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| Battling The Qaeda Hydra |
| It's been nearly 11 months since the killing of Osama bin Laden and almost 11 years since 9/11 thrust Al Qaeda to the forefront of US national security. Since then in fits and starts after 2001, and at an accelerated pace in the last five years
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| ELEPHANTS DOWN UNDER |
| I'VE learned three things visiting New Zealand and Australia: There is a place in the world where rugby is front-page news. |
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 | In Wrath of the Titans I got it right: Worthington HE may be a Hollywood leading man – his thriller Man on a Ledge is still in theatres even as Wrath of the Titans, in which he stars as the mythic warrior Perseus, but he doesn't talk the right game.
For instance, sitting in a luxury suite at....
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| | A pop shop for a new generation | | ENTERING the B r o o k l y n Museum's "Keith Haring: 1978- 1982," which focuses on his early career, I worried that the show was going to be one big, marketable nostalgia trip. The loud strains of David Bowie, Grace Jones and the B-52s emanating from the galleries were not auspicious. Nor was the sight of a Pop Shop full of merchandise just outside the exhibition. (Haring didn't open his first one, on Lafayette Street, until 1986.) Inside the show were walls of sceney photographs, a recreation of one of Haring's installations at Performance Space 122 and another blast of music (accompanying a slide show of his famous subway drawings). It looked as if the museum had simply repackaged the mythic Haring – club kid, Warhol protege and maker of friendly street art – for a younger generation, glamorising the permissive culture of downtown New York in the 1970s and '80s.
It has done that, stopping well short of Haring's death from AIDS-related complications in 1990, at 31. But within the exhibition's party atmosphere other Harings emerge in early drawings, collages and journals, and, especially, on video. And each one is just as relevant, to young artists today, as the figure celebrated in shows like last year's "Art in the Streets" at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and on the reality television series "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist." Organized by the Contemporary Arts Centre in Cincinnati and the Kunsthalle Wien in Austria, this show includes equal quantities of works on paper and rarely seen archival objects (about 300 pieces in all). Also here are seven videos, a medium Haring took up as a student at the School of Visual Arts but later abandoned.
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| | 200 solar flares may hit earth in one year | | SOLAR storms like the one that buffeted the Earth's magnetic field last Thursday will soon become a common occurrence.
Magnetic eruptions on the sun released two huge bursts of light – two of the largest solar flares over the past five years – and accelerated a blob of highspeed particles headed toward us. As the charged particles slam the Earth's magnetic field at more than 1 million mph and are funnelled toward the north and south poles, they generate the nighttime light now known as auroras or northern and southern lights.
Giant solar storms can wreak havoc on satellites and power grids. One storm knocked out power in a large area in Quebec in 1989. The current storm, which started last Thursday morning, is not nearly large enough to cause that much trouble.
"At this point it's a minor storm," said C Alex Young, a senior solar physicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre in Greenbelt, Maryland "It's not going to be that big even if the levels increase a bit. This is really not something to be concerned about." Nevertheless, concern did ensue after NASA issued a statement saying that two large solar flares could send "a severe geomagnetic storm" toward Earth that could cause "possible disruption to high frequency radio communication, global positioning systems and power grids.... |
| | Lohan returns to court for probable final hearing | | LINDSAY Lohan returned to court on Thursday for a hearing that could give the actress back something she hasn't had for nearly two years: true freedom.
Lohan will give a judge her final update on strict probation requirements that have had her doing cleanup duty at the county morgue and attending regular psychotherapy sessions since late last year. Superior Court Judge Stephanie Sautner had said she would end Lohan's probation on a 2007 drunken driving case on Thursday if she completes the requirements, which the actress has apparently done.
The Mean Girls star will remain on informal probation for taking a necklace without permission, but she will no longer be supervised by a probation officer and judge and no longer be forced to live in Los Angeles, where the actress still faces civil lawsuits over accidents and her bad behaviour.
The hearing comes as Lohan's career is showing hints of a comeback. She is due to guest star on an upcoming episode of Glee, and recently hosted a highly rated but criticised episode of Saturday Night Live and is set to star as Elizabeth Taylor in a television movie.
"Lindsay is ending one chapter and starting the next," her spokesman, Steve Honig said. "She is very eager to get back on set and dive into her next few projects." Roles have been hard to come by for Lohan in recent years as she has been in-and-out of courtrooms, admitted to rehab and sentenced to jail.
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