Juvenile Detention Center Inmates

The police have arrested and are charging with premeditated murder an eight year old boy from St. Johns, Arizona.

A spokesperson of the St. Johns police said that last Wednesday Vincent Romero, aged 29, and Timothy Romans, aged 39, were shot to death by the son of one of the victims. The body of one man was found on the front porch of the house where the defendant lived and the other in a room at the second floor.

The child, whose identity has not been revealed yet, denied all the charges, but later on he confessed to both killings. However, Benjamin Brewer, the defendant’s attorney, says that the child confessed while there was no legal representative present and without having his rights read by a police officer. He implied that the boy was intimidated into confessing.

The judge dealing with this case has declared there is solid evidence against the boy and that his testimony only comes to confirm what they already knew; he premeditatedly killed his father and one of his friends, and he will do time in a juvenile detention center.

Omar Osama Bin Laden and Wife Zaina al Sabah

Omar Osama Bin Laden, the fourth of the 19 sons of Osama Bin Laden, has not been granted political asylum in Egypt either.

At the beginning of this week he flew from Cairo to Madrid and, as soon as the plane landed, Omar and his wife, Zaina al Sabah, filed a petition for political asylum to the Spanish authorities.Two days later, the petition was denied and yesterday he and his wife were embarked on a plane headed for the Egyptian capital, Cairo.

During their stay in the International Airport of Cairo the couple was not allowed to have any contact with the press. When they received the news that their petition had also been rejected by the Egyptian Authorities the couple, traveling with Saudi Arabia passports, boarded on another flight, this time to Doha, the capital of Qatar.

Omar Osama Bin Laden claims to be the pacifist son of Osama, and he says he fears for his life for having criticized his father’s actions and for being against the Islamic fundamentalism.

Seeing that he possesses Saudi Arabian citizenship, there should be no problem for him to enter Qatar territory and get the political asylum; nonetheless, he has filed another petition to British authorities, which will not be answered until February 2009.

Nuclear Submarine Layout

At least 20 people got killed in an accident that took place on board of a Russian nuclear submarine of the Pacific fleet, according to the declarations of Captain Igor Dygalo.

The accident was caused by a malfunction of the fire extinction system during some training procedures at sea. Russian officials have not given details on the submarine’s name or location, but they ensure that the nuclear reactor is fully functional and it has not been affected by the incident.

Admiral Vladímir Vysotski gave orders for the procedures to be ceased immediately, but gave no details on their nature.

The victims probably died asphyxiated, as on submarines the fire extinction procedures consist in hermetically sealing all the exits and spraying chemical substances that neutralize the oxygen in the affected area. In such cases, in order to survive, those present should wear gas masks.

According to sources from the Army, on board of the submarine there were 208 persons, out of whom only 81 were military; the rest were specialized workers.

Juan Camilo Mouriño

The Mexican Government has totally ruled out the possibility of Mouriño’s plane crashing because of a bomb attack.

They are not yet certain it wasn’t an attack; they just said they did not find any trace of explosives on board. The aircraft’s black boxed have been sent to Tucson, Arizona for further investigation.In a press conference held in Ciudad de Mexico, the Minister of Transports and Communications, Luis Tellez, has announced that there is no indication of a technical error either, since the engines were working at the same intensity.

Juan Camilo Mouriño, close friend of the Mexican President, died on the 4th of November in a plane crash, together with José Luis Vasconcelos, the President’s Security adviser.

The accident also caused the death of five civilians who just happened to be on that street in downtown Ciudad de Mexico when the plane crashed.

Gilberto López Meyer, the Director of ASA (Airports and Auxiliary Services), has announced that the remains of the airplane will be taken from the crash site in maximum 48 hours.

The human remains of Juan Camilo Mouriño (1971-2008) have been taken to the memorial house of a cathedral situated in Campeche, Southern Mexico, where he had spent his childhood.

Khaled Meshaal, Hamas Leader

Obama’s election has been received extremely well by the majority of world leaders and institutions.

Latest events come to show that even terrorists groups like him more than they did President Bush; during his mandate, the United States have totally rejected the idea of keeping contact with the Islamic terrorist groups, and they did not seem willing to do so either.

