Quebec City celebrates 400th birthday

QUEBEC CITY, Quebec (AP) -- On July 3, 1608, French explorer Samuel de Champlain founded a fur-trading post on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

This summer, Quebec City celebrates four centuries of French heritage.

That fur-trading post is now one of the oldest cities in North America. And this summer, Quebec City celebrates four centuries of French heritage with a series of exhibits, festivals and performances.
Events include a fireworks extravaganza that is being called the biggest ever in Canada, to be held at midnight on July 3 on the St. Lawrence; and a free outdoor concert for 100,000 people on August 22 in the city's biggest park, Plains of Abraham, headlined by French-Canadian superstar Celine Dion.
Also on the 400th anniversary schedule this summer:
Image Mill: Images from Quebec's history will be projected nightly on a giant screen in the Old Port, June 20-August 24. Organizers say they hope to earn a spot in the record books for creating the largest multimedia projection ever.
Rencontres: A musical about Champlain and the founding of Quebec will be presented outside the Parliament of Quebec July 3, 4 and 5. (Note that while English is widely spoken in Quebec, lyrics and dialogue in anniversary shows like this will be in French.)
Street performers: Acrobats, jugglers, stilt-walkers and others will perform at Cartier-Brebeuf Park and on Parliament Hill.
Film and song: A film created for the anniversary, "Infiniment Quebec," premieres July 2 at the Agora, an outdoor amphitheater in the Old Port. Quebec's Symphony Orchestra plays music from the film before a second showing July 3. A public sing-along of 20 popular Quebecois songs, with lyrics projected on giant screens, will be held July 15.
The Walking Road: A nighttime show under a full moon in Baie de Beauport, August 15, includes acrobatics, performances with fire and water, multimedia projections, electronic and world beat music.
Le Cirque du Soleil: A special show created for the 400th anniversary will be held October 17, 18 and 19.
Don't Miss
Quebec 400
Quebec City's anniversary headquarters, Espace 400e (pronounced quatre-centieme, meaning 400th), will be open at the Louise Basin in the Old Port, June 3-September 28. In the main pavilion, "Passagers/Passengers," a multimedia exhibition, celebrates the 5 million immigrants who passed through or settled in Quebec City since its founding. Espace 400e will also host the Ephemeral Gardens, 11 original gardens by designers from Canada, France, the United Kingdom and the U.S.
Many annual events have added programs in honor of the anniversary, including the Summer Festival, which will feature Linkin Park among others, and the Musee de la civilisation de Quebec, which has added exhibits on "Gold in the Americas," "Urbanopolis" and an outdoor participatory environmental installation, "The Visionaries Garden."
The Musee National des Beaux-Arts du Quebec is hosting "The Louvre in Quebec -- The Arts and Life," with 271 pieces from the Paris museum beginning June 5. The Opera de Quebec will host "Operalia," an international singing competition directed by Placido Domingo, and a new version of the musical "Les Miserables" will run at the Theatre Capitole.
Indian culture and history will be interpreted in programs offered by the First Nations of Quebec and Canada, including an outdoor drama, "Kiugwe: The Great Meeting," presented in Wendake, July 18-September 7. (Wendake is a section of Quebec City where the Huron-Wendat tribes live.)
Special events aside, if you're visiting Quebec City this summer, be sure to spend an afternoon exploring the narrow cobblestone streets of Vieux Quebec, or Old Quebec, which today is crowded with cafes, open-air boutiques, and small stone houses with brightly painted shutters. Most buildings in the historic district are from the 19th century, but older architecture includes an Ursuline convent founded in 1639, and the Restaurant Aux Anciens Canadiens at 34 rue Saint-Louis, located in a house built in the 1670s.
The city is still surrounded by fortification walls dating from the 18th and 19th centuries, with cannons along the ramparts. UNESCO declared the area a World Heritage site in 1985, citing it as a good example of a "fortified colonial city" and "the only North American city to have preserved its ramparts, together with the numerous bastions, gates and defensive works."
The name Quebec comes from an Algonquin Indian word that means "where the river narrows." A statue of Champlain is located on a terraced promenade that offers spectacular views of the St. Lawrence.
The streetscapes of the old city are dominated by the Chateau Frontenac, which looks like a medieval castle with stone turrets and gables. It's actually a luxury hotel, now part of the Fairmont chain. It opened its doors in 1893 near where Champlain's fort (later the governor's mansion) was erected in 1620. Archaeological work is under way at the site, and this summer the public can observe the excavation underground.
If you have an extra day, nearby places worth visiting include Montmorency Falls Park and the charming island of Ile d'Orleans. Take a cable-car ride up to the top of the waterfalls, then walk down a scenic route that includes a suspension bridge above the falls. On Ile d'Orleans, drive the Chemin Royal road and enjoy the scenery. You'll find picturesque harbors, old-fashioned farmhouses and historic churches. Stop for lunch or a treat at a bakery or sweets shop, and don't miss the strawberries sold from roadside stands a little later in the season.

Kelsey Grammer recovering from heart attack

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- A spokesman for Kelsey Grammer says the "Frasier" star is recovering in a Hawaii hospital after a mild heart attack this weekend.
Stan Rosenfield says Grammer is "resting comfortably" in an undisclosed hospital after being stricken Saturday. Rosenfield says the 53-year-old actor will be released early this week.
Rosenfield says Grammer -- the star of "Cheers," "Frasier" and the recently canceled Fox sitcom "Back to You" -- was paddle-boarding with his wife, Camille, when he experienced symptoms.
The couple lives in Kona, on Hawaii's big island.
Rosenfield says Grammer was immediately taken to an area hospital where it was determined that he had suffered a "mild heart attack." The spokesman says he is unaware of any history of heart trouble for Grammer.

Guitarist Bo Diddley dead at 79

Bo Diddley, the musical pioneer whose songs, such as "Who Do You Love?" and "Bo Diddley," melded rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll through a distinctive thumping beat, has died. He was 79.

Rock 'n' roll pioneer Bo Diddley influenced generations of guitarists.
more photos »

