9 Maret, McDonald's Bagikan Sarapan Gratis

Jakarta (News Today) - McDonald's Indonesia akan kembali menyelenggarakan acara "National Breakfast Day", untuk tahun ketiga. Pada 9 Maret mendatang mulai pukul 6:30 pagi sampai 18:00 , McD akan membagikan lebih dari 150.000 Egg McMuffin di 148 restoran McDonald's di seluruh Indonesia, kecuali Bali dan Lombok.

Acara National Breakfast Day adalah program regional McDonald's yang diadakan secara serentak di negara-negara Asia, Timur Tengah, dan Afrika, dimana setiap restoran McDonald's yang berpartisipasi akan membagikan 1,\.000 Egg McMuffin gratis kepada pelanggan dengan sistem first-come, first-served alias siapa cepat dia dapat.

Tidak hanya membagikan Egg McMuffin gratis kepada konsumen, McDonald's juga akan memberikan Egg McMuffin kepada pelayan publik. Mereka di antaranya petugas di Stasiun Gambir, para polisi lalu lintas dan pengatur jalan di sekitaran Bundaran HI, para pekerja medis dan non medis di Rumah Sakit Cipto Mangunkusumo (RSCM) dan RS Budi Kemuliaan, para petugas pemadam kebakaran, para petugas di PMI, petugas di Terminal Trans Jakarta, para guru di beberapa sekolah, dan para rekan jurnalis foto di Bundaran HI.

Melalui ajang ini, McDonald's berupaya untuk bisa memperkenalkan menu sarapan McDonald's kepada masyarakat. Marketing & Communication Director McDonald's Indonesia Michael Hartono bilang, sarapan adalah bisnis yang signifikan bagi McDonald's. Dia mengklaim, selama dua tahun, acara ini selalu mendapat respon luar biasa dari pelanggan McD.

"Dilihat dari antrian tahun lalu, ini adalah program yang sesuai dengan keinginan konsumen kami. Tahun ini, untuk menambah semangat sarapan, kami juga kembali menawarkan All Day Breakfast pada hari yang sama di hampir semua restoran McDonald's di Indonesia," ujar Michael.

Source : kompas

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Chaz Bono gets legal name (and gender) change

(News Today) - A year after undergoing a sex change, Chaz Bono is now legally a man.

A Santa Monica, Calif., judge granted the political and social activist's petition for a gender and name change Thursday, according to a spokesperson for the Transgender Law Center, which represented Bono.

"Chaz couldn't be happier," said Kristina Wertz, legal director for the Transgender Law Center. "This is an important step in his transition and will allow him to change a variety of his identity documents to show who he truly is."

Born Chastity Bono to famous parents Cher and Sonny Bono, Chaz started the female-to-male sex change March 2009, shortly after his 40th birthday.

"It's hard for me to articulate how this feels -- when you've lived your whole life in a body and having everybody relate to you as something you don't feel," Bono, 41,told PEOPLE back in December. "When that finally gets righted, it's just amazing. I finally get to live my life the way I've always wanted to."

Source : CNN

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Lindsay Lohan lands racy movie role: Linda Lovelace

(News Today) - Can one troubled movie star have insight into another? Producers of an upcoming film about the 1970s porn scene hope so -- reportedly signing up Lindsay Lohan to play famed adult star Linda Lovelace.

"We've all thought that Lindsay would be a great choice for a while now, and we're all convinced that she is going to do it," said "Inferno" producer Wali Razaqi, who confirmed the casting choice to the Los Angeles Times. "For at least a year, the director [Matthew Wilder] and I have gone back and forth imagining how awesome of a performance she could give if she was in the movie."

Besides their sharing the same monograms, Razaqi sees broad thematic parallels between Lohan and Lovelace (real name: Linda Susan Boreman), who had drug problems and was famously ambivalent about her career. She died in 2002.

"Not that Lindsay's life is similar in any way -- but she's been through a lot of ups and downs," said Razaqi. "A lot of times you're loved and then you're hated, and I think she can relate to those emotions and feelings. One week she's the 'it' girl, and the next, she's the 'What are you doing?' girl."

Razaqi says an announcement about Lohan's casting will be made at the Cannes Film Festival this month.

Source : CNN

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Country stars to help rebuild Music City

Nashville, Tennessee (News Today) - As Nashville bails out from catastrophic flooding, the country music community will be leading the charge to rebuild Music City.

Radio fundraisers are taking place, and star-studded benefits are in the works after 19 people died in weekend storms in Tennessee.

Among the events is a telethon Thursday with Vince Gill for NBC affiliate WSMV-TV to benefit the Red Cross, Salvation Army and Second Harvest Food Bank.

"Nashville is a community of great spirit," country superstar Keith Urban told CNN's Rick Sanchez via Skype from the Nashville-area home he shares with his wife, Nicole Kidman, and their daughter.

"I went through this in Australia in 1974. I was very young, but we had this kind of 100-year flood in my city, and it's just unfathomable," Urban said. "It's possible that as much as I haven't lost what everybody else has, I've probably lost all of my road equipment, and all my guitars, and amp and everything."

Like many artists, Urban had been storing his gear at Soundcheck, a rehearsal facility on the edge of the swollen Cumberland River.

JoDee Messina was on the road promoting her new album when the storm hit. She returned to find a swimming pool inside her home in Franklin, a Nashville suburb that's been hard hit.

"There is as much water in [the] house as in the pool," she said via Twitter. "Thank God for our neighbors letting us borrow pump. Thx to franklin police 4 getting us home."

"Big" Kenny Alphin probably won't be hosting any dinner parties anytime soon. The tall, liberal half of the duo Big & Rich hurt his back siphoning off 4 feet of water from his dining room and wine cellar.

His partner, John Rich, is breathing a sigh of relief after a boat rescued his grandmother, "Granny Rich," from her Ashland City home.

In the meantime, Dierks Bentley is back on the road after canceling two concert dates due to impassable roads. A photo he posted on Twitter showed what he was doing during his days off -- bailing out his flooded basement with a bucket.

Flooding also has affected two Nashville cultural institutions. "The Grand Ole Opry" has been forced to move this week's shows to other venues. Its longtime home, the Grand Ole Opry House, is under 6 feet of water. The last time performances had to be relocated were in 1975 -- also due to flooding from the Cumberland River.

The Country Music Hall of Fame is closed for the next few days as well. The downtown museum sustained no damage to its collections -- which are housed above the first floor -- but water seeped into its basement-level theater up to the third row.

Even so, the Hall of Fame is ready to welcome guests at any time. "As soon as the power grid is back on, we're open for business," spokeswoman Liz Thiels said.

The Country Music Association also is proceeding with its annual CMA Music Festival on June 10-13. The three-day event brings in more than $22 million to the Nashville economy each year and supports music education in public schools.

"We cannot think of a better way to help our local economy at this time of great need than to continue the 39-year tradition of the CMA Music Festival," the organization said Tuesday.

Headliners for this year's extravaganza include Carrie Underwood, Tim McGraw, Reba McEntire and Urban -- although the latter may have his hands full in the immediate future.

According to Thiels, Urban has volunteered to come down to the Country Music Hall of Fame with a broom to help with the cleanup.

Source : CNN

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Oil slick targeted with steel, fire

(News Today) - Authorities battled the Gulf of Mexico's massive oil spill with sweat, steel and fire Wednesday as patches of oil crept to within two miles of the Louisiana bayous.

