Your Favorates Converters

Losing A Friend

2009-07-20T04:48:00.001-07:00

When You Gotta Go...

2009-07-20T04:47:00.001-07:00

Funny Prank In Action

2009-07-11T07:42:00.001-07:00

Store Rules

2009-07-11T07:40:00.001-07:00

Shopping Cart Antics

2009-07-11T07:37:00.000-07:00

Cat Wathing "A" Film?

2009-07-11T02:29:00.000-07:00

Anus Perfumes?

2009-07-11T02:23:00.001-07:00

Ripped His Pants

2009-07-11T02:08:00.001-07:00

Damn

2009-07-11T02:01:00.000-07:00

Laziness

2009-07-11T01:59:00.001-07:00

Adobe Photoshop

2009-07-10T23:06:00.000-07:00

Spilled Drink

2009-07-10T22:31:00.001-07:00

Bluetooth

2009-07-10T22:29:00.001-07:00

Polar Bears

2009-07-10T22:23:00.001-07:00

Like A Cat

2009-07-10T22:22:00.001-07:00

Frightened Egg

2009-07-10T22:13:00.001-07:00

Time Machine

2009-07-10T22:08:00.000-07:00

I'm 16

2009-07-10T22:07:00.001-07:00

The Happy Cat

2009-07-10T22:05:00.000-07:00

Baby Sitting

2009-07-10T19:12:00.001-07:00

Poisoned?

2009-07-10T19:11:00.001-07:00

Why Men Should Never Take Messages

2009-07-10T19:07:00.001-07:00

Deer Are Party Animals

2009-07-10T19:05:00.001-07:00

Elephants Love Apples

2009-07-10T18:52:00.001-07:00

Free Offer

2009-07-10T18:48:00.001-07:00

Worst Idea Ever

2009-07-10T18:06:00.001-07:00

Whatever Works...

2009-07-10T17:36:00.002-07:00

No Horn Blowing

2009-07-10T17:34:00.001-07:00

Meet The Meat Manager

2009-07-10T17:12:00.001-07:00

NO Way

2009-07-10T09:32:00.001-07:00

One Woman Satisfies 12 Men!

2009-07-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

General Motors emerges from bankruptcy, according to the AP

2009-07-10T05:07:00.000-07:00

A person briefed on the matter says General Motors Corp. has emerged from bankruptcy protection after signing papers to transfer the bulk of its assets to a new, leaner company majority-owned by the U.S. government.
The person, who asked to remain anonymous because the action hasn't been officially announced, said Friday the action came at 6:30 a.m. EDT Friday.
One bankruptcy expert called GM's 40-day case the fastest ever for a company of its size.
The new GM is a smaller company that is less burdened by the staggering debt that nearly sent it to liquidation.

Forget Subway!

2009-07-10T04:25:00.001-07:00

Closed Exit

2009-07-10T04:23:00.001-07:00

Perez Hilton Starts His 'Own' Record Label

2009-07-09T21:48:00.000-07:00

Blogger and media personality Mario Lavandeira, aka Perez Hilton, is about to launch his own imprint with record label Warner Bros. Perez (or one of his ghostwriters, more likely), has taken it upon himself to announce that he's "starting his own record label!!!!!"Perez credits himself with launching the careers of both Lady Gaga and Mika. He told Entertainment Weekly, "I have an ear, which is really important in the music world -- to be able to hear a hit and to be able to know who has a good song or not… I'm more than just an A&R person. I'm also a marketing person. I'm also a manager."Now it'll be a lot easier for Perez to brag that he's changing the face of the music industry...if his imprint is successful, that is.

New Book Explores David Beckham-Tom Cruise Bromance

2009-07-09T21:45:00.000-07:00

Ever since David Beckham befriended Tom Cruise in 2003, the actor has influenced every single life decision Becks has made. That's the moral of the story exposed in The Beckham Experiment, a new book by Sports Illustrated writer Grant Wahl, who spends a whole chapter of his saga describing the soccer star's relationship with Cruise.

And it goes something like this: David and wife Victoria hired both Cruise's rep and his PR firm to speak for them (begging the question: Is Tom's current PR all that valued given his declining popularity of late?) In addition, Posh and Becks moved just five minutes away from TomKat when they made the jump to LA. Cruise even left Germany, where he was filming Valkyrie, to throw them a housewarming fête. David also adopted his physical therapist and fellow bromantic, Will Smith. According to the New York Daily News, David and Tom talk on the phone most days, and Beckham takes Cruise's advice on "nearly everything," even influencing the footballer's decision to play for LA Galaxy. And the Beckhams' son, Cruz? Yep, also a shout-out to Tom.

It sounds like the only thing the two don't share is a love of Xenu. Beckham has said:

It's something I respect, because Tom's explained to me and Victoria what it's all about. But he's never turned around and said, 'That is what you should be doing,' because he would never do that. He and Katie have their beliefs ... but me and Victoria have also got our own.

Xbox Laptop

2009-07-09T21:07:00.001-07:00

Rich & Poor

2009-07-09T20:59:00.000-07:00

Winnie The Pooh

2009-07-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

Private Sign

2009-07-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

Hundreds protest in Iran, defying crackdown vow

2009-07-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Thousands of protesters streamed down avenues of the capital Thursday, chanting "death to the dictator" and defying security forces who fired tear gas and charged with batons, witnesses said.
Turning garbage bins into burning barricades and darting through choking clouds of tear gas, the opposition made its first foray into the streets in nearly two weeks in an attempt to revive mass demonstrations that were crushed in Iran's postelection turmoil.
Iranian authorities had promised tough action to prevent the marches, which supporters of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi have been planning for days through the Internet. Heavy police forces deployed at key points in the city ahead of the marches, and Tehran's governor vowed to "smash" anyone who heeded the demonstration calls.
In some places, police struck hard. Security forces chased after protesters, beating them with clubs on Valiasr Street, Tehran's biggest north-south avenue, witnesses said.
Women in headscarves and young men dashed away, rubbing their eyes in pain as police fired tear gas, in footage aired on state-run Press TV. In a photo from Thursday's events in Tehran obtained by The Associated Press outside Iran, a woman with her black headscarf looped over her face thrust her fist into the air in front of a garbage bin that had been set on fire.
In another image, a man dropped to his knees, overcome by the effects of tear gas.
But the clampdown was not total. At Tehran University, a line of police blocked a crowd from reaching the gates of the campus, but then did not move to disperse them as the protesters chanted "Mir Hossein" and "death to the dictator" and waved their hands in the air, witnesses said. The crowd grew to nearly 1,000 people, the witnesses said.
"Police, protect us," some of the demonstrators chanted, asking the forces not to move against them.
The protesters appeared to reach several thousand, but their full numbers were difficult to determine, since marches took place in several parts of the city at once and mingled with passers-by. There was no immediate word on arrests or injuries.
It did not compare to the hundreds of thousands who joined the marches that erupted after the June 12 presidential election, protesting what the opposition said were fraudulent results. But it was a show of determination despite a crackdown that has cowed protesters, who have not held a significant rally for the past 11 days.
Onlookers and pedestrians often gave their support. In side streets near the university, police were chasing young activists, and when they caught one, passers-by chanted "let him go, let him go," until the policemen released him. Elsewhere, residents let fleeing demonstrators slip into their homes to elude police, witnesses said.
All witnesses spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisals. Iranian authorities have imposed restrictions that ban reporters from leaving their offices to cover demonstrations.
Many of the marchers were young men and women, some wearing green surgical masks, the color of Mousavi's movement, but older people joined them in some places. Vehicles caught in traffic honked their horns in support of the marchers, witnesses said. Police were seen with a pile of license plates, apparently pried off honking cars in order to investigate the drivers later, the witnesses said.
Soon after the confrontations began, mobile phone service was cut off in central Tehran, a step that was also taken during the height of the postelection protests to cut off communications. Mobile phone messaging has been off for the past three days, apparently to disrupt attempts at planning.
The calls for a new march have been circulating for days on social networking Web sites and pro-opposition Web sites. Opposition supporters planned the marches to coincide with the anniversary Thursday of a 1999 attack by Basij on a Tehran University dorm to stop protests in which one student was killed.
Demonstrators dispersed by nightfall. But after sunset, shouts of "death to the dictator" could be heard from rooftops around the city — a half-hour nightly ritual by Mousavi supporters that has continued even since the previous crackdown.
Mousavi and his pro-reform supporters say he won the election, which official results showed as a landslide victory for incumbent hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Days of massive demonstrations erupted, until supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei declared the results valid and warned that unrest would not be tolerated.
In the crackdown that followed, at least 20 protesters and seven Basijis were killed, according to police.
Police have said 1,000 people were arrested in the crackdown and that most have since been released. But prosecutor-general Qorban-Ali Dorri Najafabadi said Wednesday that 2,500 people were arrested and that 500 of them could face trial, Press TV reported. The remainder have been released, Najafabadi said.
Arrests have continued over the past week, with police rounding up dozens of activists, journalists and bloggers.
In the latest detentions, prominent human rights lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah was taken away by security forces from his office Wednesday along with his daughter and three other members of his staff, the pro-opposition news Web site Norouz reported. A former deputy commerce minister in a previous pro-reform government, Feizollah Arab-Sorkhi, was also arrested at his Tehran home, the site reported.
A large number of top figures in Iran's reform movement, including a former vice president and former Cabinet members, have been held for weeks since the election.
Iranian authorities have depicted the postelection turmoil as instigated by enemy nations aiming to thwart Ahmadinejad's re-election, and officials say some of those detained confessed to fomenting the unrest. Opposition supporters say the confessions were forced under duress.
Ahead of the protests, Tehran's governor Morteza Tamaddon accused "foreign counterrevolutionary networks" of plotting new marches. "If some individuals plan to carry out any anti-security actions by listening to (protest) calls ... they will be smashed under the feet of our aware people," he said late Wednesday, according to the state news agency IRNA

4 charged after bodies dug up at Ill. cemetery

2009-07-09T13:48:00.000-07:00

ALSIP, Ill. - Four workers at a historic cemetery that is the final resting place for many famous blacks have been charged with taking part in a scam in which employees dug up and dismembered bodies, dumped them into unmarked mass graves and then resold the plots to unsuspecting members of the public, authorities said.
Carolyn Towns, 49, Keith Nicks, 45, and Terrence Nicks, 39, all of Chicago, and 61-year-old Maurice Dailey of Robbins, were charged Thursday with one count each of dismembering a human body, a felony.
Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart said officers found "startling and revolting" conditions at the Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, a Chicago suburb.

As many as 300 graves were tampered with, Dart said. Some of the graves were dug up and the bodies dumped elsewhere, including in an open area at the back of the 150-acre property, and the plots were resold. In other cases the graves were "pounded down" and another person was buried on top, Dart said.
Cemetery records were destroyed and plot deeds were altered, officials said.
The sheriff's investigation began six weeks ago when the cemetery's owner reported that an employee who began feeling guilty revealed what allegedly had been going on, possibly for as long as four years, Dart said. "All of us who were working on this for the last week were pretty distraught," Dart said. "You start with the premise of your own loved ones and how they are cared for after they are buried, but there is also a true significance to this particular cemetery."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson said at a news conference Thursday that he's been besieged by phone calls from worried relatives of those buried at the cemetery.
Upon hearing the news, hundreds of people went to the cemetery Thursday looking for their loved ones' graves; many couldn't find them. A couple told WMAQ-TV that they found headstones that apparently had been recently tampered with, and they were not sure who was underneath the headstones.
The sheriff said it will take a while to sort out the mess and urged people with relatives or friends buried in the cemetery to be patient. "We're not necessarily talking weeks, we're talking months," Dart said. Famous namesChicago native Emmett Till, whose 1955 lynching at age 14 added impetus to the civil-rights movement, is buried at Burr Oak. It's also the final resting place of singers Dinah Washington, Willie Dixon, and Otis Spann, as well as former world heavyweight boxing champion Ezzard Charles, Harlem Globetrotter Inman Jackson, and several Negro League baseball players.

"For many years, this was the only cemetery where African Americans could be buried," said Spencer Leak Sr., president of Leak and Sons Funeral Home, noting that Burr Oak once was owned by Ebony Magazine publisher John Johnson. Dart said the scheme appears to have targeted older, unmarked graves that had not been visited in a long time. There was no indication the more famous sites were disturbed. Perpetua Holdings of Illinois Inc., a subsidiary of a Tucson, Ariz.-based funeral home and cemetery development company, has owned the cemetery since 2001. A message seeking comment was not immediately returned.
The Cemetery Care and Burial Trust Department, a division of the Illinois Comptroller's office, has said it has received complaints in recent years about poor upkeep at Burr Oak, including sunken or tilting gravestones, unmanageable roads, drainage problems and weeds.

Nikola Tesla's Introduction

2009-07-09T13:39:00.000-07:00

Nikola Tesla (10 July 1856 – 7 January 1943) was an inventor and a mechanical and electrical engineer. Tesla was an ethnic Serb born in the village of Smiljan, Vojna Krajina, in the territory of today's Croatia. He was a subject of the Austrian Empire by birth and later became an American citizen.[2] Tesla is often described as an important scientist and inventor of the modern age, a man who "shed light over the face of Earth".[3] He is best known for many revolutionary contributions in the field of electricity and magnetism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Tesla's patents and theoretical work formed the basis of modern alternating current electric power (AC) systems, including the polyphase power distribution systems and the AC motor, with which he helped usher in the Second Industrial Revolution.
After his demonstration of wireless communication (radio) in 1894 and after being the victor in the "War of Currents", he was widely respected as one of the greatest electrical engineers who worked in America.[4] Much of his early work pioneered modern electrical engineering and many of his discoveries were of groundbreaking importance. During this period, in the United States, Tesla's fame rivaled that of any other inventor or scientist in history or popular culture,[5] but due to his eccentric personality and his seemingly unbelievable and sometimes bizarre claims about possible scientific and technological developments, Tesla was ultimately ostracized and regarded as a mad scientist.[6][7] Never having put much focus on his finances, Tesla died impoverished at the age of 86.
The SI unit measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field "B"), the tesla, was named in his honor (at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris, 1960), as well as the Tesla effect of wireless energy transfer to wirelessly power electronic devices which Tesla demonstrated on a low scale (lightbulbs) as early as 1893 and aspired to use for the intercontinental transmission of industrial energy levels in his unfinished Wardenclyffe Tower project.
Aside from his work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering, Tesla contributed in varying degrees to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics,[8] and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court of the United States credited him as being the inventor of the radio.[9] Many of his achievements have been used, with some controversy, to support various pseudosciences, UFO theories, and early New Age occultism.
Tesla is honored in Serbia and Croatia, as well as in the Czech Republic and Romania. He was awarded the highest order of the White Lion by Czechoslovakia.

Tesla was born to Serbian parents in the village of Smiljan, Austrian Empire near the town of Gospić, found in the territory of modern day Croatia).
His baptismal certificate reports that he was born on 28 June (N.S. 10 July), 1856, to Father Milutin Tesla, a priest in the Serbian Orthodox Church, Metropolitanate of Sremski Karlovci and Đuka Mandić. His paternal origin is thought to be either of one of the local Serb clans in the Tara valley or from the Herzegovinian noble Pavle Orlović [10] His mother Đuka , daughter of a Serbian Orthodox Church priest came from a family domiciled in Lika and Banija, but with deeper origins to Kosovo. She was talented in making home craft tools and memorized many Serbian epic poems, but never learned to read.[11]
Nikola was the fourth of five children, having one older brother (Dane, who was killed in a horse-riding accident when Nikola was five) and three sisters (Milka, Angelina and Marica).[12]:3 His family moved to Gospić in 1862. Tesla went to school in Karlovac. He finished a four year term in the span of three years.[13]

Tesla then studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. Some sources say he received Baccalaureate degrees from the university at Graz.[14][15][16] However, the university claims that he did not receive a degree and did not continue beyond the first semester of his third year, during which he stopped attending lectures.[17][18][19][20] In December 1878 he left Graz and broke all relations with his family. His friends thought that he had drowned in Mura. He went to Maribor, (today's Slovenia), where he was first employed as an assistant engineer for a year. He suffered a nervous breakdown during this time. Tesla was later persuaded by his father to attend the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, which he attended for the summer term of 1880. Here, he was influenced by Ernst Mach. However, after his father died, he left the university, having completed only one term.[21]
Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, supposedly having a photographic memory.[22] Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his brain in precise form before moving to the construction stage; a technique sometimes known as picture thinking. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; this began to happen during childhood.[22]

Three-phase rotating magnetic field
In 1880, he moved to Budapest to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company,[23] the National Telephone Company. There, he met Nebojša Petrović, a young, Serbian inventor who lived in Austria. Although their encounter was brief, they did work on a project together using twin turbines to create continual power. On the opening of the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla became the chief electrician to the company, and was later engineer for the country's first telephone system. He also developed a device that, according to some, was a telephone repeater or amplifier, but according to others could have been the first loudspeaker.[24]

[edit] United States and France
In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received patents in 1888.