Diddley died Monday, surrounded by family and loved ones at his home in Archer, Florida, a family spokeswoman said.
The cause was heart failure, his family said.
Diddley is survived by his brother, the Rev. Kenneth Haynes of Biloxi, Mississippi, his children, Evelyn Kelly, Ellas A. McDaniel, Tammi D. McDaniel and Terri Lynn Foster, as well as 15 grandchildren, 15 great-grandchildren and three great-great-grandchildren.
The world-renowned guitarist's signature beat -- usually played on an equally distinctive rectangular-bodied guitar -- laid the foundation for rock 'n' roll, and became so identified with him that it became known as the "Bo Diddley" beat. It was unlike anything else heard in pop music. iReport.com: Share your memories of the legend
"This distinctive, African-based ... rhythm pattern (which goes bomp-bomp-bomp bomp-bomp) was picked up by other artists and has been a distinctive and recurring element in rock 'n' roll through the decades," according to the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame. Watch Bo Diddley in action »
Guitarist George Thorogood, a Diddley disciple, put it more bluntly.
"[Chuck Berry's] 'Maybellene' is a country song sped up," Thorogood told Rolling Stone in 2005. " 'Johnny B. Goode' is blues sped up. But you listen to 'Bo Diddley,' and you say, 'What in the Jesus is that?' "
Among the artists who made use of the Bo Diddley beat were Buddy Holly ("Not Fade Away," later covered by the Rolling Stones), Johnny Otis ("Willie and the Hand Jive"), the Yardbirds (covering Diddley's "I'm a Man" and adding their own guitar stylings to the closing bars, which were later incorporated into the Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction"), the Strangeloves ("I Want Candy"), Bruce Springsteen ("She's the One"), U2 ("Desire") and George Michael ("Faith"). Hundreds of artists have covered Diddley songs. Blog: The genius of Bo Diddley
"Bo Diddley was one of rock 'n' roll's true pioneers," said Neil Portnow, president and CEO of The Recording Academy, the music industry organization best known for presenting the Grammy Awards. "He inspired legions of musicians with his trademark rhythm and signature custom-built guitar, and his song 'Bo Diddley' earned a rightful place in the Grammy Hall Of Fame. He leaves an indelible mark on American music and culture, and our deepest sympathies go out to his family, friends and fans. The 'Bo Diddley beat' surely will continue on."
Diddley's debut single was his self-titled 1955 classic, with "I'm a Man" as its B-side. The songs were released on Chicago's Chess-Checker Records label, also the home of Chuck Berry and Willie Dixon. See photos from Bo Diddley's career »
"It was the first in a string of groundbreaking sides that walked the fine line between rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll," his Hall of Fame biography says.
Diddley was also an innovator in using the electric guitar, tweaking his instruments and adding a variety of effects to his recordings.
A contemporary of Berry, Fats Domino and Elvis Presley, Diddley cut a stylish figure on the rock 'n' roll landscape. With his guitar, dark glasses and black hat, he looked vaguely menacing; his music was much earthier and bluesier than that of his rock 'n' roll contemporaries.
However, Diddley wasn't above climbing on bandwagons in search of wider popularity; his early 1960s albums included such titles as "Bo Diddley Is a Gunslinger," "Bo Diddley's a Twister," "Bo Diddley's Beach Party" and "Surfin' with Bo Diddley."
Eventually, Diddley returned to his roots and became a rock 'n' roll elder statesman. He was featured in the Thorogood video "Bad to the Bone," playing pool with Thorogood, and showed up during the Nike "Bo Knows" campaign starring Bo Jackson.
At the conclusion of a Nike commercial that showed Jackson excelling at a variety of sports, the athlete picked up a guitar and produced a squall of noise. Cut to Diddley, listening to the attempt: "Bo, you don't know Diddley," he said.
"I never could figure out what it had to do with shoes, but it worked," Diddley told The Associated Press. "I got into a lot of new front rooms on the tube."
Diddley was born Ellas Otha Bates in McComb, Mississippi, on December 30, 1928. He later took the name McDaniel after being adopted by his mother's cousin. Diddley's family moved to Chicago when he was 7, according to his Hall of Fame biography.
He played violin as a child, but said he was inspired to pick up the guitar after hearing John Lee Hooker's 1949 rhythm and blues hit, "Boogie Chillen."
He told many stories of how he got the name "Bo Diddley." In a 1999 interview, he said it came from his childhood friends, according to AP. Other tales included a one-string instrument from traditional blues called a diddley bow, the AP notes.
Either way, it became his own -- as did his music.
"I don't like to copy anybody. Everybody tries to do what I do, update it," he told the AP. "I don't have any idols I copied after."
"They copied everything I did, upgraded it, messed it up. It seems to me that nobody can come up with their own thing, they have to put a little bit of Bo Diddley there," he said.
He continued to tour well into 2007, but suffered a stroke last May and a heart attack in August.
He was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in January 1987.
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Though he was upset that he never received the financial rewards he expected -- "I am owed," he told the AP, adding "a dude with a pencil is worse than a cat with a machine gun" -- he reflected modestly on the rock 'n' roll revolution he helped start.
"Well, it's no different from anything else, I guess. I started sumthin'. I just happened to be the first one," he told the British magazine Uncut in 2005. "But I never thought it would turn into what it did. Somebody had to be first, and it happened to be me."

TUCSON, Arizona

NASA's new robot on Mars has reached out and touched the soil for the first time, leaving behind a striking footprint-like impression.
Exhaust from the lander's descent engine revealed the patch beneath the Mars dirt.
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The Phoenix Mars Lander's robotic arm was making a test run, just one week after the craft's landing. The spacecraft, which is also its own laboratory, will soon start scooping up soil and ice and running tests on them.
David Spencer, Phoenix's surface mission manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said Sunday the first touch "allows us to utilize the robotic arm accurately."
NASA on Saturday showed sharp images of what appeared to be ice exposed under the lander. The mission's main goal is to test ice for evidence of organic compounds that are the chemical building blocks of life.
Team members said Friday that photos showing the ground beneath the lander suggested that the vehicle was resting on splotches of ice. Washington University scientist Ray Arvidson said the spacecraft's thrusters may have blown away dirt covering the ice when the robot landed one week ago.
On Saturday, scientists said that a more detailed image taken under the lander shows one of the craft's three legs sitting on coarse dirt and a large patch of what appears to be ice -- possibly 3 feet in diameter -- that apparently had been covered by a thin layer of dirt.
"We were worried that it may be 30, 40, 50 centimeters deep, which would be a lot of work. Now we are fairly certain that we can easily get down to the ice table," said Peter Smith, a University of Arizona scientist who is the chief project investigator.
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The spacecraft is equipped with a backhoe-like robotic arm that will dig into the ground and retrieve samples for testing in the lander's small laboratories. The lander was sent to a spot on Mars' northern regions in hopes of finding frozen water, but just how deep underground it would be found was unknown.
The robot arm is expected to begin its first digging operations after several more days of testing.
The final proof that the material is ice could take weeks, but close-up color images that were taken Saturday could improve the researchers' confidence level, said Horst Uwe Keller, the scientist in charge of the camera on the robotic arm. The initial image released Saturday was in black and white.
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Once the arm starts digging, the dirt and ice it scoops up will be deposited in several small ovens to be heated. Measuring devices will test the resulting gases. Watch a report on the lander's mission »
The University of Arizona in Tucson is leading and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is managing the three-month scientific mission.

WASHINGTON

After a day of wrangling in front of a sometimes unruly crowd, the Democratic National Committee's rules and bylaws committee reinstated all of Florida and Michigan's delegates to its party convention, with each getting a half-vote to penalize the states for moving their primaries earlier than the party had approved.

Members of the Democrats' rules committee discuss the delegate issue Saturday.

