholic youths cheered the blaze and jeered the home’s elderly occupants, who vowed to leave behind their Catholic neighbors after 32 years.
And Catholic youths struck two departing Orangemen in the head with rocks in the village of Rasharkin. Three police officers were injured in subsequent scuffles with Catholics, who threw several Molotov cocktails. One rioter was arrested.
During another Orange parade in the city of Armagh, 40 miles (65 kilometers) southwest of Belfast, police evacuated a major street called Friary Road after spotting a small bomb. It detonated, injuring nobody and causing little damage, before British army experts could defuse it using a remote-controlled robot.
No group claimed responsibility but police and politicians blamed IRA dissidents who reject the underground group’s 2005 disarmament. Analysts agree that the dissidents’ sporadic bombings and shootings stand no chance of forcing Northern Ireland out of the United Kingdom, the traditional IRA goal.
Scores of Catholic youths later attacked police on Friary Road with Molotov cocktails and other thrown objects. They also hijacked and burned two cars on the road. Police arrested four rioters.
“The Twelfth” officially commemorates the July 12, 1690, triumph of Protestant King William of Orange versus his Catholic rival for the English throne, James II, at the Battle of the Boyne south of Belfast. This year the parades took place on the 13th because Orangemen — who march beneath banners depicting the British crown on an open Bible — refuse to hold the holiday on a Sunday.
Orangemen once marched wherever they wanted in Northern Ireland, a state created on the back of Orange power as the predominantly Catholic rest of Ireland won independence from Britain in the early 1920s.
Catholic hostility to Protestant parades helped ignite a conflict over Northern Ireland’s future that claimed more than 3,600 lives from the late 1960s to mid-1990s, when paramilitary cease-fires finally took hold.
At that time, the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party led protests blocking Orangemen’s traditional marching routes in several cities, towns and villages. The tactic brought Northern Ireland to the brink of civil war — and ultimately ended in broad defeat for the Orangemen, who refused to negotiate on their marching rights until it was too late.
Britain punished the Orangemen’s stubbornness by imposing bans on parades that encountered the heaviest opposition from Catholics. The Orangemen spent years mounting violent standoffs with British security forces in hopes of regaining lost ground, but eventually gave up.
The Crumlin Road beside Ardoyne is the only remaining parading point in Belfast that inspires recurring violence. There, the Orangemen have no obvious alternative way to march from their lodges to central Belfast and back again.
___
On the Net:
Orange Order, http://www.grandorangelodge.co.uk/index.html

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AFP) –
The US space agency will make a fifth attempt to launch the space shuttle Endeavour Monday after a fourth scheduled takeoff a day earlier was cancelled because of stormy weather.
The shuttle launch was rescheduled for 6:51 pm (2251 GMT), but forecasters said the likelihood of favorable weather conditions was just 40 percent, far below the 70 percent forecast leading up to Sunday's scrapped attempt.
Still, NASA began fueling at 9:33 am (1333 GMT) in preparation for the third attempt since Saturday to launch the Endeavour on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) to assemble the Japanese Kibo laboratory.
“If a new technical issue crops up or rain gets into the thruster, teams will look to target launch for Tuesday,” NASA said on its website, referring to a partially unattached Tyvek cover used to keep rain and debris out of one of Endeavour's thrusters.
The risk of a storm system developing within 20 miles (36 kilometers) of launchpad 39A, where the Endeavour and its seven-astronaut crew are waiting to take off, is the main concern, meterologist Scott McCormick told AFP.
Florida's tropical climate in summer is often unstable in the afternoon with frequent rapidly-forming storm systems.
Sunday's cancellation was caused by thunderstorms and rain developing in the late afternoon near the launch site.
“Looks like the team is ready but the weather is not. At this time we are no-go,” the US space agency's launch director Pete Nickolenko said with just minutes to go before liftoff.
