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Minggu, 26 Juni 2011

Justin Bieber & Perez Hilton praise “Korea’s Got Talent” sensation Choi Sung Bong


An episode of the cable channel tvN's "Korea's Got Talent" left an inspiring effect on many people across the world.
On the 16th, famous entertainment blog, "PerezHilton" and Justin Bieber's official Facebook, shared the viral video of Choi Sung Bong's story and performance from "Korea's Got Talent".
Justin Bieber posted the video on his Facebook, which was previously uploaded on his manager's, Scotter's, twitter. He said, "This is awesome. NEVER SAY NEVER and good luck to this kid," showing his interest and hope for Choi Sung Bong to not give up on his dream with his meaningful phrase, Never Say Never, which was also the title for his 3-D documentary/concert film. The post hasn't even been up for 24 hours yet has received over 41,000 likes and about 8000 different reactions.
In addition, gossip blog, "Perezhilton" posted the video along with the words, "Get your tissues ready, because this story definitely moved us to tears! Such an inspirational story and performance, you just have to watch it. We wish you all the luck, Sung-Bong Choi!!"
You can watch the video below of Choi Sung Bong's emotional story, in addition to his beautiful performance.
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Christina Aguilera: Neither of us were 'angels'

Christina  Aguilera: Neither of us were 'angels'

Christina  Aguilera addresses the rumors about whether she and/or her now ex-husband strayed during the marriage – sort of.
"At one time or another, we were both not angels," the singer told W. " It got to a point where my life at home was reminding me of my own childhood.  I will not have my son grow up in a tension-filled home..."
"The Voice" coach has a spread in the new issue of  W where she she says she has never watched an entire episode of the show's major competitor "American Idol" because "it's too mean."
"Why would anyone want to go on a show to be ripped apart," Aguilera said. "I don't want to be tough with my singers, but I do want to tell them on 'The Voice' that if you really want this, you'll be kicked when you're down."
The hit NBC show has proved to be lucrative for the singer/actress. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Aguilera is paid more than $250,000 per episode to appear on "The Voice."
Perhaps such a hefty payday helps the star encourage her team of singers to aspire to win. Aguilera said competing on the show takes dedication.
"You have to be willing to roll with those punches," she said. "You have to really want it."
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Hantuchova beats Venus

Daniela Hantuchova ended the Williams sisters' run at the Eastbourne grasscourt event Thursday as she finally triumphed after ten losses in her career series with Venus.
Daniela Hantuchova ended the Williams sisters' run at the Eastbourne grasscourt event Thursday as she finally triumphed after ten losses in her career series with Venus, pictured here in action on June 15.
The Slovak who had won just two sets previously against the American holder of five Wimbledon titles, secured a gritty 6-2, 5-7, 6-2 quarter-final victory to send Venus out a day after her sister Serena lost to top seed Vera Zvonareva.
"I felt I came out and played well early in the match," said the winner.
"The wind picked up and made things tough for both of us. It was then about who had the mentality and I came through.
"I'm feeling really good. My form is good."
Hantuchova, ranked 25th, laboured for two hours, 23 minutes after a delayed start due to rain in the area. The Slovak who played last week's Birmingham final, won her 27th match of the season and heads into a semi-final against either fifth seed Petra Kvitova or Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska.
The pair played their first match a decade ago and last met in Miami in March, where Williams won after coming back from a 1-6 first set.
Williams, her ranking down to 33rd, was playing an event for the first time in five months after an abdominal injury which forced her to quit a match at the Australian Open in January.
Her sister Serena came back this week after almost a year off court due to two operations on a cut foot last year and a February surgery to remove blood clots from her lungs.
Hantuchova, 2004 Eastbourne runner-up, won the opening set in 39 minutes from two breaks and a 5-2 lead. After claiming the first, she led 4-2 in the second and looked to be cruising before Williams laid on a fightback to eventually square the match.
In the third the Slovak got off to a break in the opening game, only to lose it in the fourth. But the 28-year-old fought on to break Williams straight back before repeating the effort and serving out the win on her first match point.
Men finally completed three left-over second-round matches topped by rain on Wednesday.
Janko Tipsarevic, the number three and last seed remaining, beat Mikhail Kukushkin 6-3, 7-6 (7/2), Belgian Olivier Rochus stopped Argentine Carlos Berlocq 3-6, 7-6 (7/5), 7-6 (7/3) and Japan's Kei Nishikori beat German veteran Rainer Schuettler 6-4, 4-6, 6-2.
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Selasa, 21 Juni 2011

Hantuchova halts Venus return in Eastbourne; Stosur topples Zvonarev




Daniela Hantuchova registered her first win over Venus Williams in 11 meetings at Eastbourne.
Daniela Hantuchova registered her first win over Venus Williams in 11 meetings at Eastbourne.
(CNN) -- A day after her sister Serena's comeback was ended in Eastbourne, Venus Williams suffered a similar fate losing in the quarterfinals to Daniela Hantuchova.
The Slovak battled hard in blustery conditions on the south coast of England as she recorded a 6-2 5-7 6-2 win -- her first over Venus in 11 meetings.
Williams had been out of action for five months with an abdominal injury before returning for the warm-up tournament ahead of Wimbledon and showed flashes of her old self in the second set.
Hantuchova told the WTA's official web site: "I was not thinking about our other matches at all. I was just focusing on my game today.
"I had a good win yesterday and I wanted to build on that. But I still feel there is a lot of room to improve. I'm not where I want to be yet, but I feel like I'm on the right way, which is pretty exciting for me."
Hantuchova breezed through the first set in just under 40 minutes after breaking Williams' serve twice to take it 6-2 and led the second 4-2 before Venus hit her stride.
It wasn't the best luck today, but I feel good about my preparation (for Wimbledon)
--Venus Williams
Williams then stormed back to take the second set before Hantuchova restored her dominance in the decider, breaking Williams twice and sealing the tie with her first match point.
Venus said: "The wind didn't make it very predictable, but I give her credit for hanging in there. On a day like today, you have to just hang in there.
"I think Daniela had a lot of motivation -- we've been playing I don't know how many years, and I am sure she has wanted to get a win against me for a long, long time."
"It wasn't the best luck today, but I feel good about my preparation (for Wimbledon). More than anything I was able to get a lot of great competition. This has been ideal. I would have liked to win here, but there are positives here too."
Hantuchova said she was glad the Williams sisters were back in tennis. "I think they're great for the game. I was really looking forward to the match today and really pleased I was able to make it through," she said.
Hantuchova will now face fifth seed Petra Kvitova, from the Czech Republic after she battled back from dropping the opening set to beat Poland's Agnieszka Radwanska 1-6 6-2 7-6.
The other semifinal will pit French No.6 seed Marion Bartoli against No.7 seed Samantha Stosur, from Australia.
Bartoli was 6-2 2-0 up against Victoria Azarenka when the Belarusian retired, while Stosur triumphed 4-6 7-6 6-4 over number one seed Vera Zvonareva.
In the men's draw, Janko Tipsarevic, from Serbian, won twice on Thursday to seal his place in the semifinal, first beating Kazakhstan's Mikhail Kukushkin and then Grigor Dimitrov, from Bulgaria by the same 6-3 7-6 scoreline.
World No. 59 Kei Nishikori beat Rainer Schuettler and then Czech Radek Stepanek to reach the final four, while Italian Andreas Seppi also went through with a win over Belgium's Olivier Rochus.
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Today's video gamer? It might not be who you think




