The architect’s concept is breathtaking: a spiralling, 115-storey tower that would pierce the sky along Chicago’s lakefront and grab the title of the tallest building in the United States. Off the drawing board, though, history shows that such plans often fail to live up to their record-breaking aspirations.
The company that pioneered commercial space travel by sending ”tourists” up to the International Space Station is planning a new mission: rocketing people around the far side of the moon. The price of a round-trip ticket is -million. The first mission by Space Adventures could happen in 2008 or 2009 and is planned as a stepping stone to an eventual lunar landing by private citizens.
Rupert Murdoch, the chairperson and CEO of News Corporation, said he plans to make several more acquisitions of online businesses in the coming months as his global media conglomerate makes the internet a ”major part” of its future growth. Murdoch said on Wednesday that News Corporation is in advanced talks to buy a controlling interest in an online search company.
It is not often that computer users cheer a victory for Microsoft, the software firm whose uncompromising success has made founder Bill Gates the world’s richest man. But many will have shared his satisfaction on Wednesday after the computer giant claimed a victory when a man dubbed the ”Spam King” agreed to pay the company -million.
Waterborne weenie waving has become an unwanted side dish at a waterside restaurant in a popular tourist haunt across the bay from San Francisco, the manager lamented humorously on Tuesday. ”Most of the diners think it is quite comical,” said Jeff Scharosch, manager of The Spinnaker restaurant in the town of Sausalito.
A hacker has broken into computers at Sonoma State University in California and stolen personal information on about 61Â 000 students, according to the college. The unidentified hacker invaded seven staff computers at the college in July by exploiting ”a previously unknown weakness” in an operating system.
Casey Sheehan did not want to go to Iraq, but he did not want to let down his buddies. So despite his mother’s offer to whisk him away to Canada or run his leg over with a car, off he went. Less than two weeks later, the 24-year-old from Zacaville, California, was dead, one of eight soldiers killed in an ambush near Baghdad.
Dana Reeve, the widow of Superman actor Christopher Reeve, has been diagnosed with lung cancer, she announced on Tuesday. Reeve (44) who spent nine years caring for her husband after he was paralysed in a riding accident, said she had decided to disclose her illness because a tabloid newspaper was about to print the story
The Federal Reserve on Tuesday lifted United States borrowing costs for the 10th time running to guard against inflationary pressure and signalled it would stay on a tightening course. As expected, the US central bank’s Federal Open Market Committee said it was taking the headline Fed funds rate to 3,5%.
A recent survey has uncovered mixed feelings about HIV vaccines. One of the discoveries was that several people believe an HIV vaccine already exists.
Tropical depression Irene was getting better organised in the central Atlantic, forecasters said, but still posed no immediate threat to land. Irene had top sustained winds of 56kph on Tuesday night, just below the 63km threshold to become a tropical storm. Forecasters said it was possible for Irene to
strengthen into a tropical storm by Wednesday, but said the forecast wasn’t clear.
Discovery‘s crew early on Tuesday made final preparations for a predawn return to Earth that will mark the conclusion of the first space shuttle flight since the 2003 Columbia disaster. The seven astronauts closed the payload area’s massive baydoors in preparation for the homebound journey that initially had been scheduled for Monday.
A new study sheds new light on euthanasia in The Netherlands, the first country to legalise it for terminally ill people, finding that nearly one in eight adult patients who requested mercy killings decided not to go through with it. Nearly half of the euthanasia requests were carried out.
They’re being bred now by the millions, the mutants, created to carry the ghastliest of diseases for the benefit of the human race. Since researchers published the mouse’s entire genetic make-up in map form three years ago, increasingly exotic rodents are being created with relative ease.
A smartly-dressed young mother, the head of the healthy children’s committee, stands before the parent-teacher association to demand that fizzy drinks be removed from the school vending machines. Moments later she is negotiating a deal to buy a large quantity of marijuana to sell to teenagers and their parents.
The reputation of the United Nations was dealt a severe blow on Monday when an independent inquiry accused one of its most senior officials, Benon Sevan, of corruptly receiving  184 to help to facilitate an oil deal. Sevan, a UN official for 40 years, resigned on Sunday ahead of publication of the report. He denies the claims.
