Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science at the American Institute of Physics, has shared a unique video of a blast during America’s testing of nukes in the Yucca Mountain area of Nevada during the 1950s.
The historian was sent the video below from a Russian colleague, and has now shared it on his blog.
Alex Wellerstein wrote: “Most films of nuclear explosions are dubbed. If they do contain an actual audio recording of the test blast itself (something I’m often suspicious of – I suspect many were filmed silently and have a stock blast sound effect), it’s almost always shifted in time so that the explosion and the sound of the blast wave are simultaneous.
“This is, of course, quite false: the speed of light is much faster than the speed of sound, and the cameras are kept a very healthy distance from the test itself, so in reality the blast wave comes half a minute or so after the explosion. Basic physics that even a non-technical guy like me can understand.
“It’s rare to find footage where the sound has not been monkeyed with in post-processing. So I was pleased when a Russian correspondent sent me a link to footage digitized by the National Archives of a 1953 nuclear test. The footage is very raw: it hasn’t been edited much, and is a bit washed out, but the audio is still in <<correct>>, original sync.”
Atom blast at Yucca Flat, Nevada, March 17, 1953
Civilians were allowed to watch this blast from 11 miles away, partly an attempt by the government to allay public fears about the dangers of nuclear fallout.
Alex Wellerstein adds: “The audio is what makes this great. Put on some headphones and listen to it all the way through – it’s much more intimate than any other test film I’ve seen. Troops were also on hand, and they can be heard shouting <<Whoa>> and <<Jeez!>> at the end of the video.
“You get a much better sense of what these things must have been like, on the ground, as an observer, than from your standard montage of blasts.
“Murmurs in anticipation; the slow countdown over a megaphone; the reaction at the flash of the bomb; and finally – a sharp bang, followed by a long, thundering growl. That’s the sound of the bomb.
“There were U.S. troops there as well, as part of Operation Desert Rock V. They provide a huge amount of ambient noise.”
A new report by UK’s Pets at Home on the beneficial effects of pet ownership suggests that owning a pet may in fact help children with their homework.
The survey of 1,000 pet-owning children, aged between 5-16 years old, revealed that the vast majority (79%) believe their pet friends have a positive effect on their homework and schoolwork in general.
Children with rats or mice are the most likely to believe their pet could be helping them with their homework (92%), against 86% and 80% for children owning dogs and cats respectively.
Owning a pet may in fact help children with their homework
Wildlife TV presenter and animal lover Michaela Strachan endorses the findings: “I have a seven-year-old and three older step children. We have a Jack Russell and my stepdaughter has two rescue dogs.
“Toto, our dog, is part of our family and has brought huge benefits to Ollie, my son. Jade’s two rescue dogs, Marley and Timmy, have had a really positive impact.
“Owning a pet can bring so much pleasure to a family. It can increase a child’s sense of responsibility, nurture a more caring attitude and develop self-confidence and, in the case of having a dog, it encourages kids to get outside more. There can be so many benefits.”
Nearly half of children believe owning and looking after a pet makes them happier, a third claim to be calmer, while a fifth feel more intelligent.
East Anglia (57%) and Scotland (54%) are where most children feel happier as a result of owning and caring for a pet.
Figures also showed that chinchillas and degus have the biggest influence on a child’s cleverness, with 55% of children owning such pets feeling more intelligent.
Commissioned by Pets at Home as part of their Kids’ Holiday Pet Club, a series of free pet workshops for children taking place at all stores throughout the summer holidays, the study identified other significant improvements children noticed through pet ownership.
More than a third (36%) say they have become more caring, 34% feel a greater sense of responsibility, while one in five have become better at talking to people.
Reptile owners, with 68%, top the charts for those believing their pet had given them a greater sense of responsibility.
Rabbit owners come second with 61%; 40% for cat owners and 36% for dog owners.
Scott Jefferson, marketing director for Pets at Home, concluded: “Owning a pet also has a positive impact on a child’s level of fitness. More than 30% of children who took part in our survey said they had become more active as a result of owning a pet.”
A simple walking test could show if Alzheimer’s patients have the disease, say researchers after they found a link between the two.
In one test patients with a shorter stride and lower cadence and velocity in their walk also experienced memory problems and issues with cognition.
Another test found a person’s gait became “slower and more variable as cognition decline progressed”.
The findings are the first time that a physical symptom has been linked to the disease.
Previous research looked into cognition by carrying out neurological exams which tended to be costly and take a long time.
A simple walking test could show if Alzheimer’s patients have the disease
In future patients could simply be asked to walk and be observed over a number of months to see if they are at risk.
Crucially, the scientists said that walking changes can occur even before cognition decline surfaces.
Both pieces of research were presented at Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Vancouver, Canada.
The first from the US-based Mayo Clinic involved monitoring how 1,341 participants walked through a gait sensor in two or more visits spaced 15 months apart.
The researchers found that walking changes occur because the disease interferes with the circuitry between areas of brain.
Lead researcher Rodolfo Savica said: “Walking and movements require a perfect and simultaneous integration of multiple areas of the brain.
“These changes support a possible role of gait changes as an early predictor of cognitive impairment.”
The second piece of research was carried out by Basel Mobility Center in Basel, Switzerland, and was on 1,153 adults with a mean age of 78.
The team found that people with Alzheimer’s walked more slowly than those with mild cognitive impairment.
They said that an annual test might help detect the disease early and that often relatives of Alzheimer’s patients comment on how badly a person is walking.
Bill Thies, chief medical and scientific officer for the US-based Alzheimer’s Association, said: “Monitoring deterioration and other changes in a person’s gait is ideal because it doesn’t require any expensive technology or take a lot of time to assess.”
Recent research into Alzheimer’s found that signs of dementia may appear 25 years before patients or their family sees any outward symptoms.
Scientists from Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis believe the brains and spines of those with the disease change in their 30s and 40s, several decades before memory loss and confusion sets in.