A woman plays games at the Sony PlayStation booth at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
A woman plays games at the Sony PlayStation booth at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles.
(CNN) -- At 37, Lisa Sharp is comfortable calling herself a video-game junkie. But that wasn't always the case.
"I was the typical high-school girl who always watched the guys play and never picked up a console until well after college," she said.
Then, one day, the cable was out, so she grabbed a controller for her roommate's Nintendo 64. The rest is pixelated history.
Now, she and her husband have an old Nintendo 64 of their own. And a GameCube. And a PlayStation 2. And a Wii. And, as of last Christmas, a PlayStation 3.
"It relaxes me," said the Atlanta resident, whose favorites include the "Legend of Zelda" and "Final Fantasy" series. "My job gets a little bit crazy at times, so it's nice to go slash and bang stuff around."
As a mom who works in the finance department at Georgia Tech, Sharp hardly fits the stereotype of the avid video gamer -- that teenage or 20-something guy in the basement grinding out hours on his console or PC.
And that's part of a story that those in the video-gaming world already know: thanks partly to games on new platforms such as Facebook, smartphones and tablets, gaming is more popular than ever. Some observers even see parallels to the early-'80s arcade heyday, when games such as "Pac-Man" became mainstream phenomenons.
Last year, video-game software and hardware raked in more than $25 billion, according to the Entertainment Software Association, a gaming industry trade group. Compare that with the $7.3 billion the association reported in 2004, and it's not hard to see what's happening.
"I still think we have a lot of growth to go, even though we're at the highest point ever of people playing video games," said Tal Blevins, vice president of games content at IGN Entertainment. "As we have grown up with video games, it's just become a normal part of society.
"Video games did seem weird to our parents when we were young. But now, we're the old fogies, and it doesn't even phase us."
The massive growth of the past few years, evidenced at last week's Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, has moved on two tracks.
The 'blockbusters'
The first is the swelling mainstream popularity of so-called "hardcore" gaming titles, the detailed, immersive and artfully rendered games that take even the most devout players hundreds of hours to complete (longer, if they opt for multiplayer challenges that can last forever).
Last year's "Call of Duty: Black Ops" didn't just break video-game records. Selling 5.6 million copies in 24 hours and grossing $650 million in its first five days, it was the biggest entertainment opening of all time -- bigger than "Titanic," "Avatar" and every other Hollywood blockbuster.
The previous record holder? "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2," which grossed $550 million in the same five-day span. By comparison, "Avatar" grossed $77 million in its opening weekend.
"They've become blockbusters in the way we traditionally talk about something at the cinema," said Rich Taylor, a senior vice president with the Entertainment Software Association. "If you look at the dollars and cents compared to the blockbusters coming out of Hollywood and the publishing world ... (video games) are the ones that are knocking it out of the park."
The rise of the social game
But the industry has also made massive strides on a second front. The recent explosion of so-called casual gaming has brought new populations into the fold and threatens to forever blur the distinction between "gamer" and "non-gamer."
Nintendo's Wii, with its motion-based controllers, unleashed a flood of family-friendly party games when it was released in 2006. It quickly became the most popular gaming console in the world and was followed last year by Microsoft's Kinect and Sony's Move motion systems.
But the bigger advance might be happening on smartphone screens and Facebook pages.
Zynga, the makers of the alternately addictive or infuriating FarmVille, is worth an estimated $14.5 billion and expected to make its initial stock offering in the near future.
And versions of "Angry Birds," the addictive mobile game by Rovio, recently reached a staggering 250 million downloads on multiple platforms, from the iPhone and iPad to Google's Chrome browser.
"Mobile, and the iPhone in particular, is creating a so-much more casual and mainstream audience," said Dave Castelnuevo, co-creator of "Pocket God," a perennial app-store favorite that has been downloaded more than 4.5 million times since debuting in 2009. "They're not your hardcore gamers. My wife can't quit 'Angry Birds,' and she's never picked up an Xbox joystick."
The numbers definitely show a growing gamer base.
According to ESA's statistics, the average video-game player last year was 37 years old (like Sharp). That's up from 30 in 2004.
Forty-two percent of players were women. And nearly half (47%) of the online games people reported playing could be categorized as "casual" -- puzzles, trivia, board games, card games and the like.
More "hardcore" titles will always be in demand and "the industry has answered that bell time and time again," Taylor said. "But it's an industry that has expectations beyond just that audience. Any more, if it has a screen, it's going to have games."
The rift
Among diehard video-game enthusiasts, the rise of casual games has caused resentment in some quarters. On CNN Tech, any passing mention of FarmVille brings waves of fury in the comments section.
A story from E3 on mobile favorite "Fruit Ninja" coming to Microsoft's Xbox Kinect system prompted angry responses. Among them: "E3 is currently going on and THIS is the crap that mainstream media decides to write to the public about? How about talking about real games rather than app crap."
"I think sometimes, a lot of the people who are in the old-school mentality of hardcore gaming feel a little threatened with what's been happening over the past two or three years because it was, to them, almost this secret world," IGN's Blevins said. "It's like a 'We don't want you in our clubhouse' mentality."
At E3, Nintendo's world president Satoru Iwata talked with CNN about the rift as he promoted the upcoming Wii U, which Nintendo hopes will appeal to avid and casual gamers. He said that if tension between the two groups continues, it could be dangerous for the industry.
"Many people in this industry tend to categorize our customers into two groups -- one is the core gamer and the other is casual gamers. They somehow say that these two groups will never mix or overlap ... " Iwata said through a translator. "If we maintain that kind of wall or psychological barrier separating the two groups, someday I'm afraid that the culture of video games will be diminished."
Coming together?
Many observers say that, as gaming's growth continues, it's just a matter of time before those barriers fall.
"I consider myself a 'good game' gamer," said Taylor. "I play the games that are high quality, that entertain me. I play first-person shooters. I play sports games. I play 'Little Big Planet.' I play 'Angry Birds.' I play a lot of 'Scrabble.' I don't sit there and say 'I'm a hardcore gamer so I only play these titles.' I don't go to the store and see the hardcore-gaming section."
Castelnuevo, whose "Pocket God" franchise has branched out into toys, comics and cartoons, agrees.
"I think it's all growing," he said. "The 13-year-old males (who play "Pocket God") also play Xbox. They also play Nintendo DS. They love Mario and Batman and 'Bioshock.' "
Blevins also sees the divide getting thinner and says that, one day, even the term "gamer" may be outdated.
"You don't say 'I'm a movie-er' or 'I'm a book-er,' " he said. "Video games are now just another form of entertainment. There was once a little bit of that stigma -- the lonely kid in the basement. It's very different these days."
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Injured Clijsters forced out of Wimbledon


Kim Clijsters will miss Wimbledon because of the ankle inury that has plagued her in recent weeks.
Kim Clijsters will miss Wimbledon because of the ankle inury that has plagued her in recent weeks.

(CNN) -- Reigning U.S. Open and Australian Open champion Kim Clijsters will miss Wimbledon after suffering a recurrence of the ankle problem that has troubled her in recent weeks.
The 28-year-old Belgian, who has never even reached the final of the grass-court event despite an illustrious career, underwent further tests on the injury following a shock defeat at the Unicef Open in s'Hertogenbosch on Tuesday.
And she has now been forced to admit defeat after scans showed the injury, initially picked up while dancing at a relative's wedding, will need some rest to heal properly.
Clijsters said in a statement: "I'm very, very disappointed to have to withdraw from Wimbledon after injuring my foot again at the tournament in s'Hertogenbosch.
"At this moment I feel frustrated that it has to happen now before one of my favourite tournaments," she continued.
"I've always enjoyed being a part of the Wimbledon atmosphere but I have no other choice now but to rest, recover and to not play tennis for a few weeks."
Clijsters was seeded second for the tournament, and her withdrawal means last year's runner-up, Vera Zvonareva, has been promoted to second seed.
French Open winner Li Na is the third seed, with Victoria Azarenka of Belarus and former winner Maria Sharapova now fourth and fifth.
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Murray unlikely to win Wimbledon despite recent success