Patent
Soon thereafter, Tesla was awakened from a dream in which his mother had died, "And I knew that this was so".[25] After her death, Tesla fell ill. He spent two to three weeks recuperating in Gospić and the village of Tomingaj near Gračac, his mother's birthplace.
On 6 June 1884, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City [26] with little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, a former employer. In the letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison, Batchelor wrote, "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." Edison hired Tesla to work for his Edison Machine Works. Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical engineering and quickly progressed to solving some of the company's most difficult problems. Tesla was even offered the task of completely redesigning the Edison company's direct current generators.[27]
Tesla claims he was offered US$50,000 (~ US$1.1 million in 2007, adjusted for inflation)[28] if he redesigned Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy.[22]:54-57 Tesla said he worked night and day on the project and gave the Edison Company several profitable new patents in the process. In 1885 when Tesla inquired about the payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," thus breaking his word.[29][30] Earning a mere US$18 per week, Tesla would have had to work for 53 years to earn the amount he was promised. The offer was equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to US$25 per week.[31]
Tesla eventually found himself digging ditches for a short period of time for the Edison company. Tesla used this time to focus on his AC polyphase system.[22]
Electromechanical devices and principles developed by Nikola Tesla:
Various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (1882)
The Induction motor, rotary transformers, and "high" frequency alternators
The Tesla coil,[32] his magnifying transmitter, and other means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations (including condenser discharge transformations and the Tesla oscillators[33][34])
Alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system [35] (1888) and other methods and devices for power transmission
Systems for wireless communication (prior art for the invention of radio) and radio frequency oscillators [36]
Robotics and the "AND" logic gate [37]
Electrotherapy Tesla currents[38][39][40]
Wireless transfer of electricity and the Tesla effect[41][42]
Tesla impedance phenonomena[43]
Tesla electro-static field
Tesla principle
Bifilar coil
Telegeodynamics
Tesla insulation
Tesla impulses[44]
Tesla frequencies[32]
Tesla discharge[32]
Forms of commutators and methods of regulating third brushes
Tesla turbines (eg., bladeless turbines) for water, steam and gas and the Tesla pumps
Tesla igniter
Corona discharge ozone generator
Tesla compressor
X-rays Tubes using the Bremsstrahlung process
Devices for ionized gases and "Hot Saint Elmo's Fire".[45]
Devices for high field emission
Devices for charged particle beams
Phantom streaming devices[46]
Arc light systems
Methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electrical current (predecessor to superconductivity)
Voltage multiplication circuitry
Devices for high voltage discharges
Devices for lightning protection
VTOL aircraft
Dynamic theory of gravity
Concepts for electric vehicles
Polyphase systems

[edit] Middle years
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise capital for his next project. In 1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse listened to his ideas for polyphase systems which would allow transmission of alternating current electricity over long distances.
In April 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single node vacuum tubes (similar to his patent #514,170). This device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that they had no target electrode. The modern term for the phenomenon produced by this device is bremsstrahlung (or braking radiation). We now know that this device operated by emitting electrons from the single electrode through a combination of field electron emission and thermionic emission. Once liberated, electrons are strongly repelled by the high electric field near the electrode during negative voltage peaks from the oscillating HV output of the Tesla Coil, generating X-rays as they collide with the glass envelope. He also used Geissler tubes. By 1892, Tesla became aware of the skin damage that Wilhelm Röntgen later identified as an effect of X-rays.
In the early research, Tesla devised several experimental setups to produce X-rays. Tesla held that, with his circuits, the "instrument will [... enable one to] generate Roentgen rays of much greater power than obtainable with ordinary apparatus".[47] He also commented on the hazards of working with his circuit and single node X-ray producing devices. Of his many notes in the early investigation of this phenomenon, he attributed the skin damage to various causes. One of the options for the cause, which is not in conformity with conventional X-ray production, was that the ozone generated rather than the radiation was responsible. He believed early on that damage to the skin was not due to the Roentgen rays, but the ozone generated in contact with the skin, and to a lesser extent, nitrous acid. Tesla held that these were in fact longitudinal waves, such as those produced in waves in plasma. In a plasma or a confined space, there can exist waves which are either longitudinal or transverse, or a mixture of both. There are known examples of this and these plasma waves can occur in the situation of force-free magnetic fields.[48][49] His hypotheses and experiments were confirmed by others.[50]
Tesla continued research in the field and, later, observed an assistant severely "burnt" by X-rays in his lab. He performed several experiments prior to Roentgen's discovery (including photographing the bones of his hand; later, he sent these images to Roentgen) but didn't make his findings widely known; much of his research was lost in the 5th Avenue lab fire of March 1895.
A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon the electrical conductivity was proposed in which transmission in various natural media with current that passes between the two points are used to power devices. In a practical wireless energy transmission system using this principle, a high-power ultraviolet beam might be used to form a vertical ionized channel in the air directly above the transmitter-receiver stations. The same concept is used in virtual lightning rods, the electrolaser electroshock weapon,[51] and has been proposed for disabling vehicles.[52][53]
Tesla demonstrated "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891. The Tesla effect (named in honor of Tesla) is the archaic term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor).[22]:174[54]

Wireless transmission of power and energy demonstration during his high frequency and potential lecture of 1891.
On 30 July 1891, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States at the age of 35. Tesla established his 35 South Fifth Avenue laboratory in New York during this same year. Later, Tesla would establish his Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46 E. Houston Street. There, at one point while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators he generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings but, due to the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to apply a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived.[55] He also lit vacuum tubes wirelessly at both of the New York locations, providing evidence for the potential of wireless power transmission.[56]
Some of Tesla's closest friends were artists. He befriended Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson, who adapted several Serbian poems of Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (which Tesla translated). Also during this time, Tesla was influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of the Swami Vivekananda.[57]
When Tesla was 36 years old, the first patents concerning the polyphase power system were granted. He continued research of the system and rotating magnetic field principles. It is curious that Nikola Tesla, a pioneer of AC systems, was born approximately 100 km north of Šibenik where the first power plant in Croatia was constructed. It may be a coincidence that in May 1892, Tesla held a lecture on alternating systems in the City Hall of Zagreb (the capital of Croatia) at the time of the beginning of the preparations to construct the Jaruga I hydroelectric power plant.[58] Tesla served, from 1892 to 1894, as the vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the forerunner (along with the Institute of Radio Engineers) of the modern-day IEEE. From 1893 to 1895, he investigated high frequency alternating currents. He generated AC of one million volts using a conical Tesla coil and investigated the skin effect in conductors, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for inducing sleep, cordless gas discharge lamps, and transmitted electromagnetic energy without wires, building the first radio transmitter. In St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made a demonstration related to radio communication in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail its principles. Tesla's demonstrations were written about widely through various media outlets. Tesla also investigated harvesting energy that is present throughout space. He believed that it was just merely a question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature, stating:
“
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.
”
—"Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency" (February 1892)
At the 1893 World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an international exposition was held which for the first time devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was a historic event as Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC power by using it to illuminate the Exposition. On display were Tesla's fluorescent lamps and single node bulbs. An observer noted:
Within the room was suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with tin foil. These were about fifteen feet apart, and served as terminals of the wires leading from the transformers. When the current was turned on, the vacuum bulbs or tubes, which had no wires connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates, or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room, were made luminous. These were the same experiments and the same apparatus shown by Mr. Tesla in London about two years ago, where they produced so much wonder and astonishment.[59]

Nikola Tesla's AC dynamo used to generate AC which is used to transport electricity across great distances. It is contained in U.S. Patent 390,721.
Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field and induction motor by demonstrating how to make an egg made of copper stand on end in his demonstration of the device he constructed known as the "Egg of Columbus".
Also in the late 1880s, Tesla and Edison became adversaries in part due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse. Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. As a result of the "War of Currents," Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in 1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break from Tesla's patent royalties. Also in 1897, Tesla researched radiation which led to setting up the basic formulation of cosmic rays.[60]
When Tesla was forty-one years old, he filed the first basic radio patent (U.S. Patent 645,576). A year later, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the US military, believing that the military would want things such as radio-controlled torpedoes. Tesla had developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control.[61] In 1898, a radio-controlled boat was demonstrated to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. These devices had an innovative coherer and a series of logic gates. Tesla called his boat a "teleautomaton" and said of it, "You see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race."[62] Radio remote control remained a novelty until the 1960s. In the same year, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug for Internal combustion gasoline engines. He gained U.S. Patent 609,250, "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", on this mechanical ignition system. Tesla lived in the former Gerlach Hotel, renamed The Radio Wave building, at 49 W 27th St. (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue), Lower Manhattan, before the end of the century where he conducted the radio wave experiments. A commemorative plaque was placed on the building in 1977 to honor his work.

[edit] Colorado Springs
Main article: Magnifying transmitter

Publicity picture of a participant sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs with his "Magnifying Transmitter" generating millions of volts. The arcs are about 7 meters (23 ft) long. (Tesla's notes identify this as a multiple exposure photograph.)

An experiment in Colorado Springs. This bank of lights is receiving power from a distant transmitter

Colorado Springs experiment where grounded tuned coil is in resonance with distant transmitter; a light is glowing near the bottom.
In 1899, Tesla decided to move and began research in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he would have room for his high-voltage, high-frequency experiments. Upon his arrival he told reporters that he was conducting wireless telegraphy experiments transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris. Tesla's diary contains explanations of his experiments concerning the ionosphere and the ground's telluric currents via transverse waves and longitudinal waves.[63] At his lab, Tesla proved that the earth was a conductor, and he produced artificial lightning (with discharges consisting of millions of volts, and up to 135 feet long).[64] Tesla also investigated atmospheric electricity, observing lightning signals via his receivers. Reproductions of Tesla's receivers and coherer circuits show an unpredicted level of complexity (e.g., distributed high-Q helical resonators, radio frequency feedback, crude heterodyne effects, and regeneration techniques).[65] Tesla stated that he observed stationary waves during this time.[66]
Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly over long distances (via transverse waves, to a lesser extent, and, more readily, longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies through the ground as well as between the Earth's surface and the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. He received patents on wireless transceivers that developed standing waves by this method. In his experiments, he made mathematical calculations and computations based on his experiments and discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was approximately 8 Hertz (Hz). In the 1950s, researchers confirmed that the resonant frequency of the Earth's ionospheric cavity was in this range (later named the Schumann resonance).
In Colorado, Tesla carried out various long distance power transmission experiments. Tesla effect is the application of a type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Through longitudinal waves, Tesla transferred energy to receiving devices. He sent electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor situated in the changing magnetic flux and transferred power to a conducting receiving device (such as Tesla's wireless bulbs).
In the Colorado Springs lab, Tesla observed unusual signals that he later thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Venus or Mars.[67] He noticed repetitive signals from his receiver which were substantially different from the signals he had noted from storms and earth noise. Specifically, he later recalled that the signals appeared in groups of one, two, three, and four clicks together. Tesla had mentioned before this event and many times after that he thought his inventions could be used to talk with other planets. There have even been claims that he invented a "Teslascope" for just such a purpose. It is debatable what type of signals Tesla received or whether he picked up anything at all. Research has suggested that Tesla may have had a misunderstanding of the new technology he was working with,[68] or that the signals Tesla observed may have simply been an observation of a non-terrestrial natural radio source such as the Jovian plasma torus signals.[69]
Tesla left Colorado Springs on 7 January 1900. The lab was torn down and its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado experiments prepared Tesla for his next project, the establishment of a wireless power transmission facility that would be known as Wardenclyffe. Tesla was granted U.S. Patent 685,012 for the means of increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations. The United States Patent Office classification system currently assigns this patent to the primary Class 178/43 ("telegraphy/space induction"), although the other applicable classes include 505/825 ("low temperature superconductivity-related apparatus").

[edit] Later years
In 1900, with US$150,000 (51 % from J. Pierpont Morgan), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. The tower was finally dismantled for scrap during World War I.[70] Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe "Tesla's million-dollar folly". In 1904, the US Patent Office reversed its decision and awarded Guglielmo Marconi the patent for radio, and Tesla began his fight to re-acquire the radio patent. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 hp (150 kW) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine. During 1910–1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100–5000 hp.
Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marconi for radio in 1909, Thomas Edison and Tesla were mentioned as potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in a press dispatch, leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies. Some sources have claimed that due to their animosity toward each other neither was given the award, despite their enormous scientific contributions, and that each sought to minimize the other one's achievements and right to win the award, that both refused to ever accept the award if the other received it first, and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it.[71]

The Wardenclyffe Tower facility.
In the following events after the rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915, and Tesla did receive one bid out of 38 in 1937).[72] Earlier, Tesla alone was rumored to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize of 1912. The rumored nomination was primarily for his experiments with tuned circuits using high-voltage high-frequency resonant transformers.
In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against Marconi's claims. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless. In 1917, the facility was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected that it could be used by German spies.
Before World War I, Tesla looked overseas for investors to fund his research. When the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his patents in European countries. After the war ended, Tesla made predictions regarding the relevant issues of the post-World War I environment, in a printed article (20 December 1914). Tesla believed that the League of Nations was not a remedy for the times and issues. Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three; he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded cloth napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity, and this undoubtedly hurt what was left of his reputation.
At this time, he was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renting in an arrangement for deferred payments. Eventually, the Wardenclyffe deed was turned over to George Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria, to pay a US$20,000 debt. In 1917, around the time that the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished by Boldt to make the land a more viable real estate asset, Tesla received AIEE's highest honor, the Edison Medal.
Tesla, in August 1917, first established principles regarding frequency and power level for the first primitive radar units.[73] In 1934, Émile Girardeau, working with the first French radar systems, stated he was building said systems "conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla". By the 1920s, Tesla was reportedly negotiating with the United Kingdom government about a ray system. Tesla had also stated that efforts had been made to steal the so called "death ray". It is suggested that the removal of the Chamberlain government ended negotiations.
On Tesla's seventy-fifth birthday in 1931, Time magazine put him on its cover. The cover caption noted his contribution to electrical power generation. Tesla received his last patent in 1928 for an apparatus for aerial transportation which was the first instance of VTOL aircraft. By the end of 1931, Tesla released "On Future Motive Power" which covered an ocean thermal energy conversion system. In 1934, Tesla wrote to consul Janković of his homeland. The letter contained a message of gratitude to Mihajlo Pupin who had initiated a donation scheme by which American companies could support Tesla. Tesla refused the assistance, choosing instead to live on a modest pension received from Yugoslavia, and to continue his research.
In 1936, Tesla wrote in a telegram to Vladko Maček: "I'm equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland. Long live all Yugoslavs."[74]

[edit] Field theories
When he was eighty-one, Tesla stated he had completed a "dynamic theory of gravity". He stated that it was "worked out in all details" and that he hoped to soon give it to the world.[75] The theory was never published.
The bulk of the theory was developed between 1892 and 1894, during the period that he was conducting experiments with high frequency and high potential electromagnetism and patenting devices for their use. Reminiscent of Mach's principle, Tesla stated in 1925 that:

Nikola Tesla, with Ruđer Bošković's book Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis, sits in front of the spiral coil of his high-frequency transformer at East Houston Street, New York.
“
There is no thing endowed with life—from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the nimblest creature—in all this world that does not sway in its turn. Whenever action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and the universal motion results.
”
Tesla was critical of Einstein's relativity work, calling it:
“
...[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king ... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists ...[76]
”
Tesla also argued:
“
I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.[77]
”
Tesla also believed that much of Albert Einstein's relativity theory had already been proposed by Ruđer Bošković, stating in an unpublished interview:
“
...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, not withstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum ...'.[78]
”

[edit] Directed-energy weapon
Later in life, Tesla made remarkable claims concerning a "teleforce" weapon.[79] The press called it a "peace ray" or death ray.[80][81] In total, the components and methods included:[82][83]
An apparatus for producing manifestations of energy in free air instead of in a high vacuum as in the past. This, according to Tesla in 1934, was accomplished.
A mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force. This, according to Tesla, was also accomplished.
A means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by the second mechanism.
A new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. This would be the projector, or gun, of the invention.
Tesla worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon from the early 1900s until his death. In 1937, Tesla composed a treatise entitled "The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media" concerning charged particle beams.[84] Tesla published the document in an attempt to expound on the technical description of a "superweapon that would put an end to all war". This treatise of the particle beam is currently in the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade. It described an open ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allowed particles to exit, a method of charging particles to millions of volts, and a method of creating and directing nondispersive particle streams (through electrostatic repulsion).[85]
His records indicate that it was based on a narrow stream of atomic clusters of liquid mercury or tungsten accelerated via high voltage (by means akin to his magnifying transformer). Tesla gave the following description concerning the particle gun's operation:
“
[The nozzle would] send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks.[86]
”
The weapon could be used against ground based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes.[87]
Tesla tried to interest the US War Department in the device.[88] He also offered this invention to European countries.[89] None of the governments purchased a contract to build the device. He was unable to act on his plans.[90]

[edit] Theoretical inventions
Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as Tesla's Flying Machine, which appears to resemble an ion-propelled aircraft.[91] Tesla claimed that one of his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take the form of a cigar or saucer.[92]

[edit] Personal life
Tesla was fluent in many languages. Along with Serbo-Croatian, he spoke seven other languages: Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

Teslas father Milutin Tesla
Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder,[93] and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three. Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts mysophobic.
Tesla was obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he fed in Central Park and even bringing some into his hotel room with him. Tesla was an animal-lover, often reflecting contentedly about a childhood cat, "The Magnificent Macak." Tesla never married. He was celibate and claimed that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.[22] Nonetheless there have been numerous accounts of women vying for Tesla's affection, even some madly in love with him. Tesla, though polite, behaved rather ambivalently to these women in the romantic sense.
Tesla was prone to alienating himself and was generally soft-spoken. However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of him. Robert Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a "distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force." His loyal secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote: "his genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul." Tesla's friend Hawthorne wrote that "seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink."
Nevertheless, Tesla displayed the occasional cruel streak; he openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a secretary because of her weight.[22]:110 He was quick to criticize others' clothing as well, on several occasions demanding a subordinate to go home and change her dress.[22]
Tesla was widely known for his great showmanship, presenting his innovations and demonstrations to the public as an artform, almost like a magician. This seems to conflict with his observed reclusiveness; Tesla was a complicated figure. He refused to hold conventions without his Tesla coil blasting electricity throughout the room, despite the audience often being terrified, though he assured them everything was perfectly safe.

Mark Twain in Tesla's lab, spring 1894
In middle age, Tesla became very close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.
Tesla remained bitter in the aftermath of his incident with Edison. The day after Edison died the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla, who was quoted as saying:
He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene ... His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense.
Shortly before he died, Edison said that his biggest mistake had been in trying to develop direct current, rather than the vastly superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp.[12]:19
Tesla was good friends with Robert Underwood Johnson. He had amicable relations with Francis Marion Crawford, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff, and Kenneth Swezey. He ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, in part because of the implications it would have on his future vision of free power, and in part because it would run Westinghouse out of business, and Tesla had no desire to deal with the creditors.
Tesla lived the last ten years of his life in a two-room suite on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. There, near the end of his life, Tesla showed signs of encroaching mental illness, claiming to be visited by a specific white pigeon daily. Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the pigeon as a "final blow" to himself and his work.
Tesla believed that war could not be avoided until the cause for its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to wars in general.[94] He sought to reduce distance, such as in communication for better understanding, transportation, and transmission of energy, as a means to ensure friendly international relations.[95]
Like many of his era, Tesla, a life-long bachelor, became a proponent of a self-imposed selective breeding version of eugenics. In a 1937 interview, he stated:
... man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct .... The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.[96]
In 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of women and the struggle of women toward gender equality, indicated that humanity's future would be run by "Queen Bees". He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future.[97]
In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was "superior to it [meat] in regard to both mechanical and mental performance". He also argued that animal slaughter was "wanton and cruel".[98]
In his final years he suffered from extreme sensitivity to light, sound and other influences.[99]

[edit] Death

Bust of Tesla by Ivan Meštrović, 1952, in Zagreb, Croatia
Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, on 7 January 1943.[100] Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts. Later that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number,[101] in effect recognizing him as the inventor of radio.
Immediately after Tesla's death became known, the government's Alien Property Custodian office took possession of his papers and property, despite his US citizenship. His safe at the hotel was also opened. At the time of his death, Tesla had been continuing his work on the teleforce weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department. It appears that his proposed death ray was related to his research into ball lightning and plasma, and was imagined as a particle beam weapon. The US government did not find a prototype of the device in the safe. After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be top secret. The personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisers; J. Edgar Hoover declared the case most secret, because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents.[102] One document stated that "[he] is reported to have some 80 trunks in different places containing transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments [...]".
Tesla's family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with the American authorities to gain these items after his death due to the potential significance of some of his research. Eventually, his nephew, Sava Kosanoviċ, won possession of some of his personal effects, which are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum.[103]
Tesla's funeral took place on 12 January 1943, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York City. His body was cremated and his ashes taken to Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1957. The urn was placed in the Nikola Tesla Museum, where it resides to this day.

[edit] Tesla's pigeon
According to John J. O'Neill, author of Prodigal Genius, the Life of Nikola Tesla, Tesla told him this story in the presence of William L. Laurence, the New York Times science writer.
Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: "Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me." If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.
One night as he was lying in bed, she flew in through the window and he knew right away that she had something important to tell him: she was dying. "And then, as I got her message, there came a light from her eyes - powerful beams of light". "...Yes," "...it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory."
Tesla admitted to O'Neill that when that particular pigeon died, something went out of his life. Before that time, he could complete the most ambitious programs he could ever dream of but after the pigeon flew into the beyond, he knew his life's work was done for good.[104]

[edit] Legacy and honors

Statue of Nikola Tesla in Niagara Falls State Park on Goat Island, New York.
He did not like posing for portraits, doing so only once for princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy.[105] His wish was to have a sculpture made by his close friend, Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who was at that time in United States, but he died before getting a chance to see it. Meštrović made a bronze bust (1952) that is held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and a statue (1955/56) placed at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. This statue was moved to Nikola Tesla Street in Zagreb's city centre on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, with the Ruđer Bošković Institute to receive a duplicate. In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara Falls, New York. A similar statue was also erected in his hometown of Gospić in 1986.
The SI unit tesla (T) for measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B) was named in Tesla’s honor at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris in 1960. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of which Tesla had been vice president also created an award in recognition of Tesla. Called the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award, it is given to individuals or a team that has made outstanding contributions to the generation or utilization of electric power, and is considered the most prestigious award in the area of electric power.[106] The crater Tesla on the far side of the Moon and the minor planet 2244 Tesla are also named after him.

