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/ 16 November 2007
As the Hollywood writers’ strike winds through a second week, many American viewers are missing the political satire they’ve come to love on late-night talk shows, but otherwise appear unconcerned. The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Saturday Night Live are the main casualties of the strike that started on November 5.
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/ 15 November 2007
A planned United Nations-African Union peace force for Darfur could fail unless disputes with Sudan over its make-up are resolved and key specialised units found. The 26 000-member force aims to bring security to the western Sudanese region after four-and-a-half years of conflict.
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/ 15 November 2007
Led by a record-breaking Jeff Koons sculpture and a -million Francis Bacon canvas, Sotheby’s roared back from a dismal Impressionist sale to score the highest total in its history at a contemporary and postwar art auction on Wednesday.
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/ 14 November 2007
Chevron, the number-two United States oil company, has agreed to pay -million to resolve criminal and civil liabilities related to procurement of oil under the United Nations oil-for-food programme, US prosecutors said on Wednesday. Chevron will not be prosecuted and will continue to cooperate with investigators, they said.
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/ 14 November 2007
Thousands of people who volunteered to test an experimental Aids vaccine that may have actually raised the risk of infection will be told if they got the actual shot. Merck and academic researchers said they would ”unblind” the study, meaning everyone would find out who got the active shot and who got a dummy injection.
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/ 14 November 2007
Ira Levin, the playwright and novelist who wrote Rosemary’s Baby, The Stepford Wives and The Boys From Brazil, has died at the age of 78, the New York Times reported on November 13. Levin died on November 12 at his home in Manhattan, apparently of natural causes.
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/ 14 November 2007
Nanotechnology has been hailed as the science of the future, with micro-particles already powering innovations that remove lines from faces, strengthen beer bottles and clean clothing without water. Yet early studies also indicate some of these particles, enabled by the latest in engineering science, can cause cancer.
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/ 13 November 2007
In a nine-country survey released on Tuesday, more than 40% of respondents did not understand that HIV/Aids is always fatal. While most respondents believed that The survey from the MAC Aids Fund involved 4Â 510 interviews conducted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.
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/ 13 November 2007
A private pathologist hired by the family of a South African-born woman who died in police custody at Phoenix airport in the United States said she accidentally strangled herself — but he also blamed police for her death. He agreed with a medical examiner’s report that the intoxicated woman accidentally strangled herself on her shackles.
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/ 13 November 2007
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday hailed as a ”significant breakthrough” last week’s agreement by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Rwanda to deal with illegal armed groups in the eastern DRC. Ban urged both Kinshasa and Kigali to ”act urgently to implement all the agreed measures”.
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/ 13 November 2007
Marvel is putting some of its older comics online on Tuesday, hoping to reintroduce young people to the X-Men and Fantastic Four by showcasing the original issues in which such characters appeared. It is a tentative move, but it represents perhaps the comics industry’s most aggressive web push yet.
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/ 11 November 2007
Low-cost computers meant to usher poor children worldwide into the digital age are being mass-produced in China as United States non-profit One Laptop Per Child strives to deliver on its promise. The first of the XO laptops being built at a Quanta Computer facility in Changshu are destined for Uruguay.
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/ 11 November 2007
A computer security consultant accused of installing malicious software to create an army of up to 250 000 ”zombie” computers so he could steal identities and access bank accounts will plead guilty to four federal charges. He could face up to 60 years in federal prison and a ,75-million fine.
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/ 10 November 2007
”OJ’s in court today and I’m standing here. I don’t want to be here. I want to be in there, doing my job.” Joe Medeiros nods at the hulk of the NBC building in Burbank, Los Angeles, outside which he and a gaggle of fellow red-shirted pickets have been walking in circles for the best part of the morning.
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/ 9 November 2007
When a blogger revealed earlier this year that Microsoft wanted to pay him to fix purported inaccuracies in technical articles on Wikipedia, the software company endured online slams and a rebuke from the web encyclopedia’s founder for behaving unethically. But why is it so bad to pay someone to write something on Wikipedia?
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/ 9 November 2007
A sports collector told a Las Vegas courtroom on Thursday that United States ”trial of the century” defendant OJ Simpson stormed his hotel room with armed men and stole dozens of items of memorabilia. Items stolen from Fromong’s room included memorabilia from Simpson’s own sporting career
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/ 9 November 2007
A divided United States Senate confirmed retired judge Michael Mukasey as Attorney General on Thursday, setting aside concerns he might support interrogation methods decried worldwide as torture. On a largely party-line vote of 53-40, the Senate approved his nomination to succeed Alberto Gonzales.