Andy Murray is unlikely to win Wimbledon this year, despite his recent success at Queen's Club.
Andy Murray is unlikely to win Wimbledon this year, despite his recent success at Queen's Club.
I wonder if Andy Murray ever curses the fact that he's playing in an era with two of the greatest tennis players of all time? I suspect he does.
The Scot has all the attributes to be a major winner; he can play every shot in the book, is incredibly fit, loves a challenge and has great court-craft and intuition, but so far this total package hasn't been quite good enough.
There are transition times in tennis, just like every sport, when the better players retire, get injured or lose their edge and that's when the lesser-lights have a chance of clinching one of the big ones.
And while it's been like this for a while on the women's tour, the men's has been dominated by Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal for several years, and now Novak Djokovic has entered the fray.
So even though Murray has become the king of Queen's club for the second time in his career and is legitimately the fourth best player in the world, the chances of him ending Britain's 75-year wait for a men's singles champion at Wimbledon really aren't that great.
For the next three weeks or so, he'll be under an intense microscope. The British media will follow him everywhere and report on everything he does, but he'll have got used to that. It's literally 'Murray Mania.'
In fact, I think he does tremendously well under extreme pressure and don't believe his failure to win a major is because of a mental block.
It's just that the players who have beaten him in the three finals he has reached, have played at a different level. Take this year's Australian Open for example. Djokovic took him out in straight sets during a superb winning run in which he beat Nadal four straight times and Federer three.
Since Federer won his first Wimbledon in 2003, the three players I just mentioned have won 28 of the 32 major titles on offer. Isn't that incredible?
The four they missed went to Andy Roddick (US Open 2003), Gaston Gaudio (French Open 2004), Marat Safin (Australian Open 2005) and Juan Martin del Potro (US Open 2009).
And so, given that the Wimbledon title has gone to either Federer or Nadal for the past seven years, it's hard to see past the dynamic duo, although I do think Novak has a real shot if it stays dry!
Once again, the women's tournament is hard to predict but surely the lowly ranked Williams sisters will be major contenders despite not having played much in the past year.
Together they've held the Venus Rosewater dish aloft nine times in the last 11 years with only Maria Sharapova and Amelie Mauresmo breaking up their stranglehold in 2004 and 2006 respectively.
We must savor this year's women's Wimbledon Championship, because, not only do we have Venus and Serena back playing, but also a whole host of others in the mix with the exception of Kim Clijsters, who has withdrawn after a reccurence of her foot.
Li Na is now a major champion, while Sharapova also looks back to her best. Add to that world number one Caroline Wozniacki and the likes of Vera Zvonareva, Victoria Azarenka and Petra Kvitova, and we could have quite a tournament on our hands.
The winner, if not one of the Williams sisters, will likely have to beat either Serena or Venus en route, or even both. Not an easy task!
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Barnes & Noble's new Nook: The anti-iPad

It's not an iPad, or even a Nook Color. But that's the whole point of Barnes & Noble's newest e-reader: it's not supposed to be.

FORTUNE -- Just six months after launching its well-received Android-based Nook Color tablet, Barnes and Noble (BKS) unveiled a major hardware update to the original e-ink-based Nook e-reader that cuts down on bulk, weight, and physical buttons.
Here's the important thing to note right off the bat about this new Nook: it doesn't have a color display like the iPad or the even the Nook Color. There isn't a full-fledged Web browser, email app, or really any third-party apps to speak of.
"Boring!" one Fortune reader complained about the Nook's launch last month. "An iPad does all this and about 1 zillion things more."
I initially agreed. I wouldn't say my iPad 2 3G does a zillion things in comparison, but it's much more versatile. So when I met with the B&N folks to pick up a review device, I was skeptical of its value and timing, particularly its arrival after Nook Color, a device I came to enjoy after the software update last March ironed out the major software kinks and added support for apps like email or one my favorite news curation readers, Pulse.
Some readers -- myself included -- don't want to give up the best features in their current e-readers for the tablet's shortcomings like comparatively shorter battery life and a display that can be tough to view outside. For us, there's the Nook: an unapologetic, laser-beam focused e-reader that does little else and doesn't bother to placate tablet proponents with so much as a full-fledged browser. But what it does do, it does exceptionally well, better than its nearest rival, the Kindle.
What's inside
At $139, the WiFi-only Nook sports a 6-inch touchscreen that marries infrared technology with a Pearl e-ink display to let users navigate with taps and swipes. It's backed up behind the scenes by an 800 MHZ Texas Instruments processor which the company says enables a much smoother reading experience, including quicker page transitions. All of that is housed in a soft, black, rubbererized plastic chassis measuring 5 inches by 6.5 inches by .47 inches  and weighs just under 7.5 ounces -- 35% lighter than the Nook first edition. There are six buttons, including recessed physical page flip buttons users can use if they prefer, and a home button. All that makes for an understated, sophisticated look that trumps the Yves Behar-designed Nook Color.
The Nook's biggest feature is one Barnes & Noble is particularly proud of, so much so they've dubbed the Nook the "Simple Touch Reader." By coupling infrared sensors with the e-ink screen, they've created one of the first dedicated e-readers that doesn't need a slew of physical buttons to get around. Many e-book readers will welcome the change because the tech actually works pretty well: there's little lag between the time you tap, swipe to flip a page, or type a letter, and when things happen onscreen. It's not as responsive as using as a color tablet, but the difference is negligible enough that users won't get frustrated. And as a result, it's easy to use the software-based keyboard.
So what you get here is the benefit that Amazon has been plugging all along with its Kindle -- reading in sunlight or on the beach -- with a responsive touchscreen, making it more intuitive to use than the first Nook or the Kindle.
Another benefit is the reduction of that film negative-like flashing effect we've come to associate with e-ink displays. Here, the company has come up with a neat little trick that it says reduces the effect by up to 80%: instead of having that happen every page, it happens every six pages. When you're reading an ebook, that claim proves true, but when you're navigating through the Home screen or looking for books in Barnes & Noble's online book store, it's not -- there's still a lot of flashing action. Luckily, screen transitions are quick enough it's not a major issue.

The Nook's new Home screen
On the software side, the Nook runs off a heavily modified version of Android 2.1. The only vestige of Android you'll likely recognize is the occasional Web browser window that pops up if you click on book embedded links.
The user interface (UI) is really all about the newly simplified proprietary software, which simplifies the Nook Color's UI even further. According to Jonathan Shar, the company's general manager for digital newsstand and emerging content, it's supposed to be so simple that users should only have to tap up to three times to get anywhere they want to go. And unless you're banging out the name of a title in a book search, that's pretty much true. There's a homescreen with three panels: a "Reading Now" area that displays what book users are currently reading and the number pages of left, "New Reads," or other ebooks in your library you haven't touched, and "What to Read Next," a social-focused section that displays what say, Facebook friends are reading. Alternatively, pressing the physical Nook button at the bottom, brings up a strip of icons that access the Home screen, your full library, the B&N shop, a search feature, and settings.
The last word
Releasing a black-and-white e-ink-based e-reader after a color screen e-reader tablet sounds counterintuitive, but I'm willing to bet the new Nook does well anyway, particularly with e-book readers who want a device that really excels at its purpose: reading. It's lighter and smaller than the iPad, so I don't have to prop it on my lap; it's got a display that doesn't strain my eyes during long periods, and battery life is pretty stellar. (I don't know about that two month claim, but after reading more than three hours a day on it since I got it last week, I've still got plenty of juice left.) And because of that touch screen and user interface, scooting through menus and even just flipping pages makes makes navigating a pleasure.
All that adds up to a win for Barnes & Noble, which has struggled recently with the closure of stores as reading has shifted towards digital faster than many analysts originally anticipated. The Nook won't make you forget about that iPad, but it will remind you that Apple's tablet has a ways before it can be everything to every user. Until then, or at least until Amazon answers B&N's rallying cry with a new Kindle of its own later this year, this new Nook will be the e-reader to beat.
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Abhisit gambles on leadership

Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has pledged to step down as the Democrat leader if his party wins significantly less than the 165 seats it captured in the last election in 2007.
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, Mr Abhisit said it was still possible that his Democrat Party could win as many as 200 of the available 500 seats but that if it won less than what it achieved in the last election in 2007, he would step down as party leader.