20 Serbian dinar coin minted in 2006
Tesla was featured on several Yugoslav- and Serbian dinar notes and coinage. The largest power plant complex in Serbia, the TPP Nikola Tesla is named in his honor. On 10 July 2006 the biggest airport in Serbia was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in honor of Tesla’s 150th birthday.
The company, Tesla was a large, state-owned electrotechnical conglomerate in the former Czechoslovakia. It was renamed in Tesla's honor from the previous Electra on 7 March 1946. Some of its subsidiaries still trade in the Czech Republic.
An electric car company, Tesla Motors, named their company in tribute to Tesla. Their website states: The namesake of our Tesla Roadster is the genius Nikola Tesla [...] We‘re confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our car and nod his head with both understanding and approval.[107]
The Croatian subsidiary of Ericsson is also named 'Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d'. ('Nikola Tesla' was a phone hardware company in Zagreb before Ericsson bought it in the 1990s) in honor of Tesla's pioneering work in wireless communication.
The year 2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, scientist , as well as being proclaimed by the governments of Croatia and Serbia to be the Year of Tesla. On this anniversary, 10 July 2006, the renovated village of Smiljan (which had been demolished during the wars of the 1990s) was opened to the public along with Tesla's house (as a memorial museum) and a new multimedia center dedicated to the life and work of Tesla. The parochial church of St. Peter and Paul, where Tesla's father had held services, was renovated as well. The museum and multimedia center are filled with replicas of Tesla's work. The museum has collected almost all of the papers ever published by, and about, Tesla; most of these provided by Ljubo Vujovic from the Tesla Memorial Society. in New York. Alongside Tesla's house, a monument created by sculptor Mile Blazevic has been erected. In the nearby city of Gospić, on the same date as the reopening of the renovated village and museums, a higher education school named Nikola Tesla was opened, and a replica of the statue of Tesla made by Frano Krsinic (the original is in Belgrade) was presented.
The song "Tesla's Hotel Room" by the Handsome Family, on their 2006 album Last Days of Wonder, is a fictionalized account of Tesla's later years at the New Yorker hotel.
The heavy metal group Tesla, which made famous the rock-ballad "Love Song", was named after Nikola Tesla, and their website provides a link to Nikola Tesla's webpage.
The famous Serbian composer-singer Zeljko Joksimovic composed in 2006 the instrumental song "Nikola Tesla", vocals by Jelena Tomasevic for a documentary film on Radio Television of Serbia. This song was released in 2008 at the Balkan ethnic collection “Balkan Routes Vol. 01: Nikola Tesla” which is dedicated to Tesla.
In the years since his death, many of his innovations, theories and claims have been used, at times unsuitably and controversially, to support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific. Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in conspiracies about "hidden knowledge". Even in Tesla's time, some believed that he was actually an angelic being from Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.[22] This belief is maintained in present times by followers of Nuwaubianism.
On July 10, 2009, google.com (Google) features a Google Doodle for Nikola Tesla's 153th anniversary of his birthday.[108]

[edit] Monuments
A monument to Tesla was established at Niagara Falls, New York, USA. This monument is a copy of a monument standing in front of the Belgrade University Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Another monument to Tesla, featuring him standing on a portion of an alternator, was established at Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.[109] The monument was officially unveiled on Sunday, 9 July 2006 on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth. The monument was sponsored by St. George Serbian Church, Niagara Falls, and designed by Les Drysdale of Hamilton, Ontario. Mr. Drysdale's design was the winning design from an international competition. Tesla's most famous statue is the one erected on 23 May 1879 at Sycamore Peak showing him and Dr. Brian S. Whitecross. Belgrade International Airport is called "Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport".[110]

[edit] Portrayals in popular culture
Main article: Nikola Tesla in popular culture
Nikola Tesla has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, films, radio, TV, Music, live theatre, comics and video games. The lack of recognition received by Tesla during his own lifetime has made him a tragic and inspirational character well suited to dramatic fiction. Tesla has particularly been seen in science fiction where his inventions are well suited. The impact of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla is a recurring theme in several types of science-fiction.Tesla then studied electrical engineering at the Austrian Polytechnic in Graz (1875). While there, he studied the uses of alternating current. Some sources say he received Baccalaureate degrees from the university at Graz.[14][15][16] However, the university claims that he did not receive a degree and did not continue beyond the first semester of his third year, during which he stopped attending lectures.[17][18][19][20] In December 1878 he left Graz and broke all relations with his family. His friends thought that he had drowned in Mura. He went to Maribor, (today's Slovenia), where he was first employed as an assistant engineer for a year. He suffered a nervous breakdown during this time. Tesla was later persuaded by his father to attend the Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague, which he attended for the summer term of 1880. Here, he was influenced by Ernst Mach. However, after his father died, he left the university, having completed only one term.[21]
Tesla engaged in reading many works, memorizing complete books, supposedly having a photographic memory.[22] Tesla related in his autobiography that he experienced detailed moments of inspiration. During his early life, Tesla was stricken with illness time and time again. He suffered a peculiar affliction in which blinding flashes of light would appear before his eyes, often accompanied by hallucinations. Much of the time the visions were linked to a word or idea he might have come across; just by hearing the name of an item, he would involuntarily envision it in realistic detail. Modern-day synesthetes report similar symptoms. Tesla would visualise an invention in his brain in precise form before moving to the construction stage; a technique sometimes known as picture thinking. Tesla also often had flashbacks to events that had happened previously in his life; this began to happen during childhood.[22]

Three-phase rotating magnetic field
In 1880, he moved to Budapest to work under Tivadar Puskás in a telegraph company,[23] the National Telephone Company. There, he met Nebojša Petrović, a young, Serbian inventor who lived in Austria. Although their encounter was brief, they did work on a project together using twin turbines to create continual power. On the opening of the telephone exchange in Budapest, 1881, Tesla became the chief electrician to the company, and was later engineer for the country's first telephone system. He also developed a device that, according to some, was a telephone repeater or amplifier, but according to others could have been the first loudspeaker.[24]

[edit] United States and France
In 1882 he moved to Paris, France, to work as an engineer for the Continental Edison Company, designing improvements to electric equipment. In the same year, Tesla conceived the induction motor and began developing various devices that use rotating magnetic fields for which he received patents in 1888.

Patent
Soon thereafter, Tesla was awakened from a dream in which his mother had died, "And I knew that this was so".[25] After her death, Tesla fell ill. He spent two to three weeks recuperating in Gospić and the village of Tomingaj near Gračac, his mother's birthplace.
On 6 June 1884, Tesla first arrived in the US in New York City [26] with little besides a letter of recommendation from Charles Batchelor, a former employer. In the letter of recommendation to Thomas Edison, Batchelor wrote, "I know two great men and you are one of them; the other is this young man." Edison hired Tesla to work for his Edison Machine Works. Tesla's work for Edison began with simple electrical engineering and quickly progressed to solving some of the company's most difficult problems. Tesla was even offered the task of completely redesigning the Edison company's direct current generators.[27]
Tesla claims he was offered US$50,000 (~ US$1.1 million in 2007, adjusted for inflation)[28] if he redesigned Edison's inefficient motor and generators, making an improvement in both service and economy.[22]:54-57 Tesla said he worked night and day on the project and gave the Edison Company several profitable new patents in the process. In 1885 when Tesla inquired about the payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American humor," thus breaking his word.[29][30] Earning a mere US$18 per week, Tesla would have had to work for 53 years to earn the amount he was promised. The offer was equal to the initial capital of the company. Tesla resigned when he was refused a raise to US$25 per week.[31]
Tesla eventually found himself digging ditches for a short period of time for the Edison company. Tesla used this time to focus on his AC polyphase system.[22]
Electromechanical devices and principles developed by Nikola Tesla:
Various devices that use rotating magnetic fields (1882)
The Induction motor, rotary transformers, and "high" frequency alternators
The Tesla coil,[32] his magnifying transmitter, and other means for increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations (including condenser discharge transformations and the Tesla oscillators[33][34])
Alternating current long-distance electrical transmission system [35] (1888) and other methods and devices for power transmission
Systems for wireless communication (prior art for the invention of radio) and radio frequency oscillators [36]
Robotics and the "AND" logic gate [37]
Electrotherapy Tesla currents[38][39][40]
Wireless transfer of electricity and the Tesla effect[41][42]
Tesla impedance phenonomena[43]
Tesla electro-static field
Tesla principle
Bifilar coil
Telegeodynamics
Tesla insulation
Tesla impulses[44]
Tesla frequencies[32]
Tesla discharge[32]
Forms of commutators and methods of regulating third brushes
Tesla turbines (eg., bladeless turbines) for water, steam and gas and the Tesla pumps
Tesla igniter
Corona discharge ozone generator
Tesla compressor
X-rays Tubes using the Bremsstrahlung process
Devices for ionized gases and "Hot Saint Elmo's Fire".[45]
Devices for high field emission
Devices for charged particle beams
Phantom streaming devices[46]
Arc light systems
Methods for providing extremely low level of resistance to the passage of electrical current (predecessor to superconductivity)
Voltage multiplication circuitry
Devices for high voltage discharges
Devices for lightning protection
VTOL aircraft
Dynamic theory of gravity
Concepts for electric vehicles
Polyphase systems

[edit] Middle years
In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. The initial financial investors disagreed with Tesla on his plan for an alternating current motor and eventually relieved him of his duties at the company. Tesla worked in New York as a common laborer from 1886 to 1887 to feed himself and raise capital for his next project. In 1887, he constructed the initial brushless alternating current induction motor, which he demonstrated to the American Institute of Electrical Engineers (now IEEE) in 1888. In the same year, he developed the principles of his Tesla coil and began working with George Westinghouse at Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company's Pittsburgh labs. Westinghouse listened to his ideas for polyphase systems which would allow transmission of alternating current electricity over long distances.
In April 1887, Tesla began investigating what would later be called X-rays using his own single node vacuum tubes (similar to his patent #514,170). This device differed from other early X-ray tubes in that they had no target electrode. The modern term for the phenomenon produced by this device is bremsstrahlung (or braking radiation). We now know that this device operated by emitting electrons from the single electrode through a combination of field electron emission and thermionic emission. Once liberated, electrons are strongly repelled by the high electric field near the electrode during negative voltage peaks from the oscillating HV output of the Tesla Coil, generating X-rays as they collide with the glass envelope. He also used Geissler tubes. By 1892, Tesla became aware of the skin damage that Wilhelm Röntgen later identified as an effect of X-rays.
In the early research, Tesla devised several experimental setups to produce X-rays. Tesla held that, with his circuits, the "instrument will [... enable one to] generate Roentgen rays of much greater power than obtainable with ordinary apparatus".[47] He also commented on the hazards of working with his circuit and single node X-ray producing devices. Of his many notes in the early investigation of this phenomenon, he attributed the skin damage to various causes. One of the options for the cause, which is not in conformity with conventional X-ray production, was that the ozone generated rather than the radiation was responsible. He believed early on that damage to the skin was not due to the Roentgen rays, but the ozone generated in contact with the skin, and to a lesser extent, nitrous acid. Tesla held that these were in fact longitudinal waves, such as those produced in waves in plasma. In a plasma or a confined space, there can exist waves which are either longitudinal or transverse, or a mixture of both. There are known examples of this and these plasma waves can occur in the situation of force-free magnetic fields.[48][49] His hypotheses and experiments were confirmed by others.[50]
Tesla continued research in the field and, later, observed an assistant severely "burnt" by X-rays in his lab. He performed several experiments prior to Roentgen's discovery (including photographing the bones of his hand; later, he sent these images to Roentgen) but didn't make his findings widely known; much of his research was lost in the 5th Avenue lab fire of March 1895.
A "world system" for "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon the electrical conductivity was proposed in which transmission in various natural media with current that passes between the two points are used to power devices. In a practical wireless energy transmission system using this principle, a high-power ultraviolet beam might be used to form a vertical ionized channel in the air directly above the transmitter-receiver stations. The same concept is used in virtual lightning rods, the electrolaser electroshock weapon,[51] and has been proposed for disabling vehicles.[52][53]
Tesla demonstrated "the transmission of electrical energy without wires" that depends upon electrical conductivity as early as 1891. The Tesla effect (named in honor of Tesla) is the archaic term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor).[22]:174[54]

Wireless transmission of power and energy demonstration during his high frequency and potential lecture of 1891.
On 30 July 1891, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States at the age of 35. Tesla established his 35 South Fifth Avenue laboratory in New York during this same year. Later, Tesla would establish his Houston Street laboratory in New York at 46 E. Houston Street. There, at one point while conducting mechanical resonance experiments with electro-mechanical oscillators he generated a resonance of several surrounding buildings but, due to the frequencies involved, not his own building, causing complaints to the police. As the speed grew he hit the resonant frequency of his own building and, belatedly realizing the danger, he was forced to apply a sledgehammer to terminate the experiment, just as the astonished police arrived.[55] He also lit vacuum tubes wirelessly at both of the New York locations, providing evidence for the potential of wireless power transmission.[56]
Some of Tesla's closest friends were artists. He befriended Century Magazine editor Robert Underwood Johnson, who adapted several Serbian poems of Jovan Jovanović Zmaj (which Tesla translated). Also during this time, Tesla was influenced by the Vedic philosophy teachings of the Swami Vivekananda.[57]
When Tesla was 36 years old, the first patents concerning the polyphase power system were granted. He continued research of the system and rotating magnetic field principles. It is curious that Nikola Tesla, a pioneer of AC systems, was born approximately 100 km north of Šibenik where the first power plant in Croatia was constructed. It may be a coincidence that in May 1892, Tesla held a lecture on alternating systems in the City Hall of Zagreb (the capital of Croatia) at the time of the beginning of the preparations to construct the Jaruga I hydroelectric power plant.[58] Tesla served, from 1892 to 1894, as the vice president of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, the forerunner (along with the Institute of Radio Engineers) of the modern-day IEEE. From 1893 to 1895, he investigated high frequency alternating currents. He generated AC of one million volts using a conical Tesla coil and investigated the skin effect in conductors, designed tuned circuits, invented a machine for inducing sleep, cordless gas discharge lamps, and transmitted electromagnetic energy without wires, building the first radio transmitter. In St. Louis, Missouri, Tesla made a demonstration related to radio communication in 1893. Addressing the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the National Electric Light Association, he described and demonstrated in detail its principles. Tesla's demonstrations were written about widely through various media outlets. Tesla also investigated harvesting energy that is present throughout space. He believed that it was just merely a question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature, stating:
“
Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.
”
—"Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency" (February 1892)
At the 1893 World's Fair, the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, an international exposition was held which for the first time devoted a building to electrical exhibits. It was a historic event as Tesla and George Westinghouse introduced visitors to AC power by using it to illuminate the Exposition. On display were Tesla's fluorescent lamps and single node bulbs. An observer noted:
Within the room was suspended two hard-rubber plates covered with tin foil. These were about fifteen feet apart, and served as terminals of the wires leading from the transformers. When the current was turned on, the vacuum bulbs or tubes, which had no wires connected to them, but lay on a table between the suspended plates, or which might be held in the hand in almost any part of the room, were made luminous. These were the same experiments and the same apparatus shown by Mr. Tesla in London about two years ago, where they produced so much wonder and astonishment.[59]

Nikola Tesla's AC dynamo used to generate AC which is used to transport electricity across great distances. It is contained in U.S. Patent 390,721.
Tesla also explained the principles of the rotating magnetic field and induction motor by demonstrating how to make an egg made of copper stand on end in his demonstration of the device he constructed known as the "Egg of Columbus".
Also in the late 1880s, Tesla and Edison became adversaries in part due to Edison's promotion of direct current (DC) for electric power distribution over the more efficient alternating current advocated by Tesla and Westinghouse. Until Tesla invented the induction motor, AC's advantages for long distance high voltage transmission were counterbalanced by the inability to operate motors on AC. As a result of the "War of Currents," Edison and Westinghouse went nearly bankrupt, so in 1897, Tesla released Westinghouse from contract, providing Westinghouse a break from Tesla's patent royalties. Also in 1897, Tesla researched radiation which led to setting up the basic formulation of cosmic rays.[60]
When Tesla was forty-one years old, he filed the first basic radio patent (U.S. Patent 645,576). A year later, he demonstrated a radio-controlled boat to the US military, believing that the military would want things such as radio-controlled torpedoes. Tesla had developed the "Art of Telautomatics", a form of robotics, as well as the technology of remote control.[61] In 1898, a radio-controlled boat was demonstrated to the public during an electrical exhibition at Madison Square Garden. These devices had an innovative coherer and a series of logic gates. Tesla called his boat a "teleautomaton" and said of it, "You see there the first of a race of robots, mechanical men which will do the laborious work of the human race."[62] Radio remote control remained a novelty until the 1960s. In the same year, Tesla devised an "electric igniter" or spark plug for Internal combustion gasoline engines. He gained U.S. Patent 609,250, "Electrical Igniter for Gas Engines", on this mechanical ignition system. Tesla lived in the former Gerlach Hotel, renamed The Radio Wave building, at 49 W 27th St. (between Broadway and Sixth Avenue), Lower Manhattan, before the end of the century where he conducted the radio wave experiments. A commemorative plaque was placed on the building in 1977 to honor his work.

[edit] Colorado Springs
Main article: Magnifying transmitter

Publicity picture of a participant sitting in his laboratory in Colorado Springs with his "Magnifying Transmitter" generating millions of volts. The arcs are about 7 meters (23 ft) long. (Tesla's notes identify this as a multiple exposure photograph.)

An experiment in Colorado Springs. This bank of lights is receiving power from a distant transmitter

Colorado Springs experiment where grounded tuned coil is in resonance with distant transmitter; a light is glowing near the bottom.
In 1899, Tesla decided to move and began research in Colorado Springs, Colorado, where he would have room for his high-voltage, high-frequency experiments. Upon his arrival he told reporters that he was conducting wireless telegraphy experiments transmitting signals from Pikes Peak to Paris. Tesla's diary contains explanations of his experiments concerning the ionosphere and the ground's telluric currents via transverse waves and longitudinal waves.[63] At his lab, Tesla proved that the earth was a conductor, and he produced artificial lightning (with discharges consisting of millions of volts, and up to 135 feet long).[64] Tesla also investigated atmospheric electricity, observing lightning signals via his receivers. Reproductions of Tesla's receivers and coherer circuits show an unpredicted level of complexity (e.g., distributed high-Q helical resonators, radio frequency feedback, crude heterodyne effects, and regeneration techniques).[65] Tesla stated that he observed stationary waves during this time.[66]
Tesla researched ways to transmit power and energy wirelessly over long distances (via transverse waves, to a lesser extent, and, more readily, longitudinal waves). He transmitted extremely low frequencies through the ground as well as between the Earth's surface and the Kennelly-Heaviside layer. He received patents on wireless transceivers that developed standing waves by this method. In his experiments, he made mathematical calculations and computations based on his experiments and discovered that the resonant frequency of the Earth was approximately 8 Hertz (Hz). In the 1950s, researchers confirmed that the resonant frequency of the Earth's ionospheric cavity was in this range (later named the Schumann resonance).
In Colorado, Tesla carried out various long distance power transmission experiments. Tesla effect is the application of a type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter; not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Through longitudinal waves, Tesla transferred energy to receiving devices. He sent electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor situated in the changing magnetic flux and transferred power to a conducting receiving device (such as Tesla's wireless bulbs).
In the Colorado Springs lab, Tesla observed unusual signals that he later thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Venus or Mars.[67] He noticed repetitive signals from his receiver which were substantially different from the signals he had noted from storms and earth noise. Specifically, he later recalled that the signals appeared in groups of one, two, three, and four clicks together. Tesla had mentioned before this event and many times after that he thought his inventions could be used to talk with other planets. There have even been claims that he invented a "Teslascope" for just such a purpose. It is debatable what type of signals Tesla received or whether he picked up anything at all. Research has suggested that Tesla may have had a misunderstanding of the new technology he was working with,[68] or that the signals Tesla observed may have simply been an observation of a non-terrestrial natural radio source such as the Jovian plasma torus signals.[69]
Tesla left Colorado Springs on 7 January 1900. The lab was torn down and its contents sold to pay debts. The Colorado experiments prepared Tesla for his next project, the establishment of a wireless power transmission facility that would be known as Wardenclyffe. Tesla was granted U.S. Patent 685,012 for the means of increasing the intensity of electrical oscillations. The United States Patent Office classification system currently assigns this patent to the primary Class 178/43 ("telegraphy/space induction"), although the other applicable classes include 505/825 ("low temperature superconductivity-related apparatus").