Two specially equipped "burn rigs" set fire to patches of crude oil near the ruptured undersea well at the heart of the spill, a BP executive said Wednesday afternoon. At the same time, a four-story containment vessel was loaded aboard a barge in Port Fourchon, Louisiana, en route to the well, the first step in an attempt to capture the leaking oil at an unprecedented depth. And thousands of volunteers, wildlife officials, idled fishermen and National Guard troops mobilized to string floating booms along the beaches and across the mouths of estuaries leading toward the Gulf.

Latest updates on oil spill

The outer sheen of oil was reported to be "very close" to the Chandeleur Islands and the Mississippi River delta in southeastern Louisiana, Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry told reporters. And an oyster fisherman spotted a large patch of oil sheen near the border between St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes, about 40 miles southeast of New Orleans, Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser said.

"It's disturbing, but it's two miles away from shore, so it's not devastating," Nungesser said. He said authorities have conceded that the oil spill will reach the state's barrier islands, but, "We've got to keep it out of the marsh."

Landry said the heavier concentrations of crude remained further offshore, and the latest predictions from the federal government said the weather would keep it largely stationary for the next three days.

The 72-hour forecast shows winds shifting to the south and blowing about 10 to 15 knots (12-17 mph), which is likely to produce only "a little bit of movement on the fringes," said Charlie Henry of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.

"Nothing's changing real fast this week," Henry said.

The oil stretched from Louisiana's Breton and Chandeleur sounds, on the northeast side of the Mississippi Delta, to about 60 miles off Pensacola, Florida, Wednesday afternoon.

WDSU-TV: Fishermen to help in cleanup efforts

With the undersea gusher dumping an estimated 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) of crude into the Gulf every day, BP -- which, as the well owner, is responsible for the cleanup -- plans to ship its newly fabricated containment vessel to the area and lower it atop a ruptured pipe this week.

The hope is that the four-story-high structure will collect the leaking oil, which would then be sucked up to a drill ship on the surface. If the operation is successful, BP plans to deploy a second, smaller container to deal with a second leak in the ruptured pipe, the company has said.

But getting the large structure into position could take several days, and the technique has never been attempted at the depth of these leaks, cautioned Doug Suttles, BP's chief operating officer.

"If all goes according to plan, we should begin the process of processing the fluid and stop the spilling to the sea on Monday," he said. But he added, "It's very complex, and it will likely have challenges along the way."

Watch as BP exec expresses confidence in the cleanup effort Video

In the meantime, booms, skimmers and chemical dispersants were being used to corral and break up the oil before it hits the sensitive wetlands of Louisiana or the beaches of Mississippi, Alabama and Florida further east. Suttles said controlled burns were being carried out at two locations near the heaviest concentrations of oil Wednesday afternoon, the first such attempt in a week. A previous attempt at a controlled burn destroyed about 100 barrels of oil on the surface of the water.

The efforts come amid rising concern that the oil could kill wildlife and damage livelihoods for thousands of people along in the Gulf states. Parish and state officials in Louisiana have enacted plans to keep the oil out of the marshes at the heart of the state's fishing industry and wildlife habitat.

"If it gets back into the backwaters, into the bayous, that's where we'll kill off the food chain," Nungesser told reporters. "That's where it will devastate southern Louisiana for years to come, and we will lose our heritage in the fishing industry."

Watch how the oil slick is a threat to marine life Video

The timing of the spill "couldn't be worse for the bird populations in this region," said Ken Rosenberg, a bird expert at Cornell University.

"It's peak nesting season for thousands of brown pelicans, which have just recently come off the endangered species list," he said Wednesday on CNN's "American Morning." It's also peak migration season for birds coming to the Gulf of Mexico from Central and South America, he added.

At least two oil-covered birds, one of them a brown pelican, have been found offshore, the National Wildlife Federation reported Tuesday. In addition, the conservation group reported finding a loggerhead turtle -- a threatened species -- gasping for air in the oil slick about 65 miles off the mouth of the Mississippi River.

BP, which is responsible for containing and cleaning up the spill, has also deployed thousands of gallons of chemical dispersants in an effort to break up the oil. But the dispersants are not necessarily a cure-all, Rosenberg warned.

"Dispersants are keeping the oil out in the water and down under the water," he said. "Almost certainly it's going to have major effects down in the water to the marine life and, ultimately, this is the same marine life on which the birds and animals on the surface are dependent.

"So just because we are not seeing oil washing ashore does not mean there aren't major effects happening out in the water," he said.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose Cabinet agency oversees both national parks and offshore oil exploration, visited the scene Wednesday. He told reporters that federal authorities "continue to do everything we can" to keep pressure on BP, which is responsible for the cleanup, and to protect fish and wildlife in the threatened area.

Salazar said the Obama administration remains committed to developing diverse U.S. energy sources, but "there are risks inherent in whatever we do."

"Having said that, I think an incident of this size needs to be an incident from which we learn, so that there is never another incident like this," he said.

The Obama administration supports increasing how much companies responsible for oil spills have to pay in damages, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday.

Current law requires companies to pay all costs of cleaning up the spill but limits the liability on damages -- such as economic loss -- to $75 million.

Asked by reporters about pending legislation that would increase the damages limit, Gibbs said the White House supported the idea. However, he refused to provide a specific ceiling figure.

"We would be in favor of lifting that cap," Gibbs said, noting the current limit comes from legislation dating back 20 years.

A bill being introduced in Congress proposes lifting the cap on economic damages to $10 billion, and making the change retroactive to include the current Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

Despite the current cap, Gibbs said that oil giant BP will be responsible for paying all cleanup costs and damages.

Source : CNN

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Kids' TV time linked to school woes, bad habits

(News Terupdate) - Young children who watch a lot of TV aren't just missing out on more stimulating activities. They may also be destined for problems at school and unhealthier habits later in life, new research suggests.

Each additional hour of TV that toddlers watch per week translates into poorer classroom behavior, lower math scores, less physical activity, and more snacking at age 10, according to a new study in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine.

"Kids should be doing things that are intellectually enriching: playing with board games, playing with dice, playing with things that will improve their motor skills, reading," says the lead author of the study, Linda Pagani, Ph.D., a professor in the School of Psychoeducation at the University of Montreal, in Quebec. "All that is replaced by sitting on the couch."

Pagani and her colleagues followed more than 1,300 children for over seven years. Using parent surveys, the researchers measured the amount of TV the kids watched at age two-and-a-half, and again at age four-and-a-half.

Then, when the children were in fourth grade, the researchers asked the kids' schoolteachers to rate their academic performance, how well they got along with peers, and how well they listened and followed instructions. They also asked parents about the child's diet and level of physical activity.

Health.com: 10 habits of healthy families

Each additional hour spent in front of the TV per week at age two-and-a-half corresponded to a 7 percent decrease in classroom engagement, a 6 percent decrease in overall math achievement, and a 10 percent increase in being bullied by peers. (Interestingly, TV time was not associated with reading skills.)

These findings suggest that kids who watch too much TV are "learning to be just a passive receptacle," Pagani says.

TV watching also appeared to have negative effects on physical health, with each additional weekly hour resulting in a 9 percent decline in overall physical activity, a 9 percent increase in soft-drink consumption, a 10 percent increase in snacks eaten, and a 5 percent increase in body mass index.