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The move will leave front-runner Sen. Barack Obama's lead over rival Sen. Hillary Clinton intact.
"This results in Sen. Clinton obtaining a substantial number of additional pledged delegates, but I also understand that many members of the Florida and Michigan delegations feel satisfied that the decision was fair," Obama said after a campaign event in Aberdeen, South Dakota. "Our main goal is to get this resolved so we can immediately turn the focus of the entire party on winning Florida and Michigan and delivering on the needs of the people in Florida and Michigan -- states that are enormously important, states where a lot of people are struggling."
The Florida decision, which follows the pro-Clinton results of that state's primary, was greeted by virtually all sides as an acceptable compromise on a thorny issue. But Clinton backers vowed to fight the Michigan decision, which gave the New York senator a 10-delegate edge over Obama in a state where his name didn't appear on the primary ballot.
"Today's results are a victory for the people of Florida, who will have a voice in selecting our party's nominee and will see its delegates seated at our party's convention," said a joint-statement from Clinton advisers Harold Ickes and Tina Flournoy. "[But] we strongly object to the committee's decision to undercut its own rules in seating Michigan's delegates without reflecting the votes of the people of Michigan."
With no Michigan or Florida delegates included, Obama led Clinton by 202 delegates.
The committee's ruling gave Clinton 105 pledged delegates from Florida and 69 from Michigan, with a total of 87 votes.
Obama received 67 pledged delegates from Florida and 59 from Michigan, casting a total of 63 votes.
That tally leaves Obama ahead by the equivalent of 174 delegates.
If each delegate had been granted a full vote, Clinton still would have trailed Obama. CNN's analysts weigh in on what the ruling means »
During the daylong committee meeting, supporters of Clinton, who came out ahead in both votes despite the fact the states had been penalized for moving their primaries earlier in the season, pushed the committee to give each delegate a full vote and to count the election results as they were registered.
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"I feel like we should not penalize them for something they did not cause and couldn't prevent," said Alice Huffman, a California superdelegate for Clinton, noting that it was a Republican legislature that changed the date.
Huffman sponsored an unsuccessful motion that would have counted Florida's results and given delegates a full vote.
She later supported the compromise. While voicing her support, she was shouted down by the same crowed members who had cheered her effort moments earlier.
As the committee voted, people attending the open meeting applauded, cheered and booed as the vote came in.
Clinton supporters interrupted the proceedings, loudly chanting "Denver! Denver!" Denver is the site of the Democratic convention, where Clinton could appeal any decision made by the committee. Watch who will really decide the nomination »
"Mrs. Clinton has asked me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee," Ickes said during a fiery speech after the vote.
Later, party leaders were celebrating the compromise as a way to reinstate delegates from two crucial swing states Democrats want to win in November.
The DNC had penalized both states for holding their primaries early by excluding them from representation when the party nominates a candidate at the August convention. Follow a timeline of the dispute »
No candidates campaigned in Florida ahead of its vote, and Clinton's was the only major candidate's name that appeared on Michigan's ballot.
She received 55 percent of the vote in that state, with 44 percent of voters voting "uncommitted."
As the committee's session began Saturday, DNC Chairman Howard Dean said that deciding how to handle Michigan and Florida will be a huge step in moving past the division of a sometimes-bitter primary campaign.
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"On the blogosphere, and the airwaves, emotions have run high and heated discussions have led at times to blatantly racist comments and blatantly sexist comments, particularly by some members of the media," Dean said in prepared remarks. "We know that those comments have no place in our society and certainly no place in our party.
"It has got to stop. We have got to come together and unite our party. Every one of us has the responsibility to help ensure that our party is united

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida

The space shuttle Discovery and its crew of seven launched into a sunny sky Saturday in the latest effort to bring supplies to the international space station.

Commander Mark Kelly called Saturday's launch "the greatest show on Earth."
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"Obviously, a huge day for the space station partnership ... for all the people who hope to see space station come to fruition," NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said after the launch.
The shuttle, which lifted off on time from Kennedy Space Center at 5:02 p.m., is transporting components for the Japanese Experiment Module, or Kibo science laboratory.
The billion-dollar Kibo, which means hope in Japanese, is Japan's first human space facility. Watch the shuttle soar into the sky »
More than 20 years in the making, the bus-sized, 32,000-pound module will be the largest lab at the space station.
"This is a big step for the Japanese community," mission specialist Akihito Hoshide told NASA-TV before the launch.
Discovery is also carrying the Japanese Remote Manipulator System, consisting of two robotic arms for operations outside the the lab. Each arm has six joints that mimic the movements of a human arm, according to NASA.
The crew, which includes five rookies, will install Kibo's large pressurized module, a giant sleeve that will help astronauts conduct gravity experiments and a robotic arm system. Watch the crew prepare for launch »
"There is going to be a lot of scientific discovery that comes out of this module," mission specialist Ron Garan told NASA-TV.
In March, the space shuttle Endeavour in March carried up the first part of the laboratory, which will serve as a storage area after being fully assembled. Kibo will be attached to its port side, according to NASA.
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At least one part of Discovery's cargo is less glamorous. The shuttle is bringing over parts for a problematic toilet aboard the space station, including a gas-liquid separator, urine collector bags and filters.
The toilet in the Zvezda service module is only partly functioning. Russian ground specialists are assisting the crew in troubleshooting the problem, NASA said.
At least five pieces of foam insulation fell off the fuel tank during liftoff after a timeframe that would indicate concern, NASA space operations chief Bill Gerstenmaier said.
Chunks of foam routinely fall off fuel tanks, though anything after the first two minutes and 15 seconds after launch is considered relatively normal.
Discovery's fuel tank was the first to incorporate all the safety changes instituted after the 2003 Columbia disaster.
The shuttle disintegrated over Texas during re-entry into the Earth's atmosphere, after a large piece of insulation broke off its tank during launch and damaged the shuttle's thermal protection system.
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At the space station, the Expedition 17 crew is busy with maintenance and preparations.
A new station crew member, Greg Chamitoff, will arrive at the orbiting complex with the Discovery crew. He will switch places with Expedition 17 Flight Engineer Garrett Reisman, who is returning home on Discovery after a three-month stay on the outpost.

Christian music star's daughter killed by car

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (AP) -- The 5-year-old daughter of Grammy-winning Christian music star Steven Curtis Chapman was struck and killed Wednesday by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother, authorities said.

Steven Curtis Chapman's daughter was fatally struck by a sport utility vehicle driven by her brother Wednesday.

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The girl, Maria Sue, was hit in the driveway of the family's home Wednesday afternoon by a Toyota Land Cruiser driven by her teenage brother, said Laura McPherson, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee Highway Patrol.
The brother, whose name and exact age weren't available, apparently did not see the girl, McPherson said. No charges are expected.
"It looks like a tragic accident," she said.
Several family members witnessed the accident, which happened in Williamson County just south of Nashville. The girl died later at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, hospital spokeswoman Laurie Holloway said.
In a statement, Velvet Kelm, a publicist for Chapman, said Maria was the Chapmans' youngest daughter.
Chapman, who is originally from Paducah, Ky., and his wife have promoted international adoption and have three daughters from China, including Maria. They also have three biological children.
The singer's Web site says the couple was persuaded by their oldest daughter to adopt a girl from China. The experience led the family to adopt two more children and create Shaohannah's Hope, a foundation and ministry to financially assist thousands of couples in adoption.
The Chapmans did missionary work at Chinese orphanages in 2006 and 2007, according to the Web site.
"After our first trip to China, my wife and I knew our lives were changing -- our eyes and hearts were opening to how big God really is, and we have wanted to experience more of that," Chapman says on the Web site.
"We've really wondered whether or not we should just go to China and stay there. But I don't think so. I believe God is saying, 'I want you to go, get your heart broken, your eyes opened, and then take this story back to the church in America and around the world."'
The 45-year-old singer also has released a book about being a father titled "Cinderella: The Love of Daddy and his Princess." He has won five Grammy awards and 54 Dove awards from the Gospel Music Association, according to Kelm.

French film wins Cannes' top prize

CANNES, France (AP) -- The French film "The Class," a frank tale about classroom life using real students and teachers at a junior high school, won top honors Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.


Benicio del Toro won the best actor award for his role in the film "Che" at the Cannes Film Festival.

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Directed by Laurent Cantet, "The Class" ("Entre les Murs") was the first French film to win the main prize, the Palme d'Or, at Cannes since "Under Satan's Sun" in 1987. The docudrama was shot in a raw, improvisational style to chronicle the drama that unfolds over one school year.

The win was a unanimous decision among the nine-member Cannes jury, said Sean Penn, who headed the panel.

