Los Angeles - Kevin Federline thinks it’s only right that his ex-wife Britney Spears should help him pay his legal fees in their divorce case.
Court documents revealed this week that Britney’s monthly income is over US$730,000, while K-Fed’s measely US$20,000 a month spousal support runs out in November.
He is seeking US$50,000 in expenses.
Federline also added another Britney co-hort to the long list of witnesses in their custody battle over their two children.
Britney’s former manager Larry Rudolph was served with a subpoena earlier this week.
Washingtonton - It is being reported that U.S. Senator Larry Craig is resigning his post on Saturday.
September 1. Craig was involved in a scandal where he allegedly propositioned another man for sex in a bathroom at a Minneapolis airport. The senator said he did nothing wrong except pleading guilty.
The calls for Craigs departure were becoming louder and louder from his Republican colleagues after MSNBC first aired the audio of the Senators arrest.
Under state law, Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, a Republican, can tap a replacement to serve out Craig’s term, which expires in 2009.
The Idaho Statesman reports that Sen. Larry Craig will make an announcement about his future Saturday.
When asked at the White House Friday wether the senator should resign, President Bush would not respond.
New York - Former United Nations weapons inspectors in Iraq have discovered traces of chemical substances, including the poisonous gas phosgene, in their office in New York and have called on US authorities to investigate, a spokeswoman said Thursday.
“There is no immediate risk or dangers and the UNMOVIC staff is still working on the premise,” UN spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.
She said the inspectors discovered two small metal and glass vials with liquid substances that were recovered from a former Iraqi chemical weapons facility Al Muthanna in 1996. The inventory showed one of the vials contains phosgene suspended in oil.
The other vial contains nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) reference standards which were used to calibrate chemical analytical equipment.
“Following discovery of these items, UNMOVIC chemical weapons experts sealed the packages and placed them in a safe, which was then isolated in a secured room,” Okabe said. “The experts also tested the environment surrounding the packages using a portable chemical detector and found no concentration of toxic vapours in the air.”
Phosgene is a poisonous gas and major industrial chemical used to make plastics and pesticides. It is converted into liquid for shipping and storage.
Phosgene was used extensively during World War I as a choking agent and was responsible for the majority of deaths caused by chemical agents during the war, according to the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is not found naturally, but can be formed when chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds are exposed to high temperatures. At room temperature, phosgene becomes a poisonous gas that can harm the skin, eyes and lungs.
The UN said the phosgene substance discovered measured in “gram quantities” suspended in oil, calling it “an old generation chemical warfare agent.”
White House spokesman Tony Snow said the chemicals were discovered Friday and should not have been stored at the New York office.
“I’m sure that there are going to be a lot of red-faced people over at the UN trying to figure out how they got there,” he said.
Inspectors of the UN monitoring agency known as UNMOVIC were charged with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before the US-led military invasion of Iraq in March 2003 and compiled a huge archive of materials found in Iraq and brought back to New York for study.
Okabe said the UN informed the US Federal Bureau of Investigation of the discovery and the FBI sent agents to investigate.
The group of inspectors has been disbanded, but a staff of 17 experts remained in charge of the archives and inventory at their office in New York. During their years of intense work in Iraq, which began after Iraqi troops under Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August 1990, the inspectors did not any weapons of mass destruction.
But US President George W Bush used the claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction as one of the justifications to sent US troops to Iraq in 2003.
Montreal - Smoking tobacco is no longer considered sexy, but it may prove a permanent turn on for some genes. Research published today in the online open access journal BMC Genomics could help explain why former smokers are still more susceptible to lung cancer than those who have never smoked.
A Canadian team led by Wan L Lam and Stephen Lam from the BC Cancer Agency, took samples from the lungs of 24 current and former smokers, as well as from non-smokers who have never smoked. They used these lung samples to create libraries using a technique called serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), which helps to identify patterns of gene activity.