In order to try to solve the political problems in the Middle East, Hamas have announced their availability to discuss with the President-elect Barack Obama.

Representatives of the Islamic movement have ensured that, as long as Obama will respect their rights and political convictions, they are willing to meet with him.

Obama has visited Israel this past July and has told Hamas leaders that the only way to have better relations with the US was to stop the acts of violence and officially recognize the existence of Israel as a separate state.

School Collapse, Haiti

After the collapse of the suburban school in Puerto Principe, Haiti, yesterday, the authorities are still digging up bodies of children trapped under the walls.

The crash, which might have been caused by an earth slide, has killed at least 50 persons and injured quite as many, according to the rescue teams.At the time of the accident the almost 700 students, with ages between 10 and 20, were in their classrooms and in the school yard.

The parents of the children studying there are desperately digging through the piles of cement in search of their bodies. The police and the UN peace forces are doing the best they can to retrieve all the bodies.

The Haitian president, Rene Preval, and the Prime Minister, Michel Pierre Louis, have attended the accident site; they have ensured all those present that the government will do everything in their power to help all the families affected by this tragedy.

Cristina Fernández , President of Argentina

The Argentinean Congress has agreed on the nationalization of the pension funds, despite the opposition’s contrary opinion.

The Government run by President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has won yet another political battle yesterday, by obtaining the approval of the Congress on the nationalization of the pension funds.
With 160 votes for and 75 against , the controversial law project has eliminated the private pension funds and has reinstated a single pension system.

The law project will now go through to the Senate, where President Fernández hopes things will go fast and without any problems.

The Government said that the main reason for this whole process is that they wanted to stop the financial groups from charging such high account administration taxes.

The political debate on the extinction of the so-called Administrators of the Jubilation and Pension Funds went on with great difficulties and there have been virulent discussions between the participants.

Arrest

The Mexican police have apprehended a regional leader of the Gulf Mexican drug cartel and a great amount of arsenal.

The Federal Police have captured Jaime González Durán, one of the leaders of the drug cartels in the Gulf of Mexico area, also known as the “Hummer”.

During the same operation, they have confiscated 5,000 cartridges, approximately 500 weapons of different calibers, and more than 86,000 dollars in cash.

The arrest took place in a neighbourhood of the town of Reynosa, in the Northern state of Tamaulipas.
Hummer is considered to be one of the main partners of Heriberto Lazcano and of Miguel Treviño Morales, leaders of the drug trafficking group “Los Zetas”.

The chief of Federal Police told the press that Jaime González joined the Mexican Army in 1991, but quit in February, 1999 in order to join Lazcano and Morales in the Gulf Drug Cartel.

Gonzalez was wanted in the United States and in Mexico for conspiracy, and production and distribution of cocaine.

Liposuction

One might think that being one of the most wanted members of the Italian Mob and searched by the police occupies one’s mind; to prove the contrary stands Domenico Magnoli.

He is one of the members of the mob group of the Southern region of Calabria, in Italy.

The French police had issued a search and arrest warrant for him, on charges of drugs trafficking, but he did not seem to see that a priority and went to a medical clinic to have a liposuction in a clinic in Southern Italy.

Minutes after he regained consciousness from the anesthetics, he was apprehended by the Italian police in Cosenza, Calabria.

Apart from the drug trafficking charges raised by the French police, Magnoli is suspected of being involved in illegal activities with the “Ndrangheta”, the powerful Calabria mob group, which coordinates drugs trafficking networks from South America and Eastern Europe.

Haiti

A school has collapsed today in Puerto Principe, the capital city of the island of Haiti, killing at least 10 people and injuring dozens more, according to the witnesses.

The authorities have not yet given an official report on the situation, but the police and UN forces are still searching for any people trapped under the school walls.

Nobody knows for sure what has caused the collapse; the La promesse, College evangelique is a four stories high building and did not seem to have any obvious structure problems.

Dozens of parents entered the building, looking for their children and hoping they were not lying under some wall of concrete. The police and the UN peace forces are now putting all their efforts in helping the parents and in ensuring all the persons that were in the building at the time of the collapse are rescued.

Carl Henry Boucher, police spokesman, has declared that more than 25 people have been transported to the hospital with severe injuries and that the doctors fear for the lives of many of them.