Health.com: 8 reasons to make time for family dinner

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children under the age of 2 watch no television at all, and after age 2 watch no more than one to two hours of quality programming a day. But nearly half of 1- to 2-year-olds and more than 40 percent of 2- to 3-year-olds are estimated to watch more than the recommended amount, the study notes.

How does TV harm kids?

Pagani's study is merely the latest to call attention to the drawbacks of childhood TV-watching. A number of studies have linked too much TV to a range of negative effects in kids, including shorter attention spans, slower language acquisition, increased aggression, and weight gain.

Experts have suggested several possible explanations for these findings. One theory is that time spent in front of the tube is time that could be spent on more enriching activities. As Dr. Jeffrey Brosco, M.D., a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, puts it, "Every hour that you're watching TV, you're not talking to someone, not playing a game, not building something with your blocks."

Health.com: Too much TV linked to earlier death

Another theory is that the act of watching television can harm developing brains. A child's brain triples in size within the first three years of life in response to external stimulation, says Dr. Dimitri Christakis, M.D., a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington and the country's foremost expert on the health effects of TV in childhood.

"Early exposure to [television] can actually be over-stimulating for the developing brain, and that can lead to shorter attention spans [and] cognitive difficulties," says Christakis, the author of "The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids."

The rapid edits and quick sequences found in many of today's TV shows may be especially harmful in this respect, Christakis adds. "The hypothesis we have is that this conditions the mind to expect high levels of input, and by comparison, reality is boring -- it doesn't happen fast enough," he says.

Yet another possibility is that the negative effects of TV that have been reported in studies are in fact a symptom of broader family and household dynamics. In the new study, for instance, the children whose mothers were less educated and children from single-parent families tended to watch more television. Although Pagani and her colleagues controlled for these and other factors in their analysis, household habits can shape studies like this in ways that can be difficult to tease out.

Health.com: Make play areas greener and safer for kids

"It's always possible that what you're measuring is not TV itself, but families that are more likely to let their kids watch TV versus families that don't want them to watch TV, or maternal education," says Brosco. "No one really understands what the effects of TV truly are, but so many studies--like this [one]--suggest TV is just plain bad for you."

Some TV shows are better than others

Watching television isn't necessarily harmful, however, and it doesn't have to be a mindless activity, says Christakis. He points out that Pagani and her colleagues did not ask about the specific programming that kids watched, which may weaken the findings.

"The results of this study probably in some ways misrepresent the reality," Christakis says. "Studies that we've done find that what kids watch--and how they watch--is as important as how much they watch."

Health.com: Is it baby fat or obesity?

Christakis believes that children should watch no more than an hour of television a day at any age. But, he says, parents should distinguish between mind-numbing cartoons and educational programs such as Sesame Street. "Parents need to know that the best-quality shows have a curriculum," he says. "They're trying to teach your child something, anything from the letter k to skills like how to share or how to handle a conflict."

According to Christakis, the best way for young children to watch TV is with a parent. This allows parents to use potentially negative content (such as violence or advertising) as a learning experience, and also provides an opportunity to engage with the children and reinforce the message of educational shows.

Source : CNN

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YouTube to let users charge rental fees

(News Terupdate) - YouTube's movie rental service is still in its infancy, and it still only offers a small selection of films, but that could change quickly. YouTube exec Hunter Walk told MediaPost that the site will soon offer its users the ability to charge rental fees for their uploaded videos.

For the past couple of years YouTube has been focusing on ways for its users to monetize their videos should they become very popular. It launched the YouTube Partnership Program last year, which allows some folks with popular videos (YouTube staff decide which ones are eligible) to share advertising revenue with Google.

However, this new self-service rental plan will be the first opportunity YouTube users have to make money off of their videos by charging viewers instead of relying on advertising. Details on the program are scarce -- for example, we're not sure if just any user can partake, or if the program is only available to industry professionals.

Admittedly, "industry professional" is a difficult term to define in the frontier of web video, which sees content from established companies competing directly with randomly viral videos from unexpected sources.

Source : CNN

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'Smart dust' aims to monitor everything

Palo Alto, California (News Terupdate) - In the 1990s, a researcher named Kris Pister dreamed up a wild future in which people would sprinkle the Earth with countless tiny sensors, no larger than grains of rice.

These "smart dust" particles, as he called them, would monitor everything, acting like electronic nerve endings for the planet. Fitted with computing power, sensing equipment, wireless radios and long battery life, the smart dust would make observations and relay mountains of real-time data about people, cities and the natural environment.

Now, a version of Pister's smart dust fantasy is starting to become reality.

"It's exciting. It's been a long time coming," said Pister, a computing professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

"I coined the phrase 14 years ago. So smart dust has taken a while, but it's finally here."

Maybe not exactly how he envisioned it. But there has been progress.

The latest news comes from the computer and printing company Hewlett-Packard, which recently announced it's working on a project it calls the "Central Nervous System for the Earth." In coming years, the company plans to deploy a trillion sensors all over the planet.

The wireless devices would check to see if ecosystems are healthy, detect earthquakes more rapidly, predict traffic patterns and monitor energy use. The idea is that accidents could be prevented and energy could be saved if people knew more about the world in real time, instead of when workers check on these issues only occasionally.

HP will take its first step toward this goal in about two years, said Pete Hartwell, a senior researcher at HP Labs in Palo Alto. The company has made plans with Royal Dutch Shell to install 1 million matchbook-size monitors to aid in oil exploration by measuring rock vibrations and movement, he said. Those sensors, which already have been developed, will cover a 6-square-mile area.

That will be the largest smart dust deployment to date, he said.

"We just think now, the technology has reached a point where it makes basic sense for us ... to get this out of the lab and into reality," Hartwell said.

Smart dust (minus the 'dust')

Despite the recent excitement, there's still much confusion in the computing industry about what exactly smart dust is.

For starters, the sensors being deployed and developed today are much larger and clunkier than flecks of dust. HP's sensors -- accelerometers like those in the iPhone and Droid phone, but about 1,000 times more powerful -- are about the size of matchbooks. When they're enclosed in a metal box for protection, they're about the size of a VHS tape.

So what makes a smart dust sensor different from a weather station or a traffic monitor?

Size is one factor. Smart dust sensors must be relatively small and portable. But technology hasn't advanced far enough to manufacture the sensors on the scale of millimeters for commercial use (although Berkeley researchers are trying to make one that's a cubic millimeter).

Wireless connections are a big distinguisher, too. A building's thermostat is most likely hard-wired. A smart dust sensor might gauge temperature, but it would be battery-powered and would communicate wirelessly with the internet and with other sensors.

The sheer number of sensors in the network is what truly makes a smart dust project different from other efforts to record data about the world, said Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Los Angeles, who works in the field.

Smart dust researchers tend to talk in the millions, billions and trillions.

Some say reality has diverged so far from the smart dust concept that it's time to dump that term in favor or something less sexy. "Wireless sensor networks" or "meshes" are terms finding greater acceptance with some researchers.

Estrin said it's important to ditch the idea that smart dust sensors would be disposable.

Sensors have to be designed for specific purposes and spread out on the land intentionally -- not scattered in the wind, as smart dust was initially pitched, she said.

'Real-world web'

Despite these differences, researchers say the smart-dust theory that monitoring everything will benefit humanity remains essentially unchanged.

And there are a number of real-world projects that, in one way or another, seek to use wireless sensors to take the Earth's vital signs.

Wireless sensors currently monitor farms, factories, data centers and bridges to promote efficiency and understanding of how these systems work, researchers said in interviews.