The Endeavour crew left the launch pad at about 8:35 pm (0035 GMT Monday) and returned to crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center for the night.
Lightning strikes were responsible for the third of four delays to Endeavour's mission on Saturday.
A Friday night storm produced at least 11 lightning strikes around the shuttle's pad, but did not damage the spacecraft.
Take-off had been delayed twice before, when potentially hazardous fuel leaks were discovered, apparently caused by a misaligned plate linking a hydrogen gas vent line with the external fuel tank.
The US space agency said the problem had been fixed, and had filled Endeavour's external fuel tanks with some two million liters (half a million gallons) of low-temperature liquid hydrogen on Sunday before the launch was scrapped.
Endeavour's crew — including six Americans and one Canadian — are expected to install a platform on the ISS for astronauts to conduct experiments in the vacuum of space, 350 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth's surface.
Canadian Julie Payette, an electrical and information engineer, is to be the only woman on board.
She has been into space before, as have two other members of the crew, including shuttle commander Mark Polansky.
The crew's four other members will be on their maiden space voyage.
American aerospace engineer Tim Kopra, 46, will replace Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, spending several months aboard the floating space station.
He would be the latest addition to the permanent crew of the ISS, which is a joint collaboration between 16 different countries.
The astronauts were also expected also undertake repair and replacement work, including installing six new batteries in the ISS.
That mission will require two astronauts to conduct five space walks totaling 32.5 hours.
Kibo's two pressurized modules were attached to the ISS in 2008, along with the European lab Columbus.

SUNDAY, July 12 (HealthDay News) — A gene that may offer a highly
accurate prediction of the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease and the
age at which people will begin to show symptoms has been identified by
U.S. researchers.
The TOMM40 gene may be the most highly predictive Alzheimer's gene
discovered so far, said the Duke University Medical Center research team,
who found that the gene could predict the age of Alzheimer's disease onset
within a five- to seven-year window among people over 60.
The study was scheduled to be presented July 12 at the Alzheimer's
Association 2009 International Conference on Alzheimer's Disease, held in
Vienna, Austria.
“If borne out through additional research, a doctor could evaluate a
patient based on age, especially among those over age 60, their APOE
genotype and their TOMM40 status, to calculate an estimated disease risk
and age of onset,” lead author Dr. Allen Roses, director of the Deane Drug
Discovery Institute at Duke, said in a university news release.
In previous research, Roses found that apolipoprotein E (APOE)
genotypes, particularly APOE4, are associated with increased risk and
younger age of development of Alzheimer's disease. APOE4 accounts for
about 50 percent of late-onset cases of Alzheimer's, but the cause of the
remainder of cases hasn't been known.
“It now looks fairly clear that there are two major genes — APOE4 and
TOMM40 — and together they account for an estimated 85 to 90 percent of
the genetic effect,” Roses said.
The Duke team is planning a five-year study of APOE genotypes and
TOMM40, along with a drug trial to assess prevention or delay of
Alzheimer's disease onset.
More information
The U.S. National Institute on Aging has more about Alzheimer's disease.

WASHINGTONAs President Obama tries pressing ahead with his domestic agenda focused on health care and energy reform, several potential investigations threaten to steal the focus in Washington.
President Obama is tackling a large domestic agenda at the same time as a new CIA controversy begins to brew.
The most recent controversy: The revelation that Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta told House and Senate intelligence committees that former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the spy agency to keep Congress in the dark for eight years about a still-secret counterterrorism program. The head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who confirmed she learned of the former vice president’s order during a recent closed-door briefing by Panetta, expressed outrage. “That’s something that should never, ever happen again,” Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-California, said on Fox News Sunday. “I think this is a problem, obviously.” A knowledgeable source familiar with the matter said the counterterrorism program in question was initiated shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The program, the source notes, was on-again, off-again and was never fully operational. Panetta has since put an end to the program, according to the source. Watch more on the CIA-Congress controversy » Efforts to contact Cheney for reaction were unsuccessful. CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano has declined to comment on the report. David Gergen, CNN senior political analyst, says that while this is the last thing the Obama administration wants to deal with, it’s “starting to mushroom into a life form of its own.” “I think we are heading toward some sort of investigation by theDemocrats,” he said. A one-time aide to the former vice president also said Sunday that reports about Cheney and the CIA may be a way to distractattention away from the Obama’s policy struggles.
