Think you are an expert on a subject? Well, Google's got a proposition for you.
Google's Wikipedia competitor, Knol, was opened to the public on Wednesday morning, according to the Official Google Blog.
So-called knols are articles about specific topics written by experts on that subject. What makes Knol different from Wikipedia is that every knol will have an author, or group of authors, whose name is prominent.
People can submit comments, rate, and review knols. Knol authors can run ads with them, as well, and receive a cut of the revenue from Google.
Google is partnering with The New Yorker magazine to allow any author to add a cartoon from the magazine to their knol.
BEIJING -- Beijing will set up specially designated zones for protesters during next month's Olympics, a security official said Wednesday, in a sign China's authoritarian government may allow some demonstrations during the games.
Worries about terrorist attacks, both from international groups and Muslim separatists from western China, and about protests of any kind have prompted one of China's broadest security clampdowns in years. The overall effect is that while Beijing looks cheerful, with colorful Olympic banners and new signs, the city feels tense.
Vehicle checkpoints ring Beijing. Visa rules have been tightened to keep out foreign activists. Police have swept Beijing neighborhoods to remove Chinese who have come to the capital to complain about local government misdeeds, and known political critics and underground Christians have been told to leave.
A Sandy man took offense to a motorist, who, after getting him to roll down his window, asked, "Excuse me, sir, do you have any Grey Poupon?"
After hearing the request for Dijon mustard, the 22-year-old driver pulled a black handgun from his glove compartment, cocked the weapon and pointed it at the three people in the other car.
"Here's your Grey Poupon, roll your [expletive] windows up," he responded. The confrontation happened June 18 at the intersection of 900 East and Winchester Street (6500 South) in Murray, court documents state.
One of the three people in the car wrote down the SUV's license plate number. Murray police later located the man, who admitted to an officer that he pulled out the gun, racked the slide and threaten the other car.
He was charged Tuesday with aggravated assault, a third-degree felony.
BEIJING -- If the Beijing Olympics' five cuddly mascots go down in history as a dud, their creator wants no part of the blame.
After China's Olympics organizers gave him the assignment, folk artist Han Meilin initially sketched out five children representing the traditional Chinese elements of fire, wood, water, gold and earth. Then the bureaucrats got involved. "There had to be a panda, even though you'd think the public would have had enough of them," says the 72-year-old artist.
Games officials faxed one request after another to his studio for other national images, such as a kite, a sturgeon and ancient cave drawings. So Mr. Han gave them Carmen Miranda-style oversized hats to help hold all the symbolism. As part of the quest to find something for everyone in a country of 1.3 billion, he drew some 1,000 different models, including a dragon and an anthropomorphic rattle drum.
For both men and women, sexual problems are a common side effect of antidepressants for both men and women. Viagra and similar drugs have long been prescribed to men in this situation. Now a study suggests Viagra may help women as well.
The study looked at 98 premenopausal women with major depression who started to have sexual problems after going on a popular class of antidepressants that includes drugs such as Zoloft and Prozac. The women were randomly assigned to receive either Viagra or a placebo for eight weeks.
The researchers, based the University of New Mexico School of Medicine and other institutions, evaluated the women on a standard scale that ranges from 1 (normal function) to 7 (most extreme sexual dysfunction).
Those who received Viagra went from 4.8 before they started taking the drug to 2.8 eight weeks later, on average. That was a significantly larger average improvement than the placebo group, which went from 4.7 to 3.6. Some side effects, such as flushing and congestion, were more common among those who received Viagra.
Christian Bale's alleged dust-up with his mother and sister came after his mom insulted the actor's wife, the Daily Mail online reported Wednesday.
"Christian was stressed, but he didn't lay a finger on anyone," said a source quoted by the Mail. "Instead, he just flew off the handle and cussed at his mother. He just got very loud because his mother was saying some very outrageous things about him, and his wife."