"The movie that we wanted to make had to resemble French society, had to be multifaceted, a bit teeming, complex, and had to sometimes portray frictions that the film didn't try to erase," Cantet said.

Italian films won the second-place grand prize and third-place jury prize. Matteo Garrone's "Gomorrah," a study of the criminal underworld in Naples, took the grand prize, while Paolo Sorrentino's "Il Divo," a lively portrait of former Premier Giulio Andreotti, won the jury award.

Benicio Del Toro won Cannes' best-actor prize for "Che," Steven Soderbergh's four-hour-plus epic about Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara. Presented as two films, "Che" follows Guevara and Fidel Castro's triumphant guerrilla campaign to overthrow Cuba's government in the late 1950s and Guevara's downfall and execution after trying to foment a similar rebellion in Bolivia in the 1960s.

Del Toro, who co-starred in Penn's "21 Grams," also won in a unanimous jury vote, Penn said.

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"I'd like to dedicate this to the man himself, Che Guevara," said Del Toro. He also thanked Soderbergh, "who got up every day, forced me to this. ... He was there pushing it, and he pushed all of us."

Soderbergh directed Del Toro to the supporting-actor Oscar for 2000's "Traffic."

Sandra Corveloni was chosen as best actress for "Linha de Passe," in which she plays the mother of four brothers struggling to make better lives for themselves in a Brazilian slum. It was her first role in a feature film.

Turkish filmmaker Nuri Bilge Ceylan was named best director for "Three Monkeys," which centers on a father who takes the rap for his employer's crime in exchange for financial support for his wife and son, only to have the scheme backfire amid bitter repercussions.

Belgian siblings Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne, two-time winners of the Palme d'Or, received the screenplay prize for "Lorna's Silence," about an immigrant woman who enters a sham marriage to gain Belgian citizenship.

The prize for a film by a first-time director went to British filmmaker Steve McQueen's "Hunger," set at a Northern Ireland prison where IRA volunteer Bobby Sands and other inmates seeking Irish independence staged a hunger strike in 1981.

The Cannes jury awarded special prizes to Clint Eastwood, who directed the competition film "Changeling," and Catherine Deneuve, who appeared in two films at Cannes this year.

Eastwood was shut out for key prizes with "Changeling," his warmly received missing-child drama starring Angelina Jolie.

Eastwood, who delivered two best-picture and director Academy Award recipients with "Unforgiven" and "Million Dollar Baby," has never won top honors at Cannes after five times in competition there since 1985.

Jury president Penn won the best-actor Oscar for Eastwood's "Mystic River," which was shut out for prizes at Cannes five years ago.

"There was a field of such powerful, emotional, moving movies, performances. There was so many times that we thought, it just can't get better," Penn said.

Critics judged the Cannes lineup more harshly, however. While Cannes presented few outright bombs this time, critics found the films a bit tepid.

Last year's competition included such films as Joel and Ethan Coen's "No Country for Old Men," which went on to win the best-picture Academy Award, and Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's animated coming-of-age tale "Persepolis," which was nominated for the animation Oscar.

A film from Kazakhstan, Sergey Dvortsevoy's "Tulpan," won a secondary competition called "Un Certain Regard." "Tulpan" is the story of an aspiring shepherd on the isolated Kazakh steppes who must wed before he can enter his chosen trade but is refused by the only prospective bride because she thinks his ears are too big.

Bosnian director Aida Begic's "Snow," a drama about villagers struggling with the decision to leave their war-ravaged town, won top honors in another Cannes competition overseen by critics.

After the awards ceremony, the festival closed with the premiere of Barry Levinson's "What Just Happened?", starring Robert De Niro, Bruce Willis and Penn in the tale of a fading Hollywood producer trying to rejuvenate his career amid personal and professional crises.

"What Just Happened?" came full circle: A year ago, Levinson and his collaborators were at Cannes filming scenes for the movie.

Walkman strikes the right note

(CNET) -- The Sony NWZ-A720 Walkman series is a subtle evolution of the NWZ-A810 series we enjoyed in 2007. This year, Sony is treating us with a larger screen and a more assertive design, offered in 4GB ($149), 8GB ($199), and 16GB ($299).
Given Sony's track record with curvy, rounded designs, the Sony NWZ-A720 is refreshingly square.
Measuring 2 inches by 3.75 inches by 0.4 inch, it has a metallic body and a 2.4-inch screen.
The NWZ-A720 is a little larger than its predecessor, but it maintains a slim, pocketable profile.
The circular four-way navigation pad found on last year's Sony NWZ-A810 has turned into a more solid-feeling square on the A720, flanked by two small option and menu buttons.
All other buttons are confined to the right side of the player, including a rocker switch for volume control and a hold switch. The bottom of the A720 Walkman features a headphone output and proprietary USB connection.
Features
The Sony NWZ-A720 is stocked with features, including music, photo, and video playback. On the audio end of things, Sony is continuing its support for MP3, AAC, WMA, WAV, and DRM-protected subscription music files.
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CNET:
In typical Sony style, the restrained design of the music playback screen betrays the awe-inspiring music enhancement technology working behind the scenes, such as a 5-band EQ, Clear Bass, Clear Stereo, DSEE high-frequency restoration, and dynamic normalization.
With its 2.4-inch QVGA LCD and excellent video battery life, the Sony NWZ-A720 is the most video-worthy Walkman we've seen. Sony offers limited video format compatibility, however, including MPEG-4 and H.264 sized at a strict 320x240 ratio. Fortunately, the popularity of the iPod and video podcasts has made the QVGA MPEG-4 file format one of the most abundant on the Web.
The Sony NWZ-A720 is a solid player with plenty to brag about, but the exclusion of features such as an FM radio, voice recording, and memory expansion is worth keeping in mind as you compare the Walkman with its competition. You should also know that Sony offers an identical-looking version of this player (the Sony NWZ-A820 series) which includes built-in Bluetooth audio streaming, at an increased price.
Performance
Year after year, Sony's MP3 players demonstrate some of the highest standards for audio quality. Even at its factory setting, the Sony NWZ-A720 radiates with fidelity that just gets better as each one of its many sound-enhancement features activate.
Listening through the excellent pair of included Sony EX in-ear headphones, the rattling saxophones of Moondog's "Dog Trot" were vibrant and easy to pick out in the stereo soundstage. Renowned for its buttery bass performance, the Clear Bass enhancement EQ feature perfectly sweetened the rolling dub synth notes of Squarepusher's "Port Rhombus" with no noticeable distortion.
Videos appeared bright, crisp, and colorful on the Sony NWZ-A720. The Walkman's screen is 0.4 inch larger than the screen found on the third-generation iPod Nano, and it shares a similarly impressive pixel density and sharp picture quality. Videos can be rotated between landscape and portrait view on the Sony NWZ-A720, and audio and video files are automatically bookmarked when the player is stopped or shut down.
Sony rates the NWZ-A720's battery life at an impressive 36 hours of audio playback and 10 hours of video. We'll update this review with our CNET Labs battery results once testing is complete.
Final thoughts
The Sony NWZ-A720 Walkman is an unquestionably great series of MP3 players, however, as a competitor to the iPod Nano it faces steep competition. Creative's Zen MP3 player, for instance, offers a larger screen, an FM radio, voice recording, and memory expansion, while Microsoft's Zune boasts coveted features such as integrated podcast management and built-in Wi-Fi.
Sony is clearly king of the hill when it comes to sound quality, but users seeking a more well-rounded MP3 player have plenty to choose from.

