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/ 31 January 2007
A Harvard study has raised new doubts over the authenticity of three paintings previously thought to be works by abstract artist Jackson Pollock, weighing into a simmering controversy in the art world. The report by the Harvard University Art Museums suggested the three paintings may have employed paints not available until after the painter’s death.
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/ 31 January 2007
Half the money needed this year for the court trying former Liberian President Charles Taylor on war-crimes charges has been raised, the prosecutor in the case said on Tuesday. Taylor is charged with overseeing a campaign of terror, murder, mutilation, rape and enslavement in neighbouring Sierra Leone’s 10-year civil war.
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/ 30 January 2007
Iran’s people would face ”deprivation” over their leaders’ nuclear ambitions, United States President George Bush said in an interview on Monday, warning Tehran against sowing ”discord and harm” in Iraq. Bush said in an interview with National Public Radio that he had no plans to invade Iran.
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/ 30 January 2007
United States tennis captain Zina Garrison announced on Monday that Venus Williams, who missed the Australian Open with a left wrist injury, will play in the first round of the Fed Cup on April 21-22 at the Delray Beach Stadium and Tennis Centre.
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/ 30 January 2007
Microsoft rolled out Windows Vista at retailers in 70 countries on Tuesday, delivering a new computer operating system that aims to manage the explosion of digital media better and protect users from the dangers of the internet. The world’s biggest software maker marked the launch with a marketing blitz.
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/ 29 January 2007
A youth carrying South African documents has been found dead in the wheel well of a British Airways jet at Los Angeles International Airport, the Los Angeles Times reported on Monday. Authorities are investigating whether the dead stowaway, described as a young black male, got into the plane at its previous stop in London or at an earlier stop in Hong Kong.
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/ 29 January 2007
The United States said on Monday Israel may have violated an agreement with Washington in its use of US-made cluster bombs during last July’s war with Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon. ”There were likely violations,” said State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack, adding that a preliminary classified report is being sent to the US Congress on Monday.
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/ 27 January 2007
The United States Treasury Department named two South African cousins as al-Qaeda financiers and facilitators, ordering a freeze on any US assets they may have and banning Americans from doing business with them. The treasury said Farhad Ahmed Dockrat provided funds to a trust used by al-Qaeda.
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/ 26 January 2007
Reports about a study that found microwave ovens can be used to sterilise kitchen sponges sent people hurrying to test the idea this week — with sometimes disastrous results. A team at the University of Florida found that two minutes in the microwave at full power could kill a range of bacteria, viruses and parasites on kitchen sponges.
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/ 26 January 2007
United States President George Bush has authorised the US military to kill or capture Iranian agents active inside Iraq, the Washington Post reported on Friday, citing government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the plan.
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/ 25 January 2007
Google announced on Friday that another major United States college library had joined its controversial project to put the world’s books online. The more than one million written works at the University of Texas library in the city of Austin will be converted to digital format and added to the Google Books Library Project.
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/ 25 January 2007
A man has been charged in connection with the murder of two black teenagers abducted and killed in Mississippi in 1964 at the height of the United States civil rights era, US officials said on Wednesday. James Seale was arrested in the case and charges against him were sealed, according to a US law enforcement official.
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/ 25 January 2007
Microsoft landed in the Wikipedia doghouse on Tuesday after it offered to pay a blogger to change technical articles on the community-produced web encyclopedia site. "We were very disappointed to hear that Microsoft was taking that approach," Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said.
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/ 25 January 2007
A former United States envoy to Sudan on Wednesday complained that United States policy on the country was based on a ”fundamental flaw” and warned a new war could erupt without urgent action. Roger Winter also made a personal appeal to President George Bush, warning that the peace agreement that ended Sudan’s bloody, 21-year civil war was at risk and would darken his White House legacy if it failed.
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/ 24 January 2007
Altruism, one of the most difficult human behaviors to define, can be detected in brain scans, United States researchers reported this week. They found activity in a specific area of the brain could predict altruistic behavior — and people’s own reports of how selfish or giving they are.
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/ 24 January 2007
United States President George Bush urged a rebellious Congress on Tuesday to give his new Iraq war plan a chance and insisted in his State of the Union speech it is not too late to shape the outcome. Facing sceptical lawmakers and some of the weakest approval ratings of his six years in office, Bush said the best chance for success is to send 21Â 500 more US troops to Iraq.