Scotland Yard detectives arrested "The Dark Knight" star Christian Bale Tuesday - after allowing him to go to the flick's European premiere - and grilled him for four hours. He was then released on bail in the eyebrow-raising case, officials said.
Bale denied the charges in a statement made through his lawyers Tuesday, and sources say the actor is confident he's done nothing wrong.
The 34-year-old Welshman has been known to have a temper. Last Friday he berated a cinematographer on the set of "Terminator 4," TMZ.com reported.
WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain says Democrat Barack Obama is wrong about the Iraq war.
But Obama's campaign says McCain was wrong about the war's timeline during a nationally televised interview Tuesday.
Asked about Obama's contention that a Sunni revolt against al-Qaida combined with the addition of thousands of U.S. combat troops that were sent to Iraq contributed to the improved security situation there, McCain scoffed.
"I don't know how you respond to something that is such a false depiction of what actually happened," McCain told "CBS Evening News," adding that Col. Sean MacFarland was contacted by a major Sunni sheik.
"Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening," McCain said, referring to the U.S.-backed revolt of Sunni sheiks against al-Qaida in Anbar province. "I mean, that's just a matter of history."
The problem with McCain's statement -- as Obama's campaign quickly noted -- was that the awakening got under way before President Bush announced in January 2007 his decision to flood Iraq with tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to help combat violence.
In March 2007, before the first of the additional troops began arriving in Iraq, Col. John W. Charlton, the American commander responsible for Ramadi, a city in Anbar province, said the newly friendly sheiks, combined with an aggressive counterinsurgency strategy and the presence of thousands of new Sunni police on the streets, had helped cut attacks in the city by half in recent months.
Jul 23rd, 2008 | GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- A former FBI agent testifying at the first Guantanamo war crimes trial said interrogators did not advise detainees here of any rights because the military prison is dedicated to intelligence gathering, not law enforcement.
Ali Soufan, an al-Qaida expert and star witness for the prosecution, said Tuesday the Guantanamo Bay Navy base is the only place in the world where he has not informed suspects of a right against self-incrimination.
"The way it was explained to us is Guantanamo Bay is an intelligence collection point," he said.
Defense lawyers asked the judge in Salim Hamdan's trial to throw out all the Guantanamo interrogations, arguing that intelligence-gathering sessions should not be used against him in court. But Judge Keith Allred, a Navy captain, ruled Monday that constitutional protections against self-incrimination do not apply to the man declared an "enemy combatant."
Estelle Getty, whose portrayal of a crabbily charming octogenarian on the television sitcom "The Golden Girls" gave new prominence to elderly characters in prime time and endeared her to viewers of all ages, died on Tuesday in Los Angeles. She was 84.
Her son Carl Gettleman confirmed her death. Ms. Getty had been suffering from Lewy body dementia, a progressive brain disease.
Long before "Golden Girls" Ms. Getty had been portraying maternal types of all sorts on the stage.
"I am the mother," she declared in her opening line in "Torch Song Trilogy," Harvey Fierstein's 1981 play about the travails of a gay man in New York City, and as a summary of her career, her character was right.
SAN FRANCISCO -- The San Francisco computer engineer accused of withholding access codes to the city's network surrendered the password during an unusual jailhouse visit by Mayor Gavin Newsom, authorities said Tuesday.
Newsom came away with the access codes Monday night after talking with Terry Childs, 43, of Pittsburg, who has been held since July 13 on four felony counts stemming from what prosecutors describe as an effort to block administrative access to the network that handles 60 percent of the city's information, including sensitive law enforcement, payroll and jail booking records.
Childs had given officials what turned out to be bogus passwords and then had refused to give the correct ones, even when threatened with arrest, authorities say. But Monday, Childs' defense attorney Erin Crane contacted the mayor's office, setting in motion the secret visit.
The visit was so secret that the mayor did not tell District Attorney Kamala Harris' office or police about it. Newsom decided on his own to accept Crane's invitation, mayoral spokesman Nathan Ballard said.