Scientists say that having regular lie-ins in old age can bring on dementia.
Getting too much or too little sleep increases your mental age by two years, researchers showed.
There is what scientists call the “goldilocks zone”, seven hours, which is neither too much nor too little.
A series of studies presented at an Alzheimer’s conference in Vancouver shows when it comes to mental decline sleep can play an important part.
It adds to evidence that poor sleep quality and quantity in the elderly increases the risk of a range of illnesses – including heart disease and diabetes.
Dr. William Thies, of the Alzheimer’s Association in the US who organized the annual meeting, said: “We know sleep patterns change as people age and that poor sleep affects overall health.
“What we don’t know for certain is whether poor sleep has long-term consequences on cognitive function.”
He said the latest research suggests cognitive health declines over the long term in some people with sleep problems.
Getting too much or too little sleep increases your mental age by two years
Dr. William Thies said: “The good news is tools already exist to monitor sleep duration and quality and to intervene to help return sleep patterns to normal.
“If we do this, there is the possibility that we may also help people preserve their cognitive health, but that needs to be tested.”
Previous studies have suggested sleep duration shorter or longer than the recommended seven hours per day may increase the risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.
But little research has been carried out on its affect on cognition among older individuals.
So Dr. Elizabeth Devore, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, and colleagues followed up over 15,000 retired nurses aged 70 or older every other year for six years.
Those who slept five hours or less or nine hours or more per day had lower average cognition than those who slept seven hours.
Too little or too much sleep was cognitively equivalent to ageing by two years.
The women were recruited for the long-term study in their early 40s and those whose sleep changed by two hours per day or more in later life had worse cognitive function than those with no change, independent of their initial duration.
In a small sample of women who gave blood samples declining ratios of proteins that suggest Alzheimer’s disease brain changes were present in those who slept less or more than seven hours.
Dr. Elizabeth Devore said: “Our findings support the notion that extreme sleep durations and changes in sleep duration over time may contribute to cognitive decline and early Alzheimer’s changes in older adults.
“The public health implications of these findings could be substantial, as they might lead to the eventual identification of sleep- and circadian- based strategies for reducing risk of cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s.”
As people age, they are more likely to develop problems with sleeping, such as insomnia, sleep apnea and disruptions in circadian rhythm that follow a 24-hour cycle.
Another five year study of 1,300 older women by California University researchers showed participants with sleep apnoea had more than twice the odds of developing dementia compared with those who did not have sleep-disordered breathing.
Women who developed a disruption of their body clock were also at increased risk of dementia and those with greater nighttime wakefulness were more likely to score worse on tests of global cognition and verbal skills.
Dr. Kristine Yaffe said: “We believe these results indicate the relationship between sleep disordered breathing and dementia may be connected to the decrease in oxygen associated with sleep apnoea and not to disrupted patterns of sleep.
“Overall, our findings support a relationship between sleep disturbances and cognitive decline in late age.
“They suggest health practitioners should consider assessing older people with sleep disorders for changes in cognition.”
She said with additional long-term research treatment of sleep disorders may be a promising method of delaying the development of dementia.
A third study of nearly 5,000 over 65 year-olds showed excessive daytime sleepiness – reported by 17.9% of participants – independently increased the risk of cognitive decline along with difficulty maintaining sleep – reported by 63.5%.
Dr. Claudine Berr, of the National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Montpellier, France, said: “These results suggest excessive daytime sleepiness may be an early predictor of cognitive decline and sleep complaints should be adequately evaluated in older persons.”
Israeli scientists have found a novel way to get images through “scattering” materials such as frosted glass or skin, and even to “see around corners”.
Much research in recent years has focused on correcting for scattering, mostly for medical applications.
But the new trick, reported in Nature Photonics, is quick, simple and uses natural light rather than lasers.
It uses what is called a spatial light modulator to “undo” the scattering that makes objects opaque or non-reflecting.
A camera that can “see around corners” garnered much attention in 2010, using a series of timed laser pulses to illuminate a scene and working out what is around a corner from the timing of the reflections.
The prototype device was just one of a great many research efforts trying to crack the problem of scattering.
But for some applications, the “time-of-flight” approach that the laser-based camera uses is not sufficient.
Israeli scientists have found a novel way to get images through "scattering" materials such as frosted glass or skin
“If you want to look to see an embryo developing inside an egg but the eggshell scatters everything, or you want to look through the skin, scattering is the main enemy there, and time-of-flight is not a good solution,” explained senior author of the study Prof. Yaron Silberberg.
For those kinds of problems, Prof. Yaron Silberberg and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have pushed the limits of what spatial light modulators (SLMs) can do.
SLMs modify what is known as the phase of an incoming light beam. Like a series of waves on the ocean that run over rocks or surfers, the waves in light can be slowed down or redirected when they hit scattering materials.
SLMs are made up of an array of pixels that can correct for this by selectively slowing down some parts of the beam and allowing others to pass untouched – when an electric field is applied to a pixel, it changes the speed at which light passes through it.
Prof. Yaron Silberberg and his team first set up their SLM by shining light from a normal lamp through a highly scattering plastic film and allowing a computer to finely tune the SLM until they could see a clear image of the lamp through the film.
Keeping the SLM set this way, they were then able to obtain clear images of other objects through the film – the SLM effectively turns the film back into a clear sheet.
“What we have shown is that you don’t need lasers – everybody else was doing this with lasers, and we showed you can do it with incoherent light from a lamp or the Sun – natural light,” Prof. Yaron Silberberg.
But the team then realized that the same approach can work in reflection – that is, not passing through a scattering material but bouncing off of it, such as the case of light bouncing off a wall at a corner.
They then showed the procedure works just as well when the light from an object bounces off a piece of paper; the SLM could “learn” how to undo the paper’s scattering effect, making it a nearly perfect reflector.