In all of these cases, the sensor networks are deployed for a specific purpose.

For example, a company called Streetline has installed 12,000 sensors on parking spots and highways in San Francisco. The sensors don't know everything that's going on at those parking spots. They are equipped with magnetometers to sense whether or not a huge metal object -- hopefully a car -- is sitting on the spot.

That data will soon be available to people who can use it to figure out where to park, said Tod Dykstra, Streetline's CEO.

It also tells the cities if the meters have expired.

Other sensors are equipped to measure vibration in factories and oil refineries to spot machine problems and inefficiencies before they cause trouble. Still others might pick up data about temperature, chemistry or sound. Tiny cameras or radars also can be tacked onto the data-collecting network to detect the presence of people or vehicles.

The power of these networks is that they eventually can be connected, said David Culler, a computer science professor at UC Berkeley.

Culler says the development of these wireless sensor networks is analogous to the creation of the World Wide Web. What's being created with the smart dust idea is a "Real World Web," he said.

But he said we're still early on in that progression.

"Netscape [for the wireless sensor network] hasn't quite happened," he said.

Big Brother effect

Even when deployed for science or the public, some people still get a Big Brother feeling -- the uncomfortable sense of being under constant, secret surveillance -- from the idea of putting trillions of monitors all over the world.

"It's a very, very, very huge potential privacy invasion because we're talking about very, very small sensors that can be undetectable, effectively," said Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy advocate.

"They are there in such numbers that you really can't do anything about them in terms of easy countermeasures."

That doesn't mean that researchers should stop working on smart dust. But they should be mindful of privacy as the work progresses, he said.

Pister said the wireless frequencies that smart dust sensors use to communicate -- which work kind of like Wi-Fi -- have security built into them. So the data is public only if the person or company that installed the sensor wants it to be, he said.

"Clearly, there are security concerns and privacy concerns," he said, "and the good news is that when the radio technology was being developed for this stuff, it was shortly after all of the big concerns about Wi-Fi security. ... We've got all the security tools we need underneath to make this information private."

Further privacy concerns may arise if another vision for smart dust comes true. Some researchers are looking into making mobile phones into sensors.

In this scenario, the billions of people roaming the Earth with cell phones become the "smart dust."

Bright future

Smart dust researchers say their theory of monitoring the world -- however it's realized -- will benefit people and the environment.

More information is better information, Pister said.

"Having more sensors improves the efficiency of a system and reduces the demand and reduces waste," he said. "So all of that is just straight goodness."

Hartwell, the HP researcher, says the only way people can combat huge problems like climate change and biodiversity loss is to have more information about what's going on.

"Frankly, I think we have to do it, from a sustainability and environmental standpoint," he said.

Even though the first application of HP's "Central Nervous System for the Earth" project will be commercial, Hartwell says the motives behind smart dust are altruistic.

"People ask me what my job is, and I say, well, I'm going to save the world," he said.

Source : CNN

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Pope visits Shroud of Turin

(News Terupdate) - Pope Benedict XVI visited the iconic Shroud of Turin on Sunday, kneeling and praying before Christianity's most famous relic, which went on display last month for the first time in 10 years.

Before visiting the shroud -- believed by some Christians to be Jesus Christ's burial cloth -- the Pope conducted an open-air mass before thousands who gathered in Turin's St. Charles Square.

In his homily, Benedict told congregants never to lose the hope that comes "from the Risen Christ, from the victory of God over sin and death," the Catholic News Agency quoted him as saying.

He said that keeping up that hope is the message of the Shroud of Turin, in which disciples see their sufferings "mirrored" in the suffering of Christ, CNA reported.

The shroud, a centuries-old linen cloth, went on public display at the Turin Cathedral on April 10 for the first time since undergoing a major restoration in 2002. It was last on display in 2000.

The shroud was restored to remove a patchwork repair done by 16th-century nuns after the cloth was damaged in a fire.

In addition to the Pope, 2 million people are expected to visit the shroud while on its current six-week display.

Many scholars contest the shroud's authenticity, saying it dates to the Middle Ages, when purported biblical relics -- like splinters from Jesus' cross -- surfaced across Europe.

"The shroud owner said it in 1355 ... the local bishop said it was a forgery and even the pope of that time said it was a fake," said Antonio Lombatti, a church historian.

The Catholic Church's official position regarding the shroud is that it's an important tool for faith regardless of its authenticity.

Source : CNN

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Freddy Krueger kills weekend box office

(News Terupdate) - It was a good weekend for Freddy Krueger. The 1980s horror villain is back with a vengeance, with "The Nightmare on Elm Street" remake earning a solid $32 million, landing it in first place at the box office this weekend.

Still, even with the success of "Nightmare" -- which stars Jackie Earle Haley as the disfigured madman who kills teenagers in their dreams -- this weekend's box office still couldn't trump last year's total in early May, when "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" grossed a boffo $85 million. (Of course, Hollywood will likely make up for it next weekend, when Robert Downey Jr. dons the Iron Man suit once again; the film is already hitting across the season, where its opened in 53 territories this past weekend, taking in $100.2 million)

And though "Nightmare" earned $32 million, the film fell steeply between Friday and Saturday night, and earned a C+ Cinemascore, which suggests that the film hasn't been very well received by audiences.

Second place for the weekend belonged to "How to Train Your Dragon," which, once again, held in remarkably well. The PG-rated 3-D flick grossed an estimated $10.8 million, down only 29 percent since last weekend. Its total gross now stands at $192.3 million.

The Steve Carell, Tina Fey-starrer "Date Night" fell only 27 percent, collecting an additional $7.6 million. The PG-13 comedy has now grossed $73.6 million. Not bad for two television stars, huh?

Despite a weak opening, "The Back-Up Plan" held on fairly well its second weekend in theaters. Falling 41 percent, Jennifer Lopez's romantic comedy grossed an additional $7.2 million to put the film's two-week total at $22.9 million.

Fifth place for the three-day period went to the other newcomer of the weekend, "Furry Vengeance." The PG-rated family film earned only $6.5 million but scored a B+ with audiences. The Brendan Fraser-starrer is unlikely to do much business going forward, but considering its a co-production between Summit Entertainment and Participant Pictures, its unlikely the film's disappointment will hurt either company much.

Sixth place went to "The Losers." The film -- which disappointed in its opening weekend -- fell 36 percent its second weekend in theaters, grossing an additional $6 million. The Jeffrey Dean Morgan-Zoe Saldana action flick has collected just $18 million after ten days in release.

"Clash of the Titans" took the seventh spot, earning an estimated $5.9 million, putting its total gross at $154 million.

"Kick-Ass" earned another $4.4 million in its third weekend of release, landing an eighth place finish. The R-rated film continues to fall steeply -- it dropped 52 percent, but has grossed a total of $42 million.

"Death at a Funeral" -- which took in $4 million -- and Disney's "Oceans" documentary, which raked in $2.6 million, rounded out the top ten. The R-rated Chris Rock comedy lost 50 percent of its value since last weekend, and, in three weeks of release, has grossed $34.7 million. Disney's doc dropped 57 percent, earning a cume of $13.5 million.

In limited release, the latest Nicole Holofcener drama "Please Give" grossed an impressive $128,696 in five theaters for a strong per-screen average of $25,000. IFC's disturbing horror flick "Human Centipede" only opened on one screen and earned $12,400 for the frame. Check back next weekend when we discover whether "Iron Man 2" will break box office records.