Mr Abhisit said Thailand's election was a tight race but his party could still win despite opinion polls showing it falling behind, and he predicted a new wave of political instability if the opposition formed the next government.
He acknowledged his party was slipping behind in the race against the opposition Pheu Thai Party led by Yingluck Shinawatra, the 43-year-old sister of self-exiled former prime minister Thaksin.
"It is still a very tight race. We have fallen behind slightly," he said.
The sudden rise to prominence of Thaksin's telegenic sister as leader of Pheu Thai has electrified the opposition's campaign, not only in the rural Northeast - long the backbone of support for Thaksin - but also in Bangkok.
"Yingluck is new on the scene. You always get a bit of a bounce ... and the media always responds to a new face," Mr Abhisit said.
"She needs to learn about government because she has no experience and that can be quite tough. There is always that question of whether she can be her own person," he said.
Meanwhile, the Democrat Party has come up with a new election campaign called "Ten Reasons to Vote for the Democrats".
This campaign was basically a combination of different policies of the party and its arch-rival, Pheu Thai.
Democrat deputy spokesman Boonyod Sukthinthai yesterday said if the Democrats returned as the government again, the party's income insurance scheme for the farmers would continue, but if Pheu Thai was in charge, the scheme would be replaced with the farm crop mortgage programme, he said.
Those who want the minimum wage to increase by 25% in two years rather than wait for a promise to raise the daily minimum wage to 300 baht should also vote for the Democrats, said Mr Boonyod.
And if the Democrat Party became the government again, it would carry on the 15-year free education programme, but if Pheu Thai was the government, students have only been promised free notebook or tablet computers, he said.
More importantly, Mr Boonyod said, if his party won with a sufficient number of votes to form a government, it would proceed with reconciliation efforts but would not attempt to whitewash any particular person under the guise of reconciliation.
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David and Goliath: Vietnam confronts China over South China sea energy riches


LONDON: An increasingly fractious maritime confrontation is developing in the South China Sea, with enormous implications for international companies interested in developing East Asia's offshore hydrocarbon resources.

Far from the radars of city of London and Wall Street investors, the clash has seen Vietnam emerge as spear carrier for its fellow ASEAN members on the dispute.

Offshore drilling is the most capital-intensive form of exploiting hydrocarbons, but its expense and scarcity has also allowed technically advanced Western companies to drive hard bargains with third world countries over their offshore waters, as they don't have indigenous advanced technical resources nor finances to exploit their maritime wealth.


Accordingly, most countries attempt to procure the best bilateral deals with foreign companies to get a taste of the offshore revenues that come from exploiting their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), which the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNLOS) recognized 12 nautical miles as normal for territorial seas and waters and provided international recognition of 200 mile EEZs.

On the vexed question of overlapping claims, when an overlap occurs, UNLOS deferred to the competing states to negotiate to delineate their final and actual maritime boundary, with the general principle that any point within an overlapping area defaults to the nearest state.

According to US government statistics, Vietnam's oil and gas industry is currently the country's biggest foreign currency earner and a major procurer of imported technology.

Since Vietnam's first oil export shipment in April 1987, crude oil has earned over $17 billion for Vietnam's economy, all of it from offshore production.

Vietnam is currently Asia's third largest oil producer behind Indonesia and Malaysia.

Over the past few years, China has asserted its sovereign maritime claims and takeovers even as Beijing has settled most of its disputes over its land frontiers with post-Soviet Central Asian states since the early 1990s.

China's expansive sovereignty claims on of South China Sea, including the Spratly (Nansha) and Paracel (Xisha) islets, putting Beijing directly in conflict with the sovereignty claims and security of five Southeast Asian states — Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia, not to mention China's irredentist claims on Taiwan. All, except Taiwan, are members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations or ASEAN.

Vietnam has now emerged as the plucky David challenging Beijing's Goliath.

The confrontation began on 26 May when three Chinese patrol boats halted a seismic survey in Spratly waters claimed by Vietnam as part of its EEZ, 80 miles from Vietnam's coast and 375 miles south of China's Hainan Island.

Following other incidents, on 13 June Vietnam's navy held live-firing exercises in an area 25 miles off central Quang Nam province after warning other vessels to steer clear.

While China has the stronger navy, both sides can currently deploy only light maritime forces, and for the moment, regional rhetoric exceeds firepower.

Besides the cover support of its ASEAN partners, China is in a dialectical trap of its own making. Asserting its unilateral sovereignty will weaken ASEAN dominated by China as a political organization and potentially drive a number of its members to closer relations with the US, the only significant non-Asian power in the western Pacific.

Beyond the regional posturing, the issue seems tailor-made for international arbitration. UNCLOS provides for bilateral discussions, but given the diversity of claims, ASEAN would seem to be a better forum.

In the meantime, the South China Sea hardly seems to best potential zone for foreign energy investment companies.
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[Thai] Army chief urges Thais not to repeat past choices [-Prayuth trying to change election outcome?]


BANGKOK (AP) — Thailand's powerful army chief, who helped oust former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has urged voters not to repeat the outcome of past elections in next month's balloting — an apparent warning against supporting Thaksin's allies.

Gen. Prayuth Chan-ocha delivered his advice Tuesday night in a special broadcast on the country's two army-owned television networks, as polls indicated that pro-Thaksin forces are again headed for victory in the July 3 general elections.

Thaksin was deposed in a 2006 military coup after being accused of corruption and disrespect to King Bhumibol Adulyadej.

A sharp split between Thaksin's supporters and opponents has left Thailand in political turmoil since the coup, culminating in street protests in Bangkok last year that deteriorated into violence, leaving 91 people dead and more than 1,800 hurt.


Prayuth, an outspoken defender of the monarchy, said offenses against the royal institution had been increasing and voters should chose "good people" with good morals "who know what is right and wrong."

By bracketing his remarks about voting with the blast at critics of the monarchy, Prayuth implied that voters who respect the king should not support the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai party.

Thaksin's youngest sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, is the party's candidate for prime minister.

Prayuth said if the same people voted the same way as before, the results would be the same, an apparent reference to the string of victories by pro-Thaksin parties.

Despite those victories, the rival Democrat Party of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was able to take power in 2008 after controversial legal rulings and defections by lawmakers from smaller parties in Parliament.

King Bhumibol has long been a unifying figure, but at 83 and in poor health, there are serious concerns about the future of the monarchy because Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn doesn't command as much popular respect.

Royalists suspect that Thaksin sought to usurp the king's authority and don't want him to return from exile overseas, where he fled to escape a jail sentence for corruption.

Thai army chiefs have a history of being powerful political figures. The country has gone through 18 coups or attempted coups since becoming a constitutional monarchy in the 1930s.

Pheu Thai spokesman Prompong Nopparit said Wednesday he saw Prayuth's comments as simply urging Thai people to vote in large numbers.

"We don't see that he is in favor of any particular party or against any other party," he said. "Pheu Thai is not worried about it. ... It is the people who will determine the future of the country. Nobody can manipulate them."
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Libya not getting Olympics tickets yet, organizers insist


The IOC will delay its release of London 2012 tickets to Libya.
The IOC will delay its release of London 2012 tickets to Libya.
London (CNN) -- The International Olympic Committee will not give any tickets to Libya's Olympic Committee "until the current situation becomes clearer," it said Wednesday.
The statement comes on the heels of public fury in Britain over reports that members of Libya leader Moammar Gadhafi's family will get tickets to the Olympics in London next year.
The British organizers of the games told CNN Wednesday that Libya's national organizing committee, "not an individual, has been allocated a few hundred tickets which they are responsible for distributing to sports organisations and athletes within their country."
London organizers have "an obligation" to sell tickets to national Olympics committees of countries that compete, they said in a statement.
But that did not mean that Libya has the tickets, the IOC said.
"To be absolutely clear, no tickets have been printed or paid for," IOC communications director Mark Adams said.
The IOC will retain its "wait and see policy" of withholding Libya's tickets "until we can be absolutely certain that the tickets can be used correctly," he said.
And the British government said key Gadhafi regime figures would not be allowed into the country anyway.
"Gadafi, his son and key figures in the current Libyan Government are banned from entering the EU and will not be coming to the Olympic Games," the Department of Culture, Media and Sport told CNN Wednesday.