PITTSBURGH -- A woman accused of slicing open a pregnant woman's belly and taking her baby was obsessed with getting an infant and even had hallucinations of hearing babies cry after a February 1990 miscarriage, according to court records.
A few months later, Andrea Curry-Demus allegedly stabbed one woman in an apparent plot to steal her newborn; the next day, she allegedly kidnapped another baby from a hospital.
Curry-Demus, 38, of Wilkinsburg, was charged Sunday with homicide, kidnapping and related offenses in the death of Kia Johnson, 18.
ATHENS -- A Greek court has dismissed a request by residents of the Aegean island of Lesbos to ban the use of the word lesbian to describe gay women, according to a court ruling made public on Tuesday.
Three residents of Lesbos, the birthplace of the ancient Greek poetess Sappho whose love poems inspired the term lesbian, brought a case last month arguing the use of the term in reference to gay women insulted their identity.
In a July 18 decision, the Athens court said the word did not define the identity of the residents of the island, and so it could be validly used by gay groups in Greece and abroad.
The ruling ordered the plaintiffs to pay court expenses of 230 euros ($366.2).
ELDORADO, Texas -- A grand jury has indicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs and five of his followers. Jeffs, who was indicted Tuesday, is accused of sexual assault. The charges and identities of the others were being withheld until authorities can arrest them, said Schleicher County clerk Peggy Williams.
One indictment is misdemeanor; the others are felonies.
The criminal charges came during the panel's second meeting on the case and followed the ill-fated child custody case in which more than 400 children were placed in foster care. The Texas Supreme Court ruled child welfare authorities had overstepped in taking all the children for their parents even though many were infants and toddlers.
McALLEN, Texas -- Dolly strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane Tuesday afternoon and was making its way to coastal areas of northeast Mexico and South Texas, where officials worried it would bring so much rain that flooding could break through the levees holding back the Rio Grande.
Officials urged residents to move away from the levees because if Dolly continues to follow the same path as 1967's Hurricane Beulah, "the levees are not going to hold that much water," said Cameron County Emergency Management Coordinator Johnny Cavazos.
The first bands of rain began to pass over South Padre Island Tuesday afternoon and the surf continued to get rougher. Dolly was expected to dump up to 15 inches of rain and bring coastal storm surge flooding of 4 to 6 feet above normal high tide levels. A few tornadoes were also possible.
Philadelphia, PA (AHN) - A federal appeals court has again ruled the 1998 Child Online Protection Act violates the First Amendment and was written too vaguely. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court's decision affirms a lower court that had already ruled the law unconstitutional.
COPA, which forbids anyone allowing access to harmful material available online to children, was designed to replace the Communications Decency Act, an earlier law that was also deemed unconstitutional.
Today's ruling will likely send the issue to the U.S. Supreme Court, extending a court battle that has been waged for a decade. The Philadelphia court also said filtering technology already exists to allow parents to control their child's access to Internet material.
The National Enquirer has been doggedly pursuing their claim that John Edwards had an affair and subsequent love child with documentarian Rielle Hunter. The story flared up in October of last year, when the Huffington Post also joined in on the speculation, but has died down since then. With Edwards's withdrawal from the Democratic presidential primary in January, we haven't heard a word about it (from anyone other than the Enquirer, at least) in months. But the tabloid's editors must be really annoyed that they didn't manage to push the story into the mainstream media, because they've apparently had reporters following Hunter and her baby around ever since and now claim to have finally caught Edwards trying to meet up with her. According to their report, they watched Edwards slip into the Beverly Hilton last night (where Hunter had two rooms rented under a friend's name) around 9 p.m. When he emerged, at nearly 3 a.m., the Enquirer reporters pounced -- and began to literally chase Edwards around the hotel. Writer Alan Butterfield says he confronted Edwards in the basement as he was exiting (notably not though the lobby), and this is what he says happened next:
Butterfield also noted: "Some guests up at this late hour watched the spectacle in amusement from a staircase nearby." It's a tragedy they weren't quoted, because the view from an outsider of this particular scene, whatever it was in reality, must have been priceless.Shocked to see a reporter, and without saying anything, Edwards ran up the stairs leading from the hotel basement to the lobby. But, spotting a photographer, he doubled back into the basement. As he emerged from the stairwell, reporter Butterfield questioned him about his hookup with Reille.