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/ 8 November 2007
A cold virus used to make an experimental HIV vaccine that was discontinued in September somehow may have caused volunteers to be more susceptible to Aids, the vaccine’s developers said on Wednesday. Researchers were doubly dismayed when it appeared that those who had been vaccinated were more likely to become infected.
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/ 7 November 2007
Google on Monday spelled out long-rumoured plans to enter the cellphone market in 2008 by building software that could help the industry make the internet run more easily on phones. The web search company is looking to expand the range of internet services it now offers through computer browsers to the far larger cellphone market.
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/ 7 November 2007
Every day that gunshots ring out in a Mogadishu neighbourhood, every week that an explosion rips homes into plumes of dust, and every month that thousands of civilians flee the capital, Somalia plunges deeper into crisis. Last week’s resignation of Ali Mohamed Gedi, the country’s Prime Minister, is the latest shake-up in a chronology of political turmoil in the Horn of Africa state.
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/ 5 November 2007
Fear and mistrust gripped Wall Street on Monday after Citigroup’s CEO quit in the wake of mounting credit losses and an influential money manager called the subprime mortgage market a ”-trillion problem”. US stocks followed European shares lower, while safe-haven bonds rallied and even the downtrodden dollar ticked up.
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/ 5 November 2007
Lance Armstrong trained harder for his second marathon, and it showed. The retired seven-time Tour de France champion improved his time by 13 minutes at the New York City Marathon on Sunday, and didn’t have to battle shin splints. ”I enjoyed it much more this year,” said Armstrong.
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/ 5 November 2007
The United States space shuttle Discovery successfully undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) early on Monday to begin a journey back to Earth, space officials said. After saying goodbye and closing the hatches, Discovery crew members smoothly sailed away from the ISS at 10.30am GMT.
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/ 5 November 2007
An autopsy of elite runner Ryan Shay was inconclusive after the 28-year-old collapsed and died in Central Park at the United States men’s marathon Olympic trials. ”We want to take a closer look at the heart tissue,” said Ellen Borakove, spokesperson for the city medical examiner’s office
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/ 5 November 2007
Paula Radcliffe made a triumphant return to marathon racing and Martin Lel reprised his thrilling London victory to win at Sunday’s New York City Marathon. Radcliffe, running her first marathon in two years after taking a maternity break and recuperating from injury, beat Gete Wami after a race-long duel.
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/ 5 November 2007
United States film and television writers started going on strike on Monday as last-minute talks aimed at averting the Writers Guild of America’s first strike in almost two decades collapsed. The strike is expected to shut down many sitcoms and send popular late-night talk shows immediately into reruns.
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/ 5 November 2007
As investors bet on the future of social networks, some of the biggest players in the field are due to unveil this week ways of piping in advertising to the most personal of media formats. MySpace, the world’s largest social network, is releasing details on Monday of how it is building discrete audiences out of nearly 110-million users.
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/ 5 November 2007
If the people of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) save the mountain gorilla, might the gorilla return the favour? That is the hope of environmental activists, who realise that wildlife conservation and tourism could be the key to survival for people as well as animals in a part of Africa where conflict has been the norm.
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/ 5 November 2007
Public restrooms have become an unexpected source of controversy in the United States as experts argue over how the ever-essential destination can avoid discriminating by class or sex. ”In the US, but also in many other parts of the world — including India … issues having to do with human waste are taboo from public discussion. It is a last frontier,” said Harvey Molotch, a professor of cultural analysis at New York University.
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/ 4 November 2007
Bush administration officials are weighing a plan that would grant detainees at Guantánamo Bay greater rights, as part of an effort to close the facility and possibly move some of the detainees to locations in the United States locations, the New York Times reported in Sunday editions.
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/ 4 November 2007
Citigroup chief executive Charles Prince plans to resign this weekend, the Wall Street Journal said on Friday, as the widening subprime mortgage crisis brings to an end the reign of Sanford Weill’s troubled successor. The largest United States bank by assets plans to hold an emergency board meeting on Sunday, at which Prince will step down.
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/ 3 November 2007
International Olympic Committee (IOC) chief Jacques Rogge said on Friday that poor air quality in Beijing could disrupt events in next year’s games. ”We will not hesitate to delay or postpone events if the air quality could harm athletes,” Rogge said during a speech in Chicago.