Female bombers kill 72 at Baghdad pet markets

Female bombers detonated by remote control killed 72 people in attacks blamed on al Qaeda at two Baghdad pet markets on Friday, the Iraqi capital's deadliest bombings in more than seven months.

Police said a female suicide bomber killed 45 people and wounded 82 at the Ghazil pet market in central Baghdad. Another blast minutes earlier killed 27 people and wounded 67 at a bird market in southern Baghdad, police said.

The U.S. military, which gave a lower death toll, said both attacks were caused by female suicide bombers and blamed al Qaeda. An Iraqi military official said the two women were mentally handicapped and the bombs detonated by remote control.

"By targeting innocent Iraqis they show their true demonic character," Lieutenant-Colonel Steve Stover, a spokesman for U.S. troops in Baghdad, said in a statement referring to al Qaeda in Iraq.

Stover later told Reuters the U.S. military had seen no evidence to suggest the women were handicapped.

While attacks have fallen across Iraq in recent months, the blasts underscore U.S. military warnings that Sunni Islamist al Qaeda remains dangerous and a return to violence that took Iraq to the brink of sectarian civil war is still possible.

The attacks are also a bitter blow to the hopes of many Iraqis that security in the capital was getting better.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the bombings underlined "the absolute bankruptcy and brutality" of those who carried them out.

"This is the most brutal and the most bankrupt of movements," Rice told reporters in Washington. "The Iraqi people have been right to turn against these terrible, violent people in their midst who will do anything."

At the Ghazil market, one of Baghdad's most popular gathering places, people stared at the destruction as workers swept up body parts and blood-stained animal boxes.

"I came here to enjoy myself. I don't know how I survived," said Abu Haider, who was covered in blood as he stood among ruined stalls and carcasses of birds and other animals.

"I was right there at the scene when the blast happened. It knocked me over. When I managed to get up, I saw dozens had been killed and wounded," he said.

One witness said the female bomber entered the market saying she had birds to sell. Scores of people gathered and then the bomb underneath her clothing went off, the witness said.



DETONATED BY REMOTE CONTROL

Major-General Qassim Moussawi, spokesman for the Iraqi military in Baghdad, said the suicide bombs were detonated remotely by mobile telephones.

"We found the mobiles used to detonate the women," he said, adding the women were mentally handicapped. He did not elaborate on how the Iraqi military knew about their mental condition.

Ambulances tried to push through packed streets to get to Ghazil after the blast, which occurred in almost exactly the same spot as a bombing which killed 13 people on Nov. 23.

Police and civil defence officials piled the wounded into wheelbarrows, cars and the back of pick-up trucks while U.S. soldiers helped secure the area. Officials at nearby hospitals said they struggled to cope with the wounded.

"Most people who visit this market are poor and just want to enjoy themselves but they came and got killed," said Hassan Salman, who sells bird seed at the Ghazil market.

The Ghazil market opens only on Fridays and sells a colourful range of creatures from guard dogs and monkeys to parrots, pigeons and tropical fish.

The November blast, caused by a bomb hidden inside a box of birds, was a big psychological blow for residents who had just begun returning to the streets after security crackdowns last year helped arrest a slide towards all-out sectarian civil war.

The combined death toll from Friday's attacks is the deadliest for Baghdad since June 19, when a car bomb killed 87 people near a Shi'ite mosque.

Violence has fallen sharply across Iraq, with the number of attacks down 60 percent since last June.

The declining violence has been attributed to 30,000 extra U.S. troops, which became fully deployed last June, and the growth of primarily Sunni Arab local police units. (Additional reporting by Waleed Ibrahim, Wisam Mohammed and Was Qusay in Baghdad and Arshad Mohammed in Washington; Writing by Paul Tait and Michael Holden; Editing by Robert Woodward)

Did the driver survive?

Did the driver survive?

The 5 Hottest Female Reporters Who Are Currently Reporting the Super Bowl During Tuesday’s Media Day

This is certainly the most specific Daily List we’ve ever done, but…you know, don’t ask. Just roll with it.

5) ESPN reporter Molly Querim


4) The Tonight Show’s Kellie Pickler, getting to the top of the story

3) Filthy Pats fan / Access Hollywood co-star Maria Menounos

2) Televisa’s Marisol Gonzales

1) TV Azteca’s Ines Sainz

Double Dipping... Yeah, It's Really That Bad

So, this brings up the question: Is double dipping really that bad?

A new study by Clemson University set out to answer that exact question.

According to The New York Times, the study was inspired by an episode of "Seinfeld" in which the character George Costanza is confronted at a funeral reception after dipping the same chip twice.

Clemson University food microbiologist Paul Dawson said he proposed the study to get undergraduate students involved in scientific research. A team of nine students had volunteers bite a wheat cracker and dip the cracker for three seconds into a tablespoon of dip, it was reported.

They repeated the process with new crackers, for a total of either three or six double dips per dip sample. The team then analyzed the remaining dip and counted the number of aerobic bacteria in it. The students found that on average, three to six double dips transferred about 10,000 bacteria from the eater’s mouth to the remaining dip, the Times reported.

"The way I would put it is, before you have some dip at a party, look around and ask yourself, 'would I be willing to kiss everyone here?' Because you don’t know who might be double-dipping, and those who do are sharing their saliva with you," Dawson told the Times.

The study is set to be published later this year in the Journal of Food Safety.

Battle Concussions Tied to Stress Disorder

About one in six combat troops returning from Iraq have suffered at least one concussion in the war, injuries that, while temporary, could heighten their risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder, researchers are reporting.

The study, in The New England Journal of Medicine, is the military’s first large-scale effort to gauge the effect of mild head injuries — concussions, many of them from roadside blasts — that some experts worry may be causing a host of undiagnosed neurological deficiencies.

The new report found that soldiers who had concussions were more likely than those with other injuries to report a variety of physical and mental symptoms in their first months back home, including headaches, poor sleep and balance problems. But they were also at higher risk for the stress disorder, or PTSD, and that accounted for most of the difference in complaints, the researchers concluded. Symptoms of the disorder include irritability, sleep problems and flashbacks.

Experts cautioned that the study had not been designed to detect subtle changes in mental performance, like slips in concentration or short-term memory, that might have developed in the wake of a concussion and might be unrelated to stress reactions. Many returning veterans are still struggling with those problems, which can linger for months.

The findings are in line with previous research linking concussions to post-traumatic stress disorder that develops after frightening events outside a military context, like car accidents; concussions from athletic collisions rarely lead to the disorder.

“This study is a very good first step, and an important one, but like any first step it should lead us to ask further questions about these injuries,” said Brian Levine, a neuropsychologist at the Rotman Research Institute and the University of Toronto, who was not involved in the study.

Now that the prevalence of combat concussions is better known, Dr. Levine said, the next step should be to assess troops’ cognitive functioning early on and track it over time, before and after combat.

