Fashions News: Nov 19, 2008

Barack Obama pictures

Posted by Iamthaonguyen

June 3, 2008

Looking Like a Winner

Obama rides an elevator to a victory rally at the Xcel arena in St. Paul, Minnesota, having just earned enough support from delegates to clinch the nomination.

November 7, 2007

Staging Ground

Obama addresses a town-hall meeting in Burlington, Iowa, part of a barnstorming tour across the state. Two monhts later he finished first in the state's caucus.

May 31, 2008

Without a Script

Taking an unplanned walk after a town-hall meeting in Aberdeen, S.D., Obama surprises a family in their front yard.

November 7, 2007

Ready for Showtime

Drumming up support in county after county, Obama, in a rare solitary moment, waits in a stairwell before addressing a crowd in Muscatine, Iowa.

April 19, 2008

Whistle-Stop Tour

Supporters wave goodbye as Obama's campaign train pulls out of Downington, Pennsylvania. Obama will later lose the state's primary to Hillary Clinton.

March 1, 2008

A Mile in His Shoes

Obama talks to reporters after a rally in Providence, Rhode Island, a state that ultimately went to Clinton.

February 16, 2007

The Rock Star

Early in his run, Obama holds a rally at the Columbia Convention Center in South Carolina to explain why he wants to be President.

April 22, 2008

Fueling Up

With Michelle (and a large press corps) on hand, Obama grabs a bite at a Pittsburgh diner on the morning of the Pennsylvania primary.

April 5, 2008

Competitive Streak

Not to be outdone by two aides who each did a pair of pull-ups, Obama does three before stepping out to address the crowd at the University of Montana.

August 29, 2008

No Time for Rest

A day after accepting the Democratic nomination, Obama, with Michelle and running mate Joe Biden looking on, holds a rally in Beaver in the battleground state of Pennsylvania.

March 31, 2008

Pleased to Meet You

A young Obama supporter waits for the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the candidate at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

July 24, 2008

Hello Berlin

Like Kennedy and Reagan before him, Obama electrified a huge German audience.

October 16, 2008

The First Couple

Less than three weeks before the election, Obama and Michelle take time out to sit backstage at a concert by Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel in New York City.

October 16, 2008

Best Behaviour

A day after their final debate, Obama and McCain attend the Al Smith charity dinner in New York City, where they vie for the attention of Cardinal Edward Egan.

June 4, 2008

There Can Only Be One

Clinton and Obama confer in Washington shortly before she concedes the nomination.

February 5, 2008

The Winner Is

At a hotel in Chicago, Obama works on the speech he will give after accepting the Democratic nomination.

September 27, 2008

The Turning Point

At the astonishing onset of the financial crisis, it was Obama's gut steadiness that won the public trust.

November 2, 2007

Breaking Through

In Manning, South Carolina, a crowd watches Obama speak outside a courthouse. Obama worked hard at that stage to convince skeptical black voters that he could actually win.

November 3, 2008

Last Hurrah

Obama spoke to more than 90,000 people at his last campaign rally in Manassas, Virginia.

November 4, 2008

Meet the Obamas

The next First Family takes the stage to acknowledge the election-night crowd.

November 4, 2008

Man with a Mission

At Grant Park, Obama, the unlikely candidate, now the next President, told America that the victory belongs to them.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

Sasha Obama Pictures

Posted by Iamthaonguyen

Sasha Obama

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

Pirates hijack oil supertanker off east Africa

Posted by Iamthaonguyen

Somali pirates have captured a fully laden Saudi supertanker far off east Africa, seizing the biggest vessel ever hijacked with a cargo of oil worth over 100 million U.S. dollars in an attack that pushed world crude prices higher.

The U.S. Fifth Fleet said the Sirius Star was being taken to the pirate haven of Eyl, in northern Somalia, on Monday.

Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker Sirius Star is seen during its naming ceremony in South Korea in this undated handout picture released on June 18, 2008 and obtained by Reuters on November 18, 2008. The supertanker, hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo in the largest ever such seizure, has reached the coast of north Somalia, a regional maritime group said on Tuesday.

The hijacking of the Saudi Aramco-owned vessel on Sunday is certain to add to pressure for concerted international action to tackle the growing threat posed by pirates from anarchic Somalia to one of the world's busiest shipping routes.

"This is unprecedented. It's the largest ship that we've seen pirated," said Lt Nathan Christensen, a spokesman for the Fifth Fleet. "It's three times the size of an aircraft carrier."

The Sirius Star held as much as two million barrels of oil -- more than one quarter of Saudi Arabia's daily exports. The hijacking helped lift global oil prices over $1 to more than $58 a barrel, although they later lost some gains.

The hijacking on Sunday, 450 nautical miles (830 km) southeast of Mombasa, Kenya, was in an area far beyond the Gulf of Aden, where most of the attacks on shipping have taken place and where foreign navies have begun patrols.

Navy Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, suggested military intervention would be complicated by hostages and ransom demands.

"I'm stunned by the range of it," said Mullen, telling reporters at the Pentagon that distance from the African coast was the longest he had seen to date.

"Once they get to a point where they can board, it becomes very difficult to get them off because, clearly, now they hold hostages."

The Sirius Star had been heading for the United States via the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, skirting the continent instead of heading through the Gulf of Aden and then the Suez Canal.

The ship, at 318,000 deadweight tons, was the largest ever captured by pirates.

Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker Sirius Star is seen during its trial run at an unknown location in this undated handout picture released June 18, 2008. The supertanker, hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo in the largest ever such seizure, has reached the coast of north Somalia, a regional maritime group said on Tuesday.

There were no reports of damage, Christensen said. He declined to say if the US navy was considering taking action to rescue the tanker, which had 25 crew from Croatia, Britain, the Philippines, Poland and Saudi Arabia.

Chaos onshore in Somalia, where Islamist forces are fighting a Western-backed government, has spawned a wave of piracy. Shipowners have paid out millions of dollars in ransoms.

Northern Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, where Eyl is located, was on the lookout for the ship.

"It has not entered Puntland's waters so far," Abdulqadir Muse Yusuf, the assistant minister for fisheries, told Reuters.

The International Maritime Bureau, a piracy watchdog, said there had been 92 pirate attacks off Somalia this year and 36 of the ships had been hijacked. Fourteen ships are still controlled by pirates and 243 crew members are being held.

"This is a very significant event because it is the largest vessel taken by far and also the distance away from Somalia is the highest, it shows the pirates are ranging very far from their base to take them," said IMB director Capt. Pottengal Mukundan.

The hijacks have driven up shipping insurance premiums and pushed some vessels to take longer routes to bypass the Suez Canal -- potentially increasing the cost of traded goods.

Among the vessels seized is one with 33 tanks on board.

British think-tank Chatham House warned in a report last month of the danger a tanker could come under attack.

"As pirates become bolder and use ever more powerful weaponry a tanker could be set on fire, sunk or forced ashore, any of which could result in an environmental catastrophe that would devastate marine and bird life for years to come," it said.

The NATO alliance and the European Union have scrambled to provide patrols in the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean waterways off Somalia. The United States and France, which have bases nearby, are also helping, while Russia has sent a warship too.

The Sirius Star is Liberian-flagged, and owned and operated by state oil giant Saudi Aramco's shipping unit Vela International. The vessel was launched in March.

Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker "Sirius Star" is seen in this photograph taken in Rotterdam on October 17, 2008. Pirates who hijacked the Sirius Star off the east coast of Africa are taking the vessel towards a Somali port, the U.S. Navy said on November 17, 2008. Picture taken October 17, 2008

Saudi-owned crude oil supertanker Sirius Star is seen in this undated handout released to Reuters November 17, 2008. The supertanker, hijacked by pirates with a $100 million oil cargo in the largest ever such seizure, has reached the coast of north Somalia, a regional maritime group said on Tuesday.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

Experts: Kangaroos are genetically close to humans

Posted by Iamthaonguyen

Australia's kangaroos are genetically similar to humans and may have first evolved in China, Australian researchers said yesterday.