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Will Serena's comeback fail?

Serena Williams proudly shows off her fourth Wimbledon crown but can she win a fifth?
Serena Williams proudly shows off her fourth Wimbledon crown but can she win a fifth?
The news that Serena Williams is to return to action for the first time in nearly a year certainly gives added spice to the build-up to the third grand slam of the year at Wimbledon.
Williams has been sidelined since winning her fourth title at the All England Club since July, not hitting a ball in anger unless you count a money-spinning exhibition match against Kim Clijsters in Belgium in front of a record crowd for a tennis match.
But days before she had stepped on a shard of glass in a restaurant in Germany to set in course a train of events which she will want to banish to the back of her memory bank.
At first it seemed the injury was not too serious, and it did not seem to bother her during the Clijsters' match, but she then skipped the U.S. Open and further complications ruled out any hope of defending her Australian Open crown.
Skeptics still doubted the true extent of her injury as the 29-year-old seemed to be using her "downtime" to be a regular on the celebrity circuit in the States, but in late February they were silenced as Serena was rushed to hospital with a blood clot on her lung, or to use the correct medical term, a pulmonary embolism.
It was as she said later a "scary" moment and led to speculation that she had hit a tennis ball in action for the final time.
The 13-time grand slam winner though is clearly made of sterner stuff and will now return for another crack at Wimbledon glory, starting in the genteel surroundings of Eastbourne on the south coast of England.
But the big question on everyone's lips is can she ever return to her best after an injury requiring two surgeries and a medical condition that can prove fatal?
Modern day tennis requires supreme physical conditioning with any weaknesses ruthlessly exploited, so expect Serena to be given no quarter by opponents with a few scores to settle for the beatings she has handed down over the years.
There are also a new breed of stars to contend with like current world number one Caroline Wozniacki not to mention new French Open champion Li Na and the irrepressible Kim Clijsters who has won two of the last three grand slams while Serena has been sidelined.
Serena will doubtless point to the break she took through 2006 and her triumphant return the following year but that appeared more a question of motivation than battling back after a career-threatening health condition.
She was also much younger and just short of 30 is getting to the veteran stage even for a player of her incredible ability.
Having her sister Venus come back to the fray at the same tournament after a six-month layoff of her own will surely boost her morale and having won Wimbledon nine times between them, not to mention their doubles exploits, the other leading contenders will await their return with keen interest.
But ultimately reputation counts for nothing in the dog-eat-dog world of professional sport and if Serena shows just a whiff of fallibility, either physical or mental, her comeback could be shortlived.

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Sabtu, 18 Juni 2011

Barcelona threaten to sever ties with Spanish rivals Real Madrid


Barcelona and Real Madrid met five times last season with tempers flaring on several occasions.
Barcelona and Real Madrid met five times last season with tempers flaring on several occasions
(CNN) -- European champions Barcelona claim they will sever ties with Real Madrid if their fierce Spanish rivals continue to push the "bounds of sportsmanship."
The two clubs faced-off five times over the course of last season, culminating in two tempestuous Champions League semifinals in which players from both sides clashed on numerous occasions.
Real coach Jose Mourinho was handed a five-match ban by UEFA after comments he made after the first leg of the tie, in which he claimed match officials favored Barcelona.
He was also sent to the stands during the game at Real's Bernabeu stadium after criticizing the referee.
Arsenal captain Fabregas: My future still to be decided
Real then claimed Barcelona's players had play-acted to con the referee, and that Sergio Busquets made racist comments to their Brazilian defender Marcelo -- a charge UEFA later dismissed.
In a press conference on Thursday Barca president Sandro Rosell warned that his club would break ties with Real if next season was again punctuated by poor relations.
"Real Madrid and FC Barcelona are ancient institutions with many supporters and aficionados," Rosell said in a statement on the club's official web site.
Real Madrid crossed the line of acceptable sporting rivalry by making accusations against our club without any foundation
--Sandro Rosell, Barcelona president
"Real Madrid crossed the line of acceptable sporting rivalry by making accusations against our club without any foundation.
"If the limits of fair play are passed once again, we shall be obliged to end our institutional relations, something we have absolutely no desire to do.
"The rivalry will continue next season but we will not allow them to go beyond the bounds of sportsmanship."
Rosell also made reference to the "numerous provocations" made by Mourinho, pointing to the post-match press conference that landed him in hot water. The Portuguese this week appealed against his ban.
He said: "Comments by the protagonists have always served to enrich footballing debate. But this season a Real Madrid employee, its coach, also went beyond all the limits of necessary sporting rivalry.
"He even went as far as to say that our coach should feel ashamed of some of our victories. The press conference given by the Real Madrid coach after the first leg of the Champions League semi finals at the Bernabeu would certainly have made any sportsperson feel ashamed.
"He accused our club of having won titles thanks to some kind of national and international conspiracy, implicating in this conspiracy the good name of Unicef and the football authorities."
Barca's president went on to claim the club's season was the best in its history, after coach Pep Guardiola secured the Spanish league title to go with the club's fourth Champions League triumph.
Rosell also hinted that Barcelona would be willing to spend big if the right players became available, as speculation over Arsenal captain Cesc Fabregas' future continues to grow.
"We'll see what happens in the transfer market. Initially, we have $63 million but we might use part of next year's money too," he said. "Guardiola has his preferences, but he doesn't talk about names, he talks about positions that should be strengthened.
"Cesc? I guess he'd like to join us, like a lot of players would, but we won't go mad and offer silly fees. Last year we offered $56 million for Cesc, this season his value is less. What we can offer will also depend on his salary."
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'Mrs. Hefner' on the cover of Playboy

'Mrs. Hefner' on the cover of Playboy
The July issue of Playboy Magazine features a cover of Crystal Harris and the headline "America's Princess: Introducing Mrs. Crystal Hefner."
Well, that would have been her name if Harris hadn't called off the wedding which had been scheduled for Saturday.
The now ex-fiancée of the world's most famous playboy appeared on Ryan Seacrest's radio show Wednesday to explain her side of the story regarding the break up.
Harris said that despite reports to the contrary there was no "nasty argument" which led to the couple splitting.
"It was mutual between Hef and I," she said. "There was no fight, we sat down and we talked about it."
Harris added that she had been feeling ill at ease about the nuptials for awhile and was not comfortable with Hef's lifestyle which included having multiple girlfriends.
She also said her boyfriend of almost two and a half years wasn't all that broken up about the engagement ending because when it came to what would have been his third marriage "he was doing it for me because he thought it was what I wanted."
But Hefner doesn't sound like he is completely over his "runaway bride" who at 25 years-old is 60 years his junior. He tweeted "Crystal did an interview with Ryan Seacrest this morning to explain everything, but I still don't have a clue."
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Cambodia moves to bar Thai chicken

Cambodia yesterday barred imports of chicken products from Thailand after authorities raided chicken slaughterhouses in Nakhon Ratchasima for selling decomposed chicken, Xinhua news agency reported.

"The Ministry of Commerce instructs all levels of authorities along the border between Cambodia and Thailand to prevent all imports of chicken products from Thailand even though the products have phyto-sanitary certificates in order to protect our people's health," Cham Prasidh, Cambodia's minister of commerce, wrote in a directive.