As Prof. Yaron Silberberg puts it: “You can take a piece of wall and effectively turn it into a mirror, and this is the part that makes everybody raise an eyebrow.”
However, he said that the primary use for the technique will be in biological and medical studies – especially tackling the highly scattering white brain matter in neurological imaging – rather than the business of seeing through thin materials or around corners.
“I don’t want to say that it solves the problems of secret organizations and Peeping Toms and so on, that’s not going to be so simple. But the principle is there.
“We have not started to tackle these things… but I see how much interest this raises and think maybe we should.”
Uma Thurman and financier boyfriend Arpad Busson welcomed a baby girl yesterday, according to America’s Us Weekly.
No other details were immediately available.
Uma Thurman, 42, has two other children – Maya, 13, and Levon, 10 – with her ex-husband Ethan Hawke.
Arpad Busson has two sons from his relationship with model Elle Macpherson – Arpad Flynn Alexander, 14, and Aurelius Cy Andrea, 9.
Uma Thurman has given birth to her third child
Uma Thurman and Arpad Busson, 49, began dating in 2007 and endured a brief split in 2009.
Sources say the pair were had not planned to start a family together, but are thrilled at the news.
“Uma was definitely not planning on having another kid. It was a surprise,” a source told Us Weekly in February.
“But she’s over the moon about it, very excited.”
Uma Thurman has made it clear that she’s very much in love with Arpad.
She said last year: “I have something I would really like to express about my love life. I’m happier with it now than I’ve been in many, many years. Yes I’m trying to have as peaceful a personal life as possible.”
The couple celebrated their impending new arrival with a pink elephant-themed baby shower in New York in May.
Public prosecutor in Egypt has ordered that former President Hosni Mubarak be returned to prison, saying that his health has improved, state media say.
Hosni Mubarak, 84, was moved from prison to a hospital last month after reports of a deterioration in his health.
He was said at the time to have had a series of strokes and to be on a life support machine. Reports that he was “clinically dead” were later denied.
In June, he was jailed for life for his role in the deaths of protesters.
Hosni Mubarak was moved from prison to a hospital last month after reports of a deterioration in his health
Prosecutor Abdel Maguid Mahmoud issued “an order to transfer former President Hosni Mubarak from the Maadi Armed Forces Hospital to Tora prison hospital after an improvement in his health,” his office was quoted as saying.
Abdel Maguid Mahmoud’s deputy, Adel al-Saeed, said that a panel of doctors had earlier established that the former president’s “health is currently stable with medication, and it is considered good for someone of his age,” according to the AFP news agency.
It was not immediately known when Hosni Mubarak would be transferred to prison.
However, any report about Hosni Mubarak’s health has to be treated with a large degree of skepticism.
Whatever the truth of the matter, Egyptians will be fairly certain this is not the last they are going to hear of this ongoing saga.
Georgie, the first smartphone designed for blind people, has been recently launched in UK.
Georgie, as the device is known, has a voice-assisted touchscreen and offers a variety of apps to help complete tasks such as catching a bus, reading printed text and pinpointing location.
The phone was designed by blind husband-and-wife team Roger and Margaret Wilson-Hinds from Peterborough.
It was named after Margaret Wilson-Hinds’ first guide dog.
The couple run a not-for-profit social enterprise Screenreader.
The handset is powered by an Android operating system and uses existing Samsung handsets such as the Samsung XCover and Galaxy Ace 2.
Georgie has a voice-assisted touchscreen and offers a variety of apps to help complete tasks such as catching a bus, reading printed text and pinpointing location
“I was able to send my very first text just earlier this year thanks to Georgie,” said Roger Wilson-Hinds.
“It’s exactly the type of digital experience we want to make easily available to people with little or no sight. It is also going to help solve everyday problems for blind people so they can be more confident about navigating the real world and become independent,” he said.
Robin Spinks, principal manager for digital accessibility at the Royal National Institute of Blind People, said: “Research continues to show that many blind and partially-sighted people struggle with the complexity of today’s smartphone technology.”
“Georgie is to be commended for allowing users to access the features of a range of modern smartphones in an easy-to-use and accessible manner,” he added.
The smartphone lets users dial a number with the voice-assisted touchscreen and uses speech input to send text messages.
Other apps are available in three different bundles; travel, lifestyle and communicate. Each bundle costs £24.99 ($40).
The phone is being distributed by Sight and Sound Technology, a firm which provides hardware and software to blind and visually- impaired people.
It is available from £299 ($475) or, for those with existing Android smartphones, a downloadable version can be purchased from Google Play, priced at £149 ($235).
It comes pre-loaded with a data SIM card. Users with pre-existing phone contracts can have it transferred to the new device or install a pay-as-you-go SIM card.
In the UK almost two million people are living with sight loss, with 360,000 registered as blind.
Microsoft is abandoning the joint venture that owned MSNBC.com after 16 years, freeing the world’s largest software maker to build its own online news service.
One of the factors behind the split was apparently Microsoft’s fears that the website was being seen as too left-wing, and the software giant’s desire to present “multiple perspectives” in its news coverage.
The breakup announced late on Sunday dissolves the final shreds of a 16-year marriage between Microsoft Corp. and NBC News, which is now owned by Comcast Corp. The relationship began to unwind in 2005 when Microsoft sold its stake in MSNBC’s cable TV channel to NBC.
NBC is buying Microsoft’s 50% interest in the MSNBC website for an undisclosed amount. MSNBC.com will be rebranded as NBCNews.com, and readers who logged into MSNBC.com late on Sunday were automatically redirected to NBCNews.com.
The website will move its headquarters from Microsoft’s corporate campus in Redmond, Washington, to NBC News’ longtime home in New York.
Microsoft is abandoning the joint venture that owned MSNBC.com after 16 years
The online divorce stemmed from the two partners’ desire to gain greater control over their digital destinies as the Internet becomes an increasingly important part of their businesses.