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Obama orders review of alleged slayings of Taliban in Bush era
Senator: Cheney and alleged secret CIA program ‘a problem’
“This is very suspect timing,” Republican strategist and former Cheney adviser Mary Matalin said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “The president’s agenda is almost in shambles. His [poll] numbers are dropping. Isn’t it coincidental; they gin up a Cheney story.” Watch more of Matalin’s comments » Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said that while it’s important for Congress to be briefed on CIA activities, the latest uproar is simply a “new theme” Democrats are taking on. “But to trot out the vice president and say he’s the one that’s at fault, this … unfortunately sounds like a new theme where they still want to blame the Bush-Cheney administration for the economy and for other things,” he told Fox News Sunday. The CIA story, in combination with other issues, is creating somewhat of a roadblock for the White House on domestic issues, according to Candy Crowley, CNN senior political correspondent. “I think that when you put it in combination with some other things thatare percolating … this is building up to an extent that the Obamaadministration, which really doesn’t want any of these to happen, isgoing to have to go with it,” Crowley said. “I think one of the unhappier people in this town … is probably President Obama.” Another distraction looming in Washington could pull even more attention away from Obama’s agenda priorities. Attorney General Eric Holder is leaning toward appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, a source tells CNN. The Bush administration has been criticized for the use of harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners, such as waterboarding, which President Obama has now deemed torture. If the attorney general does move forward, the decision would put the Justice Department at odds with what the president himself has signaled is the past. “Nobody is above the law and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing … people should be prosecuted just like any other ordinary citizen,” Obama said in early February. “But … I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.” A DOJ official says a decision could come in the next few weeks. The official insists that if the attorney general does proceed it will be a very “narrowly-tailored” look at only those who might have gone beyond the legal guidance at the time in conducting interrogations. As the two big counterterrorism battles are beginning to brew, Obama has recently ordered national security officials to look into allegations the Bush administration resisted efforts to investigate a CIA-backed Afghan warlord over the killings of hundreds of Taliban prisoners in 2001. “The indications that this had not been properly investigated just recently was brought to my attention,” Obama told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an exclusive interview during the president’s visit to Ghana.
“So what I’ve asked my national security team to do is to collect the facts for me that are known, and we’ll probably make a decision in terms of how to approach it once we have all of the facts gathered up,” Obama said. The inquiry stems from the deaths of at least 1,000 Taliban prisoners who surrendered to the U.S.-backed Northern Alliance in late 2001.
Source:CNN

Taylor to testify at Hague trial
Charles Taylor, the former president of Liberia, is to take to the stand for the first time at his war crimes trial in The Hague.He denies 11 charges at the Special Court for Sierra Leone, including terrorism, murder, rape and torture. He is expected to argue that he could not have micro-managed a rebel operation in Sierra Leone, while also running affairs of state in Liberia. Mr Taylor is the first African leader to be tried by an international court. His testimony is expected to last several weeks. Claire Carlton-Hanciles, of the court’s defence office, told the BBC on Monday that Mr Taylor was ready to defend himself and had been prepared for the past six weeks by defence lawyers. The defence for Mr Taylor, 61, began on Monday. His lawyer Courtenay Griffiths told the court that Mr Taylor had tried to broker peace in Sierra Leone.