[edit] Later years
In 1900, with US$150,000 (51 % from J. Pierpont Morgan), Tesla began planning the Wardenclyffe Tower facility. In June 1902, Tesla's lab operations were moved to Wardenclyffe from Houston Street. The tower was finally dismantled for scrap during World War I.[70] Newspapers of the time labeled Wardenclyffe "Tesla's million-dollar folly". In 1904, the US Patent Office reversed its decision and awarded Guglielmo Marconi the patent for radio, and Tesla began his fight to re-acquire the radio patent. On his 50th birthday in 1906, Tesla demonstrated his 200 hp (150 kW) 16,000 rpm bladeless turbine. During 1910–1911 at the Waterside Power Station in New York, several of his bladeless turbine engines were tested at 100–5000 hp.
Since the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Marconi for radio in 1909, Thomas Edison and Tesla were mentioned as potential laureates to share the Nobel Prize of 1915 in a press dispatch, leading to one of several Nobel Prize controversies. Some sources have claimed that due to their animosity toward each other neither was given the award, despite their enormous scientific contributions, and that each sought to minimize the other one's achievements and right to win the award, that both refused to ever accept the award if the other received it first, and that both rejected any possibility of sharing it.[71]

The Wardenclyffe Tower facility.
In the following events after the rumors, neither Tesla nor Edison won the prize (although Edison did receive one of 38 possible bids in 1915, and Tesla did receive one bid out of 38 in 1937).[72] Earlier, Tesla alone was rumored to have been nominated for the Nobel Prize of 1912. The rumored nomination was primarily for his experiments with tuned circuits using high-voltage high-frequency resonant transformers.
In 1915, Tesla filed a lawsuit against Marconi attempting, unsuccessfully, to obtain a court injunction against Marconi's claims. After Wardenclyffe, Tesla built the Telefunken Wireless Station in Sayville, Long Island. Some of what he wanted to achieve at Wardenclyffe was accomplished with the Telefunken Wireless. In 1917, the facility was seized and torn down by the Marines, because it was suspected that it could be used by German spies.
Before World War I, Tesla looked overseas for investors to fund his research. When the war started, Tesla lost the funding he was receiving from his patents in European countries. After the war ended, Tesla made predictions regarding the relevant issues of the post-World War I environment, in a printed article (20 December 1914). Tesla believed that the League of Nations was not a remedy for the times and issues. Tesla started to exhibit pronounced symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder in the years following. He became obsessed with the number three; he often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building, demanded a stack of three folded cloth napkins beside his plate at every meal, etc. The nature of OCD was little understood at the time and no treatments were available, so his symptoms were considered by some to be evidence of partial insanity, and this undoubtedly hurt what was left of his reputation.
At this time, he was staying at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, renting in an arrangement for deferred payments. Eventually, the Wardenclyffe deed was turned over to George Boldt, proprietor of the Waldorf-Astoria, to pay a US$20,000 debt. In 1917, around the time that the Wardenclyffe Tower was demolished by Boldt to make the land a more viable real estate asset, Tesla received AIEE's highest honor, the Edison Medal.
Tesla, in August 1917, first established principles regarding frequency and power level for the first primitive radar units.[73] In 1934, Émile Girardeau, working with the first French radar systems, stated he was building said systems "conceived according to the principles stated by Tesla". By the 1920s, Tesla was reportedly negotiating with the United Kingdom government about a ray system. Tesla had also stated that efforts had been made to steal the so called "death ray". It is suggested that the removal of the Chamberlain government ended negotiations.
On Tesla's seventy-fifth birthday in 1931, Time magazine put him on its cover. The cover caption noted his contribution to electrical power generation. Tesla received his last patent in 1928 for an apparatus for aerial transportation which was the first instance of VTOL aircraft. By the end of 1931, Tesla released "On Future Motive Power" which covered an ocean thermal energy conversion system. In 1934, Tesla wrote to consul Janković of his homeland. The letter contained a message of gratitude to Mihajlo Pupin who had initiated a donation scheme by which American companies could support Tesla. Tesla refused the assistance, choosing instead to live on a modest pension received from Yugoslavia, and to continue his research.
In 1936, Tesla wrote in a telegram to Vladko Maček: "I'm equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian homeland. Long live all Yugoslavs."[74]

[edit] Field theories
When he was eighty-one, Tesla stated he had completed a "dynamic theory of gravity". He stated that it was "worked out in all details" and that he hoped to soon give it to the world.[75] The theory was never published.
The bulk of the theory was developed between 1892 and 1894, during the period that he was conducting experiments with high frequency and high potential electromagnetism and patenting devices for their use. Reminiscent of Mach's principle, Tesla stated in 1925 that:

Nikola Tesla, with Ruđer Bošković's book Theoria Philosophiae Naturalis, sits in front of the spiral coil of his high-frequency transformer at East Houston Street, New York.
“
There is no thing endowed with life—from man, who is enslaving the elements, to the nimblest creature—in all this world that does not sway in its turn. Whenever action is born from force, though it be infinitesimal, the cosmic balance is upset and the universal motion results.
”
Tesla was critical of Einstein's relativity work, calling it:
“
...[a] magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king ... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists ...[76]
”
Tesla also argued:
“
I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.[77]
”
Tesla also believed that much of Albert Einstein's relativity theory had already been proposed by Ruđer Bošković, stating in an unpublished interview:
“
...the relativity theory, by the way, is much older than its present proponents. It was advanced over 200 years ago by my illustrious countryman Ruđer Bošković, the great philosopher, who, not withstanding other and multifold obligations, wrote a thousand volumes of excellent literature on a vast variety of subjects. Bošković dealt with relativity, including the so-called time-space continuum ...'.[78]
”

[edit] Directed-energy weapon
Later in life, Tesla made remarkable claims concerning a "teleforce" weapon.[79] The press called it a "peace ray" or death ray.[80][81] In total, the components and methods included:[82][83]
An apparatus for producing manifestations of energy in free air instead of in a high vacuum as in the past. This, according to Tesla in 1934, was accomplished.
A mechanism for generating tremendous electrical force. This, according to Tesla, was also accomplished.
A means of intensifying and amplifying the force developed by the second mechanism.
A new method for producing a tremendous electrical repelling force. This would be the projector, or gun, of the invention.
Tesla worked on plans for a directed-energy weapon from the early 1900s until his death. In 1937, Tesla composed a treatise entitled "The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media" concerning charged particle beams.[84] Tesla published the document in an attempt to expound on the technical description of a "superweapon that would put an end to all war". This treatise of the particle beam is currently in the Nikola Tesla Museum archive in Belgrade. It described an open ended vacuum tube with a gas jet seal that allowed particles to exit, a method of charging particles to millions of volts, and a method of creating and directing nondispersive particle streams (through electrostatic repulsion).[85]
His records indicate that it was based on a narrow stream of atomic clusters of liquid mercury or tungsten accelerated via high voltage (by means akin to his magnifying transformer). Tesla gave the following description concerning the particle gun's operation:
“
[The nozzle would] send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 200 miles from a defending nation's border and will cause armies to drop dead in their tracks.[86]
”
The weapon could be used against ground based infantry or for antiaircraft purposes.[87]
Tesla tried to interest the US War Department in the device.[88] He also offered this invention to European countries.[89] None of the governments purchased a contract to build the device. He was unable to act on his plans.[90]

[edit] Theoretical inventions
Another of Tesla's theorized inventions is commonly referred to as Tesla's Flying Machine, which appears to resemble an ion-propelled aircraft.[91] Tesla claimed that one of his life goals was to create a flying machine that would run without the use of an airplane engine, wings, ailerons, propellers, or an onboard fuel source. Initially, Tesla pondered about the idea of a flying craft that would fly using an electric motor powered by grounded base stations. As time progressed, Tesla suggested that perhaps such an aircraft could be run entirely electro-mechanically. The theorized appearance would typically take the form of a cigar or saucer.[92]

[edit] Personal life
Tesla was fluent in many languages. Along with Serbo-Croatian, he spoke seven other languages: Czech, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, and Latin.

Teslas father Milutin Tesla
Tesla may have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder,[93] and had many unusual quirks and phobias. He did things in threes, and was adamant about staying in a hotel room with a number divisible by three. Tesla was also noted to be physically revolted by jewelry, notably pearl earrings. He was fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene, and was by all accounts mysophobic.
Tesla was obsessed with pigeons, ordering special seeds for the pigeons he fed in Central Park and even bringing some into his hotel room with him. Tesla was an animal-lover, often reflecting contentedly about a childhood cat, "The Magnificent Macak." Tesla never married. He was celibate and claimed that his chastity was very helpful to his scientific abilities.[22] Nonetheless there have been numerous accounts of women vying for Tesla's affection, even some madly in love with him. Tesla, though polite, behaved rather ambivalently to these women in the romantic sense.
Tesla was prone to alienating himself and was generally soft-spoken. However, when he did engage in a social life, many people spoke very positively and admiringly of him. Robert Underwood Johnson described him as attaining a "distinguished sweetness, sincerity, modesty, refinement, generosity, and force." His loyal secretary, Dorothy Skerrit, wrote: "his genial smile and nobility of bearing always denoted the gentlemanly characteristics that were so ingrained in his soul." Tesla's friend Hawthorne wrote that "seldom did one meet a scientist or engineer who was also a poet, a philosopher, an appreciator of fine music, a linguist, and a connoisseur of food and drink."
Nevertheless, Tesla displayed the occasional cruel streak; he openly expressed his disgust for overweight people, once firing a secretary because of her weight.[22]:110 He was quick to criticize others' clothing as well, on several occasions demanding a subordinate to go home and change her dress.[22]
Tesla was widely known for his great showmanship, presenting his innovations and demonstrations to the public as an artform, almost like a magician. This seems to conflict with his observed reclusiveness; Tesla was a complicated figure. He refused to hold conventions without his Tesla coil blasting electricity throughout the room, despite the audience often being terrified, though he assured them everything was perfectly safe.

Mark Twain in Tesla's lab, spring 1894
In middle age, Tesla became very close friends with Mark Twain. They spent a lot of time together in his lab and elsewhere.
Tesla remained bitter in the aftermath of his incident with Edison. The day after Edison died the New York Times contained extensive coverage of Edison's life, with the only negative opinion coming from Tesla, who was quoted as saying:
He had no hobby, cared for no sort of amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene ... His method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 percent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense.
Shortly before he died, Edison said that his biggest mistake had been in trying to develop direct current, rather than the vastly superior alternating current system that Tesla had put within his grasp.[12]:19
Tesla was good friends with Robert Underwood Johnson. He had amicable relations with Francis Marion Crawford, Stanford White, Fritz Lowenstein, George Scherff, and Kenneth Swezey. He ripped up a Westinghouse contract that would have made him the world's first billionaire, in part because of the implications it would have on his future vision of free power, and in part because it would run Westinghouse out of business, and Tesla had no desire to deal with the creditors.
Tesla lived the last ten years of his life in a two-room suite on the 33rd floor of the Hotel New Yorker, room 3327. There, near the end of his life, Tesla showed signs of encroaching mental illness, claiming to be visited by a specific white pigeon daily. Several biographers note that Tesla viewed the death of the pigeon as a "final blow" to himself and his work.
Tesla believed that war could not be avoided until the cause for its recurrence was removed, but was opposed to wars in general.[94] He sought to reduce distance, such as in communication for better understanding, transportation, and transmission of energy, as a means to ensure friendly international relations.[95]
Like many of his era, Tesla, a life-long bachelor, became a proponent of a self-imposed selective breeding version of eugenics. In a 1937 interview, he stated:
... man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct .... The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.[96]
In 1926, Tesla commented on the ills of the social subservience of women and the struggle of women toward gender equality, indicated that humanity's future would be run by "Queen Bees". He believed that women would become the dominant sex in the future.[97]
In his later years Tesla became a vegetarian. In an article for Century Illustrated Magazine he wrote: "It is certainly preferable to raise vegetables, and I think, therefore, that vegetarianism is a commendable departure from the established barbarous habit." Tesla argued that it is wrong to eat uneconomic meat when large numbers of people are starving; he also believed that plant food was "superior to it [meat] in regard to both mechanical and mental performance". He also argued that animal slaughter was "wanton and cruel".[98]
In his final years he suffered from extreme sensitivity to light, sound and other influences.[99]

[edit] Death

Bust of Tesla by Ivan Meštrović, 1952, in Zagreb, Croatia
Tesla died of heart failure alone in room 3327 of the New Yorker Hotel, on 7 January 1943.[100] Despite having sold his AC electricity patents, Tesla was destitute and died with significant debts. Later that year the US Supreme Court upheld Tesla's patent number,[101] in effect recognizing him as the inventor of radio.
Immediately after Tesla's death became known, the government's Alien Property Custodian office took possession of his papers and property, despite his US citizenship. His safe at the hotel was also opened. At the time of his death, Tesla had been continuing his work on the teleforce weapon, or death ray, that he had unsuccessfully marketed to the US War Department. It appears that his proposed death ray was related to his research into ball lightning and plasma, and was imagined as a particle beam weapon. The US government did not find a prototype of the device in the safe. After the FBI was contacted by the War Department, his papers were declared to be top secret. The personal effects were seized on the advice of presidential advisers; J. Edgar Hoover declared the case most secret, because of the nature of Tesla's inventions and patents.[102] One document stated that "[he] is reported to have some 80 trunks in different places containing transcripts and plans having to do with his experiments [...]".
Tesla's family and the Yugoslav embassy struggled with the American authorities to gain these items after his death due to the potential significance of some of his research. Eventually, his nephew, Sava Kosanoviċ, won possession of some of his personal effects, which are now housed in the Nikola Tesla Museum.[103]
Tesla's funeral took place on 12 January 1943, at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in Manhattan, New York City. His body was cremated and his ashes taken to Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1957. The urn was placed in the Nikola Tesla Museum, where it resides to this day.

[edit] Tesla's pigeon
According to John J. O'Neill, author of Prodigal Genius, the Life of Nikola Tesla, Tesla told him this story in the presence of William L. Laurence, the New York Times science writer.
Tesla had been feeding pigeons for years. Among them, there was a very beautiful female white pigeon with light gray tips on its wings that seemed to follow him everywhere. A great deal of rapport developed between them. As Tesla confessed, he loved that pigeon: "Yes, I loved that pigeon, I loved her as a man loves a woman, and she loved me." If the pigeon became ill, he would nurse her back to health and as long as she needed him and he could have her, nothing else mattered and there was purpose in his life.
One night as he was lying in bed, she flew in through the window and he knew right away that she had something important to tell him: she was dying. "And then, as I got her message, there came a light from her eyes - powerful beams of light". "...Yes," "...it was a real light, a powerful, dazzling, blinding light, a light more intense than I had ever produced by the most powerful lamps in my laboratory."
Tesla admitted to O'Neill that when that particular pigeon died, something went out of his life. Before that time, he could complete the most ambitious programs he could ever dream of but after the pigeon flew into the beyond, he knew his life's work was done for good.[104]

[edit] Legacy and honors

Statue of Nikola Tesla in Niagara Falls State Park on Goat Island, New York.
He did not like posing for portraits, doing so only once for princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy.[105] His wish was to have a sculpture made by his close friend, Croatian sculptor Ivan Meštrović, who was at that time in United States, but he died before getting a chance to see it. Meštrović made a bronze bust (1952) that is held in the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade and a statue (1955/56) placed at the Ruđer Bošković Institute in Zagreb. This statue was moved to Nikola Tesla Street in Zagreb's city centre on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth, with the Ruđer Bošković Institute to receive a duplicate. In 1976, a bronze statue of Tesla was placed at Niagara Falls, New York. A similar statue was also erected in his hometown of Gospić in 1986.
The SI unit tesla (T) for measuring magnetic flux density or magnetic induction (commonly known as the magnetic field B) was named in Tesla’s honor at the Conférence Générale des Poids et Mesures, Paris in 1960. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) of which Tesla had been vice president also created an award in recognition of Tesla. Called the IEEE Nikola Tesla Award, it is given to individuals or a team that has made outstanding contributions to the generation or utilization of electric power, and is considered the most prestigious award in the area of electric power.[106] The crater Tesla on the far side of the Moon and the minor planet 2244 Tesla are also named after him.

20 Serbian dinar coin minted in 2006
Tesla was featured on several Yugoslav- and Serbian dinar notes and coinage. The largest power plant complex in Serbia, the TPP Nikola Tesla is named in his honor. On 10 July 2006 the biggest airport in Serbia was renamed Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport in honor of Tesla’s 150th birthday.
The company, Tesla was a large, state-owned electrotechnical conglomerate in the former Czechoslovakia. It was renamed in Tesla's honor from the previous Electra on 7 March 1946. Some of its subsidiaries still trade in the Czech Republic.
An electric car company, Tesla Motors, named their company in tribute to Tesla. Their website states: The namesake of our Tesla Roadster is the genius Nikola Tesla [...] We‘re confident that if he were alive today, Nikola Tesla would look over our car and nod his head with both understanding and approval.[107]
The Croatian subsidiary of Ericsson is also named 'Ericsson Nikola Tesla d.d'. ('Nikola Tesla' was a phone hardware company in Zagreb before Ericsson bought it in the 1990s) in honor of Tesla's pioneering work in wireless communication.
The year 2006 was celebrated by UNESCO as the 150th anniversary of the birth of Nikola Tesla, scientist , as well as being proclaimed by the governments of Croatia and Serbia to be the Year of Tesla. On this anniversary, 10 July 2006, the renovated village of Smiljan (which had been demolished during the wars of the 1990s) was opened to the public along with Tesla's house (as a memorial museum) and a new multimedia center dedicated to the life and work of Tesla. The parochial church of St. Peter and Paul, where Tesla's father had held services, was renovated as well. The museum and multimedia center are filled with replicas of Tesla's work. The museum has collected almost all of the papers ever published by, and about, Tesla; most of these provided by Ljubo Vujovic from the Tesla Memorial Society. in New York. Alongside Tesla's house, a monument created by sculptor Mile Blazevic has been erected. In the nearby city of Gospić, on the same date as the reopening of the renovated village and museums, a higher education school named Nikola Tesla was opened, and a replica of the statue of Tesla made by Frano Krsinic (the original is in Belgrade) was presented.
The song "Tesla's Hotel Room" by the Handsome Family, on their 2006 album Last Days of Wonder, is a fictionalized account of Tesla's later years at the New Yorker hotel.
The heavy metal group Tesla, which made famous the rock-ballad "Love Song", was named after Nikola Tesla, and their website provides a link to Nikola Tesla's webpage.
The famous Serbian composer-singer Zeljko Joksimovic composed in 2006 the instrumental song "Nikola Tesla", vocals by Jelena Tomasevic for a documentary film on Radio Television of Serbia. This song was released in 2008 at the Balkan ethnic collection “Balkan Routes Vol. 01: Nikola Tesla” which is dedicated to Tesla.
In the years since his death, many of his innovations, theories and claims have been used, at times unsuitably and controversially, to support various fringe theories that are regarded as unscientific. Most of Tesla's own work conformed with the principles and methods accepted by science, but his extravagant personality and sometimes unrealistic claims, combined with his unquestionable genius, have made him a popular figure among fringe theorists and believers in conspiracies about "hidden knowledge". Even in Tesla's time, some believed that he was actually an angelic being from Venus sent to Earth to reveal scientific knowledge to humanity.[22] This belief is maintained in present times by followers of Nuwaubianism.
On July 10, 2009, google.com (Google) features a Google Doodle for Nikola Tesla's 153th anniversary of his birthday.[108]

[edit] Monuments
A monument to Tesla was established at Niagara Falls, New York, USA. This monument is a copy of a monument standing in front of the Belgrade University Faculty of Electrical Engineering. Another monument to Tesla, featuring him standing on a portion of an alternator, was established at Queen Victoria Park in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.[109] The monument was officially unveiled on Sunday, 9 July 2006 on the 150th anniversary of Tesla's birth. The monument was sponsored by St. George Serbian Church, Niagara Falls, and designed by Les Drysdale of Hamilton, Ontario. Mr. Drysdale's design was the winning design from an international competition. Tesla's most famous statue is the one erected on 23 May 1879 at Sycamore Peak showing him and Dr. Brian S. Whitecross. Belgrade International Airport is called "Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport".[110]

[edit] Portrayals in popular culture
Main article: Nikola Tesla in popular culture
Nikola Tesla has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, films, radio, TV, Music, live theatre, comics and video games. The lack of recognition received by Tesla during his own lifetime has made him a tragic and inspirational character well suited to dramatic fiction. Tesla has particularly been seen in science fiction where his inventions are well suited. The impact of the technologies invented by Nikola Tesla is a recurring theme in several types of science-fiction.