Scientists said they had for the first time mapped the genetic code of the Australian marsupials and found much of it was similar to the genome for humans, the government-backed Center of Excellence for Kangaroo Genomics said.

"There are a few differences, we have a few more of this, a few less of that, but they are the same genes and a lot of them are in the same order," center director Jenny Graves told reporters in Melbourne.

"We thought they'd be completely scrambled, but they're not. There is great chunks of the human genome which is sitting right there in the kangaroo genome," Graves said, according to AAP.

Humans and kangaroos last shared an ancestor at least 150 million years ago, the researchers found, while mice and humans diverged from one another only 70 million years ago.

Kangaroos first evolved in China, but migrated across the Americas to Australia and Antarctica, they said.

"Kangaroos are hugely informative about what we were like 150 million years ago," Graves said.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | 0 Comments

Endeavour astronauts complete 1st of four spacewalks

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Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper on the end of the robot arm is aided by fellow spacewalker Steve Bowen (L) as the pair move a nitrogen tank assembly to the Space Shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay for storage in this image from NASA TV Nov. 18, 2008.

Two U.S. astronauts from the shuttle Endeavor partially cleaned and lubed a solar panel on the space station Tuesday during the first of four planned space walks.

Mission Specialists Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper and Steve Bowen stepped outside the orbital outpost at 1:09 p.m. EST (1809 GMT) and wrapped up their work at 8:01 p.m. EST.

The astronauts first replaced a depleted nitrogen tank and a device used to help coolants flow along the station truss during the excursion that lasted nearly seven hours. They also removed covers from the front of the Japanese Kibo module to prepare for the installation of the module's exposed facility during the next Endeavor mission in 2009.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper on the end of the robot arm with the earth in the background as she moves a nitrogen tank assembly to the Space Shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay in this image from NASA TV Nov. 18, 2008

The astronauts then began their main task -- inspecting, cleaning and lubricating the station's starboard solar array rotary joint (SARJ) -- or the right-side joint. The mechanism is a wagon-wheel-shaped joint on the station's truss that allows electricity-generating solar panels to rotate so that they can always collect as much sunlight as possible.

NASA ground controllers noticed last year that more power than normal was being required to rotate the starboard joint, and that the device was vibrating excessively.

During several space walks to inspect the joint, engineers narrowed the cause to insufficient lubrication.

The two astronauts began work on the problem by removing the joint's old bearings. They still have to clean metal shavings off the joint's surface, lubricate the device and install new bearings.

Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper's tool bag moves away from the International Space Station in this view from her helmet camera as the tools were lost accidentally during her work cleaning and replacing the station's solar array trundle bearing Nov. 18, 2008

Altogether, the job will take four space walks. Stefanyshyn-Piper and Bowen replaced just a few of the 11 bearings on the gear during their first space walk.

Stefanyshyn-Piper reported that her tool bag unexpectedly floated away during the job. But NASA ground controllers believe the loss will not affect the next three space walks. "There is enough equipment for the space walkers to complete the planned SARJ assembly and cleaning," NASA said on its website.

The Endeavour arrived at the space station late Sunday. "This mission is all about home improvement," Commander Chris Ferguson said. "Home improvement inside and outside the station."

In addition to the outside work, the seven shuttle crew members and the three station residents will install a series of new facilities that will allow the station to house six residents by spring 2009. Outside, spacewalkers will service the starboard joint and also lubricate the left-side joint to prevent future problems.

Space Shuttle Endeavour Commander Chris Ferguson (C) greets International Space Station Commander Mike Fincke (R) as ISS flight engineer Yury Lonchakov looks on after the opening of the hatches between the two spacecraft in this view from NASA TV November 16, 2008.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 | 0 Comments