In the study, military psychiatrists had 2,525 soldiers from two Army infantry brigades fill out questionnaires asking about missed workdays and dozens of kinds of physical and emotional difficulties, including symptoms of PTSD. The soldiers had been back home from Iraq for three to four months.

The questionnaires also asked about concussions and their severity. A concussion is an injury from a blow or shock to the head that causes temporary confusion or loss of consciousness, without any visible brain damage. The investigators found that 384 of the soldiers, or 15 percent, reported at least one concussion. One-third of that 15 percent had blacked out when injured.

The severity of the concussion was related to the risk of developing the stress disorder, the survey showed. Nearly 44 percent of the soldiers who had blacked out qualified for the diagnosis, about three times the rate found in soldiers with other injuries. Among soldiers who did not black out, the rate of PTSD was 27 percent, significantly higher than the 16 percent rate among veterans with other kinds of injuries.

“There’s a lot we don’t know about these injuries, but we do know that context is important,” said the lead author, Dr. Charles W. Hoge, director of the division of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. “Being in combat, you’re going to be in a physiologically heightened state already. Now imagine a blast that knocks you unconscious — an extremely close call on your own life, and maybe your buddy went down. So you’ve got the trauma, and maybe the effect of the concussion is to make it worse.”

In an editorial that accompanied the study, Richard A. Bryant, a psychologist at the University of New South Wales in Australia, emphasized that concussed troops “should not be led to believe that they have a brain injury that will result in permanent damage.”

On the contrary, Dr. Bryant and other experts say, the link to post-traumatic stress suggests that mild brain injuries have a significant psychological component, which can improve with treatment.

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the study, and the interest of doctors and military officials in brain trauma, were long overdue.

Study: Magnesium sulfate cuts risk of CP in preemies

Giving a cheap and widely available drug to pregnant women at high risk of premature delivery cut the risk of cerebral palsy in their babies by nearly half, according to a study presented Thursday.

Premature babies are at high risk for cerebral palsy, an often devastating movement disorder caused by brain damage before, during or after birth, says study co-author John Thorp, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. About one-third of cerebral palsy cases are caused by early preterm birth, he says.

Giving magnesium sulfate, or Epsom salt, could save many children from the condition, Thorp says. Doctors regularly use the drug to halt contractions when women go into labor very early. The drug is found in virtually every labor and delivery department and costs just pennies a dose, he says.

In Thorp's study, presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine annual meeting in Dallas, doctors focused on 2,241 women whose water broke very early — between the 24th and 31st weeks of pregnancy. A full-term delivery occurs after at least 37 weeks.

Doctors randomly assigned some women to get intravenous magnesium sulfate and others to get a placebo, a study design that's considered the "gold standard" of medical testing.

About 1.9% of women on magnesium sulfate had babies with moderate or severe cerebral palsy, compared to 3.5% of women who didn't get the drug, the study shows. The drug caused no serious side effects, although more women taking magnesium sulfate felt flushed or sweaty. Some reported temporarily blurred vision.

"This is a real breakthrough," says Thorp, noting that his study is especially powerful because it confirms the findings of a 2003 Australian study. "These are children who have their whole lives in front of them."

About 2 or 3 children in 1,000 over the age of 3 are diagnosed with cerebral palsy every year, says Dara Richardson-Heron, national medical director of United Cerebral Palsy, which wasn't involved in the study. She called the study "very promising."

Margarita de Veciana, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va., says Thorp's study is likely to spark a debate.

Some doctors are now using drugs other than magnesium sulfate to prevent preterm labor, de Veciana says, because studies haven't shown that magnesium sulfate works as well as previously believed. Doctors may reconsider abandoning magnesium sulfate, however, if it can prevent disabilities.

"This could have a huge impact," de Veciana says.

Geeta Swamy, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and assistant professor at Duke University Medical Center, says Thorp's study isn't likely to change the way women are treated right away.

Although the drug caused no serious problems in Thorp's study, Swamy says a handful of women each year do have bad reactions to magnesium sulfate, which can sometimes cause respiratory problems. Doctors will want to scrutinize Thorp's data to decide if the drug's benefits outweigh its risks.

"This study has the potential to change practice, but we don't have enough information yet," Swamy says.

Group Deplores Delays in Notice on Unsafe Products

An advocacy group criticized the Consumer Product Safety Commission yesterday for sometimes taking six months or more to notify the public about dangerous products, and complained that it took some companies nearly three years to report hazards to the agency.

The District-based consumer group Public Citizen analyzed 46 cases from 2002 to 2007, all of which resulted in recalls and involved companies that were penalized for late reports. In one case, the agency did not alert the public about an all-terrain vehicle with a faulty oil line that caused 42 fires and injured 18 people for more than two years after getting a report from the manufacturer.

"In these cases where reports are coming in so late, you'd think the agency would release information quicker. Instead, it waited months and even years," said Taylor Lincoln, research director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division.

The National Association of Manufacturers, a business trade group, called the report inaccurate because Public Citizen examined only cases that were on the public record. The cases were on the record because the CPSC had fined the companies -- a total of $20.8 million -- for not reporting product defects in a timely manner. Those cases represent only 2 percent of the more than 2,000 recalls that the CPSC oversaw during that period.

"Public Citizen has produced a misleading analysis by cherry-picking the worst-case exceptions to product-defect reporting," NAM spokesman Rosario Palmieri said.

CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese said the agency "works to notify consumers as early as possible once the hazard has been identified and the means to a remedy exists."

Sixty percent of the 450 recalls the CPSC oversees each year are "fast-track" recalls, in which companies report a problem and agree to a recall right away, agency spokesman Scott Wolfson said. And 90 percent of fast-track recalls are carried out within 20 working days, according to the CPSC's 2007 performance and accountability report. In exchange for the fast turnaround, the CPSC skips a preliminary evaluation of the product, which manufacturers worry could be used against them in consumer lawsuits.

Public Citizen President Joan Claybrook said the study's narrow scope reflected the constraints the CPSC faces in getting safety information to the public. The group was not able to examine recalls for which there was no fine because the agency does not typically release such information, even under the Freedom of Information Act.

"That is the best information we could get," Claybrook said.

Businesses have the right to review any information the CPSC puts out, including recall announcements, in which their product can be identified. If companies do not like what the agency plans to disclose, they can take the CPSC to court to stop it. While the commission has faced few such suits, the threat of legal action means in practice it negotiates with manufacturers over what it can disclose. Business groups say the law prevents the release of inaccurate and misleading information and trade secrets.

The CPSC's ability to disclose product hazards is a major sticking point in negotiations in Congress over legislation to overhaul the nation's product safety system.

Consumer groups are lobbying for a Senate proposal that would make it easier for the agency to alert the public to product hazards and eliminate the right to sue over disclosures. Manufacturers prefer a bill that has passed the House that would retain companies' right to sue but allows the commission to quickly notify the public if it finds there are pressing reasons.