The missing secrets of Nikola Tesla

2009-07-09T13:30:00.000-07:00

Obama vows U.S. will lead the way on climate change

2009-07-09T13:19:00.000-07:00

Reporting from Los Angeles and L'Aquila, Italy -- President Obama praised efforts by industrialized and developing nations to set guidelines in the battle to control climate change and said today that the United States will increase its role in that fight.Speaking from Italy, where officials from 17 nations met and set the new targets, Obama warned that further steps would be needed and cautioned against those who would dismiss today's announced agreement, which fell short of what some environmentalists had hoped for but was a significant step from the policies of the Bush administration.

"We've made a good start, but I am the first one to acknowledge that on this issue it will not be easy," Obama said. "I think one of the things we will have to do is fight the temptation toward cynicism, to feel that the problem is so immense that somehow we cannot make significant strides."It is no small task for 17 leaders to bridge their differences on an issue like climate change," Obama said.The president spoke at the news conference after the forum that included key industrialized countries and developing economies such as Australia, India, China and South Korea. The countries represent more than three-quarters of emissions blamed for raising the world's temperature.
The group agreed to prevent the Earth's climate from rising by 2 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 degree Fahrenheit). That will entail a sharp cut in emissions by 2050, about 80% for industrialized nations and 50% for the developing world."Developed countries like my own have a historic responsibility to take the lead," Obama said. "We have the much larger carbon footprint per capita, and I know that sometimes the U.S. has fallen short of meeting our responsibilities.""Those days are over," Obama said."We don't expect to solve this problem in one meeting or in one summit," Obama said, adding that he believed some progress had been made."Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time," read the official statement by the 17 nations. "As leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, we intend to respond vigorously to this challenge, being convinced that climate change poses a clear danger requiring an extraordinary global response."Among other things, the leaders agreed to establish a global carbon capture institute, charged with spurring large-scale research programs around the world. Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd predicted the initiative, to be based in his country, will speed the development of technology critical for reducing carbon emissions.In his comments after the meeting, Rudd said he welcomed the return of U.S. leadership on the climate front.Several nations also agreed to take the lead on particular technologies, including solar energy and advanced vehicles.The fact that developing nations balked at the plan reflects in part their contending political and economic needs, Obama suggested."Each of our nations comes to the table with different needs," said Obama. They want to make sure they don't have to sacrifice prosperity for progress on climate change, he said.The progress of the president's climate bill through Congress made it easier for Obama to push other nations on the climate-change measures, White House officials said."It strengthens our hand in those negotiations," press secretary Robert Gibbs said. The vote demonstrates "for the first time in many, many years our country's grave concern, shared by others in Europe . . . and how important that is to driving consensus.""We all have some skin in this game," said Gibbs."I'm not entirely sure that we expected to come here and have eight to 10 years of disagreement wash away in a couple of days in July in Italy. I think everybody understands that -- everybody understands that this is going to take some time."

Protesters, officers clash violently in Iran's streets

2009-07-09T08:13:00.000-07:00

Violent clashes erupted today in downtown Tehran between more than a thousand determined young men and women chanting, "Death to the dictator" and "God is great" and security forces wielding truncheons.The screams of a woman being beaten could be heard from nearby buildings, a witness said. Business owners could be seen hustling protesters into their buildings to shield them from plainclothes officers and anti-riot police who fired tear gas canisters.

Passing drivers and motorcyclists honked their horns and flashed the "V" sign in support of the clumps of demonstrators. At least one trash bin was set afire, a witness said, sending a plume of black smoke rising as dusk approached.Many of the demonstrators wore surgical masks to protect their identities from cameras stationed at adjacent buildings. They could be seen escaping into side streets and regrouping as shops quickly were shuttered.Some witnesses said pro-government Basiji militiamen also could be seen wearing masks to hide their faces from digital cameras.
Protesters chanted in support of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who was defeated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in disputed elections last month, and urged the security forces to join them.Uniformed security forces on motorcycles wearing black helmets and plainclothes officers had blocked off streets around Revolution Square, near the Tehran University epicenter of the protest. The Basiji militiamen could be seen fanning out throughout side streets to block demonstrators trying to flee. Armored police vans to haul away protesters could be seen parked along the roadways.But as the militiamen tried to drag away demonstrators, one witness said, protesters joined together to overpower them and rescue their comrades. The witness also said he saw some women with their headscarves pulled off being forced into police vans. Another woman taking pictures with her cellphone camera was dragged away.Despite the lack of formal organization and leadership, thousands of people in cities across Iran were determined to march today in unauthorized demonstrations to show their discontent over Ahmadinejad's reelection and to commemorate the 10th anniversary of a violent confrontation between students and security forces.Tehran Gov. Gen. Morteza Tamaddon said earlier today that any protesters would receive a "crushing" response, and security forces appeared to be responding brutally at times to the attempt at a public demonstration. One witness described how five Basiji militiamen pummeled an elderly lady who loudly warned them that they would receive their comeuppance on Judgment Day.Tammadon said, "The enemies of the Iranian nation are angry with the postelection calm in Iran and try to damage it through their TV channels."Ahmadinejad's June 12 reelection, marred by opposition allegations of massive vote-rigging, has created the biggest political rift within the nation since the first years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution. A movement built on Mousavi's campaign continues to challenge authorities, who have attempted to crush dissent by beating and jailing demonstrators.The Guardian Council, which oversaw the vote and a limited recount, announced Wednesday that it would publish an 80-page report addressing complaints about the election to submit to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the Iranian people, according to the pro-government Fars news agency.Iranian hard-line cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami publicly denied reports that some clergy were gathering signatures to remove or reduce the power of Khamenei, according to Fars, an unusual comment that some analysts said only served to heighten rumors that such a move was afoot.The Assembly of Experts, which oversees the office of the supreme leader, is led by Khamenei's rival, Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, within Iran's unique political system, which grants the clergy absolute rule under a theological concept known as Velayat Faqih, or the guardianship of jurisprudence."I reassure the great Iranian nation that the Assembly of Experts will protect Velayat Faqih and will carry out its duty, which is safeguarding Velayat Faqih," said Khatami.

Declaration of the leaders of the major economies forum on energy and climate

2009-07-09T08:11:00.000-07:00

We, the leaders of Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, the European Union, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Mexico, Russia, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States met as the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate in L'Aquila, Italy, on July 9, 2009, and declare as follows: Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. As leaders of the world's major economies, both developed and developing, we intend to respond vigorously to this challenge, being convinced that climate change poses a clear danger requiring an extraordinary global response, that the response should respect the priority of economic and social development of developing countries, that moving to a low-carbon economy is an opportunity to promote continued economic growth and sustainable development, that the need for and deployment of transformational clean energy technologies at lowest possible cost are urgent, and that the response must involve balanced attention to mitigation and adaptation. We reaffirm the objective, provisions and principles of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Recalling the Major Economies Declaration adopted in Toyako, Japan, in July 2008, and taking full account of decisions taken in Bali, Indonesia, in December 2007, we resolve to spare no effort to reach agreement in Copenhagen, with each other and with the other Parties, to further implementation of the Convention. Our vision for future cooperation on climate change, consistent with equity and our common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, includes the following: 1. Consistent with the Convention's objective and science: Our countries will undertake transparent nationally appropriate mitigation actions, subject to applicable measurement, reporting, and verification, and prepare low-carbon growth plans. Developed countries among us will take the lead by promptly undertaking robust aggregate and individual reductions in the midterm consistent with our respective ambitious long-term objectives and will work together before Copenhagen to achieve a strong result in this regard. Developing countries among us will promptly undertake actions whose projected effects on emissions represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual in the midterm, in the context of sustainable development, supported by financing, technology, and capacity-building. The peaking of global and national emissions should take place as soon as possible, recognizing that the timeframe for peaking will be longer in developing countries, bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities in developing countries and that low-carbon development is indispensible to sustainable development. We recognize the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C. In this regard and in the context of the ultimate objective of the Convention and the Bali Action Plan, we will work between now and Copenhagen, with each other and under the Convention, to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050. Progress toward the global goal would be regularly reviewed, noting the importance of frequent, comprehensive, and accurate inventories. We will take steps nationally and internationally, including under the Convention, to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emissions by forests, including providing enhanced support to developing countries for such purposes.
2. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is essential. Such effects are already taking place. Further, while increased mitigation efforts will reduce climate impacts, even the most aggressive mitigation efforts will not eliminate the need for substantial adaptation, particularly in developing countries which will be disproportionately affected. There is a particular and immediate need to assist the poorest and most vulnerable to adapt to such effects. Not only are they most affected but they have contributed the least to the build up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Further support will need to be mobilized, should be based on need, and will include resources additional to existing financial assistance. We will work together to develop, disseminate, and transfer, as appropriate, technologies that advance adaptation efforts. 3. We are establishing a Global Partnership to drive transformational low-carbon, climate-friendly technologies. We will dramatically increase and coordinate public sector investments in research, development, and demonstration of these technologies, with a view to doubling such investments by 2015, while recognizing the importance of private investment, public-private partnerships and international cooperation, including regional innovation centers. Drawing on global best practice policies, we undertake to remove barriers, establish incentives, enhance capacity-building, and implement appropriate measures to aggressively accelerate deployment and transfer of key existing and new low-carbon technologies, in accordance with national circumstances. We welcome the leadership of individual countries to spearhead efforts among interested countries to advance actions on technologies such as energy efficiency; solar energy; smart grids; carbon capture, use, and storage; advanced vehicles; high-efficiency and lower-emissions coal technologies; bio-energy; and other clean technologies. Lead countries will report by November 15, 2009, on action plans and roadmaps, and make recommendations for further progress. We will consider ideas for appropriate approaches and arrangements to promote technology development, deployment, and transfer. 4. Financial resources for mitigation and adaptation will need to be scaled up urgently and substantially and should involve mobilizing resources to support developing countries. Financing to address climate change will derive from multiple sources, including both public and private funds and carbon markets. Additional investment in developing countries should be mobilized, including by creating incentives for and removing barriers to funding flows. Greater predictability of international support should be promoted. Financing of supported actions should be measurable, reportable, and verifiable. The expertise of existing institutions should be drawn upon, and such institutions should work in an inclusive way and should be made more responsive to developing country needs. Climate financing should complement efforts to promote development in accordance with national priorities and may include both program-based and project-based approaches. The governance of mechanisms disbursing funds should be transparent, fair, effective, efficient, and reflect balanced representation. Accountability in the use of resources should be ensured. An arrangement to match diverse funding needs and resources should be created, and utilize where appropriate, public and private expertise. We agreed to further consider proposals for the establishment of international funding arrangements, including the proposal by Mexico for a Green Fund. 5. Our countries will continue to work together constructively to strengthen the world's ability to combat climate change, including through the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate. In particular, our countries will continue meeting throughout the balance of this year in order to facilitate agreement in Copenhagen.

China's Urumqi Returning to Normal, Following Bloody Violence

2009-07-09T07:43:00.001-07:00

The situation is relatively calm in Urumqi, the capital of China's Xinjiang region, days after bloody violence there left more than 150 people dead. For many people in Xinjiang's capital Urumqi, life is slowly returning to normal.Alison Klayman is a reporter there."The scene today was definitely people getting back to regular life," Klayman told VOA. "There were many shopkeepers who were opening their stores and people going back to work, for the first time since Sunday." A demonstration in Urumqi on Sunday turned violent and deadly, after mostly minority Uighur Muslim protesters clashed with Chinese security forces.Chinese authorities have rounded up more than 1,400 people on suspicion of involvement in what they are calling an organized, premeditated and severe criminal act of violence. Authorities say they will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law - including capital punishment for the most serious perpetrators.The Chinese government also has blamed foreign forces for organizing the violence from afar and calls Uighur businesswoman Rebiya Kadeer, who lives in exile in the United States, the top "mastermind."

In Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang rejected Turkey's concerns that the issue should be discussed in the United Nations Security Council. Qin says there is no reason for the Security Council to discuss events in Xinjiang because they are entirely China's internal affair.Instead, he urged the international community to support the Chinese government's efforts to safeguard national unity, ethnic solidarity and social stability.Klayman says Chinese troops are out in force in Urumqi, to help restore calm. "There's still a very large military presence, especially in Uighur areas, like the bazaar area, in the south of the city," Klayman said. "Buses and trucks with troops surround that whole area, groups of troops running around, making their presence very conspicuous. They are shouting slogans, 'Protect the people. Protect the country. Save the society.'" The clashes in Xinjiang have largely been between the Han Chinese majority and the Uighur minority, a Turkic group that shares similarities with peoples in Central Asia.The Uighurs make up nearly half of Xinjiang's 20 million people. They accuse the Chinese of discrimination and repression. The Chinese government accuses them of seeking an independence for Xinjiang.

Albany Republicans Seek to Block Paterson’s Nominee

2009-07-09T07:38:00.000-07:00

ALBANY — Gov. David A. Paterson’s naming of Richard Ravitch as the state’s lieutenant governor was plunged into legal turmoil on Thursday after Senate Republicans received a temporary restraining order that sought to prevent Mr. Ravitch from taking office.

The Republicans got the restraining order from a judge in Nassau County just before Midnight Wednesday. Paterson administration officials, however, had already rushed to swear in Mr. Ravitch at about 8 p.m. on Wednesday, and said Thursday morning that they expected him to preside over the State Senate session later in the afternoon.
Mr. Paterson said Mr. Ravitch, 76, a Democratic lawyer with a career in government dating back a half-century, would bring stability to the capital and help him end what he called the “crisis in governance” that for more than a month has paralyzed the Senate during its 31-to-31 split. The governor wants Mr. Ravitch to preside over the Senate, cast tie-breaking votes on leadership and other procedural votes and succeed him should Mr. Paterson be unable to serve.
Mr. Paterson’s move was intended to end the confusion in the capital, but it seemed chiefly to intensify it, drawing threats of legal challenges even before the governor announced his decision on television at 5 p.m.
A hearing is scheduled for Friday morning by State Supreme Court Justice Ute W. Lally in Nassau County, who issued the temporary restraining order.
Republicans are arguing that the governor does not have the authority to appoint a lieutenant governor. Their legal team drove several hours from the capital Wednesday night to Nassau County, the home county of Senate Republican leader Dean G. Skelos. “They’re going to claim he took the oath of office last night, that they did it before we got the T.R.O.,” said John McArdle, a spokesman for Senate Republicans. “It’s just going to create more chaos.”
Peter Kauffmann, a spokesman for the governor, said the administration was still planning to hold a ceremonial swearing in later Thursday morning.
“We got it after 11 o’clock last night,” he said of the restraining order, “but we had sworn him around 8 o’clock and filed all the paperwork with the Secretary of State’s office.”
The lieutenant governor’s office has been vacant since Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned last year and Mr. Paterson succeeded him; the State Constitution does not provide for filling the office in the event of a vacancy.
Mr. Ravitch is best known in New York for serving as chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 1979 until 1983, and he also ran for mayor in 1989, losing in a primary to David N. Dinkins. He was chief labor negotiator for Major League Baseball from 1991-1994, and last year the governor called on him to develop a financial rescue plan for the transportation authority.
Mr. Paterson’s aides said they expected him to take over the role as soon as Thursday. They also made it clear that he would not be a candidate for the office in 2010 and that Mr. Paterson planned to pick someone else to run with him next year.
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, the state’s top legal officer and a Democrat, like Mr. Paterson, said this week that naming a lieutenant governor would be unconstitutional and entangle the governor “in a political ploy that would wind through the courts for many months.”
Leaders of the Republican-dominated Senate coalition said that the governor’s move would further complicate the fight for control of the Senate and that they were preparing a challenge.
The governor had his own political calculus. He and his staff believe that he can rebuild his diminished standing in the polls if he is seen to be rising above the Senate fracas and acting boldly. His campaign began making automated calls across the state publicizing the Ravitch selection shortly after his speech.
In picking Mr. Ravitch, Mr. Paterson is turning to one of the stewards of New York City’s financial rescue in the 1970s at a similar time of economic peril. Mr. Ravitch, who has agreed to forgo a salary, is a well-regarded public servant, who began his career working in Washington for the House Government Operations Committee in 1959.
He was chairman of the state’s Urban Development Corporation under Gov. Hugh L. Carey before leading an overhaul of mass transit financing while he was chairman of the transportation authority.
In his televised address Wednesday, Governor Paterson said, “This, I believe, is the right thing to do, I have no doubt of that,” and added, “At a time of unparalleled fiscal difficulty, the appointment of Richard Ravitch today will bring the governor a successor, the Senate a presiding officer and will help to alleviate this crisis.”
Senator Dean G. Skelos, the leader of the Republican caucus, said in his own address, “Sadly, once again, the governor has put his political career ahead of you, the public.” He added: “Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has already said it’s unconstitutional for the governor to appoint a lieutenant governor, and I agree.”
Senate Democrats welcomed the move. “Extraordinary times call for extraordinary action,” said the Senate Democratic leaders, John L. Sampson and Malcolm A. Smith, in a joint statement.
The Senate has been deadlocked since June 8, when Senator Pedro Espada Jr., a Democrat, defected to the Senate’s 30 Republicans, leaving the 62-member chamber evenly divided.

Whether Mr. Paterson can legally appoint a lieutenant governor has been a matter of much debate this week. One view, advanced by Democrats and government watchdog groups, is that a provision of state law allows the governor to fill an elected office on his own, if there is not otherwise a process laid out in law for filling the vacancy.

