Jared Nissim wanted to make one thing clear. ”This is definitely not a dating service,” the 32-year-old New Yorker explained, as a motley group of 18 men and women, many unknown to each other, gathered around a long table at a Manhattan restaurant.
Faded pop superstar Michael Jackson was on Friday crowned as the United States’s most foolish person in 2006, narrowly beating out trigger-happy US Vice-President Dick Cheney for the title. The 47-year-old "King of Pop" snatched the dishonour for the fourth year running.
The famous Winchester rifle glorified in American Westerns may have fired its last shot as a plant where it had been manufactured since 1866 closed its doors last week. One hundred eighty-six employees of the United States Repeating Arms Company plant located in New Haven, Connecticut, were thanked for their work on Friday, two days after the facility stopped all manufacturing activity.
Phil Mickelson set his course for The Masters in Georgia on Sunday as he completed the most dominant victory of his PGA Tour career: a 13-shot triumph in the BellSouth Classic. Mickelson shrugged off a weather delay to fire a seven-under 65, giving himself a four-round total of 28-under 260.
Cyber-sex, war, and erection-inducing drugs are a recipe for a more socially inept, violent culture, according to a panel of top United States sex experts. The concern was raised as researchers discussed the future of sex at an unprecedented summit near Santa Fe, New Mexico, late last week.
China’s pandas and Madagascar’s lemurs have found unexpected new allies in a handful of mining companies and oil firms. Though natural-resource-consuming big businesses may seem unlikely champions of environmental conservation, a few are actually in the vanguard of a programme protecting forests and endangered species in Asia, Africa and around the world.
When Microsoft researchers learned recently that a software flaw had been made public and could prompt internet attacks, the company ordered a team to fix the flaw and make the repair work with other products. But some security experts complained that the software company wouldn’t help people fast enough.
Oil prices appear headed back toward a barrel, a level not seen since Hurricane Katrina battered the Gulf Coast, and sporadic shortages have raised gasoline prices in the United States — but the US economy seems capable of absorbing uncomfortably high prices.
The United States has offered aid to Iran after a devastating earthquake but also kept up pressure over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme. The powerful earthquake struck western Iran, leaving at least 70 dead and 1 265 injured. The area of Brujerd was hit hardest.
A painting by United States artist Norman Rockwell that was stolen more than 30 years ago was sold in 1988, and federal officials now are trying to find out who bought it. FBI officials said on Thursday that the agency’s Art Crime Team, created in 2004, has several leads in the theft of Rockwell’s Russian Schoolroom.
The United States military plans to detonate a 700-tonne explosive charge in a test called ”Divine Strake” that could send a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas. ”I don’t want to sound glib here but it is the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons,” said James Tegnelia, head of the Defence Threat Reduction Agency.
Former United States Open champion Svetlana Kuznetsova routed the top-seeded Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo 6-1, 6-4 to reach the final of the WTA and ATP Nasdaq-100 Open on Thursday. Mauresmo had won their first four encounters before Kuznetsova posted a 7-6 (13-11), 6-4 win in the Dubai quarterfinals earlier this year.
Scientists at an IBM research centre in Silicon Valley have created a magnetism-manipulating tool suited to building molecular computers, the company revealed on Thursday. The development was touted as a step toward making computers based on the spin of electrons and atoms.
An American Muslim convicted of joining al-Qaeda and plotting to assassinate United States President George Bush was sentenced to 30 years behind bars by a judge who compared him to ”American Taliban” John Walker Lindh. Prosecutors had asked for the maximum for Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, a 25-year-old US citizen who was born to a Jordanian father and raised in Virginia.
Growth in the use of the internet has come off its sizzling pace, even as people become more dependent on cyberspace for work and leisure, a global survey showed on Wednesday. Ipsos Insight’s Face of the Web study showed the global online population grew just 5% last year, well behind 2004’s 20% growth rate.
Paralysed rats who received transplants of adult mouse brain stem cells were able to partially restore limb movement, researchers said in Wednesday’s issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. Called neuronal precursors, the stem cells from the brains of adult mice are able to transform themselves into cells of the central nervous system and other tissues.