Gomorra, Film Poster

At the 2008 European Film Festival, in Sevilla, Spain, director Matteo Garrone’s film will be presented during the festival’s opening night.

The film, called “Gomorra”, is based on the book with the same name, written by the Italian journalist Roberto Saviano.

Underneath the fictional elements, the film shows the underworld of the Italian Mafia, and there is nothing pretty about it: no heroes, no pretty actors, nothing to hide the violence associated with this social phenomenon. The film shows reality as it is, and how the Camorra affects the lives of people living in Naples.

Garrone decided to make this film years ago, even before the book became a best-seller and even before the Camorra threatened to kill its author. He says the film is neither a critic, nor a praise. It just tells things as they are nowadays in Naples.

The film received the Grand Prix at the Cannes Festival and has been chosen to represent Italy at the Oscars, in the Best Foreign Language Film.

Stem Cell Anti-wrinkle Cosmetics

While the vast majority of people still ask themselves what exactly are stem cells, how do they work, when can they be harvested, the cosmetics industry has already created the stem cell face cream.

If 20 years ago a stem cell-based face cream would have sounded as taken out of a science fiction movie, today the cosmetics industry finds solutions in all domains, invests important amounts of money in research projects and studies their consumers’ expectations, in order to create life-changing products.

Every product they launch promises the user a miraculous skin rejuvenating process or at least a slow down of the aging process.

Stem cells are undifferentiated cells of an organism (they do not possess any specific function yet) , before becoming part of a specific tissue, and in their primary state they are capable of multiplying endlessly.

Amongst their most important features, we can say that they are totipotent (they can divide into any type of tissue), pluripotent (they can convert to specific types of tissue), and unipotent (they can form a single type of tissue).

Recently, the Swiss Stem Cell Research Center has developed a series of anti-aging cosmetic treatments based on vegetal stem cells extracted out of the lotus plant.

Producers say that all the studies to which the products have been subjected have confirmed their efficiency in fighting wrinkles without surgery. The products address women and men over the age of 35.

Job Adds

Reports of the Work Department have shown 240,000 American citizens have lost their jobs only in the past month of October, increasing to over 1,2 million the number of unemployed in the US only from the beginning of 2008.

Unemployment rates have thus increased from 6,1% in September, to a 6,5% at present; this high number has not been reached in the US since March of 1994.

More than half of the people who lost their jobs this year, have become unemployed in the last three months; specifically, 127,000 in August, and 284,000 in September.

Most of those affected were working in the fields of construction and manufacturing, while fields like coalmining and health were even requiring more personnel.

In constructions, 49,000 people have lost their job, which has created a new record of 10 million unemployed constructions-related workers, phenomenon not seen since 25 years ago.

Financial analysts do not seem to be confident the situation will get better any time soon.

Britney Spears

Britney has come back, and made it big! She is not only looking great, she has also won the MTV Europe prize for best album of the year with “Blackout”, an album that surpassed those of Coldplay and Duffy.

She was also voted the artist with the best performance of 2008.

Spears could not attend the Liverpool gala, as she is already intensely working to finish her latest album, called “Circus”, which will be out on the market in only a few weeks.

The other focus point of the night was Sir Paul McCartney, who was honored with the Ultimate Legend Prize, for his evolution and contribution to world musical culture. To honor him even more, this year’s MTV Europe Awards gala  was held in Liverpool, his place of birth.

Other trophies went to Rick Astley (best performance of all times), Katy Perry (best new artist), 30 Seconds to Mars (best rock or alternative artist), and Tokio Hotel (best live acting band).

Rahm Emanuel, Obama's New Chief-of Staff

One day after he was elected president, Obama has announced the names of the members of his transition team, which was mostly formed of ex- advisers of former president Bill Clinton.

He has also made a proposal to be his chief of staff to Rahm Emanuel, ex- adviser of Bill Clinton, and close friend to Obama.Yesterday, Democrat Rahm Emanuel has officially accepted President-elect Obama’s proposal and is therefore his new Chief-of-Staff.