The move came after Thai officials raided chicken slaughterhouses in Nakhon Ratchasima province on Monday and seized about eight tonnes of decomposed chicken.

The slaughterhouses had soaked dead chickens in a strong-smelling formalin solution before processing them as food products for human consumption.


Wachirawit Kritrittisak, deputy chief of Nakhon Ratchasima police, said police had already pressed at least 10 charges against the operators of four of the 11 slaughterhouses.

The suspects allegedly said that they typically supplied chicken carcasses to fish and crocodile farms. They told police they had bought them from middlemen.

The investigating team is gathering evidence against the operators of the other slaughterhouses, according to Pol Col Wachirawit.

Meanwhile, Nakhon Ratchasima Governor Raphee Phongbupphakit yesterday said a committee has been set up to look into claims of negligence after learning the slaughterhouses had allegedly sold to local food processors meat from chickens that had arrived at their facilities already dead.

The probe is expected to be completed in three days, Mr Raphee said.

The panel yesterday invited Pak Chong livestock chief Wibul Rattanapornwong, police chief Col Pakawat Thamde and two senior officers from Pak Chong and Klang Dong police stations to testify.

Earlier, the governor ordered a transfer of the provincial livestock chief, Suksawat Thongnoi, to an inactive post pending the probe into his conduct in relation to slaughterhouse operations in the district.
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Activists call for probe into decision to close Khmer Rouge case

Bandit You Bunleng and Herr Doktor Siegfried Blunk involved in JUDICIAL MISCONDUCT?
Jun 14, 2011
DPA

Phnom Penh - An organization monitoring Cambodia's Khmer Rouge tribunal said Tuesday the United Nations must examine the court's decision to close the investigation into its highly politicized third case.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, which is funded by US billionaire George Soros, said the step was essential in order to restore public trust in the UN-backed tribunal.

The group said the investigating judges had failed to examine fully the 'allegations of mass murder and other atrocities' against the suspects in Case Three - a case the Cambodian government has repeatedly said it would not permit to proceed to trial.

The suspects, whom the court has not named, were senior Khmer Rouge military officers and are suspected of involvement in thousands of deaths.


An investigation was needed since 'recent actions and omissions' by the investigating judges 'raise serious questions, including the possibility of gross negligence in the performance of - or that the judges knowingly acted in contravention of - their judicial duties,' the OSJI said.

The UN has not yet commented. Tribunal spokeswoman Yuko Maeda said Tuesday the judges had no comment.

The investigating judges - Germany's Siegfried Blunk and Cambodia's You Bunleng - announced their decision to close Case Three on April 29.

In subsequent public comments international prosecutor Andrew Cayley indicated he believed the investigation was deficient.

Cayley listed a number of omissions, including the investigating judges' failure to question the two suspects or to visit sites where the alleged crimes had taken place.

The OSJI said the court's actions when combined with the government's opposition to Case Three and to Case Four, which involves another three ex-Khmer Rouge, 'suggest that the outcome of (each) case has been pre-determined.'

On Monday the Cambodia Daily newspaper said several international staff in the investigating judges' office had quit following disagreements over the decision to close Case Three.

One of them was Stephen Heder, an expert on the Khmer Rouge movement who was employed as a consultant. In his May 5 resignation email, Heder said he had quit because the judges had decided to close the case 'effectively without investigating it, which I, like others, believe was unreasonable.'

In late May the UN rejected allegations it had interfered with investigations at the tribunal or put any pressure on any court officials to scupper the cases.

The court's second case, against four senior surviving leaders of the movement, is scheduled to begin June 27. More than 2 million people are thought to have died during the Khmer Rouge's rule from 1975 to 1979.
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Abhisit: Pheu Thai's special zone unrealistic vote bait

The Pheu Thai Party's proposal to make the three troubled southern border provinces a special administrative zone is purely intended to win votes, and is not a realistic solution to the problem, Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Abhisit was commenting on an interview by Pheu Thai's No.1 party list candidate Yingluck Shinawatra, who said her party would turn the three southern border provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat into a special administration zone.
Prime Minister and Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva
He said what Ms Yingluck said was not realistic.

The Democrat Party's policy is to give more power to local administrations - municipalities, tambon and provincial administration organisations (TOA and POA).

"If a special administration is set up, like Pattaya City, the TOAs or POAs would be gone.

"I assume that the special administration (mentioned by Pheu Thai) would be based in Pattani. If this is true, the people in Betong and Sungai Kolok would come under Pattani.

"I don't see how this would improve the people's quality of life," Mr Abhisit said.

The prime minister also disagreed to an idea to relocate heavy industries to the three southern border provinces, saying this would only cause more conflict to the area.

Ms Yingluck, meanwhile, avoided any commitment to take part in scheduled election policy debates between party leaders again.

She said she was not sure if she will be available for the forums organised by the People's Network for Election in Thailand (Pnet).

Ms Yingluck said her campaign schedule was tight and she had to tour throughout the country until just before July 3, so she was still undecided whether she would be available for the debates.

Pnet has scheduled a forum for the leaders of six political parties to debate their policies on June 23 and for Prime Minister and Democrat leader Abhisit and Ms Yingluck, as Pheu Thai's prime ministerial candidate, to debate on June 24.  The venue for the debates has not been disclosed.

Mr Abhisit has agreed to both debates.
Pheu Thai's No.1 party list candidate Yingluck Shinawatra
Ms Yingluck maintained that even if Pheu Thai did not take part in the debates, its absence was unlikely to make any difference to its popularity since, according to a party survey, the people wanted to hear Pheu Thai candidates speak in their constituencies.

On Mr Abhisit's questioning whether she can make her own decisions, or must seek approval first, Ms Yingluck said the people would make their own judgement on this matter.

Although she may be inexperienced in politics, she had much experience in business and leadership, she said.

Mr Abhisit has agreed to both debates.

Ms Yingluck maintained that even if Pheu Thai did not take part in the debates, its absence was unlikely to make any difference to its popularity since, according to a party survey, the people wanted to hear Pheu Thai candidates speak in their constituencies.

On Mr Abhisit's questioning whether she can make her own decisions, or must seek approval first, Ms Yingluck said the people would make their own judgement on this matter.

Although she may be inexperienced in politics, she had much experience in business and leadership, the former chief executive of Advanced Info Service (AIS) and until recently chairwoman of the family's  SC Asset Corporation said.
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UN Secretary General Moves To Ease Tribunal Tension

Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Kong Sothanarith, VOA Khmer
Phnom Penh
"...must be allowed to function free from external interference by the royal government, by the UN, donors states and by civil society." (sic!)
The office UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon sought to ease increasing tensions within the Khmer Rouge tribunal on Wednesday, rejecting media reports that a controversial third case will be dropped.

The UN-backed court's investigating judges have come under fire in recent weeks after they made a preliminary conclusion to Case 003, for two unnamed Khmer Rouge suspects.

Ban said through a spokesman on Wednesday that the conclusion had only been a procedural step and was not a signal the case—which Prime Minister Hun Sen strongly opposes—would be ignored.


However, the investigating judges have already seen a staff exodus, and their office was called "toxic" by a leading consultant for investigation, especially after they failed to interview the two chief suspects in the case.

"The co-investigating judges must ultimately issue a closing order in case 003 which, in relation to each suspect, either sends him or her to trial, or dismissed the case against him or her," according to Ban's statement.

Claire Duffy, a court monitor for the independent Open Society Justice Initiative, said while the statement was "technically" true, it was also a defense of the UN's court operations.

"If you have just kept up to date with all the developments that have been happening, it's clear that the judges intend to dismiss the case," she said.

The judges "haven't even interviewed" the suspects or assigned them counsel, she said, making indictments very unlikely.