The inherent constraints of being locked into a joint venture sometimes handcuffed Microsoft and NBC.
Microsoft, in particular, had grown frustrated by contract terms requiring it to exclusively feature MSNBC.com content on its own websites. That exasperation was exacerbated by the MSNBC cable channel’s strategy to counter Fox News Channel’s appeal to conservative viewers by tailoring its programming for an audience with a liberal viewpoint.
The strategy fed a perception that material from MSNBC’s website was also politically slanted.
“Being limited to MSNBC.com content was problematic to us because we couldn’t have the multiple news sources and the multiple perspectives that our users were telling us that they wanted,” said Bob Visse, general manager of MSN.com.
Now that it has shed those shackles, Microsoft is preparing to launch its own news service this fall. Although he declined to provide many details about the operation, Visse said the news staff will be about the same size as the roughly 100 people who created original content for the MSNBC.com.
By hiring its own news staff to feed material to its websites, Microsoft is embracing the same strategy as the owners of two other major Internet companies, Yahoo Inc. and AOL Inc.
Microsoft has leaned on its lucrative franchise selling personal computer software to pay for massive Internet investments that have rarely paid off, much to the frustration of its shareholders. The software maker initially invested $220 million in the MSNBC joint venture. It’s unclear if Microsoft ended up making any money on the alliance. As a whole, the company’s online operations, which include the Bing search engine and MSN portal, have lost more than $10 billion in the past seven years.
Even as it sets out to compete against NBC News, Microsoft will continue to highlight the top stories from its former partner for the next two years under terms of the split.
NBC News, in turn, believes it will be able to attract more traffic to its stable of websites by forging other partnerships that were off limits when it was tied to Microsoft.
“There is no question that we are going to have more flexibility to make our own decisions,” said Vivian Schiller, NBC News’ chief digital officer.
“This is really an amicable breakup. We think competition will make us better.”
MSNBC.com and its affiliated sites ranked as the Internet’s fourth most popular site for general news in the U.S., with nearly 50 million visitors in June, up 5% from last year, according to the research firm comScore Inc.
Yahoo’s recently formed alliance with ABC News topped the charts with 81 million visitors, followed by AOL/Huffington Post, and CNN.
As part of its online restructuring, NBC News plans to create a new online destination for the MSNBC cable channel’s personalities next year.
Although it will be based in New York, NBCNews.com will retain a significant staff in the Seattle area, according to Schiller. About 170 of MSNBC.com’s 300 employees worked in the Seattle area.
Microsoft is letting NBCNews.com remain in its Redmond office while it looks for a new location in the area.
Children who watch TV an increased number of hours between the ages of two and four years old risk larger waistlines by age 10.
A Canadian study found that every extra weekly hour watched could add half a millimetre to their waist circumference and reduce muscle fitness.
The study, in a BioMed Central journal, tracked the TV habits of 1,314 children.
Experts say children should not watch more than two hours of TV a day.
Researchers found that the average amount of television watched by the children at the start of the study was 8.8 hours a week.
This increased on average by six hours over the next two years to reach 14.8 hours a week by the age of four-and-a-half.
Every extra weekly hour spent by children in front of a TV could add 0.5 mm to their waist circumference and reduce muscle fitness
Fifteen per cent of the children in the study were watching more than 18 hours per week by that age, according to their parents.
The study said the effect of 18 hours of television at 4.5 years of age would by the age of 10 result in an extra 7.6 mm of waist because of the child’s TV habit.
As well as measuring waist circumference, the researchers also carried out a standing long jump test to measure each child’s muscular fitness and athletic ability.
An extra weekly hour of TV can decrease the distance a child is able to jump from standing by 0.36 cm, the study said.
The researchers said that further research was needed to work out whether television watching is directly responsible for the health issues they observed.
Dr. Linda Pagani, study co-author from the University of Montreal, said it was a warning about the factors which could lead to childhood obesity.
“The bottom line is that watching too much television – beyond the recommended amounts – is not good,” Dr. Linda Pagani said.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that children aged over two should not watch more than two hours of television per day.
Dr. Linda Pagani added: “Across the occidental world, there have been dramatic increases in unhealthy weight for both children and adults in recent decades.
“Our standard of living has also changed in favor of more easily prepared, calorie-dense foods and sedentary practices.
“Watching more television not only displaces other forms of educational and active leisurely pursuits but also places them at risk of learning inaccurate information about proper eating.”
The study said that habits and behaviors became entrenched during childhood and these habits might affect attitudes to sporting activities in adulthood.
Thousands of Olympic athletes and officials are to begin arriving in London, as questions remain about recruitment of security staff.
Preparations for London 2012 are intensifying with the opening ceremony just 11 days away.
The first priority “Games Lane” has begun operation on the M4 and the Olympic drug testing lab starts work.
Meanwhile, the chairman of G4S has refused to express support for his chief executive over the guards fiasco.
Heathrow Airport is standing by to process as many as 120,000 passengers on Monday, about 10,000 more than would be normal for this time of year.
Preparations for London 2012 are intensifying with the opening ceremony just 11 days away
Immigration Minister Damian Green has said that the UK Border Force would be in full “Olympic mode” as of Sunday and he promised all immigration desks at Heathrow would be manned at peak times.
Volunteers will be directing athletes to the coaches and trains that will take many of them to the Olympic Village in Stratford, east London.
The village will house 16,000 athletes and officials at its peak.
Those that travel by road will benefit from the first of the Games Lanes which at busy times will operate between Junction 3 and Junction 2 of the M4 motorway towards London.
The motorway has just reopened following emergency repairs on a damaged flyover near Junction 2.
The rest of the 30 miles of dedicated lanes in the Olympic Route Network (ORN) will be operational by the middle of next week, with heavy fines for those who misuse them.
All road users will be able to go into the lanes when they are not in use overnight.
Sports Minister Hugh Robertson said the authorities had plans to lift the restrictions if they were causing gridlock.