A purse containing a $1-million worth of jewellery was on its way back to its owner in Canada on Tuesday after being forgotten on a bench in a town near San Francisco. Shahla Ghannadian had entrusted her $2 000 Louis Vuitton handbag and its precious contents to her husband after they stopped at an ice cream parlour in the city of Sausalito on Sunday
Swiss world number one Roger Federer and American fourth seed Andy Roddick advanced to the quarterfinals of the ,9-million ATP and WTA hard-court tournament in Miami with triumphs on Tuesday. Federer dispatched 37th-ranked Russian Dmitry Tursunov 6-3, 6-3 in only 58 minutes.
Most adolescents in the United States are sleep deprived, jeopardising their mental, emotional and physical growth and damaging their performance in the classrom, said a study published on Tuesday. The problem could even be fatal, as adolescents learn to drive often without enough sleep, the study said.
United Nations chief Kofi Annan on Tuesday appealed to West African countries to arrest and deny refuge to Liberia’s former leader and war crimes suspect Charles Taylor, who has disappeared from Nigeria. Taylor is accused by a UN-backed war crimes court in Sierra Leone of masterminding a policy of murder, torture, pillage and rape in Liberia and Sierra Leone.
White House chief of staff Andrew Card has resigned and will be replaced by budget chief Joshua Bolten, President George Bush said Tuesday. Bush has come under intense pressure in recent weeks, including from within his own Republican Party, to shake up his White House staff amid a sharp slump in his personal-approval ratings.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) on Monday revived a project to send a probe to explore two of the solar system’s biggest asteroids, nearly four weeks after the Dawn mission had been cancelled due to cost overruns and technical glitches. The probe would travel to the huge Vesta and Ceres asteroids orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter.
Oak barrels are obsolete, according to United States vinters, who say aging wine in metal tanks with pieces of oak thrown in costs less and tastes just as good. Braving the stigma of being branded ”voodoo vintners” by traditionalists, oak alternative vinters have produced award-winning wines at bargain prices.
General Motors (GM) expects its United States market share to continue to fall in the first quarter of this year due to aggressive competition, but said it won’t reverse its strategy of lowering prices and relying less heavily on discounts, GM marketers said on Monday.
The United States has called on Nigeria deliver former Liberian leader Charles Taylor to a United Nations tribunal in Sierra Leone for trial on charges of crimes against humanity. With prospects clouded for Taylor’s prosecution for atrocities in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack said, ”He needs to be brought to justice.”
James Butler, a boxer who fought under the nickname ”The Harlem Hammer,” pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and arson on Monday in the 2004 death of a freelance sports writer. Butler will be sentenced to 29 years and four months in prison by California state court Judge Michael Pastor on April 5, according to deputy public defender Jack Keenan.
Tick, 000, tock, another 000. So rapid is the rise of the US national debt, that the last four digits of a giant digital signboard counting the moving total near New York’s Times Square move in seemingly random increments as they struggle to keep pace.
Conservatives who charge President George Bush has imposed a theocracy, risked United States bankruptcy and fanned flames of anti-Americanism are flooding US booksellers with their irate tomes. Leading the list of bestsellers is commentator Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy, the Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st century.
Tiger Woods plans to reduce his golfing schedule when he becomes a father so he can spend more time with his children, the 10-time major champion told the United States television show 60 Minutes. In an interview to be aired on Sunday, excerpts of which were posted on the show’s website, Woods tells Ed Bradley that fatherhood comes before golf feats and when wife Elin gives birth to his children he will put his family first.
Steve Vaught’s quest to shed the dozens of kilograms of fat he was lugging around began with a single step, as did his one-man expedition to cross the United States on foot. Vaught, who began his trek last April in Oceanside, California, has so far covered more than 3 700km — the last leg to New York with freezing Midwestern winds snapping at his back.
The World Golf Hall of Fame on Thursday unveiled a special exhibit, Gary Player: A Global Journey, that tells the story of the world’s most-travelled athlete and explores the impact he has had on the game and beyond. ”I wasn’t really sure what to expect, but after walking through the exhibit I was deeply moved,” said Player.
Treating mothers for depression can mean long-term happiness for their children, according to a study published on Tuesday. Depression is known to be passed on genetically, but it can also be affected by the environment in which a child is raised, according to authors of an article published by the Journal of the American Medical Association.