Ban's statement said the jurists for the tribunal "must be allowed to function free from external interference by the royal government, by the UN, donors states and by civil society."
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America’s most endangered historic places

northwestern New Mexico
More than 1,000 square miles of archeological and cultural sites in northwestern New Mexico were once home to the prehistoric Chacoan people. (Jonathan Poston)
The National Trust for Historic Preservation unveiled its 2011 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places on 15 June.
The annual list, now in its 24th year, spotlights important examples of the nation's architectural, cultural and natural heritage that are at risk of destruction or irreparable damage.
This year's sights range from a severely deteriorated 1950s ranch house in Long Island, New York, where acclaimed jazz musician John Coltrane wrote the classic album A Love Supreme, to the now vacant Pillsbury A Mill in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a former flour mill that the National Trust calls "a masterpiece of industrial architecture".
Locations are chosen based on architectural or cultural significance, the urgency of the problem and the potential for a solution, said Stephanie Meeks, president of the National Trust. She also noted that several new themes emerged this year.
Two places considered sacred ground for Native Americans -- a 4,426-foot mountain in Bear Butte, South Dakota, and more than 1,000 square miles of archeological and cultural sites in northwestern New Mexico that were once home to the prehistoric Chacoan people -- were chosen because they are threatned by energy development.
Several nominees this year reflected the impact of climate change, though only one, a fortress on Dauphin Island, Alabama, made the list. Fort Gaines, "a place of spectacular beauty and stirring history", according to the National Trust, played a pivotal role in the Civil War battle for Mobile Bay. Today its shoreline is experiencing serious erosion.
For the first time, a site was given "Watch Status", a designation for a place believed to face a growing threat that could be avoided or controlled. The historic character of Charleston, South Carolina and its surrounding neighborhoods are in jeopardy due to expanding cruise ship tourism.
Since 1988, 233 places have been cited on the annnual lists. Sadly, eight have been lost, including the Juana Briones house in Palo Alto, California, "which is being torn down as we speak", Meeks said. The property, featured on last year's list, was thought to contain the remains of the 1844 adobe home built by Juana Briones, one of only 34 women in early California history documented as a landowner.
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Abhisit to take part in debate

Prime Minister and Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva has accepted an invitation from the People's Network for Elections in Thailand (Pnet) to participate in a debate involving the leaders of six political parties on June 23, Prime Minister's Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey said on Tuesday.
Prime Minister and Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva
Prime Minister and Democrat Party leader Abhisit Vejjajiva has accepted an invitation from the People's Network for Elections in Thailand (Pnet) to participate in a debate involving the leaders of six political parties on June 23, Prime Minister's Office Minister Sathit Wongnongtoey said on Tuesday.

Mr Sathit said the six political parties whose leaders have been invited to the June 23 debate are expected to play a crucial role in the formation of the next government after the July 3 election.

He did not name the five other parties.

Mr Abhisit has also accepted Pnet's invitation to take part in a debate with the Pheu Thai Party's contender for the prime ministership, on June 24.

However, Pheu Thai's No.1 party list candidate Yingluck Shinawatra has so far not accepted the invitation.

Pnet will give her until June 17 to reply, Mr Sathit said.

Democrat list candidate Nipon Boonyamanee, who supervises the party's election campaign in the far South, said his party was confident that it will win at least nine of the 11 seats up for grabs in the southernmost provinces in the July 3 polls.
Mr Nipon said the Democrat candidates contesting the 11 constituencies in Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat provinces were being warmly received by local residents.

Many voters in the far South would vote for the Democrats as they wanted Mr Abhisit to win a second term as prime minister so he would continue his policies to douse the southern fire, said Mr Nopon, citing the latest opinion poll results in the region.
Key party figures would take part in the election campaign to boost its candidates' chances of a clean sweep, said Mr Nipon.

"Many residents still have faith and confidence in the Democrat Party and party chief adviser Chuan Leekpai as the Democrats are determined to tackle the unrest in the deep South.

"As soon as Mr Chuan completes his task in the North, he will visit the three southernmost provinces and four districts in Songkhla by the end of this month," said Mr Nipon.
Pheu Thai's No.1 party list candidate Yingluck Shinawatra
Ms Yingluck said while campaigning in the South today that she wanted the three southern border provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat to be made a special administrative zone if the Pheu Thai forms the next government.

"If Pheu Thai becomes the government, we will push for a special administrative zone.

"We'll have more discussion with relevant state agencies and the local people in the three southern provinces," said former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra's youngest sister.

She said the process of becoming a special administrative zone would be gradual and people in the area would be involved in governing themselves.

"Even if we don't target to win seats in the deep South, we will not ignore our brothers and sisters here because we are all Thais and this is Thailand," Ms Yingluck said.

She said Pheu Thai, if elected, would also improve diplomatic ties with Saudi Arabia to promote bilateral trade and make it easier for Thai Muslims to make the annual Hajj pilgrimage.

However, Pheu Thai would not touch the old Saudi cases.

"We must focus on the mutual benefits for the two countries," Ms Yingluck said.
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Bahrain Grand Prix cut from 2011 F1 calendar

The Sakhir circuit in Bahrain The Sakhir circuit in Bahrain will not stage an F1 race this season

Formula 1's governing body the FIA has confirmed that the Bahrain Grand Prix will not be part of the 2011 programme.
The race, originally scheduled for 13 March, was called off in February after more than 30 lives were lost during pro-democracy protests in the country.
Earlier this month, it was reinstated and rescheduled for 30 October.
But teams objected on logistical grounds and F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone was forced to come up with another calendar with Bahrain removed.
When asked to ratify the calendar, the World Motor Sport Council, which decides on rules and regulations for the FIA, unanimously voted in favour of staging the inaugural Indian Grand Prix on 30 October.
The FIA's decision at the start of June to restore the race to the calendar, with Bahrain taking the October slot and the Indian Grand Prix moving to 11 December, was announced as unanimous but proved highly controversial.
The decision to reinstate the Bahrain race also outraged human rights campaigners, with nearly half a million people signing an online petition demanding a boycott.
Cancellation was seen as inevitable since any change to the calendar required the unanimous written agreement of the teams.

BAHRAIN GP TIMELINE

They expressed their concerns to the FIA and F1's commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone, voicing strict opposition to the idea of a race in December.
Fota - which represents all the F1 teams bar back-of-the-grid Hispania - explained how a grand prix so late in the year would be "unbearable to our staff".
Max Mosley, the former head of world motorsport, said the sport would suffer enormous damage if the race took place.
He told BBC Radio 5 live at the time: "I will be astonished if the event goes ahead. I don't think it will happen."
Bahrain lifted emergency law this month after crushing anti-government protests but tensions remain high.
It remains on the FIA's provisional 2012 calendar as the 11 March season-opener, although one of the 21 races is expected to be dropped.
Fernando Alonso
2010's Bahrain Grand Prix in 90 seconds (UK users only)
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Rabu, 15 Juni 2011

How early Twitter decisions led to Weiner's downfall

Anthony Weiner used Twitter to establish his feisty personality with a nationwide community, but it was also his undoing.