Only about a fifth of the genes in a cell are switched on at any given time, but environmental changes such as smoking lead to changes in gene activity. The researchers found changes that were irreversible, and some changes that were reversed by stopping smoking. (more…)
Los Angeles - Britney Spears may be dropping her new album as soon as next week, according to Entertainment Weekly.
Her first single will reportedly be called ‘Gimme More’, which is an “up-tempo dance track” produced by Timbaland protégé Nate Hills.
An album title has not been released.
In June, Britney listed five possible names for the new record and asked fans to vote. Our pick was for “OMG is Like Lindsay Lohan Like Okay Like.” By the way, this was an actual title on Brit’s official website.
The divorced mother-of-two has remained in the headlines while going through a nasty custody battle with her ex Kevin Federline.
Los Angeles - Angelina Jolie spent the past week visiting refugees in Iraq and Syria.
The actress who is a goodwill ambassador for the UN, spoke to people in a refugee camp who are stranded in Iraq, unable to cross the border into Syria.
Jolie wore a blue flak jacket and took notes, listening to some of the 1,200 refugees.
The actress also took time to play with a group of children at a makeshift refugee camp, before heading back to New York Wednesday — No, she did not adopt any of them.
Jolie frequently travels around the world raising awareness about various humanitarian issues.
Boston - A new study finds that the use of hypnosis prior to breast cancer surgery can reduce the amount of anesthesia needed for the operation, the amount of pain reported afterwards as well as the time and cost of the procedure.
Researchers from New York’s Mount Sinai Medical Center say that just one 15 minute session one hour before surgery is all that’s needed.
Breast cancer surgery patients often suffer side effects such as pain, nausea, and fatigue during and after their operation. These complications can lengthen their hospital stay, lead to hospital readmission, or require additional medications�all of which increase medical costs. Several previous studies have suggested that hypnosis may reduce pain, recovery time, and the need for medications after surgery. (more…)
Beijing (EON) The father of Zhang Huimin, the 8-year-old girl from China who ran 2,212 miles to Beijing for the 2008 Olympics celebration has stated that there was never any child abuse.
Zhang Huimin began her journey to run to Beijing on July 3rd and finally finished by arriving in Beijing on Sunday. Her father followed on a motorised bicycle.
Huimin woke up at 2:30 a.m. every single day to train for the run. She ran about 65 km each day for 55 days. This is the same as running one and a half marathons each and every day.
The father is being accused of abuse stating that the run would damage the body of the girl and her growth.
Zhang Jianmin, the father, stated that “I don’t care about what the experts say. Although they accuse me of being cruel or abusive, I think I’m right.”
He has denied any type of abuse.
Kabul (EON) - The Taliban have agreed to set the remaining 19 South Korean hostages free in the coming days.
This will come without the release of Taliban prisoners who the kidnappers have been fighting to get released since the hostage situation began.
Taliban delegate Mullah Bashir made the announcement Tuesday as he talked directly to South Korean officials. The Taliban figured out that South Korea would not be able to push the Afghan government in any way to release the Taliban prisoners therefore there was no reason to hold the hostages any longer.
The hostages have been held since July 19th when 23 South Korean hostages were kidnapped on a road in central Ghazni. The Taliban stated that it would take several days to get all of the hostages released.
In accordance to the agreement, South Korea has agreed to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan by the end of this year.
Boston (EON) - The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has confirmed that he is set to visit Darfur as well as Chad and LIbya in the next week.
The whole idea behind these visits is to try and resolve the conflict in Darfur and rally support for the cause on an international scale.
The Sudan government is also going to be tested to see how well they can get their 26,000 troops ready to go in the region when they are called upon.
This is the first visit for the UN chief to this part of the regioin since he took up office at the United Nations in January.
“I want to go and see the very difficult conditions under which our forces will operate. I want to know, first hand, the plight of those they seek to help. But more, I want to create the foundations of a lasting peace and security. My goal is to lock in the progress we have made so far, to build on it so that this terrible trauma may one day cease.”
The US and the African Union is set to combine forces to try and resolve the conflict in Darfur which has taken the lives of 200,000 and displaced millions.