Doctor Accused of Leak to Drug Maker

A leading member of the Senate said Wednesday that a prominent diabetes expert had leaked an unpublished and confidential medical journal article to GlaxoSmithKline last year, tipping the company to the imminent publication of safety questions involving the company’s diabetes drug Avandia.

The expert, Dr. Steven M. Haffner of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, faxed the article to the drug maker after agreeing to read it as part of the peer-review process for The New England Journal of Medicine, according to a statement Wednesday by Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa.

“The most troubling aspect of this situation is that the integrity of another aspect of the scientific process is called into question — scientific peer review,” Mr. Grassley’s statement said. The peer-review process, he said, is meant to ensure “that other scientists will judge a study’s quality before it is made public.”

Mr. Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee and a longtime critic of business dealings between doctors and drug companies, also released a copy of a letter he sent to GlaxoSmithKline in which he asked what action the company took after receiving the letter.

Dr. Haffner did not respond to phone calls and e-mail messages seeking comment on Wednesday.

An article on the matter published online Wednesday by the journal Nature quoted Dr. Haffner as saying: “Why I sent it is a mystery. I don’t really understand it. I wasn’t feeling well. It was bad judgment.”

A spokeswoman for GlaxoSmithKline, Nancy Pekarek, said that Dr. Haffner sent the article to the company on May 3, more than two weeks before the article was published in the journal.

He “expressed concerns and questions regarding the methodology of the analysis, and sent the article to GSK for advice from experienced statisticians,” she said.

But Ms. Pekarek said the company did not provide comments or any other information. “We believe GSK acted appropriately and responsibly in responding to the situation.”

Under The New England Journal’s rules, reviewers are prohibited from disclosing an article’s contents before publication, as a way of protecting the exclusivity of the journal’s material and protecting the intellectual property of scientists who submit articles.

A spokeswoman for The New England Journal of Medicine said the journal was aware of the allegations against Dr. Haffner. “Any breach of ethics by a reviewer would be taken very seriously by the editors, but would be handled as a private matter,” The Journal said in an e-mailed statement.

Besides violating The New England Journal’s rules, disclosing a pending article would also be considered a breach of professional ethics, according to Dr. Jerry Avorn, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Avorn said that he was not familiar with the specific allegations against Dr. Haffner.

The University of Texas Health Science Center issued a statement Wednesday saying that it had just learned of the accusations and would investigate. “Once the facts are understood, we will take swift and appropriate action,” the statement said.

Dr. Haffner has previously disclosed that he has conducted research and served as a paid speaker for Glaxo. Mr. Grassley said that Dr. Haffner had received $75,000 in consulting and speaking fees from GlaxoSmithKline since 1999.

As part of its normal prepublication review process, The New England Journal asked Dr. Haffner last year to vet the article, which had been submitted for publication by Dr. Steven E. Nissen of the Cleveland Clinic. The article, a pooled analysis of Avandia studies, was published in late May and suggested that the diabetes drug increased the risk of heart attack by more than 40 percent.

Dr. Nissen, the chief of cardiovascular medicine at the clinic, said Wednesday that he was disappointed in Dr. Haffner’s decision to send the article to GlaxoSmithKline.

“The integrity of the scientific review process is really very important in medicine,” Dr. Nissen said. “The last thing I would have ever expected was that a respected reviewer for a prestigious journal would have, within hours of receiving a review, given it to a pharmaceutical company.”

The article led to criticism of the drug and was followed by a Food and Drug Administration order that a black-box warning be placed on the drug’s label. Those developments have helped drive down Avandia’s sales by more than half from their level in 2006, when sales exceeded $3 billion worldwide.

Receiving an early copy of the article could have given GlaxoSmithKline time to mount a campaign to rebut its findings. Within days of the publication of Dr. Nissen’s article, the company began citing the interim results of another study, called Record, that did not support his findings.

But Ms. Pekarek said that even before receiving the Nissen article from Dr. Haffner, the company had been weighing whether to look at preliminary results of the Record study, which was still under way. Those internal deliberations, she said, were based on the company’s own findings of an increased heart attack risk from Avandia.

Ms. Pekarek said the additional knowledge that an article critical of the drug’s safety was soon to be published increased the urgency of looking at the interim Record results.

Dr. Haffner, who had been involved in a clinical study that found Avandia worked better at controlling blood sugar than two other treatments, was quoted last year in the online medical publication TheHeart.org criticizing the publication of Dr. Nissen’s study and of editorials that supported it in two other journals.

“The three major medical journals are becoming more like British tabloid newspapers. All they lack is a bare-chested woman on Page 3,” Dr. Haffner was quoted as saying.

Medical marijuana vending machines open in L.A.

Americans who have traveled to Japan are no doubt familiar with the ubiquitous jidoohanbaiki: standalone vending machines that dispense soft drinks, coffee, food, comic books, paperbacks, clothing (including underwear and stockings), videos, CDs, jewelry, flowers — and booze (beer, whiskey, sake).

California went a big step further today: Vending machines that dispense medical marijuana.

The first two were activated today in Los Angeles at licensed cannabis clubs. State voters approved doctor-prescribed marijuana in 1996 for patients suffering serious pain or nausea who don't get relief from other drugs. (Here's background on medical marijuana in California.)

This is how the AVMs — Anytime Vending Machines — work:

• Customers bring their prescriptions for approval at the AVMs, housed in enclosed room guarded 24/7.
• They are fingerprinted and photographed.
• They receive a pre-paid credit carded loaded with their individual profiles.
• They choose their dosage (3.5 grams or 7 grams) and one of five strains of marijuana.
• The marijuana is in capsule form and dispensed in vacuum-sealed packages.
• They can buy no more than 1 ounce a week.

Anticipated future vending: Viagra, Vicodin, Propecia and anti-depressants. (Seriously.)

Philly folks flock to the 16th annual Wing Bowl

PHILADELPHIA -- A pair of 30ish men in leather jackets are waiting in a deli line one weekday afternoon in South Philadelphia talking sports. They aren't talking about another year of no world championship in Philadelphia -- and can't help but discus something the area is anxiously waiting to see in a few days.

No, it wasn't about Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics visiting. Nor was it whether or not Johan Santana would sign with the New York Mets, or a stop by Martin Brodeur and the New Jersey Devils. No, the Wachovia Center was about to play host to a classic clash of two eating titans on Friday morning, Joey Chestnut and Bill "El Wingador" Simmons, in the 16th Wing Bowl, the annual Philadelphia affair that's more indoor Mardi Gras than anything remotely close to an athletic contest, more an intoxicating celebration of one city's ineptitude to produce a world champion in 100 seasons (none of the four major Philadelphia pro sports teams have won a world championship in 25 years).

The event, hosted each year by sportstalk radio station 610 WIP, takes over the city the Friday of Super Bowl weekend, and is enough to cause two sports fans in a deli line to analytically look at the eaters as if comparing the range of Phillies MVP shortstop Jimmy Rollins to the Mets' Jose Reyes.