Kevin Delaney, from the Institute of Advanced Motorists, said the lanes could exacerbate traffic problems in the capital.
“If anything goes wrong with the central and inner London transport network, we tend to get a wholly disproportionate amount of congestion – and so the Games lanes themselves will actually impose serious constraints on this already stretched network,” he said.
The biggest anti-doping operation in the history of the Olympics also begins on Monday.
Drug testers are expecting to take the first of about 6,000 samples for testing at the London 2012 laboratory.
Half of the competitors will be tested including every medallist at the Olympics and Paralympics.
Ahead of the Games G4S chief executive Nick Buckles has been criticized over the private security firm’s failure to recruit enough security guards for the Olympics, after it emerged last Wednesday that 3,500 troops were being drafted in to plug gaps in staff provision.
G4S chairman John Connolly told the Financial Times: “We don’t want to do anything that smacks of short-term expediency, but it would be right to consider whether any members of the senior team are best placed to take the company forward.”
This comes after Nick Buckles told the Sunday Telegraph he plans to stay to help deliver the contract but that he had considered quitting over the issue.
Nick Buckles is due to appear before the Home Affairs Select Committee on Tuesday to answers MPs’ questions after he apologized on Saturday and said then that he only began to know things were going wrong “eight or nine days ago”.
The Commons Public Accounts Committee has summoned G4S, two government departments and Games organizer LOCOG to appear before it in September.
London 2012 chairman Lord Coe said security for the Olympics had not been compromised by the failure of G4S to recruit enough security staff.
G4S said it stood to lose up to £50 million ($80 million) on the contract, worth a total of about £280 million ($445 million), after being unable to provide the 10,000 staff it had been contracted to deliver.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has arrived in Israel for talks expected to focus on Iran, the peace process and Egypt.
Hillary Clinton will meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as President Shimon Peres and other officials.
She was in Egypt over the weekend, where she met new President Mohammed Mursi.
Hillary Clinton is expected to share her impressions of the new Egypt with Israeli officials.
She will tell officials in Jerusalem that Egypt’s President Mohammed Mursi reiterated in private what he has said in public – that Egypt will abide by all its international agreements.
Those agreements include a peace treaty with Israel.
Israel said to be anxious about the rise of Islamists in neighboring Egypt after the ousting of Hosni Mubarak, who was a long-time American ally.
Hillary Clinton has arrived in Israel for talks expected to focus on Iran, the peace process and Egypt
On her trip to Cairo, Hillary Clinton met President Mohammed Mursi and, separately, the head of Egypt’s top military council, Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi.
The president has been in conflict with the military council, which ruled the country after Mubarak was forced out, over parliament’s dissolution.
On Saturday, Hillary Clinton told Mohammed Mursi that the situation required “compromise and real politics” but also voiced support for a “full transition to civilian rule”.
The secretary of state also encouraged Mohammed Mursi to live up to promises to protect the rights of women and minorities, and to preserve the peace treaty with Israel.
In her talks with Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi on Sunday Hillary Clinton discussed the transition of power to the newly elected president and stressed the need to protect the rights of all Egyptians, US officials said.
Speaking later at the newly re-opened US consulate in Alexandria, Hillary Clinton said: “I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot.”
Hillary Clinton also held meetings with leading women, the Coptic Christian community and young entrepreneurs in Egypt.
She said: “Democracy is not just about reflecting the will of the majority. It is also about protecting the rights of the minority.”
According to reports from activists and residents, the Syrian capital Damascus has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the conflict so far.
Mortar and small-arms fire was reported in several areas as government forces clashed with the Free Syrian Army.
The fighting came as UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan prepared to meet Russia’s foreign minister for talks on the Syrian crisis.
Russia has been backing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Kofi Annan is expected to urge Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to put pressure on the Syrian authorities to begin a political transition..
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said the conflict in Syria is now in effect a civil war.
It means combatants across Syria are now subject to the Geneva Conventions and could be liable for war crimes prosecution in the future.
The ICRC had previously regarded only the areas around Idlib, Homs and Hama as warzones.
Syrian capital Damascus has seen some of the heaviest fighting of the conflict so far
Clashes between government forces and Free Syrian Army rebels seem to be creeping ever closer to the heart of Damascus and the centre of the regime’s power.
Mortars were reportedly used on the southern edge of the city, in areas like Tadhamon and Midan and around nearby Palestinian refugee camps.
Activists said clashes continued into the early hours of the morning.
A convoy of army reinforcements was reported to have been attacked by rebels in Kfar Sousa to the west, leading to further clashes there.
Residents were said to be fleeing some areas, while in other parts of the city protesters blocked motorways with burning tyres.
There has been frequent trouble in these areas – barely three miles (4-5 km) from the centre – for months.
But as with many of the suburbs ringing the city slightly further out, all the government’s repeated efforts to stifle defiance have failed.
The government has denied that it had used heavy weapons in its attack on the village of Tremseh on Thursday.
Activists initially described fighting in Tremseh, which is near the city of Hama, as a massacre of dozens of civilians, but later accounts suggested most of the dead were armed rebels.
UN observers at the scene have said Syrian forces used heavy artillery, tanks and helicopters, but Damascus denies those allegations and said just two civilians had been killed.
The accusations, if proved, would mean Damascus had broken an agreement it made with UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
Further pressure was put on the government of President Bashar al-Assad when the International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversees the Geneva Conventions, said fighting had now spread beyond the three hotspots of Idlib, Homs and Hama.
Spokesman Hicham Hassan said Syria was now regarded as a “non-international armed conflict”, which is the technical term for civil war.
“What matters is that international humanitarian law applies wherever hostilities between government forces and opposition groups are taking place across the country,” he said.
The statement is significant because it is the Red Cross’ job to monitor the conduct of the fighting, and to tell warring parties what their obligations are.