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/ 23 January 2007
United States President George Bush, politically weaker than ever, is to mount what could be a last-stand defence of his unpopular Iraq strategy on Tuesday in his annual State of the Union speech. Speaking for the first time to a US Congress controlled by opposition Democrats, Bush is also to lay out broad health care, environment and immigration reforms.
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/ 23 January 2007
Venture capitalists invested ,5-billion in 2006, marking the industry’s biggest burst of deal-making in the United States since the dot-com bust clogged the financial spigot for entrepreneurs five years ago. Renewed interest in internet start-ups, combined with expanding opportunities in the healthcare and alternative energy markets, spurred a 12% increase from the ,8-billion invested in 2005.
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/ 22 January 2007
Former world heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of drug possession and driving under the influence of drugs. Tyson spoke only to give his name and his birth date during the brief hearing before Maricopa County Superior Court Commissioner Lisa Vandenberg, who entered the plea on Tyson’s behalf.
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/ 20 January 2007
Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, United States researchers reported on Friday. When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time, the researchers report in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.
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/ 19 January 2007
A mystery man made his 58th straight visit to Edgar Allan Poe’s grave on Friday morning and was watched by the largest group of onlookers to date, the event’s most faithful viewer said. Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, said 55 people braved a chilly morning to catch a glimpse of the annual ritual.
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/ 19 January 2007
MySpace defended itself on Thursday against new lawsuits charging it had failed to protect five girls from being lured into sex traps by predators on the popular teen social website. The suits demand unspecified millions of dollars in damages from MySpace for "negligence, recklessness, fraud" and misrepresentation.
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/ 19 January 2007
Microsoft will make its new Vista operating system available for download via the internet when it debuts at the end of this month, a marketing first for the United States software colossus. Microsoft has sold its world-dominating software only on packaged disks since the Redmond, Washington, company opened for business in 1975.
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/ 19 January 2007
United States computer maker Hewlett-Packard on Thursday reveled in news that it had extended its lead as the world’s top personal computer vendor late last year, pressuring arch-rival Dell. Overall PC shipments in 2006 reached 228,6-million, 10% higher than the previous year.
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/ 19 January 2007
Pulitzer Prize-winning humourist Art Buchwald, who chronicled nightlife in postwar Paris, took aim at Washington’s powerful, and merrily cheated death for months in a hospice, has died at age 81. Buchwald, who had kidney failure, refused dialysis early last year and entered a hospice expecting to die within weeks.
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/ 18 January 2007
Darlene Conley, a veteran stage and television actress who entertained daytime audiences for nearly two decades as the feisty fashion mogul Sally Spectra on The Bold and the Beautiful, has died. She was 72. Conley died on January 7 of stomach cancer at her Los Angeles home surrounded by family and friends.
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/ 18 January 2007
The amount of nicotine that smokers typically inhale per cigarette rose by 11% from 1998 to 2005, perpetuating a ”tobacco pandemic” that makes it harder for smokers to quit, a Harvard study said on Thursday. To boost amounts of nicotine inhaled by smokers, cigarette makers intensified the concentration of nicotine in their tobacco and modified cigarette designs.
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/ 17 January 2007
Alice Coltrane, a jazz performer and composer whose late husband was saxophone legend John Coltrane, has died. She was 69. Coltrane died on January 12 of respiratory failure at West Hills Hospital and Medical Centre in West Hills, California, said Marilyn McLeod, her sister.
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/ 17 January 2007
As global sports icon Muhammad Ali celebrates his 65th birthday on Wednesday, the former heavyweight champion’s glory is undiminished by the ailment that has dimmed his flamboyant manner. At an age when most working Americans retire, Ali’s legend has been epic for decades and his absence from the ring for nearly a quarter of a century has not diminished his legacy.
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/ 16 January 2007
The searing cultural drama Babel and the uplifting musical Dreamgirls won the top Golden Globe awards on Monday, making them instant front-runners in Hollywood’s Oscar race. Dreamgirls, which follows the rise of three women singers and closely resembles the ascendancy of all-girl groups like The Supremes, won three awards.
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/ 13 January 2007
A powerful, 8,3-magnitude earthquake struck off Japan’s northern coast in the Pacific on Saturday, sparking a tsunami warning and sending thousands of residents along the archipelago’s eastern coast fleeing to higher ground, officials said. A small tsunami wave hit Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido.
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/ 13 January 2007
The Xbox 360 bested the Wii and PlayStation 3 in United States holiday-season sales as Microsoft scored what analysts on Friday expected to be a lasting victory in the new-generation video-game-console war. In a twist, Sony’s prior generation, the PlayStation 2, outsold all the freshly launched consoles.