Toss your fridge, save money

(This Old House) -- You've probably been pining for that energy-efficient fridge for awhile (especially considering if your current model was built before 1993, it costs at least double to run than new Energy Star-rated models of the same size), but throwing away your old one isn't exactly eco-friendly.
To address the problem, the Department of Energy has announced its new Recycle My Old Fridge Campaign.
Check out RecycleMyOldFridge.com to figure out how much your inefficient current fridge is costing you, compare those costs to an Energy Star appliance, find a recycling program in your area along with contact details, and enter the Recycle My Old Fridge Video Challenge for a chance to win a trip for two to Washington, DC.
The campaign was launched in conjunction with new Energy Star guidelines released April 28, which state all standard-sized refrigerators must be 20 percent more efficient than the federal standard to qualify. (Under the old system, fridges only had to be 15 percent more efficient.)
Interesting facts:
• If you ditch your pre-1993 fridge, you'll save enough on energy costs to buy coffee for nearly 80 days. This Old House: Hire energy auditor
• If every American home replaced its pre-1993 fridge with an Energy Star model, we would prevent annual greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those of more than 8.3 million cars.
• If everyone who buys a new refrigerator in 2008 chooses an Energy Star model over a non-qualified one, it would save $92 million each year in energy bills. This Old House: Shrink energy bills
• Refrigerators qualified under the new Energy Star guidelines use less energy than a 75-watt light bulb left on full time. This Old House: Energy saving bulbs
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If you're ready to take part in the program, here are a few Energy Star fridges for you to consider:
• LG's new 4-Door Refrigerator (set to be released this month) has two refrigerator doors at eye level and two bottom freezer drawers, the top for everyday items and the second for longer-term storage. The unit also has a nearly 1-foot-high ice and water dispenser. It retails for between $3,199 and $3,499.
• Available in stainless steel, black, and white, a side-by-side refrigerator from Electrolux features Wave-Touch Electronic Controls, which light up at a slight touch and fade away after a choice is made for an uncluttered display.
Other highlights include a 9-inch-tall water and ice dispenser and an alarm system that activates if there is a power failure, the door is left ajar, or the internal temperature rises above 56 degrees for 20 minutes. It retails for between $2,199 and $2,999.
• French door bottom freezer refrigerators are gaining in popularity, and this is the first model GE is offering for the mass market. With a 26-cubic-foot interior, it isn't lacking in storage space, and a dual-evaporator system controls air separately in the fresh-food and freezer compartments. Without an ice and water dispenser, it retails for between $1,599 and $1,799.

Giant 'telescope' links London, New York

LONDON, England (CNN) -- As the first splinters of sunlight spread their warmth on the south bank of the River Thames on Thursday, it became clear that after more than a century, the vision of Victorian engineer Alexander Stanhope St. George had finally been realized.

The Telectroscope lets Londoners and New Yorkers see each other in real time.

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In all its optical brilliance and brass and wood, there stood the Telectroscope: an 11.2-meter-(37 feet) long by 3.3-meter-(11 feet) tall dream of a device allowing people on one side of the Atlantic to look into its person-size lens and, in real time, see those on the other side via a recently completed tunnel running under the ocean. (Think 19th-century Webcam. Or maybe Victorian-age video phone.)
And all the credit goes to British artist Paul St. George. If he had not been rummaging through great-grandpa Alexander's personal effects a few years ago, the Telectroscope might still exist only on paper, hidden away deep inside some old box.
But fortunately, St. George could not bear that thought and thus decided he should be the one to finish what his great-grandfather had started. It was quite simply the right thing to do. Plus, it would make a pretty cool public art exhibit. Send us your videos, images or stories
During the twilight hours Tuesday, massive dirt-covered metal drill bits miraculously emerged -- one by the Thames near the Tower Bridge and the other on Fulton Ferry Landing by the Brooklyn Bridge in New York -- completing the final sections of great-grandfather Alexander's transatlantic tunnel.
The drills were removed Wednesday night and replaced with identical Telectroscopes at both ends, allowing Londoners and New Yorkers to wake up Thursday, look over to the far and distant shore and stare at each other for a while (the telescope-like contraption permits visual but not vocal communication).
Of course, only part of this story is true.
St. George is an artist in Britain who does have a grandfather -- minus the great prefix -- named Alexander.
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Web site: The Telectroscope
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And the trans-Atlantic tunnel is really a trans-Atlantic broadband network rounded off on each end with HD cameras, according to Tiscali, an Italian Internet provider handling the technical side of the project.
As for the Telectroscope, well, it was a fanciful idea that, according to St. George, came about from a typo made by a 19th-century reporter who misspelled Electroscope, a device used to measure electrostatic charges - as Telectroscope.
"The journalist also misunderstood what it was about and wrote in the article that it was a device for the suppression of absence," St. George said. "The accidental hope captured their imagination, and lots of people at the end of the 19th century thought it was a great idea."
The Telectroscope captured St. George's imagination five years ago, when he began pondering how to do a project on the childhood fantasy of digging a hole to the opposite side of the Earth. And because the artist also happens to have an expertise in Victorian chronophotography -- a precursor to cinematography -- he had a slight idea of where to look for the proper equipment.
"We all have that idea in our head if we could make a tunnel to the other side of the Earth," St. George said."But we are not all crazy enough to actually try and do it."
St. George was crazy enough to actually try and do it, but he realized he could not do the digging alone. So about two years ago, he pitched the idea to Artichoke, the British arts group responsible for taking the Sultan's Elephant -- a 42-ton mechanical creature -- for a stroll through central London in 2006. The company was immediately taken by St. George's idea.
"The whole thing is about seeing what is real and what isn't real and how the world is," said Nicki Webb, a co-founder of Artichoke. "Is it nighttime when we are in daytime, and does it look familiar to us or not?"
When the sun illuminated the lens of the Telectroscope next to the Thames, it was, of course, still nighttime in New York. So the screen inside the scope broadcast back only an empty sidewalk silently framed by the Brooklyn Bridge and the Manhattan skyline.
But then something miraculous occurred.
A police officer and a street cleaner walked into the frame. Stopped. And waved.
The Telectroscope will be on display and open to the public 24 hours a day in London and New York until June 15. Artichoke is arranging requests to synchronize special reunions between friends and family or, the company hopes, maybe even a marriage proposal.

Demand grows for remote-controlled drones on front lines

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The demands of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are behind a new push by the Pentagon to increase the ranks of one of its most tireless fighting machines: remote-controlled attack aircraft called Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or UAVs.

U.S. soldiers in Iraq prepare to launch an RQ-7B Shadow drone over Diyala province in February.