Under the Geneva Conventions, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, attacks on medical personnel or the destruction of basic services like water or electricity are forbidden and can be prosecuted as war crimes.
From now on, all those fighting in Syria are officially subject to the laws of war, and could end up at a war crimes tribunal if they disobey them.
The ICRC’s announcement echoes both the UN’s head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous and President Assad, who has said the country is at war.
Some 16,000 people are thought to have been killed since the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in March 2011.
UN diplomats are attempting to agree a way forward for the organization’s monitoring mission in the country.
The mission’s mandate runs out on Friday, and Western nations are trying to get Russia and China to agree to a strengthened resolution authorizing sanctions.
Kofi Annan’s six-point plan:
1. Syrian-led political process to address the aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people
2. End to violence by all sides; army troops to stop using heavy weapons and withdraw to barracks
3. Parties to allow humanitarian aid
4. Authorities to free political detainees
5. Authorities to ensure freedom of movement for journalists
North Korean state media has announced that military chief Ri Yong-Ho has been removed from all official posts.
As well as being head of the army, Ri Yong-Ho was vice-chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission and held top posts in the ruling Workers’ Party.
In a short statement, the party said Ri Yong-Ho had been removed from his posts “because of illness”.
However, there is widespread skepticism about that explanation.
The decision to relieve Ri Yong-Ho of his duties came at a meeting of the Workers’ Party Central Committee politburo on Sunday, state-run news agency KCNA said.
The brief report made no mention of a successor.
North Korean military chief Ri Yong-Ho has been removed from all official posts
In Seoul, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry told reporters that the move was “very unusual”.
“It’s quite a rare case that the North promptly and publicly announced early this morning the outcome of a meeting yesterday, on 15 July. We will keep monitoring closely,” Kim Hyung-suk said.
Ri Yong-Ho was made army chief three years ago under Kim Jong-Il, the current leader’s father who died in December 2011 after ruling North Korea for almost two decades.
The army chief regularly appeared at state occasions beside Kim Jong-Il.
He was also one of seven top officials to accompany the younger Kim as he followed the hearse containing his father’s body at his state funeral.
Ri Yong-Ho was widely thought to be a figure in the inner circle of the new leader and instrumental in helping him cement his position.
His removal is now being scrutinized by analysts for signs of the direction in which Kim Jong-Un, seen as young and inexperienced, will take the country.
The army and Workers’ Party are the two primary institutions that bolstered the Kim family dynasty, said Robert Kelly, a professor at the Pusan National University in South Korea.
Kim Jong-Un did not serve in either of those two institutions which are ”traditional proving grounds and grooming grounds… for the leadership in the system”.
”So his position is very vulnerable because he does not know the generals and colonels who prop up the state,” said Dr. Robert Kelly.
In April North Korea defied international warnings to launch a rocket – an action its neighbors called a long-range missile test that contravened UN resolutions.
South Korea also warned earlier this year that Pyongyang appeared to be in the late stages of preparing for a third nuclear test – a claim North Korea has denied.
International talks aimed at ending North Korea’s nuclear ambitions have been stalled since 2009.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was targeted by protesters who threw tomatoes and their own shoes at her motorcade during a visit to Egypt on Sunday.
Demonstrators also mockingly chanted “Monica, Monica” in reference to Bill Clinton’s extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky.
Hillary Clinton was on her first trip to Egypt since the election of the country’s new Islamist President, Mohammed Mursi.
During the protests in Alexandria, a tomato struck an Egyptian official in the face, and shoes and a water bottle landed near the armored cars carrying Hillary Clinton’s aides.
Hillary Clinton was targeted by protesters who threw tomatoes and their own shoes at her motorcade during a visit to Egypt
A senior State Department official said that neither Hillary Clinton nor her vehicle, which were around the corner from the incident, were struck by any of the projectiles.
As well as the shouts of “Monica”, some demonstrators chanted, “Leave, Clinton”.
The assault on her motorcade came on the day Hillary Clinton spoke at the newly re-opened U.S. consulate in Alexandria, addressing accusations that the U.S., which had long supported former president Hosni Mubarak, was meddling in Egyptian politics.
“I want to be clear that the United States is not in the business, in Egypt, of choosing winners and losers, even if we could, which of course we cannot,” Hillary Clinton said.
Romanian black comedy Everybody In Our Family directed by Radu Jude won the Heart of Sarajevo prize Saturday at the end of the nine-day festival.
Toata Lumea Din Familia Noastra (Everybody In Our Family), which tells the story of a divorced dad’s frustration and love for his five-year-old daughter ,won the best movie award at the 18th Sarajevo Film Festival, one of the largest in Europe, organizers said.
Uliks Fehmiu won the best actor award for his performance in the Serbian movie Ustanicka Ulica (Redemption Street).
Marija Pikic won the best actress award for her role in Bosnia’s Aida Begic’s movie Djeca (Children of Sarajevo).
Everybody In Our Family won the best movie award at the 18th Sarajevo Film Festival
U.S. superstar Angelina Jolie, whose recent directorial debut dealt with Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war, was a special guest of the festival earlier.
During her stay in the Bosnian capital she was made an honorary citizen of Sarajevo for her efforts in “keeping the truth about wartime events in Sarajevo and Bosnia-Hercegovina alive”.
The award is given by the Sarajevo county every year to a foreign national who promotes humanity, democracy and tolerance.
Other films among the more than 200 screened at the event, included a documentary Football Rebels, narrated by French former football superstar turned actor Eric Cantona.
It profiled five footballers – Ivory Coast’s Didier Drogba, Chile’s Carlos Caszely, Algerian Rachid Mekhloufi, Brazil’s Socrates, and Bosnian Predrag Pasic – focusing on their humanitarian and social activities off the pitch.
The film was directed by Gilles Perez and Gilles Rof.
The Sarajevo film festival was born as an act of resistance during the 1992-1995 war when Sarajevo was under siege.