What made it unique this year, other than the pageantry of characters that yearly cavort through the Wachovia Center like a Friday night at Caligula's palace, is that it marked the first time the legendary Simmons, a five-time Wing Bowl champion who even has a banner hanging from the rafters of the Wachovia Center, faced off against two-time defending champion Chestnut, the world's best competitive eater who already downed one legend last July, when he out ate Takeru Kobayashi in The Nathan's International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest.

This time, it was a case of the young buck, Chestnut, shattering all records by chomping down an astounding 241 chicken wings in 30 minutes, an average of eight wings a minute, outdistancing 22-year old Patrick Bertoletti, who finished with 227, and Simmons came in third with 205.

For his intestinal fortitude, Chestnut, who made over $100,000 in competitive eating in 2007, walked away with a Harley Davidson 860 Roadster, a $26,000 Toyota Tundra and a diamond encrusted gold ring. Chestnut lived on water, milk, diet soda and vitamin supplements since Tuesday. It was nice to eat something solid for the first time in three days. The last time he had anything to eat, he munched on 200 wings.

"I feel great, believe it or not," said Chestnut, 24, a project engineer for a construction company located in San Jose, California. "But this is probably it for me. This is an amazing contest, because you push your body to extreme limits with this, I've just figured out ways to stretch my stomach. For the most part, I get into a perfect rhythm like a marathoner. I just continue eating, that why it's so hard every year to go into this with goals. It's a big contest and it takes a lot to get ready for, but it also takes a lot out of you. I don't feel too bad right now."

Though sweat droplets were beading on his forehead under his Wing Bowl crown, and lines of sweat were running down the sides of his face.

"It's just my body heating up and that makes me break into a sweat, and actually, that makes me feel pretty good, too," Chestnut said.

It looks as if Chestnut will be joined in eating retirement with Simmons, 46, who has parlayed his eating exploits to open up a New Jersey restaurant and he even has his own wing sauce. He came back after a two-year hiatus in an attempt to dethrone the mighty Chestnut, who has become the despised Dallas Cowboys, New York Mets, Boston Celtics and New York Rangers all rolled up into one to Philly fans.

"Hey, I gave it my best shot, but Joey is a great eater," Simmons said. "He got booed when he came in here today, but Joey is a really good guy. I think the difference I may have made with Wing Bowl is that we put it on the map. To be the best in the world, you have to face the world's best. Chestnut and Bertoletti are the world's best. I'm done, I've had enough. No more Wing Bowls for me. What I am doing next? I'm not going to Disney World, I'll tell you that."

There was some talk that 610 WIP would discontinue Wing Bowl after this year, with its two biggest attractions saying that they're done. But that probably won't happen, considering the event sold out the 20,000-seat Wachovia Center in 45 minutes, and tickets were selling between $24 to $101 on ticket Web sites (tickets go for $5 each, with WIP giving the proceeds to charity).

Three hours after Wing Bowl 16, a group of men were sitting eating lunch at Citizens Bank Park, where the Phillies play across the street from the Wachovia Center, doing what Philadelphians tend to do this time of year: Talking about Chestnut eating 241 wings, about the eater's entourages, about the scantily clad women that filled the place ... talking about Wing Bowl and not a Philadelphia championship.

Week in review: Teaming up against Google

The fight for Internet dominance heated up this week with Microsoft offering to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion in an effort to better compete with chief rival Google.

"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player, who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition," Microsoft said in a statement Friday. "Together, Microsoft and Yahoo can offer a credible alternative."

Microsoft's offer, which was contained in the letter to Yahoo's board, amounts to $31 a share and represents a 62 percent premium over Yahoo's closing price on Thursday. Microsoft said it will offer shareholders the option of cash or stock.

Yahoo said in a responding statement that its board "will evaluate this proposal carefully and promptly, in the context of Yahoo's strategic plans, and pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders."

At press time, industry watchers were busy chewing on the news and analyzing such a merger's potential impacts. How problematic would the huge cultural differences at the two companies be? Also, could an open-source offspring be the result?

The deal followed what's been a tough week for Yahoo in its own efforts to stay afloat against competitors. After posting higher fourth-quarter revenue than a year ago but a lower net profit, the troubled Web giant confirmed expected plans to lay off 1,000 of its 14,300 workers in February to help it focus on its search and advertising businesses.

Yahoo had long been known for its innovativeness. But somewhere along the way, it has become mired in bureaucracy and what some see as an inability to respond to more nimble (though considerably larger) Google.

Following the earnings and layoffs news, Yahoo also announced that former CEO Terry Semel, who left his post last summer but remained as non-executive chairman of the board, is now out of the company altogether. All eyes are now on CEO Jerry Yang, as some are still waiting for him to come up with a remedy for what's perceived as the company's eroding culture.

CNET News.com readers, many of whom responded to a related poll, seem split on whether Microsoft should be allowed to buy Google, and whether Google is a monopolistic threat.

To at least one reader, a merger makes "good business sense."

"Google watch out...Yahoo (is) making a comeback and (it's) gonna eat you up whole," the reader wrote in Talkback to a story.

Relative to Yahoo, of course, things are looking up for Google, which reported fourth-quarter revenue rose more than 50 percent and profit was up 17 percent. But the figures were just short of Wall Street expectations. That caused shares to take a dive in after-hours trading.

Those missed expectations were partly due to a rise in traffic acquisition costs that cut into revenue. But executives acknowledged in a conference call with analysts that the company made less money than expected serving up ads on social networks, a sign that social networks may not be the easy holy grail for advertisers they were once believed to be.

"When you have the largest online advertising player with the most advanced monetization tool set out there talking about challenges monetizing certain types of pages, yeah, it would seem to be an indication of a broader industry issue," said Derek Brown, an analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald.

And Microsoft, for its part, isn't seeing the same thing as its chief rival. A Microsoft executive told CNET News.com on Thursday that monetization rates are good and have been steadily rising since the company first began feeding ads to Facebook in mid-2006.

Vista's one-year checkup
Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system turned one this week, which meant it was time for a thorough examination of its strengths and ailments.

A one-year security checkup came back with, if not a completely clean bill of health, at least signs that the infant is healthier than most babies.

According to the report, Microsoft issued 17 security updates fixing 36 vulnerabilities in Vista in the 12 months following its commercial launch in November 2006. By comparison, the company issued 30 security updates encompassing 65 vulnerabilities in XP's first year.

The report's author, Microsoft's Jeffrey Jones, says those numbers compare with more than 100 vulnerabilities fixed in Mac OS X Tiger's first year, more than 220 flaws in Ubuntu version 6.06 in its first year, and 360 flaws fixed for Red Hat enterprise Linux 4 in its first year.

There are lots more ways to look at how Windows Vista did in the first year, and CNET News.com's Ina Fried examines the plusses and minuses of Vista, looking at topics like the "downgrade to XP" movement, sales numbers, and compatibility with hardware and other software. Fried also took a rather unorthodox approach to assessing Vista by applying what she calls the "Mom test."