Edwards did not answer and then ran into a nearby restroom. He stayed inside for about 15 minutes, refusing to answer questions from the NATIONAL ENQUIRER about what he was doing in the hotel. A group of hotel security men eventually escorted him from the men's room, while preventing the NATIONAL ENQUIRER reporters from following him out of the hotel.
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- A former driver for Osama bin Laden knew the target of the fourth hijacked plane on Sept. 11, a prosecutor said Tuesday as he sought to undercut defense arguments that the Guantanamo prisoner was a low-level employee of the terrorist leader.
Salim Hamdan, the first prisoner to face a U.S. war-crimes trial since World War II, heard bin Laden say the plane was heading for "the dome," an apparent reference to the U.S. Capitol, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Timothy Stone.
The plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field as passengers overcame the hijackers.
"Virtually no one knew the intended target, but the accused knew," Stone told the jury of six U.S. military officers in his opening statement.
Celebrity celebrity-blogger Mario Lavandeira, better known as Perez Hilton, is quite possibly better at dishing it out than taking it.
The Los Angeles-based cultural authority, whose moniker could conceivably have something to do with the name of infrequently-clothed blond person Paris Hilton, is going to court to protect said moniker.
Lavandeira sued Infuse LLC, Margie E. Rogers and Elizabeth Silver-Fagan in L.A. federal court on Monday, accusing them of being the respective owner, editor and publisher of Perezrevenge.com ... Best known for annotating pictures of famous people and critiquing them, Lavandeira is demonstrably unhappy with the smaller site's purported tendency to post artwork from and critique PerezHilton.com.
The suit accuses the offenders of cyber-squatting and deceptive trade practices, with no reference to whether they look foolish in whatever they are wearing.
Hundreds of thousands of senior citizens are at risk because they are living among registered sex offenders, parolees and residents with violent histories, according to a nursing home watchdog who studied residents at nursing homes, assisted living homes and long term care facilities.
"What is shocking is we have now found 1,600 registered sex offenders across the country [in facilities with seniors]," said Wes Bledsoe, who is set to testify tomorrow at a Congressional hearing on predators in these facilities. Bledsoe tracked the number of offenders living at these homes over the past four years by matching addresses from sex offender registries with a database of care facilities from Medicare.
Bledsoe said that in many of these cases the offenders are young adults who are often placed in the facilities because of disabilities or behavioral problems.
"We found teenagers, two nineteen year olds living in these facilities, many in their twenties, thirties, and forties," Bledsoe said.
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Rising prices at the gas pump appear to be having at least one positive effect: Traffic deaths around the country are plummeting, just as they did during the Arab oil embargo three decades ago.
Researchers with the National Safety Council report a 9 percent drop in motor vehicle deaths overall through May compared with the first five months of 2007, including a drop of 18 percent in March and 14 percent in April.
Preliminary figures obtained by The Associated Press show that some states have reported declines of 20 percent or more. Thirty-one states have seen declines of at least 10 percent, and eight states have reported an increase, according to the council.
Dawn was breaking over Afghanistan one day this month as Air Force surveillance planes locked in on a top-ranking insurgent commander as he traveled in secret around Kandahar, the spiritual home of the Taliban.
But as attack aircraft were summoned overhead to strike, according to a recounting of the mission by Air Force commanders, the Taliban leader entered a building. Intelligence specialists scrambled to determine whether civilians were inside. Weapons experts calculated what bomb could destroy the structure with the least damage.
It had taken the American military many days to identify, track and target the senior Taliban officer. But the risk of civilian deaths was deemed too high. Air Force commanders, working with military lawyers, aborted the mission. The Taliban leader escaped.