Oscar-winning actress Celeste Holm died Sunday aged 95, a relative said.
Celeste Holm had been hospitalized about two weeks ago with dehydration after a fire in actor Robert De Niro’s apartment in the same Manhattan building.
She had asked her husband on Friday to bring her home, and she spent her final days with her husband, Frank Basile, and other relatives and close friends by her side, said Amy Phillips, a great-niece of Celeste Holm’s who answered the phone at Holm’s apartment on Sunday.
Celeste Holm died around 3.30 a.m. at her longtime apartment on Central Park West, Amy Phillips said.
“I think she wanted to be here, in her home, among her things, with people who loved her,” she said.
Oscar-winning actress Celeste Holm died Sunday aged 95
In a career that spanned more than half a century, Celeste Holm played everyone from Ado Annie – the girl who just can’t say no in Oklahoma!- to a worldly theatrical agent in the 1991 comedy I Hate Hamlet to guest star turns on TV shows such as Fantasy Island and Love Boat II to Bette Davis’ best friend in All About Eve.
Celeste Holm won the Academy Award in 1947 for best supporting actress for her performance in Gentlemen’s Agreement and received Oscar nominations for Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950).
Celeste Holm was also known for her untiring charity work – at one time she served on nine boards – and was a board member emeritus of the National Mental Health Association.
Julia Roberts was all sweetness and smiles in Hawaii with her adorable daughter Hazel.
Julia Roberts enjoyed a walk along the beach in Kauai while lovingly helping her 7-year-old offspring collect shells last week in Kauai.
The actress braved the hot and humid weather by casually dressing in a flowered skirt paired with sleeveless orange and gray tops along with gray trainers.
Julia Roberts , 44, wore her hair pulled up into a messy ponytail and she went make-up free.
Little Hazel wore denim shorts, a white shirt and she went barefoot.
Julia Roberts was all sweetness and smiles in Hawaii with her adorable daughter Hazel
Julia Roberts arrived in Hawaii by private plane last Tuesday, following a five hour flight from Van Nuys airport in Los Angeles.
The actress and her family were greeted with Hawaiian leis (garlands) by an assistant from their hotel who had come to meet them once they touched down.
Together with cameraman husband Danny Moder and their three children Henry, five, and twins Hazel and Phinnaues, seven, Julia Roberts was seen smiling as she loaded her children into a waiting car.
Their holiday in the Pacific comes a week the couple celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary on July 4th.
The family has a home in Malibu, where the children attend school.
They also have a ranch in Taos, N.M, where Danny Moder and Julia Roberts were wed 10 years ago after meeting on the set of The Mexican.
Julia Roberts will be starring in the film adaptation of the play August: Osage County. Production is already underway.
Robert Russell from Texas has recovered a vintage sports car he spotted being sold on eBay 42 years after thieves stole it from him, officials in California say.
Robert Russell, 66, said he had never given up searching for the 1967 Austin-Healey, which was stolen in 1970.
After seeing the car on eBay, he found that the vehicle identification number on the website matched the one on his title certificate, AP reports.
The car was being put up for auction by a dealer in Los Angeles.
Robert Russell said he had never given up searching for the 1967 Austin-Healey, which was stolen in 1970
The dealer told Robert Russell they had bought it from a man who said it had been in his family since 1970.
After checking Robert Russell’s claim, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department told him he could pick up his vehicle.
He has since brought it back to Texas where he currently lives, AP says.
Robert Russell told police he had originally bought the vehicle for $3,000. It is now valued at $23,000.
Blackberry maker Research in Motion (RIM) has been ordered to pay $147 million in damages after losing a patents case.
A jury in San Francisco upheld claims by Mformation Technologies Inc that RIM infringed patents it took out in 1999.
The software involved allows companies to access employees’ mobile phones remotely for upgrades, password changes or to delete data.
The fine was calculated by the judge as $8 per Blackberry device in use since the claims were first filed in 2008.
“We believe [the patents have] been fundamental to the success of Research in Motion,” said Amar Thakur, a lawyer for the winning side.
The damages only relate to royalties on past sales in the US, and does not cover future sales or sales outside the US.
A jury in San Francisco upheld claims by Mformation Technologies Inc that RIM infringed patents it took out in 1999
“Mformation created the mobile device management category in the late 1990s and was innovating in this area well before most of the market understood the fundamental importance of wireless mobility management,” said the firm’s founder Rakesh Kushwaha in a press release.
The case adds to RIM’s problems. Since the introduction of Apple’s iPhone in 2007, sales in the Canadian firm’s core Western market have been steadily declining.
The company is cutting 5,000 jobs – almost a third of its workforce.
RIM said in a press release that it was: “disappointed by the outcome and is evaluating all legal options.
“Additionally, the trial judge has yet to decide certain legal issues that might impact the verdict. RIM will await those rulings before deciding whether to pursue an appeal.”
Fighting in Syria has become so widespread that the conflict is now in effect a civil war, says The Red Cross (ICRC).
The change in status means combatants will now be officially subject to the Geneva Conventions, leaving them more exposed to war crimes prosecutions.
The Red Cross had previously regarded only the areas around Idlib, Homs and Hama as war zones.
Meanwhile, Syrian officials are disputing claims that they used heavy weapons in fighting on Thursday.
Activists initially described fighting in the village of Tremseh near Hama as a massacre of dozens of civilians, but later accounts suggested most of the dead were armed rebels.
Fighting in Syria has become so widespread that the conflict is now in effect a civil war
The UN accused Syrian forces of using heavy artillery, tanks and helicopters, but Damascus denied those allegations and said just two civilians had been killed.
The accusations, if proved, would mean Damascus had broken an agreement it made with envoy Kofi Annan.
The International Committee of the Red Cross, which oversees the Geneva Conventions, said fighting had now spread beyond the three hotspots of Idlib, Homs and Hama.