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Pope's envoy to run discredited Catholic order

Rome, Italy (News Terupdate) - Pope Benedict XVI will appoint a special envoy to run a Mexican Catholic order whose founder abused minor-age seminarians and fathered three children with two women, the Vatican said Saturday.

A Vatican statement said the pope will also appoint a commission to review the constitution of the Legion of Christ.

Critics had called for the order to be dissolved and its top leaders forced out, saying that the scandal has done irreparable damage to the religious sect.

In late March, the sect revealed the Rev. Marcial Maciel's transgression and asked for forgiveness for the "the reprehensible actions of our founder."

In its statement Saturday, the Vatican said, "the conduct of P. Marcial Maciel Degollado has caused a series of consequences on the life and structure of the Legion, such to require a way of deep revision.

"The very serious and objectively immoral behaviour of P. Maciel, confirmed by incontrovertible accounts sometimes turned into true crimes. They show a life lacking scruples and authentic religious calling. Of this side of life, a great part of the Legionaries were in the dark -- especially given the system of relationship built by P. Maciel, who very skillfully knew how to create alibis, obtain loyalty, trust and silence from those around him and strengthened his own role as charismatic founder."

The abuse allegations surfaced in 1997. The Vatican started an investigation into Maciel's actions in 2004 and concluded in May 2006 that he was guilty of sexual abuse, the order said.

Law enforcement officials apparently were not informed.

The Vatican, taking Maciel's health and age into consideration, asked him to give up public ministry, the group said.

Pope Benedict XVI approved the decision. Maciel died two years ago.

Although leaders at the Legion of Christ knew of the abuse since May 2006, they kept it quiet until March 2009.

Javier Bravo, spokesman for the sect in Mexico and Central America, said Legion leaders did not reveal the accusations sooner because "it has been a very difficult process. We weren't ready to assimilate it before."

He later told CNN, "we have to recognize the facts as they are."

In addition to sexually assaulting young seminarians, Maciel fathered at least three children, the group said.

The priest had a daughter from a stable relationship with a woman, and two men said they are his children from a relationship with another woman.

Maciel, born in March 1920, founded the Legion of Christ in January 1941.

According to the order, the Legion of Christ has a presence in 24 countries.

The first Legionaries arrived in Spain in 1946, and the order established a center in Rome in 1950. In the 1960s, the Legion established itself in Ireland and the United States. In the 1980s, the order expanded into more countries in South America and Central Europe.

The Legion says it recently began pastoral projects in Eastern Europe and Philippines.

The announcement about Maciel comes against a deepening crisis in the Catholic church, which is investigating complaints of abuse in Ireland, Germany, Britain and several other countries.

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Police may have video of possible car bomb suspect

New York (News Terupdate) - Law enforcement officials are examining video that may have captured the image of a suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing, New York's police commissioner said Sunday.

The video "shows a white male in his 40s, in Shubert Alley, looking back in the direction of West 45th Street," Commissioner Ray Kelly told a news conference, adding that the man looked around in a "furtive manner."

"He also was seen shedding a dark-colored shirt, revealing a red one underneath. He put the darker one into a bag that he was carrying," he said.

The video was captured about a half block from where police said a Nissan Pathfinder containing bomb-making materials was found Saturday evening on West 45th Street in the city's iconic Times Square area.

The police also have a videotape from a Pennsylvania tourist who believes he may have caught the suspect's image on camera, according to Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne.

iReport: Were you there? Share pics, videos

Also Sunday, Kelly said an NYPD bomb squad blew open a large gun locker found in the Pathfinder, revealing eight bags of an "unknown substance" and a pressure-cooker-type metal pot containing a "bird's nest of wires and M-88 firecrackers."

Preliminary tests later determined the substance to be "non-explosive grade fertilizer incapable of blowing up," according to Browne.

The gun locker was one of many items found in the rear of the Pathfinder after a T-shirt vendor alerted a nearby police officer to smoke coming out of the vehicle.

Officials removed from the SUV three propane tanks weighing between 15 and 17 pounds, Kelly said, comparing them to the kind typically used on backyard barbecues. One of the tanks had more M-88 firecrackers attached to the side, Kelly said, some of which detonated inside the vehicle.

Also found in the vehicle's back seat were two full five-gallon gasoline containers, Kelly said. And between those gasoline containers was a "16-ounce can filled with between 20 and 30 M-88 devices," he said, adding that two clocks on the floor of the vehicle's back seat were connected by wires to the can containing the firecrackers, and possibly to the gun locker as well.

Read more about the discovery of the car bomb

Had the car bomb detonated, Kelly said it would have caused casualties and a "significant fireball."

"I'm told the vehicle itself would have at least been cut in half," he said. "You have large numbers of pedestrians in that area, so, yeah, we were lucky that it didn't detonate."

Browne added that the materials found were "capable of producing human casualties and broken windows," but did not have enough force "to take down a structure, in the opinion of NYPD bomb experts."

Officials did not immediately know how the bomb would have been detonated, but Kelly offered a few hints into its design.

"(We believe) the timers would ignite the can of explosives and that would cause the five-gallon cans (of gasoline) to go on fire and then explode the propane tanks and have some effect on that rifle box," Kelly said.

Times Square evacuation captured on iPhone

Meanwhile, Times Square returned to its bustling self Sunday, even as questions remained about the source of the attempted car bombing.

In a purported Pakistani Taliban video that surfaced on the internet Sunday, the group took responsibility for the foiled attack, though Kelly said Sunday afternoon that "we have no evidence to support this claim."

The group, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, says in the video that the attack was revenge for their leaders killed by American forces, and for U.S. and NATO interference in that part of the world.

Another claim of responsibility e-mailed by an individual to a local New York news station is being investigated, Kelly said.

Kelly called the foiled attack "a sober reminder that New York is clearly a target of people who want to come here and do us harm."

President Obama, speaking from Venice, Louisiana, where he was monitoring a massive oil slick creeping toward the Gulf Coast, promised "to see that justice is done" in the failed car bombing.

"Since last night, my national security teams have been taking every step necessary to ensure that our state and local partners have the full support and cooperation of the federal government," he said. "We're going to do what's necessary to protect the American people, to determine who's behind this potentially deadly act and to see that justice is done."

In an advisory sent to local and national law enforcement, the Department of Homeland Security wrote, "There is no information to indicate that this was anything more than a single incident. Additionally, there is no reporting suggesting targeting of other specific locations."

Kelly said following the discovery of the Pathfinder, police officers did a search for secondary devices in the area and found none.

The investigation was focusing on examinations of the Nissan Pathfinder where the attempted homemade bomb was placed. Kelly said the vehicle is being combed for fingerprints, hair, fibers and other evidence that may help identify who was responsible, and hours of surveillance footage in the area were being monitored for possible clues.

Another angle of the investigation involved the license plates found on the vehicle.

Authorities said that the Connecticut license plate on the front of Pathfinder did not belong to that car, but to a pickup truck that was last reported at a junkyard.

Following that lead, police were spotted at an automobile used parts company, Kramer's Used Auto Parts of Stratford, Connecticut.

Kelly said that the plate found on the rear of the Pathfinder was also registered to a different vehicle, which was located in an auto repair shop in Connecticut, where its matching plate was also found.

The Pathfinder's vehicle identification number had been removed from the dashboard, but officials recovered it from another location on the car, a federal law enforcement official told CNN.