In a press release Obama has announced the names of his transition team supervisors: John D. Podesta, former chief of staff for Clinton, Valerie Jarret, one of Obama’s loyal and long time advisers, and Pete Rouse, former chief of staff of Obama’s Senate team.

The team also includes Carol Browner, for environment issues, William Daley, former Secretary of Commerce, Christopher Edley, Michael Froman and Julius Genachowski, Donal Gips, Governor Janet Napolitano, Federico Pena, Susan Rice and Sonal Shah, from Google.org.

This week Obamas’s team will launch their official website, www.change.gov, which will keep us up to date with the new president’s actions.

Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi

US TV show host, Ellen DeGeneres, was deeply displeased to find out about the results of the California gay marriage voting.

DeGeneres, who married to actress Portia de Rossi in August 2008, does not know what to say about this law. After America has just chosen its first Black president, they put a ban on same-sex marriages, although they had allowed it in the past.

The TV host is happy that she did manage to legally get married with her life partner, but she is sad when she thinks of all the other gay couples out there who had planned their wedding for this year.

She had given 100,000 dollars to the gay rights movement who was fighting against Proposition 8, but all their hopes were gone yesterday, when the Court amended the state constitution and prohibited same-sex marriages.

Obama and Bush Shaking Hands

Early next week President Bush is scheduled to meet with America’s 44th elected president, Barack Obama.

They will discuss matters of national security, international politics, the Iraq war, the global financial crisis and all other issues that will be passed on from the old president to the new one on the 20th of January.President Bush also wants to express his congratulations to President-elect Obama for his great campaign, and for his resounding victory.

He declared that, since Mr Obama is still choosing the members of his team, his advisors will be more than happy to give them a briefing on all important ongoing national projects, laws, as well as on economy and on foreign policies.

Bush also said that he will do all he can to ensure that, within approximately 75 days, Mr Obama and his team are more than prepared to take over the White House and the presidency of the United States, without even noticing they have only started their activity.

President -elect Obama and the members of his transition team are already being treated as such; they have been given security clearance for the White House, and some of them even receive updates on cases containing classified information.

Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck

The monarchy of Butan and it population have welcome Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, their new king.

He is only 28 years old and he has been crowned king in the country with the shortest history of democracy.

The coronation ceremony started at 08:30 local time (03:30 GMT), at the exact moment chosen by the astrologists of the Royal House, and under the strict supervision of the Prime Minister, Jigme Thinley.

The new monarch has received an Oxford education, and has also studied in the United States and India.

He represents the new spirit of Butan, a small kingdom situated in the heart of Asia, bordered by China and India.

His purpose is to try to leave behind conservatory ruling methods and continue the work of his father who abdicated in 2006 in order to make Butan a democracy.

Same-sex Wedding Cake Toppers

The judicial situation of the almost 18,000 married gay couples in California has turned quite complicated since a few days ago.

This past 4th of November it has been approved – with a majority of 53% – a law that is to modify the State Constitution and not allow gay coupled to get legally married anymore.

It is the second time when this issue comes under discussion. Last time it got to a voting issue was in 2000, when Californians defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman, but the Supreme Court declared that law unconstitutional in June, 2007.

Now the voters have decided to change the fundamental law; for all the gay movement freedom fighters it is the end of a long and painful legal battle.

For the moment, gay couples will not be able to legally marry in the State of California; but the issue is what will happen to those who already have a marriage certificate.

Will.i.am

Rapper Will.i.am has openly supported the candidate of the Democratic Party at the Presidency of the United States, now also known as Barack Obama, the new president of the US.

The Black Eyed Peas member dedicated himself body and soul to expressing his support and his joy, so while Obama was counting votes, Will.i.am was editing the final version of his newest play called “It’s A New Day”.

The song, which is scheduled to be released on the Internet this week, is dedicated to President Obama, but also to all the American citizens who have voted for him and saw that he can change things in America.

This is not the first time the rapper makes a song for Obama; he did the same in February, when people were still thinking about who to vote. He used a part of one of the new president’s speeches and put it on his music. The song, called “Yes We Can” was a major hit.

For “It’s a New Day” Will.i.am wished to collaborate with several other celebrities who had openly endorsed Obama; so, he got Scarlet Johansson, jazz star Herbie Hancock and Nicole from Pussycat Dolls.