Spokesman Hicham Hassan said Syria was now regards as a “non-international armed conflict”, which is the technical term for civil war.
“What matters is that international humanitarian law applies wherever hostilities between government forces and opposition groups are taking place across the country,” he said.
The statement is significant because it is the Red Cross’ job to monitor the conduct of the fighting, and to tell warring parties what their obligations are.
Under the Geneva Conventions, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, attacks on medical personnel or the destruction of basic services like water or electricity are forbidden and can be prosecuted as war crimes.
From now on, all those fighting in Syria are officially subject to the laws of war, and could end up at a war crimes tribunal if they disobey them.
Last month, the UN’s head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous also said Syria was in a state of civil war.
And Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has previously said the country is in a state of war.
Some 16,000 people are thought to have been killed since the uprising against Bashar al-Assad’s regime began in March 2011.
UN diplomats are attempting to agree a way forward for the organization’s monitoring mission in the country.
The mission’s mandate runs out on Friday, and Western nations are trying to get Russia and China to agree to a beefed-up resolution authorizing sanctions.
Hillary Clinton has met the head of Egypt’s top military council, Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi, on the second day of her visit to the country.
The US Secretary of State discussed the transition of power to newly elected President Mohammed Mursi and stressed the need to protect the rights of all Egyptians, US officials said.
Hillary Clinton met Mohammed Mursi on Saturday.
Mohammed Mursi and the military have been in conflict over parliament’s dissolution.
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) shut down the chamber, dominated by Mohammed Mursi’s Islamist allies, before he was formally sworn in last month.
Hillary Clinton has met the head of Egypt's top military council, Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi
It also stripped the new president, elected in the country’s first freely contested leadership vote earlier in June, of many of his powers.
Mohammed Mursi, of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party, tried to reinstate parliament by decree last weekend. The Supreme Constitutional Court has said the dissolution is final.
As head of the SCAF, Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi became Egypt’s interim ruler after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak in February last year.
Hillary Clinton held talks for more than an hour on Sunday with Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi.
A senior US state department official said: “They discussed the political transition and the [military council’s] ongoing dialogue with President Mursi.
“The secretary stressed the importance of protecting the rights of all Egyptians, including women and minorities.”
Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi brought up Egypt’s economic needs, while the pair also discussed US aid plans.
After meeting Field Marshal Mohamad Hussein Tantawi and other army leaders, Hillary Clinton will head to Egypt’s second city, Alexandria, a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood.
There she will meet leading women, the Coptic Christian community and young entrepreneurs. She is then due to fly on to Israel.
During her meeting with Mohammed Mursi on Saturday, Hillary Clinton said the situation required “compromise and real politics”.
“Democracy is hard,” she said.
She praised Egypt’s military council for its interim leadership, “for representing the Egyptian people in the revolution as compared to what we are seeing in Syria which is the military murdering their own people”.
But she also voiced support for a “full transition to civilian rule”.
The secretary of state also encouraged President Mohammed Mursi to live up to promises to protect the rights of women and minorities, and to preserve the peace treaty with Israel.
The hour-long meeting between President Mohammed Mursi and Hillary Clinton was described by a US official as candid and cordial.
However, on Saturday evening hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside Hillary Clinton’s Cairo hotel, chanting anti-Islamist and anti-US slogans in protest at her visit. Some brandished posters depicting the field marshal.
Another protest outside the US embassy was organized by Coptic Christian youth activists, who chanted: “They both can’t be trusted, not the Americans, not the Brotherhood.”
For all the US fears of an Islamist takeover in recent decades, the governments in Washington and Egypt have now realized they need each other.
Mohammed Mursi and the Muslim Brotherhood are particularly keen to avoid the sort of international isolation so damaging to other Islamist governments after they have taken office.
French far-right National Front is to sue Madonna after an image at the singer’s concert in Paris showed party leader Marine Le Pen with a swastika imposed on her face.
National Front vice-president Florian Philippot said the party could not accept “such an odious comparison”.
The image, in a video accompanying the song Nobody Knows Me, was followed by another resembling Adolf Hitler.
Madonna was performing at the Stade de France in a Paris suburb on Saturday.
National Front is to sue Madonna after showing Marine Le Pen with a swastika during her concert in Paris
Florian Philippot said the lawsuit would be filed this week.
The video had already appeared earlier in Madonna’s 30-nation MDNA world tour, sparking a warning from Marine Le Pen that she was considering legal action.
Florian Philippot said: “This is just another provocation in Madonna’s world tour so that people will talk about her.
“Marine Le Pen will defend not only her own honor but her supporters and the millions of National Front voters.”
Marine Le Pen won 18% of the vote in the first round of France’s presidential election and has tried to remove extremist elements and crack down on anti-Semitism.
However, the National Front won only two seats in the 577-member National Assembly in last month’s general election.
Madonna is due to perform in France again on 21 August, in Nice.
M.C. Hammer reveals that Whitney Houston’s father once tried to get the singers to marry in an exclusive interview with In the Mixx host Gina Glickman Giordan on Saturday.
M.C. Hammer says that while at Super Bowl XXV, where Whitney Houston gave her memorable rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner, the late singer’s father, John, attempted to play match maker for the two stars.
“Whitney’s dad pulled me and Whitney in a room and said you know Hammer, you should really consider marrying Whitney. And, I said, I’d love to but I’m already married.”
M.C. Hammer reveals that Whitney Houston's father once tried to get the singers to marry
M.C. Hammer continued, saying: “I love my wife dearly but, I always laughed about that. Always a big fan of Whitney. I loved Whitney and miss her dearly.”
At the time, M.C. Hammer had just celebrated his five-year wedding anniversary with Stephanie Fuller, whom he wed in December 1985. The two remain a couple and have raised five children together.
M.C. Hammer made this revelation in Bridgehampton, New York at The Alexander Soros Foundation’s first annual public event, UNMASKED. The affair raised more than $150,000 to benefit Global Witness.