Kenya's parties agree to stop violence

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Kenya's feuding parties agreed on Friday to a framework for talks to resolve a violent political crisis, in which some 850 people have died, within 15 days, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said.

The two sides, at odds since a Dec. 27 election returned President Mwai Kibaki to power in a vote opposition challenger Raila Odinga says he rigged, said they had agreed only a skeleton model for talks but hoped to make progress quickly.

Annan said they would discuss stopping ethnically motivated killings, how to deliver humanitarian aid to the affected and how to resolve the immediate political crisis before tackling a longer term solution, which could take a year.

"The first is to take immediate action to stop the violence," Annan, who is heading the mediation, told reporters.

"But more importantly, the parties agreed that the first three items could be handled and resolved within 7 to 15 days."

Talks are to resume on Monday. Senior opposition official Musalia Mudavadi said they two sides agreed to urge supporters to end the violence, in which rival tribes are locked into a cycle of killings and lootings.

"We ... agreed on the agenda items ... We have made substantial progress on the first agenda item ... We are calling on the public to disband any illegal militia," he said.

Kenya's Justice Minister Martha Karua agreed and said steps would be taken to protect life and property after post-poll protests descended into bloodshed.

Annan's announcement followed a visit by his successor, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon, to give clout to diplomatic efforts.

Ban met negotiating teams for Kibaki and Odinga trying to reach a deal to end the crisis in what had been one of the continent's more stable nations and strongest economies.

"What is important at this time is to maintain peace and security," he told reporters. "The killing must stop."

But even as he spoke, violence continued in flashpoints all over western Kenya.

"I saw around 20 torched houses including shops and two policemen with arrow wounds," said a local journalist who had visited the area and did not want to be named.

"At least 10 people have died from both sides."

Leaders at an African Union summit in Ethiopia want urgent action. Ban flew in from there for a one-day visit to Kenya.

"You have lost already too much in terms of national image, economic interest," he said.

More than 300,000 Kenyans are living as refugees.

Kibaki says he is Kenya's elected leader but international observers said the count was so chaotic it was impossible to tell who won.

KIBAKI BLAMES RIVALS

At a meeting of an east African regional grouping, Kibaki made provocative statement accusing his rivals of instigating the bloodshed and telling them again to challenge his disputed re-election in court.

"Regrettably, although the election results reflected the will of the majority of Kenyans, the leaders in the opposition instigated a campaign of civil unrest," he said.

Odinga says he would not get a fair hearing in court because the judiciary is biased toward Kibaki, although the opposition has challenged legislative elections in the courts.

The unrest has taken the lid off decades-old divisions between tribal groupings over land, wealth and power, dating from British colonial rule and stoked by Kenyan politicians during 44 years of independence.

The United States and European countries have pledged their support for Annan's mediation efforts. Donors have said aid programmes to Kenya are under review.

Fresh protests, in which witnesses said at least two people were killed, broke out on Thursday after a police officer in the Rift Valley town of Eldoret shot dead an opposition legislator.

He was the second killed in a week.

The officer who fatally shot the legislator and also a female police officer with him, appeared in court on Friday.

Police have said they are treating the killing as a "crime of passion", but Odinga again called it a politically-motivated assassination when he viewed the legislator's body at a Nairobi mortuary on Friday.

Soldiers fired into the air to disperse angry mobs in Eldoret after the shooting killing. Hospital sources said at least 20 people were wounded in the fighting.

MSFT and YHOO: Who's holding the shotgun?

And then there were two. If Microsoft's $44.6-billion (U.S.) bid for struggling Web giant Yahoo Inc. is successful -- which it almost certainly will be -- then there will be only two Web titans where once there was a triumvirate. Google and Microsoft will finally be going head-to-head for supremacy in the online advertising market, a game that Google has more or less controlled ever since it arrived on the scene several years ago, despite Microsoft and Yahoo's best efforts.

Microsoft is rumoured to have made several advances to Yahoo over the past year and a half, and has been turned down each time. But now, the software behemoth is going directly to shareholders with an offer that has to look awfully good after the year Yahoo just had. Shares of the Web company have plummeted by more than 45 per cent in just the last three months, as investors have soured on the company's chances of a rebound. Terry Semel was ousted as CEO because of a failure to deliver, and replaced by Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang -- a sentimental favourite with Yahoo fans, but a relatively unknown quantity from a management point of view.

The big question, of course, is whether this deal makes any sense or not. It clearly makes sense for Yahoo, since the company effectively gets a bye on having to come up with any kind of brilliant turnaround strategy -- and shareholders, including co-founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, get a nice multibillion-dollar payday. Yahoo's online advertising efforts haven't had much success in growing the company's market share, despite the fact that the company bought Overture, the firm that invented the keyword-ad market that Google later perfected. So why not sell?

For Microsoft, the question is a little murkier. Buying Yahoo has to look like a pretty sweet deal on the surface at least. Not only is the stock 60 per cent off what it was the last time Microsoft looked at buying it, but acquiring Yahoo gives the software company instant heft in its own online advertising business -- a business that has continued to be a distant third in the market, despite Microsoft spending billions of dollars in an attempt to improve its position. Yahoo also has a number of attractive media properties and relationships such as Yahoo Music that Microsoft could fold into its own MSN assets

At the same time, however, buying a company like Yahoo and trying to merge it with a gargantuan company like Microsoft is a time-consuming and expensive task -- not to mention the difficulty of blending those two corporate cultures. Microsoft is a packaged software distributor at heart, while Yahoo is a Web company, and mixing those two approaches isn't going to be easy. When Hewlett-Packard bought Compaq, it took several years for HP to actually digest the company. HP was lucky that by the time it was done, its main competitor had weakened to the point where it could get back in the game relatively easily. Google isn't likely to give Microsoft that option.

In a sense, this is a move of desperation for both companies -- a kind of shotgun wedding, but with both sides holding the gun. Microsoft needs to buy Yahoo (or thinks it does) just as much as Yahoo needs to be bought by Microsoft. But will it be a happy union? The happiest player in this particular game has to be Google: This deal means that it is dominating the market to the point where the world's biggest personal software company and one of the founding fathers of the Web have been virtually compelled to join forces.

Texas UIL Realignment Released Today

The University Interscholastic League realigned schools throughout the state of Texas this morning in a new UIL Realignment announcement released today.

2008-09 and 2009-10 Tentative Football and Basketball District Assignments and Reclassification Information

The University Interscholastic League announces the 2008-09 and 2009-10 tentative football and basketball district assignments on the enclosed list. The spring meet and other athletic district alignments will be released at a later date.

An organizing school list is also enclosed. It is the responsibility of the organizing school to organize the district and notify the UIL office of the name and the school of the permanent chairman for each sport so that district executive committee mailings are sent to the correct person. Contracts cannot be made until February 22, 2008.