The U.S. military in recent months has doubled its squadrons of the small, quiet and deadly drones, which are operated by pilots in the United States.
Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, praised the work of the Predator UAVs flying over Baghdad.
"I think there's some path-breaking work ongoing here," Petraeus said.
Yet Defense Secretary Robert Gates said last month that it's "been like pulling teeth" to get more UAVs into the air over Iraq and Afghanistan. He established a task force to speed up the process.
"Unmanned systems cost much less and offer greater loiter times than their manned counterparts, making them ideal for many of today's tasks," Gates told Air War College graduates last month. Watch drones blast unsuspecting targets »
CNN has obtained previously classified video of the Air Force's newest heavily armed unmanned warplane with the grim moniker "The Reaper," which is essentially a Predator on steroids.
The newly declassified video shows a 500-pound bomb slamming into a suspected Taliban bunker in southern Afghanistan this year.
Another video clip shows a 500-pound bomb, aimed and fired by a pilot at Creech Air Force Base in the Nevada desert, striking two insurgents in Afghanistan as they try to escape on a motorcycle.
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"It flies higher. It flies faster. It carries more of a weapons load," said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, commander of the 12th Air Force at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona. "They're flying long, they are flying hard and they are making a big impact."
The CIA began using unmanned drones with cameras in the early 1990s, when Gates was the CIA director.
"After 27 years of experience as an intelligence professional, I had seen many agents place themselves in harm's way to collect information in some of the world's most dangerous and inaccessible environments," Gates said in his Air War College address. He welcomed the UAVs as a "far less risky and far more versatile means of gathering data."
The addition of Hellfire missiles to the original "Predator" spy drone just after September 11, 2001, gave it the ability to live up to its name.
Gates said the Pentagon now has 5,000 UAVs in service -- 25 times the number before the September 11 attacks.
The Air Force recently announced that it can now keep 24 UAVs in the air at all times, putting it two years ahead of its goal.
"But in my view, we can do -- and we should do -- more to meet the needs of men and women fighting in the current conflicts while their outcome may still be in doubt," Gates said.
Gates said he was concerned the military was "not moving aggressively" to get more UAVs to the battlefield.
"I've been wrestling for months to get more intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance assets into the theater," he said. "Because people were stuck in old ways of doing business, it's been like pulling teeth."
The task force, created last month, includes representatives from all four branches of the military. It has a short deadline, he said.
The biggest challenge may be finding and training men and women to pilot the growing fleet of UAVs.
"All this may require rethinking long-standing service assumptions and priorities about which missions require certified pilots and which do not," Gates said.
Critics argue that any aircraft carrying weapons should only be flown by certified pilots.
The Air Force has reduced manpower demands by letting pilots in the United States operate the planes through satellite links supported by ground crews closer to the battlefield.
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The Air Force has reassigned pilots from other aircraft, and the Air National Guard has also accelerated its Predator commitment in five states, the Air Force said.
It will establish a second Predator training squadron and a Predator weapons instructor course in early 2009, the Air Force said.

6 killed, 1,000 hurt in China aftershock

CHENGDU, China (CNN) -- A powerful 6.0-magnitude aftershock hit China's Sichuan province Sunday, reportedly destroyed more than 70,000 homes in the region where at least 60,000 people were killed by a powerful earthquake on May 12.

A quake survivor who lost her home looks out from her tent in Yongan, China, on Sunday.

more photos »

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State media said at least six people died and more than 1,000 were hurt as a result of the latest seismic jolt, which came as Chinese officials warned that 69 dams in the province damaged in the original quake were in danger of bursting their banks.
Shaanxi experienced the highest death toll as a result of the aftershock, with four people losing their lives. One each died in Sichuan and Gansu.
The aftershock damaged more than 200,000 other homes, according to state media. It also damaged another dam, cutting off several more roads in the region.
Mudslides and rockslides caused by the quake and aftershocks created a lake to form in southwest Sichuan. Authorities are worried that the barriers could burst and cause massive flooding, the Xinhua news agency said.
The nearly 2,000 police officers and soldiers sent to the lake planned to use dynamite to break down part of the barriers in an effort to control the flow of water, which was rising.
Sichuan has experienced dozens of aftershocks since a devastating 7.9-magnitude earthquake on May 12.
But Sunday's aftershock was the strongest since a 5.8-magnitude shook the region a day after the initial quake.
The aftershock was felt in Chengdu, one of the largest cities in Sichuan province and about 150 miles from the epicenter of the aftershock. A CNN employee, on the 24th floor of a high-rise hotel, reported that the building swayed.
Meanwhile, China's top economic planning agency urged oil and power companies to make sure there are enough supplies for earthquake-hit areas and for the Beijing Olympic Games in August, The Associated Press reported.
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The National Development and Reform Commission said coal production should resume as quickly as possible in Sichuan province, which accounts for 4 percent of the country's coal production, AP reported.
The agency also said the country's top two oil producers -- China Petroleum & Chemical Corp., or Sinopec, and PetroChina -- should ensure fuel production, especially diesel for the summer, according to AP.
On Saturday, when China's Premier Wen Jiabao gave United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon a dramatic look at the damage, a strong aftershock shook the town they were in. Watch Ban Ki-moon's tour of damage »
Meanwhile, the death toll from this month's earthquake in China reached 62,664, a government official said Sunday. Another 23,775 are still missing. Watch one mother's daily quest for her missing son »
At the Sunday news conference, a civil affairs ministry official said rescue workers have pulled alive 6,537 people from the rubble of the May 12 earthquake.
The earthquake has left more than 5,000 children without their parents and more than 4,000 elderly without caregivers, China's state-run news agency said Sunday.
A Water Ministry official said at the same conference that 69 dams are in danger of bursting in Sichuan province. Watch a report on dangerous quake-made lakes and dams »
Since the quake struck, workers have made several dramatic rescues. But the numbers have dwindled in recent days as time has passed. And continued rain in the coming days threatened to make relief efforts more difficult.
On Friday, rescue workers pulled an 80-year-old paraplegic man from the rubble of his home on Friday, 11 days after the quake, state media reported Sunday.
The man, Xiao Zhihu, had been trapped for nearly 266 hours.
The beam of Xiao's house in Mianzhu City in Sichuan province collapsed during the quake, trapping him, China's state-run television CCTV said.
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The station said Xiao's wife could not go and call for help. She brought him food until he was found and freed by rescue crews Friday.
The government estimates that 45 million people, mostly in Sichuan province, were affected by the earthquake and that 5 million were left homeless.

Boeing 747 splits in two on take off

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- A large cargo plane crashed at the end of a runway and split in two while trying to take off Sunday at Brussels airport, authorities said.

The plane was about to depart for a scheduled flight to Bahrain when it crashed.

Four of the five crew members on board the Boeing 747 were slightly injured and were hospitalized, said Jan Van der Cruysse, spokesman at Brussels Airport.
"The plane is very seriously damaged," he said. The aircraft cracked in two after it crashed at the end of runway 220, which lies very close to a rail line and houses.
Rail services to and from the airport were suspended as a safety precaution, however the crash did not affect other flights at the airport, Van der Cruysse said.
Francis Vermeiren, mayor of the nearby town of Zaventem, said the plane did not catch on fire when it crashed after attempting to take off. Vermeiren was coordinating rescue efforts at the airport. Watch shattered plane straddle end of runway »
"The plane is not on fire but it has split into two," he told VRT radio.
Firefighters coated the wings of the plane with special fire retardant foam as a precaution because the plane was still full of jet fuel, the mayor said.
He said the plane was on a scheduled flight to Bahrain. It was not known what cargo the plane was carrying.
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Vermeiren said the pilot told rescue authorities he heard a large noise while trying to take off just after midday. It was not yet clear what caused the crash.
The plane is owned by Kalitta Air, a cargo carrier based at Willow Run Airport near Ypsilanti, Michigan, and makes regular flights from Brussels, officials said. A person who answered the telephone at Kalitta Air said Sunday morning that no one was immediately available to comment.

Actor in 'Harry Potter' fatally stabbed

LONDON, England (AP) -- A British teenage actor playing a minor role in the upcoming "Harry Potter" film was stabbed to death during a brawl in London on Saturday, police said.
Rob Knox, 18, was stabbed after he got caught up in a fight outside a bar in southwest London early Saturday, London's Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
Knox plays Ravenclaw student Marcus Belby in the upcoming film "Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince," the sixth installment of the popular series set for release in November.
Warner Bros., the studio that is producing the film, said it was shocked by the news.
Knox was one of five young men taken to various hospitals after the brawl, police said. Among them was a 21-year-old who has since been arrested on suspicion of murder.
The fight did not appear to be gang-related, police added, but it puts the number of violent teenage deaths in London at 14 so far this year.