The governor argued that the appointment could solve several problems, among them the state’s tangled line of succession. The combination of an empty lieutenant governor’s office and the Senate battle has created confusion about who would take over if the governor were incapacitated. The Senate president is next in line to succeed the governor after the lieutenant governor, but both the feuding Republican and Democratic factions are laying claim to the position.
Assemblyman Michael N. Gianaris, a Queens Democrat, said, “It would guarantee a line of succession should something happen to the governor, and it would give the Senate a presiding officer to help get it out of the quagmire it’s been in for the last month.”
The State Constitution speaks at some length about what is to happen if the office of lieutenant governor is left vacant, but it makes no mention of the possibility of appointing a replacement.
Perhaps most important, the Senate’s rules indicate that the lieutenant governor cannot be counted as part of a quorum, a key issue since neither faction has the 32 votes needed to constitute a quorum.
“If he can’t vote on that, then the rest becomes moot,” said Gerald Benjamin, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at New Paltz.
There is also the lack of precedent. Before the stalemate, Mr. Paterson had not sought to fill the position, nor have previous governors done so in other instances when the office was empty.
Even proponents conceded that the governor’s decision was not sure to make it through the courts.
“This is not a slam-dunk,” said Dick Dadey, executive director of Citizens Union, a watchdog group that has backed the proposal. But he added, “There needs to be some risk-taking in order for us to break the stalemate.”
There is another unspoken rationale for the governor to appoint Mr. Ravitch. His aides believe that it may smooth the way for a power-sharing deal between Senate Democrats and Republicans by removing something Democrats have said they cannot abide: the idea of Mr. Espada being next in line to succeed Mr. Paterson.
Mr. Espada claimed the title of Senate president on June 8, and were he to retain that title, the absence of a lieutenant governor would make him second in line to Mr. Paterson.
The governor’s office considered whether to make the appointment for about three weeks. Mr. Paterson and his aides first began seriously weighing it after June 18, when both Democrats and Republicans submitted paperwork that the state requires for senators to be paid. That paperwork usually comes from the Senate majority.
The governor has not traveled out of state since the dispute began to avoid any confusion about who is running the government.
“If something happened to me, it is not known who would act as governor,” Mr. Paterson said Wednesday. “That would throw the entire state government into the chaos that is being experienced in the Senate now.”

Guns Are Green

2009-07-09T07:33:00.000-07:00

Sign Here

2009-07-08T23:35:00.001-07:00

Don't Go Down This Street

2009-07-08T23:33:00.000-07:00

Separated At Birth?

2009-07-08T21:34:00.000-07:00

MousePad Hotties

2009-07-08T21:27:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome OS: Vaporware Or Victory?

2009-07-08T17:14:00.001-07:00

In announcing its forthcoming Chrome OS open-source operating system for netbooks and other computers, Google is attempting to create the cloud computing future that it's predicting.
Google characterizes Chrome OS as an attempt to redefine the operating system to address simple pain points: epic startup times, constant security problems, endless patching, and declining performance over time, to name a few such issues.

But Chrome OS also aspires to bring the change that Google has proclaimed. It aims to certify that the Web has become the dominant development paradigm.
Google executives have declared that "the Web has won," but the traditional desktop programming model staggers on, and it is likely to do so through a few more rounds in the ring. Despite massive improvements in JavaScript performance and Web applications, computationally intensive applications like Adobe Photoshop and high-end games still perform better as local applications than in the cloud.
That won't always be the case, or so Google believes. In an interview broadcast on public radio's Marketplace show, Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt foresees a future shaped by Moore's Law. "[I]n ten years, the computers you use, the networks and everything you use will be a 100 times faster, a 100 times more capable, or a 100 times cheaper," he said. "Think about what we can do with that kind of an insight."
What Google can do with that kind of insight is prepare for a world where software runs in the cloud. And if, in the process, Microsoft's business model gets kneecapped by a free open-source operating system that offers a better user experience and stronger security than Windows, you can bet no one at Google will shed a tear.
Microsoft, of course, hasn't been sitting on its hands while Google evangelizes the virtues of Web applications. Some industry observers see Google's operating system announcement as an attempt to steal the thunder from an upcoming Microsoft announcement, possibly related to Windows 7, an online version of Office, an experimental Web browser referred to as "Gazelle," or an operating system research projected known as "Singularity." Bing isn't the only card Microsoft has to play.

Slain quarterback Steve McNair epitome of toughness during his NFL career

2009-07-08T17:00:00.001-07:00

Mention the name Steve McNair to an NFL player and the words that typically follow are tough, indestructible, warrior and friendly.
Even as police confirmed the circumstances of his death - a married man shot four times by a girlfriend 16 years his junior, who then killed herself - fans and ex-teammates were trying to focus on the person McNair was between the sidelines and in the locker room.
"He could've played back in the old days with no helmets," former Titans safety Blaine Bishop said.
That sounds about right.
McNair earned plenty of accolades in the NFL, sharing the league's MVP in 2003 with Peyton Manning, finishing third in MVP voting in 2002 and being named to the Pro Bowl four times in his 13-year career. But it was his toughness that kept coming up Wednesday as fans flocked to LP Field to say goodbye to McNair on the field where he provided so many memories. A memorial service will be held Thursday night followed by the funeral Saturday in Mississippi.
Carl Shankle of Nashville stopped at the stadium during his lunch break to watch videos of McNair's career, which were flashed on the scoreboard. Shankle marvelled at McNair's coolness under pressure.
"Watch the highlights. Somebody who can stay in the backfield and one way or another get away from the people rushing," he said. "It's amazing, and (he) put up a decent pass. Some guys can get away, but when they throw the ball, it's off into nowhere."
It was McNair who turned Music City into an NFL town after the Titans moved here from Houston, where they were the Oilers. McNair took the team to its lone Super Bowl in 2000, a thrilling game featuring a final drive that came up just a yard short of forcing the game's first overtime.
The Mississippi native was country tough, and that meant learning how to ignore pain. McNair played through injuries so numerous a local newspaper once ran a chart breaking down when and what he had endured.
There was the injury to his sternum that later required surgery because a rib kept slipping against his breast bone, bone spurs in his ankle that had him limping, a shoulder surgery that became infected and needed weeks of intravenous antibiotics, bruised ribs, a strained calf.
McNair knew that he had to sacrifice his body to pick up yards, and he was always ready to do it.
"It made all of us have sighs of relief when he actually would put the uniform on and get himself ready to play regardless of how hurt he was," said Brad Hopkins, McNair's left tackle from the quarterback's rookie year in 1995 through 2005. "It always made you feel better. It made me feel better."
The quarterback crashed into an equipment trunk on the sideline in Dallas.
He came off the bench in Pittsburgh a week after first hurting his chest, then drove the Titans down the field for the winning touchdown. He did it to the Steelers again in a playoff game, going back in after ripping a piece of skin off a thumb and leading Tennessee to tie the game and force overtime. Then he drove the Titans down the field to set up the winning field goal.
Titans coach Jeff Fisher's favourite memory involves seeing McNair use a walker in a hospital to receive an epidural injection that would allow him to practice late in 2005, a season in which Tennessee went 4-12.
"Those types of stories are those that you have never heard of. You witnessed the moments on the field and the comebacks and all those kind of things, but it was those things that made him special," Fisher said.
McNair was no diva. He liked to kill time watching "The Price is Right" and "Walker, Texas Ranger." He loved to pull sly jokes on his teammates and once told one of his backups that playing quarterback was mental, not physical - which was why he stayed out of the weight room.
He also was among the first to welcome free agent long snapper Ken Amato to the team in 2003.
"He made everybody feel welcome. It didn't matter who you were. If you were a first-round draft pick or a free agent, that was his personality," Amato said. "He made everybody feel welcome, a part of the team. It was almost like you were a part of his family."
What McNair did on the field wasn't captured by the league's passer rating because so much of it involved his legs: a 71-yard run against Tampa Bay in 1998; his 51-yard scramble in the 2000 AFC championship game with Jaguars grabbing at him; pulling away from Kevin Carter in that 2000 Super Bowl to keep the last drive alive.
He joined Steve Young and Fran Tarkenton - both Hall of Famers - as the only quarterbacks to throw for 30,000 yards and run for 3,500 more. Between 1999 and 2003, no NFL team won more games than the Titans with McNair and only St. Louis matched their total.
Fisher said he thinks anyone with the NFL knows understands what McNair accomplished on the field.
"It was just an incredible career," his coach said.

G-8 leaders have ambitious environmental goals

2009-07-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

Leaders of the world's most powerful economies pledged to seek huge cuts in their greenhouse gas emissions at a summit in Italy on Wednesday.

The Group of Eight leaders said they would "join a global response to achieve a 50 percent reduction in global emissions by 2050 and to a goal of an aggregate 80 percent or more reduction by developed countries by that date."
The goal mirrors one adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives last month.
Despite the G-8 leaders' pledge to cut emissions, developing nations may not follow suit -- and G-8 leaders stopped short of calling on them to set specific targets.
Instead, they "called upon major emerging economies to undertake quantifiable actions to collectively reduce emissions significantly below business-as-usual by a specified year," the White House said.
U.S. President Obama joined the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia in the mountain town of L'Aquila, which was devastated by a 6.3-magnitude quake in April, for the meeting.
Chinese President Hu Jintao was expected to attend the summit but returned home Wednesday to deal with deadly ethnic clashes in China's remote western Xinjiang province that have prompted a massive security clampdown.
China's problems add to a list of global concerns overshadowing the talks, including the recent political turmoil in Iran and North Korea's nuclear ambitions, both of which have prompted renewed talk of major economic sanctions.
Though Hu was forced to return home, representatives of the other "plus five" group of emerging economic giants, including Brazil, India, South Africa and Mexico, are to attend Thursday's session, with discussions looking ahead to a major environmental summit in Copenhagen, Denmark. A senior Chinese official, Dai Binnguo, is standing in for Hu in Italy.

After the summit's first session, Obama and other leaders toured the area damaged by the quake, which killed about 300 people and left 45,000 homeless. Watch as leaders tour quake zone »
Obama is expected to push for further international financial stimulus packages at the summit, reflecting continued concerns over the global economic crisis despite massive government spending to halt the downturn. Watch what's on agenda at G-8 summit »
The summit's host, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, is probably hoping that the three-day event will help draw the spotlight away from recent scandals that have prompted questions over his suitability to lead.
Prone to gaffes and facing a divorce from his wife of 19 years, the Italian prime minister is being investigated over allegations that he paid for sex, claims that he has repeatedly denied.
Berlusconi has made a show of moving the summit from its original venue on the island of Sardinia to L'Aquila, in the mountains of central Italy, as a gesture of support for the region. Watch Berlusconi talk to CNN about scandals he faces »
A massive security operation has been put in place around the town, which is still hit by regular aftershocks. Italy claimed last week that it had arrested six members of a left-wing terrorist group who were plotting an attack on the summit.
Meanwhile, Pope Benedict XVI launched his own verbal assault on global capitalism ahead of the meeting, lambasting "grave deviations and failures" and calling for a "profoundly new way of understanding business enterprise."
The pope, who is due to meet Obama on the summit's sidelines, challenged bankers to turn away from the practices blamed for bringing about the global economic crisis and instead use their power to help the world create wealth and economic development.
"Above all, the intention to do good must not be considered incompatible with the effective capacity to produce goods," Benedict said.
After a G-20 summit of leading powers in London, England, in April that critics claim was little more than a photo opportunity despite pledges of global economic cooperation, some have questioned what tangible gains can be made from this week's meeting.

Ahead of the summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned that the financial crisis is far from over, echoing White House calls for further economic stimulus -- something that is likely to meet resistance among European leaders.
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is campaigning for greater environmental awareness, said Tuesday that the G-8 was expected to set out a framework for tackling climate change that would be carried forward to the Copenhagen meeting.

America's Youth

2009-07-08T16:34:00.000-07:00

Barbecued Weiners

2009-07-08T16:33:00.001-07:00

Google's new operating system to take on Microsoft

2009-07-08T08:31:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. is working on a new operating system for inexpensive computers in a daring attempt to diminish Microsoft Corp.'s longstanding control over people's computer experience.
The new operating system, announced Tuesday night on Google's Web site, will be based on the company's 9-month-old Web browser, Chrome. Google intends to rely on help from the community of open-source programmers to develop the Chrome operating system, which is expected to begin running computers in the second half of 2010.
Shares of Google jumped $6.92, 1.8 percent, to $403.55 in morning trading Wednesday, while Microsoft fell 15 cents to $22.38.
Google is designing the operating system primarily for "netbooks," a lower-cost, less powerful breed of laptop computers that is becoming increasingly popular among budget-conscious consumers primarily interested in surfing the Web.
Google has already introduced an operating system for smart phones and other mobile devices, called Android, that vies against various other systems, including ones made by Microsoft and Apple Inc.
The Android system worked well enough to entice some computer makers to begin developing netbooks that will run on it. For instance, Acer Inc., the world's third-largest PC maker, said last month it would make netbooks that run Android instead of Windows. Acer said Android would make the computers less expensive and possibly help them boot up faster.
Google, though, apparently believes a Chrome-based system will be better suited for netbooks.
That is a direct challenge to Microsoft, whose next operating system, Windows 7, is being geared for netbooks as well as larger computers. And it would be Google's boldest confrontation yet with its biggest nemesis.
Microsoft had no immediate comment Wednesday.
A duel between the two technology powerhouses has been steadily escalating in recent years as Google's dominance of the Internet's lucrative search market has given it the means to threaten Microsoft in ways that few other companies can.
Google already has rankled Microsoft by luring some of its top employees and developing an online package of computer programs that provide an alternative to Microsoft's top-selling word processing, spreadsheet and calendar applications.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has been trying to thwart Google by investing billions of dollars to improve its own Internet search and advertising systems -- to little avail so far.
In the past month or so, though, Microsoft has been winning positive reviews and picking up more users with the latest upgrade to its search engine, now called Bing. Microsoft is hailing the makeover with a $100 million marketing campaign.
Now Google is aiming for Microsoft's financial jugular with Chrome its operating system.
Microsoft has drawn much of its power -- and profits -- from the Windows operating system that has steered most personal computers for the past two decades.
Google's chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and its co-founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have not concealed their disdain for Windows.
Schmidt maintains Microsoft sometimes unfairly rigs its operating system to limit consumer choices -- something that Microsoft has consistently denied doing. Google fears Microsoft could limit access to its search engine and other products if Windows is set up to favor Microsoft products.
Google made a veiled reference to Windows' perceived shortcomings in its blog posting Tuesday.
"We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear -- computers need to get better," wrote Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president of product management and Linus Upson, Google's engineering director. "We believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google."
Schmidt and Brin are expected to discuss Google's new operating system this week when they appear at a media conference hosted by Allen & Co. at the Sun Valley resort in Idaho.
Despite its own power and prominence, Google won't have an easy time changing the status quo that has governed personal computing.
As an example of how difficult it is to topple a long-established market leader, Google estimates about 30 million people are now using its Chrome browser -- a small fraction of those that rely on Microsoft's market-leading Internet Explorer. And there have been various attempts to develop open-source software to undermine Windows on PCs, with relatively little effect.

Biden Announces Deal With Hospitals to Help Fund Health Care Reform

2009-07-08T08:21:00.001-07:00

Vice President Biden has announced a White House deal with the hospitals to help pay for President Obama's overhaul of health care.
Biden made the announcement Wednesday morning at the White House with hospital administrators and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.Biden said "reform is coming."
Biden said the hospitals are ready to give up about $155 billion over 10 years in government payments. The money could then be used to help pay for covering millions of uninsured.
Despite the deal, some Democrats are rebelling over taxing generous health insurance benefits to pay for any overhaul, jeopardizing bipartisan legislation in the Senate and Obama's ambitious timetable.

Why Elk Have Long Antlers!

2009-07-08T08:18:00.000-07:00

Swiss ready to seize UBS data to stifle Washington

2009-07-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

Switzerland's government said Wednesday it would forbid the Swiss bank UBS AG from complying with any court-ordered transfer of data on tens of thousands of American clients to the U.S. government, and would consider seizing documents to prevent that

The statement was the strongest yet by Swiss authorities locked in a battle with the U.S. Justice Department over the identities of more than 50,000 American clients at UBS.
The case in the federal district court in Miami has become a focal point of Washington's efforts to crack down on tax evasion and the foreign banks that help wealthy Americans send money overseas. But UBS and the Swiss government say handing over the names would violate Swiss law and subject bank employees to criminal prosecution in Switzerland.
"Swiss law prohibits UBS from complying with a possible order by the court in Miami to hand over the client information," the Swiss Justice Ministry said in a statement, describing its latest filing with the Miami court.
It said the bank would not be in a position to comply, anyhow, since "all the necessary measures should be taken to prevent UBS from handing over the information on the 52,000 account holders demanded in the U.S. civil proceeding."
Ministry spokesman Folco Galli told The Associated Press the government decided last month that it would even seize the documents from UBS to prevent the transfer.
Last month, the U.S. Justice Department said UBS "systematically and deliberately" violated U.S. law by dispatching private bankers to recruit wealthy Americans interested in evading taxes. It urged U.S. District Judge Alan S. Gold to hold UBS accountable for conducting years of illegal business on U.S. soil -- business it claimed had earned the bank more than $100 million in fees but cost the U.S. hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes.
Gold has set a July 13 hearing on whether to enforce what are known as "John Doe summonses" used by the Internal Revenue Service to seek information about U.S. taxpayers.
Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz has referred to the possibility of an out-of-court settlement, but U.S. authorities have pressed on with the case, threatening to further strain U.S.-Swiss relations.
UBS previously reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department in which it agreed to disclose the identities of up to 300 U.S. clients and to pay $780 million to the U.S. government. In that deal, UBS admitted regularly violating U.S. law through its client recruitment methods, use of sham offshore entities and filing of false paperwork.
Nicolas Michellod, a senior analyst with Celent, a Boston-based financial research and consulting firm, said the U.S. and Switzerland were using legal agreements to try and gain the upper hand when they negotiate a settlement. The case, however, is only about money, he said.
"As UBS has already admitted its fault, there can be only one solution," Michellod said. "The Swiss bank will have to pay a fine or compensation of an amount corresponding to taxes that are still due to the U.S. government."
The Swiss government's extraordinary step is not without precedent. In the 1980s, it confiscated business files linked to commodities trader Marc Rich to ensure that they weren't passed on to the United States.
Rich fled from the United States to Switzerland in 1983 after he was indicted by a U.S. federal grand jury on more than 50 counts of fraud, racketeering, trading with Iran during the U.S. Embassy hostage crisis and evading more than US$48 million in income taxes -- crimes that could have imprisoned him for more than 300 years.
He was controversially pardoned in 2001 by Bill Clinton just hours before he left office as U.S. president.

Stocks modestly higher ahead of Alcoa report

2009-07-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

Stocks are modestly higher in early trading Wednesday as investors wait for aluminum maker Alcoa Inc. to provide some guidance about the economy.
Investors worried that the world economy may take longer to emerge from recession than originally hoped are turning their focus this week to companies' financial results and, more importantly, to what they have to say about business conditions for the rest of the year.
Alcoa kicks off earnings season Wednesday with its second-quarter report, to be released after the market's close.
"(Their report) gives an indication if we are moving out of the doldrums and potentially into more recovery, or are we potentially falling backward, again," said Doug Lockwood, chief investment officer at Cornerstone Wealth Management.
Wall Street analysts expect Alcoa to post a quarterly loss of 38 cents per share. In the same period a year earlier, Alcoa earned 66 cents per share on revenue of $7.6 billion.
In the first half hour of trading, the Dow Jones industrials rose 36.88, or 0.5 percent, to 8,200.48. The Standard & Poor's 500 index added 4.58, or 0.5 percent, to 885.61 and the Nasdaq composite index rose 11.31, or 0.7 percent, to 1,757.48.
After sending stocks soaring this spring on the belief that the economy was turning around, investors have put their buying on hold since mid-June amid an increasing number of disappointing economic reports.
The slight gains in the market Wednesday follow a sharp drop the day before. World markets, meanwhile, were little changed.
Analysts say the light volume that has marked trading in recent days shows little conviction behind the selling.