“We do not take issue with the fact that terrible atrocities occurred in Sierra Leone,” he said. “This case should not be about what happened in Sierra Leone, but who bears the greatest responsibility, bearing in mind that Charles Taylor tried to achieve peace.” Mr Griffiths added that the prosecution’s case was based on unsubstantiated rumour and hearsay, and that Mr Taylor now wanted to put the record straight. Mr Taylor has sat in the courtroom, housed in the International Criminal Court building in The Hague, for months, occasionally passing notes to his counsel and holding whispered conversations with him. In May, judges rejected a request by Mr Taylor’s defence team to acquit him because of a lack of evidence. The prosecution says Mr Taylor planned atrocities committed by Revolutionary United Front rebels during Sierra Leone’s civil war, which ended in 2002. The RUF was notorious for using machetes to hack the limbs off civilians. Some of the prosecution’s 91 witnesses gesticulated in court with amputated limbs – their hands had been chopped off by rebel soldiers.
Mr Taylor is accused of passing guns to the RUF in exchange for diamonds from Sierra Leone. But his defence claims that Mr Taylor did not command RUF rebels in Sierra Leone, sell them weapons in exchange for blood diamonds or recruit child soldiers. Mr Taylor started a civil war in Liberia 1989, before being elected president there in 1997. After a period of exile in Nigeria, he was eventually extradited from Liberia in 2006. The trial, being held by the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone, was moved to the Netherlands from Sierra Leone’s capital, Freetown, amid fears it could create instability in the country and neighbouring Liberia.

Source:BBC

CHICAGO – When his mother put the battered body of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the ground more than 50 years ago, it was supposed to be the end of a sad saga for the boy whose lynching became a rallying point for the civil rights movement.
But even in death, Till cannot rest. Four years after his body was exhumed as part of an investigation, his original glass-topped casket has been found in a rusty shed at a suburban cemetery where workers are accused of digging up and dumping hundreds of bodies in a scheme to resell the burial plots.
The casket, which was seen by mourners around the world in 1955, was surrounded by garbage and old headstones. When authorities opened it, a family of possums scampered out.
“There is no rest for Emmett,” Ollie Gordon, a cousin, said Monday. “It was turmoil when they exhumed his body, and now we are put in turmoil because we might have to exhume again.”
Till’s current grave site does not appear to be among those disturbed at Burr Oak Cemetery, the historic black burial ground south of Chicago where authorities have charged a manager and three gravediggers with the gruesome reburial scheme. The manager is also suspected of pocketing donations she elicited for a Till memorial museum, though she has not been charged in connection with those allegations.
“Emmett Till is being treated with the same disrespect in death as he was treated in life,” said Jonathan Fine, executive director of the group Preservation Chicago.
In August 1955, Till traveled from Chicago to Mississippi to visit relatives. After he whistled at a white woman outside a market, the woman’s husband and another man snatched him from his bed. His body was found in a river three days later, a cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His nose was crushed, and his left eye was missing, as were most of his teeth.
The two men were acquitted, but the next year they confessed to the killing in a Look magazine article.
Till’s body was exhumed in 2005 as part of a new investigation into his death, as federal authorities sought to dispel long-standing rumors that the body was not Till’s.
Tests confirmed the body was that of Till, and the case was closed after a Mississippi grand jury decided not to return an indictment against any other possible other participants in his killing.
Till was reburied in another casket, as is customary after exhumations, and the original glass-topped coffin was to be saved for a memorial.
Authorities investigating the grave desecration found Till’s first casket beneath a dirty tarp in a dark corner of a cemetery shed.
A sheriff’s spokesman said the casket has been moved to a secure room at a suburban sheriff’s facility. He expects it will eventually be released to the Till family.
Till’s mother chose the original casket so mourners could see her son’s ghastly injuries. Photographs of Till’s body in the coffin published in Jet Magazine became powerful images of the civil rights movement.
“The young people who later led the civil rights movement were roughly Emmett’s age, (and) all of them say that was a formative moment for them, that someone their own age was being lynched for virtually nothing,” said Taylor Branch, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a three-volume biography of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
One person could not get the story out of her head was a young seamstress named Rosa Parks in Montgomery, Ala.