Probe lands on Mars, NASA says

(CNN) -- The first pictures from NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, which successfully touched down near Mars' north pole Sunday, showed a pattern of brown polygons as far as the camera could see.

The Mars Phoenix Lander took this image of the planet's surface at its landing site Sunday.

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"It's surprisingly close to what we expected and that's what surprises me most," said Peter Smith, the mission's principal investigator. "I expected a bigger surprise."
The landing on the Red Planet's arctic plains -- which ended a 296-day journey -- was right on target, a feat NASA's Ed Weiler compared to landing a hole-in-one with a golf ball from 10,000 miles.
The landing -- dubbed the "seven minutes of terror" -- was a nerve-wracking experience for mission managers, who have witnessed the failure of similar missions.
In mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, they celebrated the lander's much-anticipated entry.
"It was better than we could have imagined," Barry Goldstein, project manager for the Phoenix mission, told CNN. Watch the celebration at mission control »
The Phoenix's 90-day mission is to analyze the soils and permafrost of Mars' arctic tundra for signs of past or present life.
The lander is equipped with a robotic arm capable of scooping up ice and dirt to look for organic evidence that life once existed there, or even exists now.
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"We are not going to be able to answer the final question of is there life on Mars," said principal investigator Peter Smith, an optical scientist with the University of Arizona. "We will take the next important step. We'll find out if there's organic material associated with this ice in the polar regions. Ice is a preserver, and if there ever were organics on Mars and they got into that ice, they will still be there today."
The twin to the Mars Polar Lander spacecraft, Phoenix was supposed to travel to Mars in 2001 as the Mars Surveyor spacecraft. They were originally part of the "better, faster, cheaper" program, formulated by then-NASA Administrator Dan Goldin to beef up planetary exploration on a lean budget.
But Polar malfunctioned during its descent into Mars' atmosphere in 1999 and crashed. An investigation concluded that as many as a dozen design flaws or malfunctions doomed the spacecraft.
The failure of that mission, as well as another spacecraft called the Mars Climate Orbiter the same year, led to NASA to put future missions on hold and rethink the "better, faster, cheaper" approach. Mars Surveyor went to the warehouse. Watch the challenges the mission faced »
But all was not lost. In 2003, Smith proposed a plan to re-engineer the Mars Surveyor and fly it on a mission to look for signatures of life in the ice and dirt of Mars far North. Mars Phoenix, literally and figuratively, rose from the ashes of Surveyor.
Engineers set to work, testing and retesting the onboard system to ferret out and fix all the flaws they could find. iReport.com: Send your photos, video of space
"We always have to be scared to death," Goldstein said. "The minute we lose fear is the minute that we stop looking for the next problem."
The team was concerned about the Phoenix landing system. NASA had not successfully landed a probe on Mars using landing legs and stabilizing thrusters since the Viking missions in the late 1970s. The other three successful Mars landings -- Pathfinder in 1997 and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers in 2004 -- used massive airbags that inflated around the landing craft just before landing to cushion the impact. Learn about NASA's past missions to Mars »
The Phoenix doesn't have airbags because the lander is too big and heavy for them to work properly.
Its landing site was targeted for the far northern plains of Mars, near the northern polar ice cap. Data from the Mars Odyssey spacecraft indicate large quantities of ice there, likely in the form of permafrost, either on the surface or just barely underground.
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"Follow the water" has become the unifying theme of NASA's Mars exploration strategy.
In 2004, the rover Opportunity found evidence that a salty sea once lapped the shores of an area near Mars' equator called Meridiani Planum. Astrobiologists generally agree that it's best to look for life in wet places.

iPhone sold out online

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- Apple Inc. said Monday its online stores in the U.S. and UK are sold out of the iPhone, a sign supplies are being winnowed ahead of the launch of the device's next generation featuring faster Internet surfing speeds.

The iPhone is out of stock online, but brick-and-mortar stores run by Apple and AT&T might still have units.

The Cupertino-based company confirmed that the iPhone is out of stock online, but added that brick-and-mortar stores run by Apple and iPhone carriers including AT&T Inc. might still have units available.
Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris declined to comment on reasons for the shortage and on Apple's plans for an update to the device, which is widely expected to be unveiled in June at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.
The paucity of iPhones for sale in some markets comes as Apple is hustling to meet its goal of selling 10 million of the hybrid iPod-cell phone-Internet surfing gadgets by the end of 2008. So far, Apple has sold 5.4 million iPhones, according to the latest data as of the end of March. Watch how new iPhones will compete with a new BlackBerry model »
One way Apple is expanding the iPhone's reach is by inking deals with wireless carriers around the world, even breaking with its pattern of requiring exclusivity to sell in a certain country.
On Monday, four mobile providers in the Asia-Pacific region announced partnerships with Apple to bring the iPhone to their regions later this year.
SingTel will sell the gadget in Singapore, Bharti Airtel Ltd. in India, Globe Telecom Inc. in the Philippines and Optus in Australia, the companies said in a brief joint statement, without giving details.
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SingTel owns Optus and holds a 30.5 percent stake in Bharti and 44.5 percent in Globe.
SingTel has about 2.3 million mobile subscribers in Singapore and around 7 million in Australia, according to data as of December 31, 2007. Bharti currently has about 64 million subscribers, while Globe reported a 21.3 million mobile subscriber base for the quarter ended March 31.
Last week, the top mobile phone operator in Latin America, America Movil SAB, also announced plans to deliver the iPhone to its region. America Movil has 159.2 million subscribers in 16 countries, including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Mexico.
In recent weeks Apple has also signed deals with Rogers Communications Inc. to sell the device in Canada; Milan-based Telecom Italia SpA to sell the iPhone in Italy; and Vodafone Group PLC, the world's biggest mobile company by sales, to sell it in a total of 10 countries, including Australia, India, Italy and Turkey.
Until the spate of the latest deals, Apple adhered to its policy of exclusivity with one carrier in each country.
The exclusive deals for the iPhone were with AT&T Inc. in the United States, O2 in Britain, T-Mobile in Germany and France Telecom's Orange wireless arm in France.
Industry observers say some people may be holding off on buying an iPhone until the much-rumored next-generation of the device is launched, and the phone is officially rolled out in more countries.
It takes some technical gymnastics, but it's still possible to get the phone in some markets where Apple doesn't have arrangements with wireless carriers.
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Many of the phones sold so far have been bought legitimately in one country, modified to work on any cellular network, and resold in countries where Apple doesn't have agreements to sell the iPhone. The trend expands the iPhone's reach but deprives Apple of some of the subscriber fees that Apple splits with its carrier partners.
Apple is also planning a software update for this summer that makes the iPhone work better with corporate e-mail, a necessary upgrade to help the iPhone compete with Research in Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry and Palm Inc.'s Treo smart phones.

HONG KONG, China (CNN)

By Cherise FongFor CNN
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- Way back in 1888, Kodak popularized the hobby of snapshot photography with its famous slogan: "You press the button, we do the rest."

Zink paper is is dry, waterproof, smudge-proof, tear-proof, peel-off, sticky-backed -- and recyclable.