Kelly said officials have identified the registered owner of the Pathfinder, but were not yet making his name public.

A New York police official told CNN the owner lives in the Tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

The lockdown of the popular New York attraction began around 6:30 p.m. Saturday after a T-shirt vendor -- a Vietnam veteran -- saw the SUV, found it suspicious and alerted a mounted police officer.

Officer Wayne Rhatigan peered inside and noticed a box with smoke coming out and smelled gunpowder. Authorities immediately evacuated the area.

Watch police evacuate McDonald's: 'Pack your food up! Let's go!'

Rhatigan, a 19-year NYPD veteran, and vendor Lance Orton were called "heroes" by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Sunday.

"We're very lucky that people like Wayne and ... Lance Orton saw something and did something about it, and that's what we all have to do," Bloomberg said outside Blue Fin restaurant in Times Square, where he later dined with Rhatigan in a show of the safety around the area.

"There are some people around the world that find our freedoms so threatening that they're willing to kill themselves and others to prevent us from enjoying it, but we're not going to let them win," Bloomberg said.

Rhatigan said that after smelling the gunpowder he thought, "Uh oh, this is a little bit more than just a parked car and a cigarette in the ashtray."

He said that despite the potential danger, there wasn't time to be scared as he and other officers sought to set up a perimeter and evacuate passers-by.

"It's what we do, this is our job," Rhatigan, 46, said outside the restaurant.

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How we became white people

(News Terupdate) - I am white. I know that's a terribly big surprise, considering that I write a blog called Stuff White People Like, but I mean it, I'm white.

Like really white.

I'm not attempting to assert some sort of superiority through my whiteness; quite the opposite actually. Thanks to my liberal upbringing, I am imbued with the appropriate amount of guilt and shame about my ancestors and their actions in the New World.

Even in my home, I can't offer a blanket to a nonwhite friend without the fear that they will look at me and say "no smallpox on this right?" A joke, but I still want to apologize.

I'm a white male. I belong to a group that pretty much always been able to own land and to vote. I'm more or less from the kind that grabbed power somewhere after the fall of Rome and never let go. In other words, I'm the kind of white guy that has never experienced any real oppression.

Although I guess my ancestors technically left England because of some religious persecution and in spite of a rough boat ride and a rough first Thanksgiving, it's safe to say it worked out pretty well. Unless you got one of those aforementioned blankets.

But in addition to being white and having ancestors on the Mayflower, I'm also Canadian. Yes, I know that might actually make me more white than before, but it also technically makes me an immigrant to this country.

Still, I am loath to call myself an immigrant because I don't want to demean the very real, very difficult challenges faced by immigrants to this country who have had to overcome differences in language, culture and distance from their families. I would say my biggest hardship has been trying to find Ketchup Chips.

But in the eyes of the U.S. government, I am an immigrant, the same as someone from China, Mexico or India. I would not be in this country had I not met my wife in graduate school, and I am thankful every day for her and the opportunity to live in the United States.

So when the census came around, I was absolutely thrilled. I've lived in the United States for eight years (four of them as a graduate student), and in that time, I have never been able to vote or access any public services. The census meant I was going to be counted, I was going to be a part of American history. A good part, not that blanket part.

When the form arrived, I scanned the options and quickly checked "white." I would have checked "Canadian" but that option wasn't anywhere to be found. There it was, I was a white American, or technically a white American Permanent Resident. But then I started thinking about what it really means to be a white American.

As long as America has been around, I would have been considered white. I would have checked the same box in the 1790 census, had my relatives decided to stay on their land instead of moving to Canada to stay loyal to the King of England. But not everyone who checked that box on the census has always been considered white. Irish, Italian, Jewish, German and Eastern European have all been considered not white. or at the very least "not American."

All of these groups came to America amid widespread discrimination, and yet through the process of assimilation and Americanization, the status of white was slowly conferred upon them (read "The History of White People" or "How the Irish Became White" for actual, intelligent research on how this happened).

And with this new-found white status also came the status of "ethnically American." Of course, a lot of people will say that there is no such thing as an ethnic American and that everyone who becomes a citizen is an American. And this is true to the letter of the law, but if we consider the popular perception of immigration and the American dream, to say that white skin has nothing to do with it would be complete folly.

In the popular myth, immigrants arrive as huddled masses yearning to be free and most of the women wear scarves around their head. They move to the Lower East Side or some other suitably "ethnic" community, they change a last name, they learn English and within one generation they are welcomed into the country as ethnic Americans and granted that wonderful privilege of checking the white box on the census.

The reality is that America has a long history of welcoming immigrants who will never be able to check that white box on the census, and unfortunately that means America also has a long history of discrimination against those people regardless of their status in the country. Just one example would be the treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II contrasted against the treatment of German-Americans.

But all of that was in the past right? Well, ask yourself this: Who is more likely to get pulled over and forced to show his papers in Arizona today? A first generation Canadian immigrant, or a 10th generation Mexican-American?

What I hope this census will force the country to deal with is the fact that white immigrants like me will never again make up the majority of people that come to this country. America is not getting whiter, it will never get whiter. Well, unless we start handing those blankets out again.

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Sister: Despite 'throbbing' brain, Bret Michaels sounds good

(News Terupdate) - Bret Michaels "sounds like Bret" nearly a week after suffering a massive brain hemorrhage, his sister told a radio show Wednesday.

"He sounded good -- as good as you can when your brain's throbbing," Michelle Sychak said in a interview with the "Todd N Tyler Radio Empire." "He seems very coherent to me and like he knew what he was saying."

Michaels' recovery is going well enough that his concert tour could resume in a month, according to a statement on his website.

The rock singer and reality TV star, hospitalized since last Friday, is in critical condition in an intensive care unit, his road manager said.

Doctors will "explain his condition, treatment and prognosis" at a news conference next Tuesday, according to a statement posted on his official website.

His sister's call to the Omaha, Nebraska-based radio show was one of the few times a family member has spoken publicly about Michaels' illness.

"He's doing good," she said. "He's not by any means out of the woods, but he is getting better every day."

Road manager Janna Elias, who has been posting daily updates for fans on Michaels' official website, wrote Wednesday evening that his band could resume its tour in a month.

Elias said the plan is for Michaels' tour to resume May 26 in Fort Smith, Arkansas, "provided there are no further complications or setbacks."

"Even though yesterday was a minor setback, doctors remain hopeful for a full recovery and plan to release more specific information next Monday," Elias said.

Tuesday's statement from Elias disclosed that Michaels suffered a side effect from the brain hemorrhage called "hyponatremia, a lack of sodium in the body which leads to seizures." Doctors still have not pinpointed the "exact cause of the rupture" in Michaels' brain, she said.

"He is responding well to tests and treatments," Elias said.

Doctors told Michaels "is very lucky as his condition could have been fatal," she said.

"With further testing and rehabilitation, they are hopeful that Bret will gradually improve as the blood surrounding the brain dissolves and is reabsorbed into his system, which can be a very painful recovery and take several weeks to months," she said.

Michaels, 47, was hospitalized Friday after suffering the hemorrhage. Citing security reasons, his manager and publicist have not disclosed the hospital or even the city where the singer is being treated.

Michaels was the lead singer for the '80s glam-metal "hair band" Poison. He became a reality star by headlining the VH1 show "Rock of Love with Bret Michaels." He has also appeared on "Celebrity Apprentice."