“I once asked Mrs. Parks, ‘Why didn’t you move to the back of the bus?’” the Rev. Jesse Jackson said last week, standing with members of Till’s family at the cemetery. “She said, ‘I thought about Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back.’”
Jackson said he was stunned by the treatment of the casket
“I think that the thieves in this situation have no regard for history of humanity,” he said.
Such talk makes the treatment of the casket that much harder to explain, Fine said.
“That casket is as much a part of the civil rights movement as the bus that Rosa Parks was riding on,” he said. The bus is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.
Jerry Mitchell, a reporter for The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., whose work led to criminal convictions of some Ku Klux Klansmen, said Till and other civil rights-era figures tend to be overshadowed by King and a few others whose history has been better preserved.
“These things are forgotten, so they get tucked into a shack, literally,” Mitchell said.
Gordon, Till’s cousin, said the family has not decided whether to exhume the body again, or whether Till, his mother, stepfather and other relatives will be moved to another cemetery.
She hopes his original casket can be restored and possibly placed in a museum, as had been planned.
Mitchell feels much the same way.
“Maybe this will lead to something good, to really do something now, really build a mausoleum, put this casket where it belongs,” he said. “There is a lot of history in that, a lot of important history.”

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (AFP) –
The US space agency will make a fifth attempt to launch the space shuttle Endeavour Monday after a fourth scheduled takeoff a day earlier was cancelled because of stormy weather.
The shuttle launch was rescheduled for 6:51 pm (2251 GMT), but forecasters said the likelihood of favorable weather conditions was just 40 percent, far below the 70 percent forecast leading up to Sunday's scrapped attempt.
Still, NASA began fueling at 9:33 am (1333 GMT) in preparation for the third attempt since Saturday to launch the Endeavour on a mission to the International Space Station (ISS) to assemble the Japanese Kibo laboratory.
“If a new technical issue crops up or rain gets into the thruster, teams will look to target launch for Tuesday,” NASA said on its website, referring to a partially unattached Tyvek cover used to keep rain and debris out of one of Endeavour's thrusters.
The risk of a storm system developing within 20 miles (36 kilometers) of launchpad 39A, where the Endeavour and its seven-astronaut crew are waiting to take off, is the main concern, meterologist Scott McCormick told AFP.
Florida's tropical climate in summer is often unstable in the afternoon with frequent rapidly-forming storm systems.
Sunday's cancellation was caused by thunderstorms and rain developing in the late afternoon near the launch site.
“Looks like the team is ready but the weather is not. At this time we are no-go,” the US space agency's launch director Pete Nickolenko said with just minutes to go before liftoff.
The Endeavour crew left the launch pad at about 8:35 pm (0035 GMT Monday) and returned to crew quarters at the Kennedy Space Center for the night.
Lightning strikes were responsible for the third of four delays to Endeavour's mission on Saturday.
A Friday night storm produced at least 11 lightning strikes around the shuttle's pad, but did not damage the spacecraft.
Take-off had been delayed twice before, when potentially hazardous fuel leaks were discovered, apparently caused by a misaligned plate linking a hydrogen gas vent line with the external fuel tank.
The US space agency said the problem had been fixed, and had filled Endeavour's external fuel tanks with some two million liters (half a million gallons) of low-temperature liquid hydrogen on Sunday before the launch was scrapped.
Endeavour's crew — including six Americans and one Canadian — are expected to install a platform on the ISS for astronauts to conduct experiments in the vacuum of space, 350 kilometers (220 miles) above Earth's surface.
Canadian Julie Payette, an electrical and information engineer, is to be the only woman on board.
She has been into space before, as have two other members of the crew, including shuttle commander Mark Polansky.
The crew's four other members will be on their maiden space voyage.
American aerospace engineer Tim Kopra, 46, will replace Japanese astronaut Koichi Wakata, spending several months aboard the floating space station.