Books about boy wizard Harry Potter have become favorite reading material among Islamic terror suspects at the United States detention centre at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, <i>The Washington Times</i> reported on Monday. "We’ve got a few who are kind of hooked on it," said a librarian working at the centre.
Scores of the United States’s richest people have pledged -million or more towards a new attempt to reinvigorate the American left and counter the powerful Republican political machine. The money will be funnelled through an organisation called the Democracy Alliance which will help fund a network of thinktanks and advocacy groups
The former chief of the Iraq oil-for-food programme resigned on Sunday, a day before investigators release a report that is expected to accuse him of taking kickbacks. Benon Sevan accused United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan of failing to stand by him and blasted the independent inquiry committee investigating allegations of corruption.
The landing of the beleaguered Discovery space shuttle has been delayed due to low clouds over Florida’s Kennedy Space Centre, Nasa announced this morning. The seven astronauts were originally preparing to land on Monday morning, but the bad weather put the landing back to later in the day.
A month after running a negative review of John Irving’s new novel, The Washington Post has run a negative review of that review. Irving’s Until I Find You, an 824-page novel based partly on the author’s relationship with his father, was panned in a July 10 review by Marianne Wiggins as a ”mass of lazy, unrefined writing”.
The United States space agency Nasa will hope to lay the ghosts of the Columbia disaster to rest on Monday morning as it guides the shuttle Discovery back to earth at the end of the US’s first manned space mission for two-and-a-half years.
Discovery‘s seven astronauts on Saturday carried out final preparations for their attempt to land their stricken space shuttle. In a critical manoeuvre, pilot Jim Kelly freed the shuttle from the International Space Station and inched the craft away from its docking port before firing the spaceship’s jets to reposition it for its voyage home on Monday.
Top-seeded Andy Roddick and unseeded James Blake won straight-set semifinal matches to advance to the final at the Legg Mason Tennis Classic on Saturday. Roddick beat 13th-seeded Paradorn Srichaphan 7-6 (4), 6-2, advancing to a final for the 29th time in his career. Blake then beat 10th-seeded Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic 6-4, 6-3 in the other semifinal to reach his fourth career final.
The United States justice department has opened a criminal investigation into allegations that DaimlerChrysler-owned Mercedes paid bribes to foreign officials. The investigation was sparked by a former Chrysler accountant, who has alleged in a lawsuit that the German carmaker kept secret bank accounts to bribe officials in Africa and Latin America.
A man was sentenced on Thursday to more than seven years in prison for sexually assaulting a woman sleeping next to him on an airline flight. Deepak Jahagirdar (55) a former health care executive from Scottsdale, Arizona, was convicted in April of sexually abusing and having abusive sexual contact with the woman, then 22.
Violinists playing sweetly beneath her, the video game heroine Lara Croft has two guns blazing and the full attention of 10Â 000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. The animated star of Tomb Raider games unflinchingly braves explosions on a giant TV screen that hangs, incongruously, above the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
Violinists playing sweetly beneath her, the video game heroine Lara Croft has two guns blazing and the full attention of 10Â 000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. The animated star of Tomb Raider games unflinchingly braves explosions on a giant TV screen that hangs, incongruously, above the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra.
A Cape Town businessman has been sent to prison in the United States after pleading guilty to the illegal export — to Pakistan via South Africa — of American-made items that can be used in nuclear weapons, South African Broadcasting Corporation news reported on Friday.
Internet search giant Yahoo on Thursday trumpeted the release of a trial version of software that lets people seek out music, news, speeches and other audio files online. Yahoo’s service weighs into a competitive internet market where audio-file search programs are offered by companies such as America Online and Google.
Chevron paid Nigerian soldiers who guarded the company’s oil rigs after they allegedly attacked two villages in the African nation, according to company documents that have surfaced during a lawsuit against the energy firm. The invoice asks Chevron to pay 15Â 000 naira, about , to 23 soldiers who responded to ”attacks from Opia village against security agents”.
America Online said on Thursday it has bought the online storage company Xdrive to meet the growing needs of consumers with rapidly expanding collections of digital music, photos and other files. AOL did not disclose financial terms but said it would operate Xdrive as a wholly owned subsidiary and continue to sell storage and backup services through Xdrive.com.