N. Korea believed behind cyber attacks

2009-07-08T07:05:00.000-07:00

South Korean intelligence officials believe North Korea or pro-Pyongyang forces committed cyber attacks that paralyzed major South Korean and U.S. government Web sites, aides to two lawmakers said Wednesday.
The sites of 11 South Korean organizations, including the presidential Blue House and the Defense Ministry, went down or had access problems since late Tuesday, according to the state-run Korea Information Security Agency. Agency spokeswoman Ahn Jeong-eun said 11 U.S. sites suffered similar problems. She said the agency is investigating the case with police and prosecutors.
In the U.S., the Treasury Department, Secret Service, Federal Trade Commission and Transportation Department Web sites were all down at varying points over the July 4 holiday weekend and into this week, according to American officials inside and outside the government.
Others familiar with the U.S. outage, which is called a denial of service attack, said that the fact that the government Web sites were still being affected three days after it began signaled an unusually lengthy and sophisticated attack. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.
The Korea Information Security Agency also attributed the attacks to denial of service.
Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said he doubts whether the impoverished North has the capability to knock down the Web sites.
But Hong Hyun-ik, an analyst at the Sejong Institute think tank, said the attack could have been done by either North Korea or China, saying he "heard North Korea has been working hard to hack into" South Korean networks.
On Wednesday, the National Intelligence Service told a group of South Korean lawmakers it believes that North Korea or North Korean sympathizers "were behind" the attacks, according to an aide to one of lawmakers who was briefed on the information.
An aide to another lawmaker who was briefed also said the NIS suspects North Korea or its followers were responsible.
The aides spoke on condition of anonymity and refused to allow the names of the lawmakers they work for to be published, citing the classified nature of the information.
Both aides said the information was delivered in writing to lawmakers who serve on the National Assembly's intelligence committee.
The National Intelligence Service — South Korea's main spy agency — declined to confirm the information.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency said military intelligence officers were looking at the possibility that the attack may have been committed by North Korean hackers and pro-North Korea forces in South Korea. South Korea's Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report.
Earlier Wednesday, the NIS said in a statement that 12,000 computers in South Korea and 8,000 computers overseas had been infected and used for the cyber attack.
The agency said it believed the attack was "thoroughly" prepared and committed by hackers "at the level of a certain organization or state." It said it was cooperating with the American investigators to examine the case.
South Korean media reported in May that North Korea was running a cyber warfare unit that tries to hack into U.S. and South Korean military networks to gather confidential information and disrupt service.
An initial investigation in South Korea found that many personal computers were infected with a virus program ordering them to visit major official Web sites in South Korea and the U.S. at the same time, Korean information agency official Shin Hwa-su said. There has been no immediate reports of similar cyber attack in other Asian countries.
Yonhap said that prosecutors have found some of the cyber attacks on the South Korean sites were accessed from overseas. Yonhap, citing an unnamed prosecution official, said the cyber attack used a method common to Chinese hackers.
Prosecutors were not immediately available for comment.
Shin, the Information Security Agency official, said the initial probe had not yet uncovered evidence about where the cyber outages originated. Police also said they had not discovered where the outages originated. Police officer Jeong Seok-hwa said that could take several days.
Some of the South Korean sites remained unstable or inaccessible Wednesday. The site of the presidential Blue House could be accessed, but those for the Defense Ministry, the ruling Grand National Party and the National Assembly could not.
Ahn said there were no immediate reports of financial damage or leaking of confidential national information. The alleged attacks appeared aimed only at paralyzing Web sites, she said.
South Korea's Defense Ministry and Blue House said that there has been no leak of any documents.

Columns of troops pour into China's restive west

2009-07-08T07:04:00.001-07:00

URUMQI, China – Hundreds of helmeted troops in riot gear swarmed the central square of the capital of western Xinjiang on Wednesday after ethnic riots left at least 156 dead. The city's Communist Party boss promised those behind the killings would be executed.
Ethnic clashes have paralyzed Urumqi over the past several days — with minority Uighur and Han Chinese mobs roaming the streets and attacking each other. The violence forced President Hu Jintao to embarrassingly cut short a trip to Italy where he was take part in a Group of Eight summit.
The government further responded Wednesday to the violence by pouring columns of troops into the far-flung province, hundreds of which were stationed in People's Square in the middle of the city.
Communist Party chief Li Zhi told a televised news conference that many people had been arrested, including students.
"To those who committed crimes with cruel means, we will execute them," he said, adding government forces would crack down on any security risk. He did not give details.
More than 1,100 people were wounded in the violence, and hundreds of vehicles were damaged or set on fire in the riots on Sunday. It was not known how many Uiqhurs (pronounced WEE-gers) and Han Chinese died or who was behind their deaths.
Li would not say how many of the 156 dead were Han — the majority ethnicity in China — and how many were Uiqhurs — a largely Muslim minority — even though more than 100 of them have been identified and handed over to their families.
He said both groups were responsible for the violence. "The small groups of the violent people have already been caught by police. The situation is now under control."
China's top police officer also vowed there would no leniency for those who took part in the violence in Urumqi (pronounced uh-ROOM-chee).
Public Security Minister Meng Jiangzhu was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency that "key rioters should be punished with the utmost severity."
Meng repeated the government's accusations that the riot was masterminded by overseas separatist groups. China has specifically accused U.S.-exiled Uighur activist Rebiya Kadeer and her overseas followers of being behind the violence. She has denied the allegations, and accused China of inciting the violence among Urumqi's 2.3 million residents.
Hu arrived home Wednesday "due to the situation" in Xinjiang, the official Xinhua News Agency said. It did not say what action he would take.
At the Urumqi People's Hospital, a newlywed who was attacked said she does not know what happened to her husband.
"He must be unconscious. ... They have been searching the urgent care wards but have not found him yet," said Dong Yuanyuan.
Dong was leaving for her honeymoon with her husband on Sunday when they were dragged off a bus and beaten unconscious.
An air of chaos still permeated the city Wednesday, with swarms of police and paramilitary troops patrolling the streets where armed Han Chinese men also wandered in groups. About 50 Han Chinese, many carrying metal rods, shouted and harassed a foreign reporter who walked by and would not let another journalist with a video camera film the scene.
In a Uighur neighborhood, people carried rocks and makeshift weapons — a knife attached to the end of a wooden stick in one instance — stood guard in groups.
Uighurs say the riots that started Sunday — put down by volleys of tear gas and a massive show of force — were triggered by the late June deaths of Uighur factory workers during a brawl in the southern Chinese city of Shaoguan. State-run media have said two workers died, but many Uighurs believe more were killed and said the incident was an example of how little the government cared about them.
Chinese authorities have been trying to control the unrest by blocking the Internet, including social networking sites such as Facebook, and limiting access to texting services on cell phones. At the same time, police have generally been allowing foreign media to cover the tensions.
On Wednesday, workers in Internet cafes in two other Xinjiang cities, Turpan and Kashgar, said Internet connections had been cut.
"The police came to us and told us to shut down our Internet cafe for the next three days, but who knows how long this will last," said the manger of the Huo Zhou Internet cafe in Turpan. He would give only his surname, Pei.
An operator with China Mobile's service center in Xinjiang, who refused to give her name, said all the services for cell phones, except making and receiving calls, had been suspended, including sending and receiving text messages — one of the major ways Twitter messages are distributed.
Concerns about what was happening in Xinjiang have even extended to Beijing. A female clerk at the Furong Hotel, a two-star hotel, said they received a notice from local police branch Tuesday asking them to report to the police if they received any Uighurs or Tibetans. She said there were no orders not to receive them as guests.

Eminem to Star in Adam Sandler Flick

2009-07-08T06:42:00.000-07:00

Eminem, who cut his acting teeth in the somewhat successful film, 8 Mile, has been confirmed to star along side (although most likely in a cameo) Adam Sandler in the Judd Apatow-directed film, Funny People (which is getting really good pre-release buzz)."I was scared to pitch jokes to him," Apatow told MTV, "then I realized his songs are as nasty as anything that has ever been spoken. There is no way to offend him."Also starring in Funny People are the usual suspects and then some: Seth Rogen, Ken Jeong, Jason Schwartzman, Sarah Silverman, Leslie Mann, and Jonah Hill. Other actors Apatow has recruited include: RZA, Andy Dick, Eric Bana, Norm MacDonald and Dave Attell (many of whom play themselves).

IMDB's tagline:

When seasoned comedian George Simmons [Sandler] learns of his terminal, inoperable health condition, his desire to form a genuine friendship cause him to take a relatively green performer under his wing as his opening act.

Should be a good one. Eminem seems to be making an attempt at showing his light-hearted side, no? First there was the staged Bruno stunt at the MTV Movie Awards, then he hosted Fox’s animation block with Baby Stewie, and he recently went on Jimmy Kimmel joking around. I guess I like this new Eminem. But it feels kind of like the high school bully who once pulled a knife on a kid over the summer, but is now (maybe) cleaned up his act and trying to make friends with everybody. Sorta.Funny Peopole comes out July 31. We'll see if we can get an interview with the rapper and put his new-found sense of humor to the test.

Justin Timberlake, Golf Book Author?

2009-07-08T06:41:00.001-07:00

Justin Timberlake considers himself a Renaissance man. Not too long ago, he said he considered himself equal parts performer and fashion designer - and now he may be looking to further expand his resumé.Sources tell The Observer that Timberlake has a literary agent in David Vigiliano, who has helped to ink book deals for Shannen Doherty and Clay Aiken, among others. And while a semi-autobiographical novel about a young man's ascent to stardom as a member of a boy band would probably sell like crazy, Timberlake already has a strong idea of what he'll write: a golf book.Timberlake clearly loves golf - he's often spotted at the driving range and on the golf course by the paparazzi. He also owns an environmentally-friendly golf course in Millington, Tennessee, his hometown.

Thin-looking Kim Jong Il makes rare appearance

2009-07-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

A thin-looking Kim Jong Il made a rare public appearance Wednesday as North Korea paid solemn respects to his father, the country's late founder, on the 15th anniversary of his death.
The memorial was the second major state event that the 67-year-old Kim has attended in person since reportedly suffering a stroke last summer. In early April, he presided over a parliamentary meeting where he was re-elected as leader.
Footage from broadcaster APTN showed Kim dressed in a khaki suit, looking more gaunt and with less hair than in April. As in April, he limped slightly while walking into the packed Pyongyang auditorium in what is believed to be an effect from the stroke.
Kim bowed his head during a moment of silence. A portrait of a giant red flag with an image of his father, a smiling Kim Il Sung, dominated the backdrop.
Kim's health has sparked concerns about instability and a power struggle if he were to die without naming a successor. His third and youngest son, Kim Jong Un, has widely been reported as being groomed as heir, but the regime has made no announcement to the outside world.
Wednesday's memorial came after the North conducted a number of banned ballistic missile tests last weekend, fueling tensions already running high after Pyongyang's second nuclear test on May 25 led to punishing U.N. sanctions.
The regime used the memorial to criticize the United States and South Korea.
"We will sternly smash the U.S. imperialist forces and South Korea's puppet regime anti-unification plot," Kim Yong Nam, the North's No. 2 leader, told the ceremony, according to footage broadcast on state television.
"We will achieve the historical mission of national unification by realizing" Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il's policies for that, he added.
Kim Il Sung died of heart failure on July 8, 1994 at the age of 82. He ran the communist country with an iron grip and was the object of an intense personality cult.
Streams of North Koreans visited a huge bronze statue of their late founder standing on a hill overlooking the capital. They laid flowers and bowed repeatedly.
"The great leader, President Kim Il Sung, is always alive — not only in the hearts of our people, but also in the minds of people all over the world," said Hwang In San, a Pyongyang resident.
The North's Korean Central News Agency reported that the younger Kim visited the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang, where Kim Il Sung's embalmed body lies, accompanied by top military generals.
Kim Jong Il assumed power after his father's death, though he did not take on his father's title of president. He runs North Korea from his post as chairman of the National Defense Commission.
In Seoul, dozens of conservative South Korean activists staged an anti-North Korea rally, torching a North Korean flag covered with crossed-out photos of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un.
The rally took place in front of the home of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who held the first-ever inter-Korean summit with Kim Jong Il in 2000. Protesters accused the former president of providing the North with massive aid and helping fund Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs.

G8 sees economy still in peril, falters on climate

2009-07-08T05:27:00.001-07:00

L'AQUILA, Italy (Reuters) – G8 leaders believe the world economy still faces "significant risks" and may need further help, according to summit draft documents that also reflect failure to agree climate change goals for 2050.
Progress on the environment was impeded by Chinese President Hu Jintao returning home due to unrest in northwestern China in which 156 people have died. Before he left, summit host Silvio Berlusconi spoke of Chinese "resistance" on climate goals.
Documents seen by Reuters before the G8 summit began on Wednesday cautioned that "significant risks remain to economic and financial stability" while "exit strategies" from pro-growth packages should be unwound only "once recovery is assured."
"Before there is talk of additional stimulus, I would urge all leaders to focus first on making sure the stimulus that has been announced actually gets delivered," Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said.
Leaders met in L'Aquila, a mountain town wrecked by April's earthquake and a fitting backdrop to talks on a global economy struggling to overcome the worst recession in living memory.
The Group of Eight -- United States, Germany, Japan, France, Britain, Italy, Canada and Russia -- kicked off with debate on the economic crisis, after what one analyst called a "reality check" in recent weeks on the prospects for rapid recovery.
G8 leaders badly underestimated the economic problems facing them when they met in Japan last year and were expected to focus on what must be done to prevent another meltdown.
"Although there have been signs of stability in the economy and the sentiment has improved, the real economy has not recovered yet with job and wage conditions still stagnant," said Takao Hattori, senior strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities.
But few big initiatives were expected as the G20, a broader forum that also includes the main emerging economies, is tasked with formulating a regulatory response to the crisis and meets in September in Pittsburgh after an April summit in London.
DOLLAR DEBATE PLAYED DOWN
Not mentioning China's push for a sensitive debate about a long-term alternative to the dollar as global reserve currency, the draft talked only of global "imbalances." G8 diplomats had said this might be the only oblique reference to currency.
"Stable and sustainable long-term growth will require a smooth unwinding of the existing imbalances in current accounts," read the draft prepared for the G8 talks.
China complains that dollar domination has exacerbated the global crisis and worries that the bill for U.S. recovery poses an inflation risk for China's dollar assets, an estimated 70 percent of its official currency reserves.
Analysts said the decision not to refer to this directly could remove a destabilizing factor on currency markets.
U.S. President Barack Obama was expected to make his mark on his first G8 summit by chairing Thursday's meeting in L'Aquila of the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, whose members account for about 80 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
MEF ministers holding last-minute preparatory talks failed to close the gap between U.S. and Europe on the one hand and emerging powers like China and India on the other hand on the goal of halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
A draft MEF document dropped any reference to this and aimed instead for agreement on the need to limit the average increase in global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times.
Cindy Baxter of Greenpeace said G8 leaders were "watering down climate ambitions," a bad omen for December's U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen seeking a successor to the Kyoto pact, since emission cuts are a prerequisite for limiting temperature rises.
Developing nations, present in large numbers at the expanded G8 summit with more than 30 world leaders invited, argue that they have to consume more energy to end poverty and that rich nations must make deep emission cuts of their own by 2020.
The packed first day was due to wrap up with talks on an array of international issues, including Iran's post-election violence and nuclear program. However, these are unlikely to lead to any immediate action, such as a tightening of sanctions.
One area where a breakthrough is possible is trade. A draft communique suggested the G8 and "G5" developing nations would agree to conclude the stalled Doha round of trade talks in 2010.
Launched in 2001 to help poor nations prosper through trade, the talks have stumbled on proposed tariff and subsidy cuts.
Leaders will also discuss a U.S. proposal that rich nations commit $15 billion over several years for agricultural development in poor countries to ensure food supplies.

Warm Welcome Door Mat

2009-07-08T05:19:00.001-07:00

Nerd Paradise

2009-07-08T01:15:00.000-07:00

Billboard Battle

2009-07-07T23:29:00.001-07:00

Obama asks Russians to forge partnership with US

2009-07-07T16:43:00.000-07:00

Working to turn Russia from antagonist to ally, President Barack Obama asked the Russian people Tuesday to "forge a lasting partnership" with the U.S., but he acknowledged after talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that on divisive issues there won't be "a meeting of the minds anytime soon."
Obama was wrapping up a two-day stay in Russia, during which he and President Dmitry Medvedev said they were determined by year's end to negotiate a new nuclear arms treaty that would slash both country's arsenals by about one-third.
After breakfast at Putin's country home, Obama sped back to central Moscow to tell the graduating class of the prestigious New Economic School that the U.S. and Russia were not "destined to be antagonists."
Throughout his young presidency, Obama has hewed to a singular message about U.S.-Russian relations, insisting that both nations must get beyond the kind of thinking that gripped Moscow and Washington during the decades of the Cold War. He reprised that in his graduation speech.
"It is difficult to forge a lasting partnership between former adversaries," Obama said. "But I believe on the fundamental issues that will shape this century, Americans and Russians share common interests that form a basis for cooperation."
Before leaving for Russia, Obama had said that Putin had "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new." After breakfast with the Russian leader, he told Fox News Channel: "I found him to be tough, smart, shrewd , very unsentimental, very pragmatic. And on areas where we disagree, like Georgia, I don't anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon."
Putin, the former Russian president, also spoke warmly of his country's hopes for improved U.S. ties with Obama in the White House.
"With you we link all our hopes for the furtherance of relations between our two countries," the former KGB official said, sitting next to Obama.
The White House had been hoping to reach a broader Russian audience with Obama's speech, but the address was not widely available on television. It was carried live on the 24-hour news channel Vesti, but not on any of the main, more widely watched Russian outlets such as First Channel, Rossiya, or NTV.
Obama used his speech to further define his view of the United States' place in the world and, specifically, to argue that the U.S. shares compelling interests with Russia.
"Let me be clear: America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia," he declared.
His upbeat comments showed Obama's determination to turn around public opinion in Russia, where polls show people are wary of the United States and take a skeptical view of Obama himself.
He said Russian and U.S. interests largely overlap in halting the spread of nuclear weapons, confronting violent extremists, ensuring economic prosperity, advancing the rights of people and fostering cooperation without jeopardizing sovereignty.
But he also sprinkled in challenges to Russia, particularly in the area of democracy. U.S. officials are wary of Russia's increasingly hard-line stand on dissent.
"By no means is America perfect," Obama said. But he also said: "Independent media have exposed corruption at all levels of business and government. Competitive elections allow us to change course. ... If our democracy did not advance those rights, I as a person of African ancestry wouldn't be able to address you as an American citizen, much less a president."
Obama said the U.S. will not try to impose any kind of governing system on another country. But he argued for democratic values "because they are moral, and also because they work."
On Georgia and Ukraine — two nations that have sought NATO membership to the chagrin of neighboring Russia — Obama tried a diplomatic touch. He defended the steps nations must take to join the alliance, adding, "NATO seeks collaboration with Russia, not confrontation."
The White House described the session positively, on the whole.
Both sides agreed to try to be better listeners and pay more attention to how each side is looking at the same issues, said one senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss details of the private meeting that was described as "very candid."
Before the speech Obama held what the White House characterized as a "good meeting" with former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The U.S. leader, accompanied by Medvedev, also met with U.S. and Russian business leaders. Obama also met with a diverse collection of nongovernment leaders from both countries — health experts, environmentalists, reporters, human rights advocates — who held their own summit to re-engage engage bilateral cooperation.
Obama also met with Russian opposition leaders.
On Wednesday he heads to a G-8 summit in Italy. While there he will meet Pope Benedict XVI, before moving on to Ghana where he plans to deliver what the White House describes as a major foreign policy speech.