(WIRED) -- Now that the Anthony Weiner Twitter meltdown has pretty much played out, I'm surprised that there hasn't been much discussion of the butterfly wing-flap that brought him down: Twitter's rules of engagement when it comes to "following."
The success of a social network is largely determined by its settings. In 2006, an engineer named Jack Dorsey had an idea for a way for people to share short updates on their lives with friends and family.
Working with a small team, Dorsey and his colleagues began developing and testing the product. This included determining the built-in boundaries of the service, a process which would determine the breadth and purpose of the entire project.
Twitter was a simple idea but settings had to be just right, like the proper temperature for a soufflé.
WIRED: Twitter creator Jack Dorsey returns
Should the rules be very restrictive, to preserve privacy and intimacy? (Too much restriction would make the service less useful.) Or should they be expansive, and invite a wide circle to share one's status reports? (Too broad a channel would mean a depersonalized cohort.)
The breakthrough that enabled Twitter to become the wildly successful service it is now came from a twist that was much more significant than even its founders knew: They made it possible to "follow" someone's messages without requiring permission.
Essentially you would take out a subscription to someone's Twitter stream. You would follow your best friend or your brother in the same way you would follow Barack Obama, DeSean Jackson or the New York Times.
This was a break from the traditional two-way agreement that ruled communications in previous social systems. This changed Twitter from an asynchronous instant messaging system into a hybrid of a social network and broadcast medium.
"The relationship model was something that we debated a lot," says Evan Williams, who headed the company (Odeo) that created Twitter. "In the first version, by default you were private." (This quote is from a conversation I had with Williams in 2009, when I was working on a story for Wired.)
But then Dorsey's team came up with the idea that you could follow someone without them following you.
"That was really important," says Williams. "From my perspective, I wanted something like a blog relationship model. What I thought was beautiful about blogs as opposed to e-mail or anything else is it's completely up to the recipient of the information whether or not they consume it."
But Twitter was much more intimate than blogs. Following someone on Twitter was not exactly like setting up a blog feed or subscribing to a magazine. You became part of a visible community.
The relationship model was something that we debated a lot.
--Evan Williams
In order to make this happen, Twitter made public the list of people you followed, as well as the list of people who followed you. You would notice when your friends followed the same people you did. You could make connections with other people who followed the same tweeters you followed.
To further encourage the community aspect of Twitter, the founders determined that by default, all messages would be public. Weirdly, one of the questions that came up during this discussion was whether people would be creeped out when it came to flirting and other personal issues.
"This openness was the result of a lot of thought around the way we had started recognizing that people were communicating online," says Noah Glass, who was part of the original team. (I interviewed Glass for the aforementioned story.) "We were on MySpace, and I got into a lot of trouble from various girls posting things on that thing out in the open, and I started thinking about openness -- we all started thinking about openness.
"We come from a world where privacy is important. But we realized that not everyone shared this feeling about privacy in that same kind of way," Glass says. "People were having really intimate discussions out for everyone else to read. I realized that that the level of privacy we thought was important, was not necessarily important to a certain group of people for a certain type of communication. And so making any conversation open and followable was something based on those systems that were becoming popular."
This thinking influenced the settings when Twitter, because of user demand, implemented a "reply" feature. The replies, just like any other tweets, were public.
But what if you wanted to have a truly private conversation, as with SMS or e-mail, with someone on Twitter? This presented a problem to those with a huge following.
WIRED: Reporter tweets cell number to world, no one calls
One way to do this would be to allow users to send a private message to any other user, just as they can with e-mail. But celebrities and others with large followings didn't want to open a private channel to just anyone.
So Twitter decided that for "direct" messages there should be some limits. Direct, private messages could only be sent to someone who followed you. The fact that you followed someone meant that you'd probably be happy to hear from him or her. To have a back-and-forth conversation, then, both parties would have to be following each other.
We realized that not everyone shared this feeling about privacy in that same kind of way.
--Noah Glass
Otherwise, once you hit a few keystrokes to specify that something is a direct message, sending a private tweet is not all that different from sending a public tweet.
The service has never really figured a way to foolproof the process. It is a rare Twitter user -- even an experienced one -- who has not mistakenly sent something intended as a direct message out into the public Twittersphere. Happens all the time.
These settings helped make Twitter catnip for loquacious politicians like Anthony Weiner, who used it to establish his feisty personality with a nationwide community.
But it also proved his undoing when he misused Twitter for sordid sexual contact with women.
Twitter's regimen of rules tanked Anthony Weiner in several ways.
First of all, it provided a public record of the initial contacts that Weiner made with the women.
Here was the apparent pattern of Weiner's inappropriate communications: a woman would tweet an encouraging public message to the legislator -- which would be public, the only way she could communicate to him. (By and large, since the women were political supporters and not thinking of themselves as material for his sexual fantasies, this wasn't a problem for them.)
Then Weiner would respond to them -- but his responses were constrained by the knowledge that his replies were public.
Weiner needed a more private channel of communication for flirtations up to and including pictures of his package. Since the women followed him already, he could send them direct messages. But to receive their replies, he had to follow them in return. Only then could he engage in flirting or sexual repartee.
Weiner seemed not to realize the extent to which Twitter's rules still made him vulnerable.
The women were publicly listed among those accounts he followed. Since he only followed around 200 people, these new followers seemed out of place among the politicians, journalists, and celebrities on his list.
It was all too easy for a political foe to notice that Weiner was adding young women (and in at least one case, a porn star) to his followers soon after a public exchange.
And that is exactly what happened. A right-wing activist noticed Weiner's pattern and then harassed the young women the congressman followed.
But even then, Weiner did not curtail his behavior. He simply unfollowed those women and found new ones to flirt with. His Twitter use was a train wreck waiting to happen.
The train wreck occurred when Weiner confronted the confusing rail yard that Twitter's founders never truly fixed: the inadequately drawn distinction between a public message and a direct one.
When Weiner decided to send a young woman a picture of his crotch -- wearing gray boxers that barely contained his tumescence -- he had already taken the step of following her. But he made a common mistake between a direct private message and a public reply, and sent the picture out to the tens of thousands of people who followed him.
That was so crazily egregious that Weiner's initial lies that his account had been hacked seemed plausible.
But the evidence of his deeper misbehavior was already out in the open: the thumbnails of the young women he followed, publicly available on his Twitter account.
Journalists, political rivals, and right-wing muckrakers had no problem finding multiple women who had flirted and even received more graphic photos via "private" Twitter messages. When asked about what happened, the women talked, and Weiner's original "I was hacked" story fell apart.
Weiner was caught in the social net, undone by a bunch of conversations several years earlier between some San Francisco geeks trying to figure out the settings of a cool new product.
The details of web product design had led to the pants being pulled down on a promising political career.
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Google adding search by voice, pictures

Google search guru Amit Singhal announces new search features at Tuesday's press event.
San Francisco (CNN) -- The plain Google search box will soon be able to handle more than taps on a keyboard.
Google is bringing features pioneered on smartphones, like voice and image search, to its flagship product, the company said at a news conference here on Tuesday.
The speech-recognition tool began showing up as a microphone button on the right-hand side of the Google.com search box for some visitors on Tuesday. It will only be available on Google's Chrome Web browser for now, but Google executives say they hope other software makers implement the technology to support the feature.
Like on Android or the Google application for the iPhone, people can click the mic icon on Google.com, and say a phrase or question into their computer microphone.
The speech technology attempts to account for accents and context in order to transcribe the recording into text. This produced mixed results in my testing, speaking in plain English or with a faux Cockney accent.
Take a peek at Google voice search
The image-search feature will start rolling out in the next few days, said Johanna Wright, a Google search director. "Every picture has a story, and we want to help you discover that story," she said.
Image Search can, say, look at a family vacation photo and figure out where it was shot, or help explain images that become Internet memes, such as Lolcats. The recognition technology applies a bunch of Google's proprietary algorithms to photos, but facial recognition isn't one of them, executives said in an interview with reporters.
People using newer Web browsers will be able to drag an image file from the desktop onto the search box. Additional features are available to those who install the Google Toolbar in Firefox.
Google Instant, the immediate suggestions offered when a user is typing into the search box, will debut on Google's image-search section "in the coming weeks," said Google exec Amit Singhal.
To complement Google's quest for high-speed Web surfing, the company plans to roll out a feature called Instant Pages. It will sometimes load the top search result on your computer before you click on the link, so that the page pops up instantly once you do.
The feature will only be available in Chrome, starting with the beta version of the software later this week.
That many of Tuesday's announcements will initially only be available in Chrome limits their reach. In May, Google controlled 65.5% of the U.S. Web search market, according to comScore, but Chrome only had 12.5% of browser usage -- far behind Internet Explorer and Firefox -- said research firm Net Applications.
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