Schools may discuss scheduling possible games beginning on February 1, but cannot actually contract until February 22. Districts with an odd number of schools may meet prior to February 22 to determine "open" dates within the district schedule. These districts cannot set the district schedule, but may draw byes. District Executive Committees may begin contracting games on February 22, 2008.

The Chair of the Legislative Council shall appoint a District Assignment Appeals Committee. A participant school may request an appeal of the district assignment by filing its request and a supporting statement with the District Assignment Appeals Committee and informing, in writing, the superintendent and principal of the schools in the district to which it was assigned and to the district to which it wishes to be assigned. This appeal must be made by February 14, 2008. The meeting at which appeals will be heard is scheduled for February 21, 2008.

Celtics (13-0) earn another West win

So far, the Celtics know how the West is won.
more stories like this

* At this point, missing Garnett doesn't hurt Celtics
* Mavericks know of challenges facing Celtics
* Allen is latest Celtic floored by flu bug
* C's beat up on Heat
* No Garnett, no Allen, no problem: Celtics roll past Heat, 117-87

They defeated the Dallas Mavericks, 96-90, last night at a sold-out TD Banknorth Garden. With Celtics legend Bill Russell sitting courtside, Boston improved to 13-0 against the Western Conference this season.

While the Celtics have yet to play the reigning champion Spurs and the hot Suns and Hornets, defeating the Mavericks legitimized Boston's unblemished West record.

"I didn't know that," said Celtics coach Doc Rivers of his team being 13-0 against the West. "It's nice. It caught me off guard. But we still have a West Coast trip coming up [after] the All-Star break, so you know I'm not going to say a word about it. The West is better than the East."

Boston is now an NBA-best 36-8, and 20-4 at home, after going 10-5 in January.

Kevin Garnett missed his third straight game with an abdominal strain. Boston, however, is 2-1 without Garnett, filling his mammoth sneakers with the likes of Leon Powe (10 points, 4 rebounds) and James Posey (13 points, 3 rebounds).

"When you don't have a Garnett and you win against Dallas, it's good," Rivers said. "Dallas is a team that we are still trying to catch in our minds. They've been there."

Rivers said he wouldn't return Garnett to the lineup until he was 100 percent and that there was no timetable for his return. Rivers, however, did say that Garnett seemed to be improving.

Garnett hasn't spoken publicly in a week. Director of basketball operations Danny Ainge, however, expressed optimism that Garnett will be back soon.

"I'm not worried long term," Ainge said. "It's day to day. I'm hoping he can play next week."

Allen returned to the lineup after missing Tuesday's game at Miami with flu-like symptoms. He received intravenous fluids at a Miami hospital and slept so much that day that he remembers little of it.

"I just kept throwing up," Allen said. "It was probably the most I had thrown up in my life."

To make matters worse, he returned to action just after learning he didn't get selected to the Eastern Conference All-Star team, while teammates Garnett and Paul Pierce made it.

The teams went into halftime knotted at 44. Allen scored 22 points on 9-of-11 shooting before the break. Dallas forward Josh Howard, who was snubbed for the Western Conference All-Star team, scored 17 of his 19 points in the first half.

"I was trying to make plays," Allen said. "I've spent a lot of time being a playmaker so I wanted to make sure I came out and was aggressive."

Boston held a 71-70 lead through three. Pierce scored 13 points in the third quarter, when Dallas's Dirk Nowitzki scored 17 of his game-high 31 points.

Howard's lay-in tied the game at 88 with 3:21 left. Two free throws by Pierce gave Boston a 90-88 lead with 3:02 remaining, before Nowitzki hit two free throws with 58.4 seconds left to tie the game at 90.

After a missed jumper by Pierce, the 6-foot-1-inch, 171-pound Rondo snuck behind the 7-foot, 245-pound Nowitzki and took the ball out of his hands. Without hesitation, Rondo (14 points, season-high 12 rebounds) scored on a reserve lay-in to give Boston a 92-90 lead with 42.5 seconds left.

"[Rondo] came in from behind on us and I guess we just lost vision of him, and it was a huge play for him," said Mavericks coach Avery Johnson said.

Said Rivers: "Over the last three games, I think this is the best stretch of [Rondo's] career."

After Dallas guard Jason Terry missed a jumper in the lane, Posey retrieved the rebound with 10.9 seconds left. After being fouled, Posey sealed the win with two free throws with 10 seconds left.

"It's a little surprising," said Pierce of Boston's success against the West. "But, hey, we are focusing on what we have to do night in and night out. Anything is possible. I think the Western Conference favors the kind of style we like to play, anyway. They like to get up and down [the floor] a little more. They are more offensive-oriented than, I think, the Eastern Conference. That suits our style just fine."

Bruins dominate Sun Devils

There was plenty of spectacular play by UCLA against Arizona State on Thursday night at Pauley Pavilion, but just enough caution for the fifth-ranked Bruins to rout the Sun Devils, 84-51, in a Pacific 10 Conference game.

It was the fourth straight loss for the Sun Devils, 14-6 overall and 4-4 in the Pac-10, who couldn't cope when UCLA practiced patience during an early 13-0 run that gave the first-place Bruins (19-2, 7-1) an unchallenged 18-4 advantage.

And they coped even less well when the Bruins felt free to improvise a little bit later.

"I'm really pleased with how we played tonight, especially attacking the zone defense," UCLA Coach Ben Howland said. "This team tonight against the zone did the best job ever since I've been here."

Howland pointed to the fact that against a defense where the first open shot is often a long distance shot, the Bruins took only 12 three-pointers and made eight of them.

"That's a lot of efficiency," Howland said. "To only take 12 threes against a zone is a good sign."

Certain that they could break down Arizona State by going inside (Luc Richard Mbah a Moute started UCLA's initial run with a layup) and then outside (Josh Shipp made consecutive open three pointers in the middle of it), the Bruins were able to be aggressive and creative.

"Obviously we got whipped in every facet of the game," Arizona State Coach Herb Sendek said. "Tonight was just a learning experience."

After the Sun Devils had drawn within 30-20, Russell Westbrook stuck his hand in the passing lane and came out with a steal. The ball went on a string to Darren Collison who passed, with both feet in the air, to a running Kevin Love, who scored a dainty layup and encouraged the Pauley sellout crowd of 11,070 to its feet.

Collison said he didn't even remember the play. Love said he meant to dunk the ball but his leg locked up a little. Yet the basket put the Bruins ahead, 34-20, and the Sun Devils seemed to lose heart while UCLA extended that lead to 46-24 by halftime.

What followed was more joyful basketball.

Love eyeballed Collison after Arizona State made a free throw and hit him with an immediate outlet pass for a fastbreak layup. Shipp made his fifth three-pointer of the game with 12:27 left while he was fading almost out of bounds.

With almost nine minutes left and UCLA up 72-38, many of the late-arriving crowd became early exiters.

Howland wasn't quite as eager to sit down his stars. With 8:27 left, Collison was checked hard into the stanchion and stayed on the ground for a moment. Hobbled for so long by a sprained knee and a sore hip, each Collison tumble is cause for concern. But the junior point guard hopped up and made his free throws to put the Bruins up, 76-40.