He would be the latest addition to the permanent crew of the ISS, which is a joint collaboration between 16 different countries.
The astronauts were also expected also undertake repair and replacement work, including installing six new batteries in the ISS.
That mission will require two astronauts to conduct five space walks totaling 32.5 hours.
Kibo's two pressurized modules were attached to the ISS in 2008, along with the European lab Columbus.

Dying model plea ‘he stabbed me’
A young model dialled 999 as she lay dying, pleaded for help and said her boyfriend had “stabbed her to death”, a court has heard.Amy Leigh Barnes’ father found her in a pool of blood at her grandmother’s house in Bolton, Greater Manchester. The 19-year-old’s boyfriend, Ricardo Morrison, appearing at Manchester Crown Court, denies murder. His mother, Pc Melda Wilks, of Rubery, West Midlands, also appeared in court to deny assisting her son. The court heard that Ms Barnes, a part-time model and actress, had been killed with a kitchen knife in November last year. Stuart Driver, prosecuting, recounted her desperate plea to the operator at the end of her 999 call. ‘Penetrated liver’”I’m dying. He’s stabbed me to death. I’m dying. Please help me.” The operator asked who had stabbed her and she said, “My boyfriend”, the court heard. He said Ms Barnes had been slashed across the face and she had five wounds to her chest and four to her back, several of which had penetrated her liver. At this point the defendant turned his back and ran towards the cells. Following Mr Morrison’s return to the dock, Mr Driver told the court that Ms Barnes had tried to end the relationship that day and he had attacked her before leaving, locking her in the house.
Later, she rang her mother in tears, and it was agreed her father would come to pick her up. Two minutes after that call ended she dialled 999 to say she had been “stabbed to death”. “Her father turned up, opened the front door and found his daughter at the bottom of the stairs, a pool of blood beneath her. “You can imagine his reaction, his panic,” Mr Driver said. Blood-stained knifeMs Barnes was taken to the Royal Bolton Infirmary where she died three hours later. The court heard that a neighbour had spotted a man, fitting Mr Morrison’s description, on wasteland shortly after she had been attacked. “The witness said the man bent down and put his hand into a puddle and appeared to be rinsing his hands,” Mr Driver said. A blood-stained knife, which had DNA belonging to the young model, was found stuck in an abandoned car seat on the wasteland.
Pc Melda Wilks sent texts to Ms Barnes’ mother after the murder
The defendant caught a coach to Birmingham where his mother, Pc Wilks, picked him up, it is alleged. Mr Driver told the jury that she washed his jacket “for a criminal purpose to remove any forensic scientific evidence”. Ms Barnes’s mother, Karyn, phoned Pc Wilks from the hospital soon after the attack. “She told her that Amy had been stabbed and accused her son, Ricardo Morrison, of doing it,” he said. Recovery positionPc Wilks then sent a text to Ms Barnes’ mother: “I know what my son has done is unforgivable. No need to be rude. Now I understand more about your family. “Do not call me again. My son will be dealt with by law.” Morrison said in his defence statement that he was not at the house when the attack took place. He said he returned to the house in Bolton, discovered she had been stabbed and put her in the recovery position before he left the scene. Mr Driver disputed this, saying it would have meant that another person must have stabbed Amy in the space of two minutes – the gap in which Ms Barnes finished on the phone to her mother and when she dialled 999. The trial continues.

Source:BBC

When he started speaking, every face and camera lens in the room turned toward Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota. There were grins all around the Judiciary Committee dais. That’s a lot of interest for a senator only five days into office, but this was Franken making a first impression on the most visible stage in Washington.
He packed his statement with populism and substance, noting that he’s not a lawyer but neither are most Americans.”I’m just going to start listening,” he said.Are you listening? Send us your thoughts on Franken at @AP_Courtside.-Laurie Kellman, AP reporter, Congress