Fire Alarm Humor

2009-07-07T16:26:00.001-07:00

Poignant service says goodbye to M.J., the man

2009-07-07T16:24:00.001-07:00

Michael Jackson was an entertainment phenomenon both triumphant and troubled, a dazzling performer who transcended barriers, transformed the music world and transfixed fans and non-fans alike in every corner of the Earth. But Tuesday's memorial was not for that Michael Jackson. Instead, those closest to the legend gave us of a glimpse of Michael Jackson the man.
In a poignant and serene service, the portrait they painted was of a human just as remarkable, making his loss doubly painful to bear for those who truly loved him.
"I just wanted to say ... ever since I was born, Daddy has been the best father you could ever imagine. And I just wanted to say I love him — so much," said Jackson's 11-year-old daughter, Paris-Michael, before dissolving into tears and falling into the embrace of her aunt Janet.
It was a deeply emotional moment, the most profound part of a memorial that accomplished what Jackson could not in life: humanizing a man who for so long had seemed like a caricature.
How could someone who moved like he moved, sang like he sang, and reached musical heights no person has ever touched be as human as the rest of us? How could a man who threw a wedding for Elizabeth Taylor, had a chimpanzee as a companion, and wore masks to cover his surgically altered face be any part normal?
How can a man who admitted he shared his bed with boys — though he maintained it was never sexual, as others suggested — be a decent man, closer to saintly than devilish?
It took those closest to him, from his brother Marlon to his old friend Brooke Shields, to explain Michael Jackson to those who saw him as a talented freak — an image that deeply pained Jackson.
So while Motown founder Berry Gordy talked about the child prodigy he signed at age 10, and pronounced him not just the King of Pop, but "the greatest entertainer who ever lived," he also talked about the little kid who played catcher during family softball games against the Gordys, who cracked jokes and frolicked in the pool. Magic Johnson talked about the perfectionist who made him achieve higher heights as a basketball player, but also told of sitting around and eating KFC at his home. And Shields talked about a friendship in which laughter was central to it all.
"We had a bond, and maybe it was because we both understood what it was like to be in the spotlight from a very, very young age," Shields said, fighting back tears. "Both of us needed to be adults very early, but when we were together, we were two little kids having fun. ... M.J.'s laugh was the sweetest and purest of anyone I've known."
For Jackson's family and the organizers of the memorial, it was a successful rehabilitation of the image of a superstar who had been derided for so long. The words "sweet" and "pure" had rarely been used to describe Jackson in the last two decades of his life, marked by allegations of child abuse, an ever-changing face, multiple lawsuits, eccentric behavior and what seemed to be one bad career move after another.
Only true Jackson fans, a number that seemed to be dwindling year after year, seemed to remember the man who dazzled us with "Thriller," made us swoon with delight with infectious grooves like "Rock With You" to "Remember the Time," and conversed with presidents, kings and queens.
Tuesday's memorial reminded us of that Michael Jackson, too. The universally revered and admired former South African President, Nelson Mandela, offered words of condolences and love for Jackson in a statement read by Smokey Robinson.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, talked about how Jackson held court with African leaders in his bid to help slow the spread of AIDS there.
And Maya Angelou, who was also represented by her words instead of her presence, offered a loving tribute for the entertainer in remarks read by Queen Latifah.
"He took a pose on his toes for all of us," Angelou wrote, remarking on his worldwide influence from "Birmingham, Ala., to Birmingham, England."
For an entertainer known for his amazing music, song took a backseat to sentiment at the service. But when it was used, it was to great effect. His very biggest hits were not part of the program.
Instead, what we heard were the songs that reinforced Jackson outside of entertainment. Longtime friend Stevie Wonder — who summarized the thoughts of many when he said, "This is a moment I wished I didn't live to see" — sang his own "Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer," originally intended as a bitter breakup song but repurposed as a sad goodbye.
Lionel Richie, Jackson's collaborator on the anthem "We Are the World," sang a gospel classic, "Jesus is Love." Another gospel hymn heralded the arrival of Jackson's casket when a choir sang the lines, "Hallelujah, hallelujah, we're going to see the King."
Two of Jackson's songs underscored his humanitarian side — the closing numbers, "We Are the World" and the anthem for his charity, "Heal the World."
Usher's heartbreaking rendition of "Gone Too Soon," which Jackson wrote as a memorial for Ryan White, one of the early public faces of AIDS, captured the pain not only of his fans and friends, but of his family, as the Jackson brothers came together and gripped a sobbing Usher in their arms afterward.
And Jermaine Jackson's version of "Smile," which Michael Jackson had often used as a metaphor for his own tragic life, was a fitting epitaph for his brother.
But perhaps no one lifted up the image of Jackson more than the Rev. Al Sharpton, in rousing, church-like sermon that took Michael Jackson back from the tabloid headlines. Sharpton looked at Jackson's children and declared: "Your daddy wasn't strange — what he had to deal with was strange."

Long Way...

2009-07-07T16:10:00.001-07:00

Someone Cant Drive

2009-07-07T16:09:00.001-07:00

Palin: Politically speaking, 'If I die, I die.'

2009-07-07T08:38:00.001-07:00

Sarah Palin says she's not a quitter, she's a fighter, but adds that, politically speaking, "if I die, I die. So be it."
The Alaska governor spoke in taped interviews on ABC, NBC, Fox News Channel and CNN broadcast Tuesday morning.
She told CNN that "all options are on the table" for her future, and told Fox she doesn't know what the future holds.
But told ABC's "Good Morning America" that she recognizes she might not have political staying power after her surprise resignation Friday, which came just as she had been expected to elevate her national profile ahead of a possible 2012 GOP presidential run.
"I said before ... 'You know, politically speaking, if I die, I die. So be it,'" she said.
Speaking in fishing waders from the town of Dillingham, Palin said her administration has been paralyzed by fending off frivolous lawsuits.
"I'm not going to take the comfortable path. I'm going to take the right path for the state," she said of her resignation, which she characterized as a matter of progressing in an unconventional way.
"That caught people off guard. ... It's out of the box and unconventional. That's what we are as Alaskans and certainly how I am as a public servant."
Palin said she doesn't think she needs a title to bring about "positive change," but added that she can't see herself being totally out of public service. She criticized President Barack Obama, a possible sign she's looking toward the 2012 presidential race.
"Average, hardworking Americans need to be able to get out there, unrestrained, and fight for what is right, fight for energy independence and national security, fight for a smaller government instead of this big government overgrowth that Obama is ushering in," Palin told Fox News Channel.
The outgoing Alaska governor told the Anchorage Daily News she stepped down because ethics complaints against her and her squabble with lawmakers would have paralyzed the 18 months she had left in office.
"Especially when all these lawmakers are lining up for office," she said. "Their desire would be to clobber the administration left and right so that they can position themselves for office. I'm not going to put Alaskans through that."
She told the paper she believes her replacement, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who will take office on July 26, will diffuse the controversy that surrounds her.
"With Sean in the governor's seat, it won't be the politics of personal destruction, I don't believe," Palin said.
She added she wasn't sure what her next step would be.
"I can't predict the next fish run much less what's going to happen in a few years," she told the Daily News. "I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to keep working hard for Alaska."
Palin has spent the past four days with her family, but she returned to work as Alaska governor Tuesday in a remote fishing village 30 miles north of the Arctic Circle.
Palin was scheduled to appear in Kotzebue to sign a bill designed to bring public safety officers to small towns. Kotzebue, a town of about 3,000 people, is 550 miles northwest of Anchorage and lies on a spit of sand at the end of a peninsula.
There has been speculation that she has some legal issue that is not yet known to the public. But her lawyer told The Associated Press on Monday that she has no legal problems whatsoever, and simply is tired of the hostile political climate, legal bills and other distractions.
"She is leaving now because I think she believes that she has become the issue, rightly or wrongly, with all these ethics complaints and with the issues involving the Legislature, the combativeness they've been demonstrating toward her since she returned from the campaign," Thomas Van Flein said.
"I think she believes it's in the best interest of the state to progress forward, for her to move on to other issues."
Palin has become a lightning rod for partisan politics in Alaska since her return from the 2008 presidential campaign after John McCain selected her as his running mate for the GOP ticket. She has racked up an estimated $500,000 in legal bills defending the flurry of ethics complaints, including one filed Monday that alleges she is violating ethics law by taking per diem payments when she stays in her Wasilla home instead of the governor's mansion in Juneau.
In addition, her relationship with Democrats in the state Senate — once among her staunchest allies — deteriorated in the last session.
At the state Capitol in Juneau, the "Time to Make a Difference" clock that counted the time left in Palin's term was taken down from the wall outside her office. And people from around the country called up her office to inquire about the situation, as did a few cruise ship tourists who made the trek to the Capitol.
The young woman at the desk outside Palin's office was busy answering phones.
"Yes, she is getting swamped with e-mails," the woman tells one caller. "Yes, they do get forwarded to the appropriate person."
"Unfortunately, we are having a back load of e-mails so it will take some to get a response," she tells another.
Where is she? Why is she stepping down? When is her last day? Why so soon?
The tour guide tried to politely answer the questions for the tourists when she could, but for the most part had no answers.
Some of the visitors left Palin messages in a guest log.
"Sarah — Please Stay!" one person wrote.
Kathy Waldo-Gilbert, a registered Democrat from Iowa who was on her honeymoon in Alaska, said she was especially disappointed because she believes that Palin's early departure from the governor's job will make it harder for other women who want to be taken seriously in high-profile positions. Waldo-Gilbert voted Republican for the first time in last year's presidential election.
"When things get hard, you stick around," she said.
Erika Fagerstrom, executive residential manager at the governor's mansion, said Palin and her family will be missed. Even though Palin lived most of the time at her home in Wasilla, she spent "quite a bit" of time at the stately columned mansion near the Capitol, she said.
"We are sad to see her go. They are a great family," she said.
Palin will be succeeded by Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, who has announced he will seek to retain the office in the 2010 election.
State Rep. John Harris, a former House speaker and Republican from Valdez, announced Monday that he's preparing to file paperwork with state election officials in a bid for governor.

Moving Day

2009-07-07T08:35:00.001-07:00

Frat Guy Heaven

2009-07-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Fans ready to 'celebrate Michael's life'

2009-07-07T07:04:00.000-07:00

As Tuesday dawned in downtown Los Angeles, some fans waiting to get in for the Michael Jackson memorial service were surprised at their good fortune.

Michelle Mann and Basra Arte, both 18, flew in from Vancouver, British Columbia, to honor Jackson. They stood outside the Staples Center, brimming with excitement and celebrating the generosity of a complete stranger.
"It's overwhelming," Mann said. "We can't believe that we're here."
The two had appeared on Canadian television and said they planned to fly to Los Angeles for the memorial service -- even thought they had no tickets. Six hours before their flight, 15-year-old Karlo Karanan, who'd seen them on TV, tracked them down and gave them his.
"I'm looking forward to being in the presence of other fans," Arte said. "The energy is going to be amazing."
Gates to the Staples Center were opened about 6 a.m. PT (9 a.m. ET).
There were plenty of other fans on hand as the 10 a.m. hour of the Jackson service approached. On Monday night, more than 12 hours before the service, the mood was almost festive, with fans lined up around the block to sign the memorial wall.
Police and security officers kept a close watch. Helicopters flew overhead, and sheriff's deputies could be seen strolling through with bomb-sniffing dogs.

As media from around the world rolled cameras and took photos, fans talked about their tenderness toward the star.
Some in line gathered around Barbara Delorm, who toted a thick photo album that contained a collection of all of her -related items. It was decades in the making, she said.
Delorm grew teary-eyed as she showed off photos of herself at age 14 when her parents surprised her with a trip to visit the outside of the Jackson family home in Encino, California.
"It's not about being inside the Staples Center," said Delorm, who scored a ticket to attend the memorial. "It's about everyone being here together like this to celebrate Michael's life."
The singer had a strong influence on her life, Delorm said.
"I just loved him, all of my life," she said, her voice beginning to break. "I never did drugs, and I never got involved with bad stuff because he was such a great role model."
Vendors strolled through the crowd, offering everything from Jackson T-shirts to copies of old magazines featuring the star on the cover.

Tonya Sandis lugged a box of her homemade "King of Pop" soda. For $5, customers could grab a bottle of the root beer, cream soda or vanilla cream flavors.
"I think [Jackson] was a genius," she said as she held up a bottle that featured a silhouette drawing of Jackson and the words "Established 8-29-58, Aged to perfection."
To pass the time, some in the crowd sang, shared memorabilia and swapped stories about the icon.
Many vowed to camp out overnight even though they didn't have one of about 17,000 tickets to the event given out to the public.
"We are staying," said Christina Merlos, who came from Gardena, California, with her 15-year-old son, Carlos Villa, some of his friends and her friend Aracli Arias. "We wanted to be here tonight to hang out with each other and the other fans."
Leobarda Grijalva carried an acrylic painting she had made of a sparkling-gloved Jackson. She said she planned to watch the memorial service on television before heading to Neverland Ranch to pay her respects.
"I came here to share my love for Michael Jackson with the world, and what better place to do that than here," she said, gesturing toward the Staples Center.

Jackson Family Gathers At Cemetery Hours Before Memorial

2009-07-07T06:54:00.000-07:00

Michael Jackson's family is scheduled to gather on Tuesday morning (July 7) for a private funeral service at the Los Angeles' Forest Lawn Memorial Park just a few hours before the pop singer's fans will pay their respects at the Staples Center across town.
According to TMZ, several members of the Jackson clan visited the cemetery on Monday night. Brother Randy and sister LaToya were spotted entering Forest Lawn, and a hearse was spotted pulling up to the Hall of Liberty complex for what the gossip site speculated might have been a private viewing of the body. People reported that a dozen or more cars arrived at Forest Lawn on Monday night for the family event. Fans and media were camped out outside of Forest Lawn, where visitors from as far as Japan and Spain gathered to pay their final respects to the singer, who died at age 50 nearly two weeks ago following cardiac arrest.

Although unconfirmed at press time, TMZ also reported that after Tuesday morning's private memorial ceremony at Forest Lawn, Jackson's coffin will be transported to the Staples Center.
The roster of attendees slated to participate in the memorial at the Staples Center includes Lionel Richie, Usher, Kobe Bryant, Mariah Carey, Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, among others. Wonder and Carey are expected to perform, as well as Jennifer Hudson. Beyoncé and Whitney Houston are rumored to be attending but not participating in the official hourlong ceremony.
Along with former wife Debbie Rowe — the mother of Jackson's two oldest children — another intimate who will not be attending the memorial is longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor, 77, who tweeted on Monday that, "I just don't believe that Michael would want me to share my grief with millions of others. How I feel is between us. Not a public event." One of Jackson's closest friends, Taylor said she was asked to speak at Staples Center but declined. "I cannot be part of the public whoopla," she explained, "and I cannot guarantee that I would be coherent to say a word."
As part of the heavy security measures in place for the public service, police closed off multiple areas outside of Staples Center and the Nokia Theater late Monday night. Only credentialed media members with blue wristbands will be allowed to roam the area on Tuesday morning, while fans with tickets and gold wristbands will be able to enter designated areas where they will be ushered into the separate venues.
All week, city officials have urged fans to stay away from the downtown Los Angeles area. No giant screens are in the area for fans to view the service, as previously reported. Only platforms for media cameras have been erected near the scene.
The doors are set to open at 8 a.m. PT, and the memorial service is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. According to CNN, the memorial service is expected to run for one hour. Participants were rehearsing Monday, according to reports, though no names were released.

Obama offers Russian youth a vision of "reset" world

2009-07-07T06:33:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama attempted to bridge the divisions of the Cold War with a new generation of Russian students on Tuesday, outlining a vision of a world made safer by closer ties between the Kremlin and Washington.
The U.S. president told students from Moscow's New Economic School the future of Russia -- and its relations with the United States -- belonged to them.
"What kind of future is Russia going to have? What kind of future are Russia and America going to have together? What world order will replace the Cold War?" Obama said.
"Those questions still do not have clear answers, and so now they must be answered by you -- by your generation in Russia, America, and around the world. You get to decide."
But a generation of apathetic young people who were born in the last days of the Soviet Union and who grew up in the chaos of the 1990s may care more about money than better relations with Washington.
The students of the school sat quietly and applauded only at the end of the 31-minute speech, which was delivered late because Obama's meeting with Russia's powerful prime minister, Vladimir Putin, went over time.
During other keynote speeches in Prague in April and Cairo in June, Obama was repeatedly applauded. His speech in Moscow was not carried live on the main Russian television channels, showing only on a cable news channel not seen by most.
A NEW BEGINNING?
While extending the hand of friendship on cutting nuclear weapons and dealing jointly with North Korea and Iran, Obama also addressed the hangovers from the Soviet Union by warning empires should not treat other countries as chess pieces.
"In 2009, a great power does not show strength by dominating or demonizing other countries," Obama said. "The days when empires could treat sovereign states as pieces on a chess board are over."
A gentle way to ease Russia out of its post-imperial stupor, perhaps, but Obama's comments go against the feelings of many in the Russian elite, who pine for the days when the Kremlin was at the very top table of world politics.
Many Russian officials believe the United States is an empire that has sought to check Russian interests since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. And Obama or no Obama, they say, the U.S. empire will remain.
Russians have heard the promises of democracy and friendship from visiting U.S. leaders for decades, while Russian officials say NATO has expanded eastwards.
"It was a very positive speech," said Natalya Ignatyeva, a third year student in the audience. "I want to see how it works out in better relations."
Obama said Georgia and Ukraine should have the right to secure borders and sovereignty and that NATO did not want a confrontation with Russia.
The U.S. leader also addressed the rampant corruption that is widespread in every walk of Russian life, from multi-billion energy deals to everyday bribes to teachers and policemen.
Obama was careful to sprinkle his charm carefully through the speech, quoting Russian poet Alexander Pushkin and honoring the Soviet Union's enormous sacrifices in the Second World War.
"Russia has cut its way through time like a mighty river through a canyon, leaving an indelible mark on human history as it goes," Obama said.
"As you move this story forward, look to the future that can be built if we refuse to be burdened by the old obstacles and old suspicions."

Getting Ready Is Half The Fun

2009-07-07T06:21:00.001-07:00

Glass And Utility Cleaner

2009-07-07T06:00:00.001-07:00

John Galliano for Christian Dior: Hats Off to the Pantsless Brigade

2009-07-07T05:47:00.000-07:00

John Galliano showed his Christian Dior Haute Couture collection in Paris today, showcasing a return to the New Look aesthetic that put Dior on the map more than half a century ago. But while all the runway models' eyebrows were arched and painted to look like those of legendary '50s model Dovima, the pieces exhibited were by no means retro retreads.

Galliano showcased many of his beautiful jackets by dressing his models in little else, save whimsical hats by famed milliner Stephen Jones and Aquanet hairstyles straight out of Flashdance. Mannish, scuptural shoulders were absent on Galliano's runway: most pieces emphasized the hourglass shape.

Expect to see much of Galliano's ultrafemme perfection on Dior fanatics like Marion Cotillard and Dita Von Teese.

There was, of course, plenty of drama in the ball gown department. Hats off to whichever brave starlet choose to wear one of these creations on the red carpet next year.