Those foul shots were Collison's 27th and 28th in a row. The school record is 36 in a row, set by Henry Bibby in 1972.

Collison wasn't considering any personal streaks after the game though. He was celebrating UCLA's unselfish play.

"We were making extra passes, everybody looked for the open guy and it is real fun to play this way," he said.

Love finished with his 12th double-double (20 points and 10 rebounds), Shipp had a game-high 21 points and Collison had 14 points and nine assists with only one turnover.

Mbah a Moute, who missed both UCLA wins on the Oregon trip last weekend because of a concussion, was back in the starting lineup as was Westbrook (in place of Alfred Aboya). Westbrook had been coming off the bench since Michael Roll injured his foot a month ago.

"My purpose was that we wanted to attack the zone early," Howland said, "and that's our best five players from the standpoint of attacking a zone defense."

There was a single down note afterward. Howland said backup center Lorenzo Mata-Real injured his left wrist in the final 30 seconds while taking a charge and may need an X-ray.

'Over Her Dead Body' Is Enlivened by a Free Spirit

Is there love after death? Around Hollywood, that's like asking if there's valet parking at Mr. Chow's. Even a cursory survey of the available research material -- "Topper," "Blithe Spirit," "Wuthering Heights," "Ghost," "Heaven Can Wait," "Close to Heaven," the recent "P.S. I Love You" -- nullifies the notion that mere mortality might ever get in the way of romance. After all, it's not as if life comes with end credits.

And yet, when we talk about "movie magic," we're not talking about the casual ability to suspend the divine rule book. We mean the screen's capacity to cloud men's minds. To perform sleight of hand, using smoke and mirrors. To execute an alchemical process on the most leaden or ridiculous of plots and devices. Take "Casablanca": Why in the world would the Nazis have cared about letters of transit signed by Gen. de Gaulle? Before you can give it much thought, Ingrid Bergman walks into the room, and the issue is moot. How about "Pretty Woman"? Isn't the premise about a hooker-turned-Cinderella just a tiny bit fatuous? Yes, but Julia Roberts laughs off all the arguments. Is "Juno" overrated? Okay, let's not go there.

"Over Her Dead Body," which should be the biggest tuna on that barge known as the weekend movie menu, has a fatuous, overabused storyline and a larger set of gestures than Cecil B. De Mille. But it also has Lake Bell -- the actress, not the nautical alarm system -- who blows into "Over Her Dead Body" the way the aforementioned Roberts blew into 1988's "Mystic Pizza." She takes over the screen. She is unkempt yet Botticellian. In her imperfectly beautiful way, she suggests Carole Lombard. As a comedian, she is enough of a distraction that you forgive all the inanities occurring around her. And there are many.

"Over Her Dead Body" is -- one supposes -- Eva Longoria Parker's movie, although the "Desperate Housewives" star is uncategorically eclipsed by her co-star, and playing the least sympathetic figure in the movie. Wearing a crescendo of hair and enough bronzer to alter the complexion of Finnish Lapland, Parker's Kate marches around the site of her pending nuptials with all the cuddliness of Otto von Bismarck. "It's your wedding day! Relax!" urges her laid-back veterinarian fiance, Henry (Paul Rudd), who apparently has never seen an episode of "Bridezillas." When a 500-pound ice sculpture lands on Kate, sending her to the antechamber of paradise, a sigh of contentment is heard from caterers all over the country.

There's a great deal of forced naturalism in "Over Her Dead Body" which is of the standard-issue, aren't-we-quirky-but-not-too-quirky-for-cable air of premeditated spontaneity. Except for Bell. She really is a natural, or as natural as one can be in a movie in which a dead fiancee returns to demolish her dear bridegroom's love life. As Ashley the psychic -- who is also a caterer -- Bell mixes eccentricity with warmth, creating a character so charming we don't stop to ask The Questions: What qualifies the goofy Ashley as a psychic (or a caterer!)? Why would someone as rumpled and easygoing as Henry agree, even at the request of his sister, Chloe (the winning Lindsay Sloane), to visit a clairvoyant like Ashley, especially to make contact with someone like Kate? None of it makes a lick of sense, not logically, emotionally or dramatically. But we have Bell, and everything's cool.

At this point, we the reviewer are experiencing buyer's remorse. Have we invested too much in Lake Bell? Is she really as convincing as we thought? Our fascination, we think (and hope), is less about a hormonal response than the phenomenon of the camera: How does an actress of less-than-classic beauty, whose features, in any objective sense, are overlarge and out of balance (the same was said of Sophia Loren), exist as such a pure creature of cinema? That movie stars are another species is not an original thought. But when one comes along, you know it. Anthropologically speaking.

The comedy doesn't nearly live up to its star, who, while a bit of a throwback to the era of effervescent screwball humor, is in a movie swirling in a vortex of formula. The momentum that's built as Ashley and Henry get on the same romantic track, and as Kate tries to derail them, starts to slow when Ashley finds the resolve to stand her ground rather than run comically away.

Writer-director Jeff Lowell must have sensed this, because he appends two sort-of subtexts that serve as movie applique rather than plot engines. One involves Dan, Ashley's catering partner and a gay man (Jason "American Pie" Biggs is actually quite good) with a secret. The other involves Chloe, who's a bit of a kleptomaniac around Henry's office, steals people's animals and does generally wacky things. She's enchanting but superfluous. What's interesting is that she's a free-spirited woman in a movie already built around one. How much individuality can one movie support? No one ever said there was a limit on personality, and Chloe supplies plenty of it.

And all this follows a year in which women were relegated to supporting roles, if they were lucky. (How does one explain Cate Blanchett's Best Actress nomination for "Elizabeth: The Golden Age"? Poverty of choice.) "Over Her Dead Body," whose title might have explained the entire, dire state of women on film in 2007, has three very capable actresses in prominent roles. It may make one of them a star. There are certainly worse ways to start off a year in movies

Britney Spears returns to psych ward

Amid an orgy of flashing lights, police sirens and chopper blades, pop tart Britney Spears made a comeback of sorts Thursday - returning to a Los Angeles psychiatric ward.

A motorcade stretching the length of a football field whisked the singer to the UCLA Medical Center for a 72-hour stay after another "sad, sad evening" for the endlessly erratic entertainer, according to a family source.

"I don't know about Britney," her grandfather, June Austin Spears, told the Daily News. "I'm worried about her. She shouldn't go in the nut house.

"Sometimes you come out worse than you come in."

Sources said Britney Spears was up without sleep for three days and driving like a madwoman through her exclusive California neighborhood before she was hospitalized.

Celebrity Web site TMZ.com said Spears told doctors she was taking Adderall, a drug used to treat attention deficit disorder, and as many as 10 laxatives a day.

Spears, 26, has been classified as "G.D.," gravely disabled, which means she is unable to take care of her personal needs, such as food, clothing and shelter, TMZ.com also reported.