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Greece seeking aid package worth $160B

(News Terupdate) - The aid package being negotiated to bail out Greece is worth 120 billion euros (about $160 billion) through 2012, according to Vassilis Papadimitriou, a spokesman for Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou.

But the International Monetary Fund and European Union are demanding further austerity measures as a price for the bailout, according to a top Greek labor union official.

Greece will be required to cut civil servants' salaries, freeze their pay increases, reduce their pension payments, change tax rates and increase the value-added tax consumers pay on purchases, according to Ilias Iliopoulos, the general secretary of the public sector union ADEDY.

The International Monetary Fund did not respond immediately to a CNN request for confirmation of the value of the package. Its head, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, said Wednesday the agency did not release information about deals in the works until they were done.

"Until we reach this point there is no precise information to give because the information doesn't exist," he said.

Greece's credit rating has been slashed twice in the past two weeks -- most recently being downgraded to "junk" -- raising fears for the euro currency used by 16 nations across Europe.

Markets worldwide tumbled when Standard & Poor's downgraded Greece earlier this week. It's the first European country to fall below investment grade.

What Greece's debt rating downgrade means

The downgrade -- which makes it harder and more expensive for a country to borrow money -- was a major problem for Athens as it struggles to crawl out from beneath the country's massive debt.

The national debt of 300 billion euros ($394 billion) is bigger than the country's economy, and some estimates predict it will reach 120 percent of gross domestic product in 2010.

Germany is expected to contribute the lion's share of EU funding to bail out Greece. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday her country will do what it can to help Greece out of its financial crisis, "but also Greece has to do its part."

She was meeting with Strauss-Kahn to hammer out specifics of the deal.

"Obviously what Greece has to do is a difficult thing, but I think they are committed to doing it," he said in an appearance with the German leader.

Merkel is being pulled in two directions -- toward bailing out Greece in order to stabilize the euro, and away from forking out cash because it is unpopular with German voters, with local elections coming up soon.

Former Greek Finance Minister George Alogoskoufis said Thursday that German taxpayers have nothing to worry about.

"German taxpayers are going to make money" when Greece repays the loans, he said on CNN's "Quest Means Business."

"Greece will never default," he added.

He said the country needed the aid package because it no longer had the options it used to have for raising funds.

"The markets have closed, we cannot rely on the markets as we have relied on the markets for so many years," he said.

Standard & Poor's slashed Spain's debt to a "AA" rating Wednesday, down from "AA+," as Merkel and Strauss-Kahn focused on Greece.

Who are the credit rating agencies?

Spain's economy is among the largest in the European Union, significantly bigger than Greece's.

Greek civil servants and private sector workers are planning a 24-hour strike May 5 to protest government austerity measures, the unions announced Wednesday. Sporadic demonstrations have already taken place in several cities, with sometimes violent clashes between police and protesters angry about the coming changes.

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Officials to discuss Census participation

(News Terupdate) - The army of U.S. Census Bureau personnel poised to fan out across the country will find out Wednesday approximately how many doors they're going to be knocking on to complete this year's nationwide survey.

Census Director Robert Groves is scheduled to announce at 1 p.m. ET how well Americans responded by mail to the once-a-decade census, and thereby how many homes need to be contacted directly by census workers in an effort than begins in May.

The U.S. Census Bureau announced that as of Tuesday night, 72 percent of U.S. households that were sent the census survey had mailed back, matching the rate achieved during the last census in 2000, and with some late-mail arrivals expected in coming days.

Midwestern states have turned in the highest participation rates, according to the bureau, with Wisconsin leading the country with an 80 percent rate. Minnesota follows with a 79 percent rate, then Iowa and Indiana with 77 percent and Nebraska at 76 percent.

The U.S. Census Bureau has chalked up vast array of numbers regarding the 2010 census and its importance: more than $400 billion in federal funds allocated based in part on the census, 134 million "housing units" contacted, 13.5 million bilingual (English/Spanish) questionnaires delivered in selected neighborhoods, and so on.

But there is one that cuts to the bottom line of census business:

It costs the government 42 cents for each response that comes back via mailed census form, while it costs the government an estimated $57 per household to obtain responses in person.

The latter figure can vary, according to the number of times census workers have to come knocking to get a response, the bureau says.

Taken on a grander scale, taxpayers would save $1.5 billion if everyone completed and mailed back the census questionnaire instead of requiring the hiring, training and dispatching of that army of census workers, the bureau says.

One bright economic light in all the census statistics, especially in these economically stressful times: the bureau is hiring an estimated 870,000 temporary workers as part of the 1.2 million field positions needed to conduct census operations this year.

That's more than the population of Alaska, North Dakota, Vermont or Wyoming.

Job information is available at the census Web site.

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Coast Guard considers burning Gulf oil slick to save coastline

(News Terupdate) - The U.S. Coast Guard could begin burning off portions of a Gulf of Mexico oil slick as early as Wednesday, as the pool of crude began to encroach on sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta.

The option is one of several that Coast Guard officials were considering as the oil slick moved to within 20 miles of the Louisiana coastline.

Officials say the oil spill has the potential to become one of the worst in U.S. history.

Oil is still leaking at a rate of about 42,000 gallons a day from the well, located some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana. A drilling rig, the Deepwater Horizon, exploded and sank at the site last week.

BP, the well's owner, has been trying to shut off the well using eight remote-controlled submarines, but has had no luck up to this point.

"If we don't secure the well, this could be one of the most serious oil spills in U.S. history," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, head of a joint response task force, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.

The Coast Guard stressed it would never set the entire spill on fire at once. It would instead use a 500-foot-long, flame-retardant boom to gather some of the oil and then burn only the crude inside its perimeter, according to spokeswoman Lt. Sue Kerver.

Twenty miles is the closest the slick has come to land so far.

Officials said oil slicks are sometimes set on fire, especially when they are near sensitive marsh areas where heavy equipment used to clean the spill may cause more harm than good.

The spill, measured from end to end, stretched as wide as 42 miles by 80 miles, although oil isn't necessarily covering that entire area.

Most of the slick is a thin sheen on the water's surface, ranging in thickness from a couple of molecules to the equivalent of a layer of paint. About 3 percent of it is a heavy, pudding-like crude oil.

At its current flow rate, it would take over 260 days to rival the Exxon Valdez disaster, which discharged some 11 million gallons into Alaska's Price William Sound. Still, even if it never compares in size to the Exxon Valdez spill, if it makes landfall it could have serious ecological repercussions.

The Coast Guard, BP and the rig's owner Transocean have deployed nearly 50 vessels to help contain and clean the slick.

Marine life has been spotted in the area. Over the weekend, a plane from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sighted five small whales nearby.

Efforts are also underway near the shoreline to deal with the spill should it reach land, including positioning boom material around sensitive ecological areas.

Five staging areas have been set up on land, stretching from Venice, Louisiana, to Pensacola, Florida.

Landry said it appears the slick should remain at sea for at least the next three days, although weather reports for the latter part of that period suggest the wind could shift and blow the slick toward land.

The oil, if it stays at sea, will eventually evaporate, break down and sink, or get cleaned up, but analysts have said the spill could have political fallout, especially if it reaches shore.

Several lawmakers and interest groups have led a charge over the last several years to open up more parts of the U.S. coast for oil drilling, efforts that are generally supported by the public.

That support could erode if crude oil starts washing up on the Louisiana or Mississippi coasts.