"We miss the opportunity, but the beauty of what we do is we will get them eventually," said Lt. Gen. Gary L. North, commander of American and allied air forces in the Middle East and Southwest Asia. "We will continue to track them. Eventually, we will get to the point where we can achieve -- within the constraints of which we operate, which by the way the enemy does not operate under -- and we will get them."
In interviews at the air operations headquarters in Southwest Asia, American and allied commanders said that even as orders for air attacks in Afghanistan had increased significantly this year, their ability to strike top insurgent leaders from the air was severely restricted by rules intended to minimize civilian casualties.
LONDON -- Actor Christian Bale, star of Batman blockbuster "The Dark Knight," on Tuesday denied allegations of assault made by his mother and sister after he was questioned by London police.
The 34-year-old spent several hours at a London police station before being released without charge, his U.S.-based spokeswoman Jennifer Allen said.
"Christian Bale attended a London police station today, on a voluntary basis, in order to assist with an allegation that had been made against him to the police by his mother and sister," Allen said in a statement.
"Mr. Bale, who denies the allegation, co-operated throughout, gave his account in full of the events in question, and has left the station without any charge being made against him by the police."
CHICAGO -- Viagra's effect in women has been disappointing, but a new small study finds those on antidepressants may benefit from taking the little blue pills. The research involving 98 premenopausal women found Viagra helped with orgasm. But the benefits did not extend to other aspects of sex such as desire, researchers report in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
"For women on antidepressants with orgasm problems, this may provide some wonderful relief," said psychologist Stanley Althof, director of the Center for Marital and Sexual Health of South Florida in West Palm Beach, who was not involved in the study. "But it will not improve their desire or arousal."
Antidepressants can interfere with sex drive and performance even as the drugs help lift crippling depression. Switching drugs or reducing the dose can help. But many people, men and women, stop taking them because of their sexual side effects.
WASHINGTON -- The proposed government rescue of the nation's two mortgage finance giants will appear on the federal budget as a $25 billion cost to taxpayers, the independent Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday even though officials conceded that there was no way of really knowing what, if anything, a bailout would cost.
The budget office said there was a better than even chance that the rescue package would not be needed before the end of 2009 and would not cost taxpayers any money. But the office also estimated a 5 percent chance that the mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could lose $100 billion, which would cost taxpayers far more than $25 billion.
The House is expected to act this week on housing legislation that includes the proposed rescue plan. Legislative language has not been finalized, but the Congressional Budget Office said its estimates were based on the plan by the Treasury Department and that it did not expect significant changes in the final bill.
Jul 22nd, 2008 | JERUSALEM -- A Palestinian man from east Jerusalem rammed a construction vehicle into three cars and a city bus in downtown Jerusalem near the luxury hotel where presidential candidate Barack Obama is supposed to stay Tuesday night as he kicks off a visit to Israel. The attacker injured four people before an Israeli civilian shot and killed him, police and witnesses said.
The attack was a chilling copycat of a similar incident earlier this month when another Palestinian from east Jerusalem plowed his huge front loader into a string of vehicles and pedestrians on another busy Jerusalem street about 3 miles away. Three people were killed in that attack and dozens were wounded before an off-duty soldier shot and killed the assailant.
Police said in the latest attack, a civilian driving nearby saw what was happening, jumped out of the car and shot the driver, bringing traffic to a halt. A border policeman who rushed to the scene also shot the driver. Police sealed off possible escape routes into predominantly Arab east Jerusalem and were searching for two suspects who fled the scene, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.
The attacker struck a busy part of downtown Jerusalem, several hundred yards from the luxury King David hotel where Obama is scheduled to stay Tuesday night. The incident took place about seven hours before Obama was to arrive in Israel.
Filmmakers Jay and Mark Duplass and their cast talk about "Baghead," their delightful and totally unclassifiable indie-satire-horror breakout.
Tsk tsk and all that, but at least people are talking about the league.
Actual audio from "The Dark Knight"
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