The classification is one of the criteria for involuntary commitment.

Some sources said the pop tart was refusing to take her prescription medicine when the strange behavior began.

A photographer staking out her Studio City mansion said she was disoriented and slurring her words. "She was really confused, like she didn't know where to go," he said. Sipping a Red Bull and wearing sunglasses, Spears started driving to a nearby dance studio before abandoning her plans and coming home, he said.

She was in the house early Thursday with her mother, Lynne; a friend, Alli Simms, and manager Osama Lutfi when the psychiatrist called the Los Angeles Police Department to commit her, published reports said.

"Her daddy and [her brother] Bryan had a lot to do with it," said the singer's 77-year-old grandfather. "They want what's best for her."

Police arrived shortly before 1 a.m., and she was loaded into an ambulance within 10 minutes for a hurried trip down Coldwater Canyon Blvd., police said.

The post-midnight motorcade was more fit for a President than a pop star: 11 police motorcycles and two police cars, with a pair of LAPD helicopters hovering above the ambulance carrying the distressed singer.

A source inside the Spears camp insisted the platinum-selling star was very calm and went willingly with police after they arrived at her house.

Actor George Clooney Becomes UN Peace Envoy

Oscar-winning actor George Clooney turned the normally staid United Nations upside down on Thursday when he visited the headquarters to become a U.N. Messenger of Peace. VOA's Margaret Besheer reports from the U.N. that the American celebrity is well-known for his work as a human rights activist on Darfur.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon enlisted George Clooney as a Messenger of Peace for his ability to raise awareness about critical issues.

The U.N. chief bestows the title of Messenger of Peace for an initial period of three years on prominent personalities willing to volunteer their time and talent to promote U.N.'s global peace efforts.

There was no doubt at U.N. headquarters on Thursday that the American actor can draw a crowd.

For the last few years, Clooney has been a passionate activist about the conflict in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region. In his new U.N. capacity, he will have a special focus on peacekeeping.

He just returned from a two-week trip to Sudan, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo with the U.N.'s Assistant Secretary-General of Peacekeeping Operations Jane Holl Lute. He told reporters the U.N has an important role to play in the crisis, and spoke about an experience he had while on his trip.

"When I stood in the hospital next to women who had been raped and set on fire two days earlier, they looked up to me and said, 'Please send the U.N.' - not the U.S., not China, not Russia - just the U.N. You are their only hope," he said.

In Darfur, Clooney said the Sudanese government tried, but failed, to show them that the international community had treated the government unfairly and accusations of atrocities are exaggerated.

"Let us be clear, as we traveled to north, south and west Darfur - in el-Fasher, Nyala and Zalengi - there was not one man, woman or child at any of these camps, at any of these locations who did not hold the government of Sudan or its Janjaweed-supported militia responsible for them being displaced," he added. "Not one."

Clooney also touched on the issue of equipment - particularly the need for helicopters - for the newly deployed African Union-U.N. peacekeeping force in Darfur. He said the vast country lacks sufficient roads and helicopters are badly needed and urged member states to equip the troops properly.

He said there is only one chance to get it right in Darfur and only the United Nations can help on this scale. Clooney said he is proud to be a messenger of peace and that his message is: "the world is watching and you cannot afford to fail."

Ferry runs aground off Blackpool

A roll-on roll-off ferry which ran into trouble in high winds in the Irish Sea has run aground off Blackpool.

A total of 19 crew members and four passengers were flown to safety from the Riverdance, after it was hit by a freak wave in bad weather.

Nine of the crew members were still on board when it ran aground on the north shore of Blackpool beach on its journey from Northern Ireland to Heysham.

Owner Seatruck Ferries said it was trying to salvage the ferry.

Initially four passengers and 10 crew members were rescued, with the remaining nine crew rescued later.

A spokesman for Seatruck Ferries said: "The conditions are such that the master requested helicopter transfer of all personnel.

"All nine (crew members) are now safely off."

He added: "The issue was that as we approached high water the vessel started to rotate broadside on the beach.

"The high swell caused a list and, under those circumstances, the master decided safety came first."

He said the boat was listing 30 degrees and there was a risk that a helicopter rescue would be impossible if it was delayed any longer.

"We have now organised salvage assistance for the vessel," he added.

The Riverdance got into difficulties on Thursday evening, 10 nautical miles off the coast of Fleetwood, Lancashire, over a bank known as Shell Flat.

It had been sailing from Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland.

The vessel issued a Mayday at about 1930 GMT and three helicopters from the RAF, Royal Navy and Coastguard, were sent to the scene to help winch those on board to safety.

People were lifted two at a time into the helicopters, with nine crew staying on board to try and prevent the vessel from sinking.

Two lifeboats with volunteer crews also assisted in the rescue operation.

Rich Taylor, one of the RAF winch men involved, said: "It took some time to get the first rope down to the boat.

"Unfortunately, we then lost contact with that rope just through the boat moving away from us in the big swirl.

"So we had another bash at it and managed to get another rope down."

Seatruck Ferries Limited said the stricken vessel had been carrying trucks and trailers from Warrenpoint in Northern Ireland to the port of Heysham in Lancashire, when it was struck by the freak wave.

The wave caused the ship's cargo to shift resulting in the vessel developing a significant list.

Speaking during the rescue operation, John Matthews from Fleetwood RNLI described the sea conditions as "horrendous" with 7m waves and winds of up to 60mph (96km/h).

'Extremely unlucky'

Kevin Hobbs, the chief executive of Seatruck Ferries Limited, defended the decision to run the service in bad weather.

"When the vessel sailed there was no cause for concern," he said.

"There are many ships at sea at the moment in these conditions and we've just been extremely unlucky."

Those flown to safety have been taken to Blackpool Airport to recover and be assessed for injuries.

Supt Richard Spedding, of Lancashire Police, said a couple of them had "very, very minor injuries" but they were "glad to be safe on dry land".

Baghdad hit by two deadly market bombs

Up to 35 people were killed and dozens wounded in bombings at two Baghdad pet markets within 20 minutes of each other today.

A bomb hidden in a birdbox exploded at about 10.20am at the central al-Ghazl market, killing at least 17 people and wounding 27, police and hospital officials said. Six children and many teenagers were reported to be among the victims.

About 20 minutes later, another bomb targeted a bird market in the mainly Shiite southeastern neighborhood of New Baghdad. Police said four people were killed and nine wounded, including some children.

The bombings, which took place shortly before the weekly Islamic call to prayer, are the latest in a series of attacks chipping away at the recent security gains achieved by building up the numbers of US troops and a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida.

In late November, a bomb hidden in a box of small birds exploded at the al-Ghazl market, killing at least 15 people and wounding dozens, but it has recently re-emerged as a popular venue after security was improved and a driving ban was lifted.

The US military blamed the November attack on Iranian-backed Shiite militants who had hoped al-Qaida in Iraq would be held responsible for the attack so Iraqis would turn to the Shiites for protection.