The well is expected to continue leaking until it is sealed. The leak appears to be coming from a pipe that ran from the well head to the drilling rig, which is now laying upside down in 5,000 feet of water.

It has not been decided if the rig will be salvaged or remain where it is, a Transocean official said Monday.

To seal the leak, three approaches are being tried.

BP is now using a set of remote controlled submarines in an attempt to activate the well's "blow out preventer" -- a steel device the size of a small house that sits atop the well and is intended to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a disaster. It's not clear why that device didn't not originally act to cap the well, or if it will be of any use in the future.

BP is also bringing in another drilling rig which could seal the well, but that effort would take months, according to a BP spokesman.

In the meantime, the company is also trying a novel approach to capture the oil -- using a dome right above the well head. The dome resembles an inverted funnel, with a pipe leading up to ships waiting at the surface to capture the oil. That tactic has never been tried in deep water before.

A BP spokesman said the dome should be ready in two to four weeks.

Eleven workers are still missing after last week's explosion. The search for them was suspended last Friday.

Another 115 other people were rescued from the rig after it exploded. One person injured in the blast remains hospitalized. The cause of the blast remains under investigation.

Source : CNN

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China lifts ban barring entry to foreigners with HIV and AIDS

(News Terupdate) - The Chinese government has lifted a 20-year-old rule that banned foreigners with HIV and AIDs, sexually transmitted diseases and leprosy from entering the country, according to the country's state news agency.

State-run news agency Xinhua reported Tuesday that China's State Council decided to repeal the ban after realizing it did little to prevent the spread of disease and caused problems when the country was hosting international events.

The revision came days before the opening of the six-month Shanghai World Expo, which organizers expect will draw 70 million people. The government had previously lifted the ban temporarily for other large-scale events, including the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

Xinhua said the health ministry estimates the number of people living with HIV in China had reached 740,000 by October 2009, with deaths caused by AIDS totaling 49,845 since the first case was reported in 1985.

China's decision comes several months after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention removed HIV infection from the list of diseases that prevent non-U.S. citizens from entering the country.

Until January, the U.S. was one of seven countries with laws barring entry of people with HIV, according to amfAR, an AIDS research organization.

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Tests suggest setback for Bret Michaels

(News Terupdate) - Medical tests show Bret Michaels has suffered a setback in his recovery from a brain hemorrhage, according to a statement posted on his official website Tuesday.

Despite the development, "doctors remain hopeful for a full recovery," the statement said.

The rock singer and reality TV star suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and was hospitalized Friday.

"Doctors state Michaels is very lucky as his condition could have been fatal," it said.

"Test results indicate a setback in Bret Michaels' condition, a side effect from the brain hemorrhage called hyponatremia, a lack of sodium in the body which leads to seizures," said the statement posted by road manager Janna Elias.

Michaels "is responding well to tests and treatments," she said.

"Even though today was a minor setback Doctors remain hopeful for a full recovery and plan to release more specific information next Monday."

Michaels, 47, was the lead singer for the '80s glam-metal "hair band" Poison. He became a reality star on the VH1 show "Rock of Love with Bret Michaels." He has also appeared on "Celebrity Apprentice."

His manager and publicist have been careful not to disclose the hospital or even the city where the singer is being treated. They cite security reasons for the secrecy.

Tuesday's statement offers the greatest detail so far about Michaels' condition and treatment.

"Michaels' medical workup demonstrated findings of a subarachnoid hemorrhage, a type of stroke that causes bleeding in the fluid-filled spaces around the base of the brain," the statement said. "It presents itself suddenly as the sound of a loud gunshot or thunderclap at the back of the head causing severe cranial pain and muscle spasms."

Michaels, who is in critical condition in an intensive care unit, has undergone a continuous series of tests "including angiograms, CT scans, MRIs and transcranial dopplers (TCDs)," the statement said. "With further testing and rehabilitation, they are hopeful that Bret will gradually improve as the blood surrounding the brain dissolves and is reabsorbed into his system, which can be a very painful recovery and take several weeks to months," it said.

The latest statement also addressed possible causes of Michaels' brain hemorrhage.

"Many people are speculating Michaels' head injury suffered from a prop striking the singer at the Tony awards last June is the cause," it said. "Additional studies are planned throughout the week to hopefully detect the exact cause of the rupture."

Michaels, who is a lifelong Type 1 diabetic, had an emergency appendectomy just 11 days before falling ill last week.

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Priest at his child abuse trial in Rome: 'I am not a monster'

Rome, Italy (News Terupdate) - A priest accused of child abuse denied the charges Tuesday in a high-profile trial taking place in the shadow of the Vatican.

"I am not a monster. I am innocent," the Rev. Ruggero Conti said in court.

Conti is accused of molesting seven young boys at the Nativita di Santa Maria Santissima parish in Rome. He faces charges of committing sexual violence and prostitution.

Two alleged victims told police that Conti masturbated them and forced them to perform oral sex on him in his home, where he often invited them to dinner and to watch movies, according to court documents.

Anti-abuse activists say Conti's superiors knew of allegations against him as early as 2006 but did not do enough to stop him.

Prosecutors say they will call Conti's bishop, Monsignor Gino Reali, to testify. Reali was interrogated by police as part of their investigation into Conti, the activists say.

Putting a bishop on the stand in Rome, the capital of deeply Catholic Italy, would be potentially explosive, particularly against the background of a European-wide scandal.

The Catholic Church has been rocked this year by allegations of child abuse by Catholic clergy in Ireland, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, following similar accusations in the United States in the past decade. A damning Irish government-backed report last year said the Dublin Archdiocese had systematically covered up the allegations.

Pope Benedict XVI met this month with a group of men in Malta who say they were abused. He prayed and cried with them.

He has repeatedly insisted the church will do everything in its power to prevent child abuse.

But the trial taking place on his doorstep may undercut such assurances, not least since the alleged abuse of boys took place well after the scandal came to light in the United States.

Conti, a former adviser to the mayor of Rome, was arrested in June 2008, more than a year after an anti-pedophilia organization says it brought accusations against him to Catholic Church officials.

Roberto Mirabile, the president of the organization, said his group was warned about Conti by another priest in the spring of 2007. The group, La Caramella Buona, met with the alleged victims and their families, Mirabile told reporters on Friday.

Mirabile himself went to top Vatican officials, including the man responsible for prosecuting alleged child abusers within the Catholic Church, Monsignor Charles Scicluna, he said.

Scicluna told the child-protection activist there was no Vatican record of complaints about Conti and advised him to go to the police with his concerns, Mirabile said.

Mirabile accused Scicluna of washing his hands of the matter.

Scicluna did not respond to CNN attempts to contact him about the case.

Caramella Buona officials did go to the police, who launched an investigation in November 2007.

Conti was arrested as he prepared to go to World Youth Day in Australia in June 2008. Police believe he continued abusing children until March 2008, Mirabile said.

Conti's superior, Bishop Reali, told police in December 2008 he knew of vague accusations against the priest two years before he was arrested but did not take action, according to court documents.

Nino Marazzita, a lawyer for La Caramella Buona, provided CNN with what he said were transcripts of the prosecutor's interrogation of the bishop.

"You know that there are so many 'rumors,' " Reali told investigators, according to the lawyer. "And I can't run after each one of them."

Conti accused La Caramella Buona of being ideologically opposed to him in his testimony Tuesday. The group denies it.

Reali did not respond to CNN attempts to contact him by phone and e-mail.

Source : CNN

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