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Now, 120 years later, Zink says: "Just add paper" and do it yourself.
Zink is a zero-ink printing company that has updated the instant gratification that comes from developing pictures for the digital age.
The pleasure of snapping a picture and admiring the print hasn't changed, but the technology has, plus there is a new eco-friendly element.
Zink paper is an advanced composite material with embedded yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals that change color when heated. For a 2"x3" print, a Zink-enabled printer uses 200 million heat pulses to activate and colorize 100 billion crystals, in 30 seconds, in a single pass.
The final result is a photographically correct print that is not only completely dry, but also waterproof, smudge-proof, tear-proof, peel-off and sticky-backed -- not to mention recyclable.
If Zink's thermal printing process sounds familiar, it differs from D2T2 (dye diffusion thermal transfer), or dye sublimation technology, used by other companies such as Kodak, Canon or Sony, in one crucial aspect -- Zink involves zero ink.
"The source of heat conveyed to the printer head is similar," says Steve Herchen, one of Zink's original inventors and present chief technology officer.
"The advantage with Zink is that there is no need for an ink ribbon. The heat is applied directly to the paper. There are no gears, no motors, no mechanism is required to manage the ink ribbon. All the information is in the paper."
Inkless footprint
So not only is Zink compact, it's ecological. Because there is no ink, there are no empty ink-ribbon cartridges and no extra packaging to dispose of.
"The paper is the print," concludes Herchen. "Printers can be the smallest footprint of any printing technology."
As the company's first consumer application to hit the market, the Zink-enabled Polaroid Instant Mobile Printer is only slightly bigger than an iPhone, weighs 230 grams, uses a rechargeable lithium-ion battery, and connects to a mobile phone via wireless Bluetooth or to a digital camera through a USB cable.
The pocket printer will be available later this summer in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Russia, and will sell for about $150, while Zink paper will be sold in packs of 10 or 30, at 33-40 cents per sheet.
With sales of camera phones and digital cameras growing exponentially, one can easily speculate about hundreds of billions of digital photos being snapped and "trapped" on memory cards and hard drives around the world.
But hold on a nanosec -- Why print to paper at all when we inhabit the global digisphere?
You know you want to
"Our research shows that in this digital age, more than ever, people still have a deep-rooted need to see, feel, mark, share or use their digital images or information in a physical form," remarks Scott Wicker, Zink's chief marketing officer.
"We know there's a pent-up need to print," confides Herchen, a 30-year Polaroid veteran. "Even though not everyone wants to print every image, there is still a real customer need to be able to print on-the-go, whenever you want, wirelessly, from portable devices."
So far, Zink has partnered with Polaroid and manufacturer Alps Electric to produce the Instant Mobile Printer, and with toy-maker TakaraTomy and manufacturer Foxconn for an upcoming product.
In addition, Zink has produced its own not-yet-released 6-megapixel digital camera-printer. If the combo-device doesn't appeal immediately to all die-hard digerati, it might be more likely to win over Polaroid Instamatic nostalgics, or anyone keen on wallet-sized snaps and Japanese-style "purikura" photo-sticker booths.
Commemorating those Kodak moments
Twenty-five-year-old student Caroline enjoys printing out those special shots for her scrapbook or making collages for friends, and she is happy to pick them up from the self-service kiosk after a short wait.
"I like to physically hold the prints and look at them in my hands," she says. "You appreciate a photo more when it's not on the computer. It's one that you've taken the trouble to print, maybe even frame, so you pay more attention."
If one person's print is that same person's carbon footprint, most people seem to agree that printing remains an inalienable delight.
Andy, of the Photo 2000 express kiosk in Hong Kong, confirms: "About half of the people out there prefer to view their pictures printed, rather than on a computer. But all people like to see real photos. All our customers print photos for friends and family, never for business... If they don't want to print, then we close."
Whether instant or not, at least now zero-ink provides us with an environment-friendly alternative to satisfy our pent-up printing desires.

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Arizona (CNN

FOUNTAIN HILLS, Arizona (CNN) -- A team of doctors from the Mayo Clinic declared Friday that there appears to be no physical reason why Sen. John McCain, the 71-year-old presumed Republican presidential candidate, could not carry out the duties of the office.

Sen. John McCain, who turns 72 in August, could become the oldest person elected to a first term as president.

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"Sen. McCain enjoys excellent health and displays extraordinary energy, and, while it is impossible to predict any person's future health, I and my colleagues can find no medical reason or problem that would preclude Sen. McCain from fulfilling all of the duties or obligations of the president of the United States," said Dr. John D. Eckstein, an internist who has been overseeing McCain's treatment for 16 years at the famed research center's campus in Scottsdale, Arizona.
McCain has been undergoing periodic examinations there since the 1990s and annual examinations since 2000, Eckstein said. His most recent comprehensive examination took place in March, with follow-up tests this month.
The doctors described a number of health issues faced by McCain, many of them typical for a man of his age but at least one of them potentially serious.
McCain has had four malignant melanomas removed. Three of them -- on his left shoulder, left arm and left nasal wall -- were limited to the top skin layer and were not invasive. They were removed in 1993, 2000 and 2002, and all were declared Stage 0, of little long-term concern.
But a fourth melanoma proved to be invasive and was removed from his left lower temple in 2000, Eckstein said.
The surgery on McCain's temple was carried out in August 2000 by Dr. Michael Hinni, who described the melanoma as 2.2 mm thick at the thickest point and 2 cm across.
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Hinni said that, in order to leave a 2 cm margin that would minimize the risk of leaving some of the cancer intact, he had to remove a patch of skin roughly 6 cm in diameter, as well as an underlying carotid salivary gland from McCain's face.
Dissection of dozens of lymph nodes showed no evidence that the cancer had spread, he said.
According to the American Cancer Society, such a melanoma would be classified as Stage IIA, which is associated with a five-year survival rate of about 78 percent and a 10-year survival rate of about 66 percent.
The wound required major reconstruction and has left the senator with a mass of scar tissue on his face. His left jaw appears prominent because because there was an absence of soft tissue on the face in front of his ear, Hinni said.

Ryan Giggs could stay at Old Trafford beyond his playing days, according to Sir Alex Ferguson.

26/05/2008 07:09, Report by Gemma Thompson
Reds to retain Ryan for life?
Ryan Giggs could stay at Old Trafford beyond his playing days, according to Sir Alex Ferguson.The record-breaking winger claimed his second Champions League winners' medal on Wednesday night, ten days after scooping his tenth Premier League title.He's now the holder of United's all-time appearance record having surpassed Sir Bobby Charlton's tally in Moscow and Sir Alex believes the 34-year-old still has a few good years left in him yet."Ryan could play until his 38 and it would definitely be here. I think he'll be here for a long time," he said."He's taking his coaching badges and we like the structure of our former players remaining part of the club like Bryan Robson and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, who are both ambassadors for the club."The model of that is, without question, Bayern Munich and I've been saying for years to the people at our club that our former players, who have been such a credit to United, should always be included in the future. I'm sure Ryan will be part of that."

CNN) -- It's been a long, long time since the last "last" time: When Dr. Henry "Indiana" Jones Jr. rode off into the sunset in May 1989, courtesy of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade," the Berlin Wall was still standing, George H.W. Bush was only four months into his presidency, and Harrison Ford was just a young whippersnapper of 46.

Harrison Ford returns as Indiana Jones in "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."

Quite why Ford, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas -- three of the wealthiest men in Hollywood -- should feel the need to resurrect Indiana Jones at this late stage of the game is anybody's guess. The three men have a combined age of 191, but like many boomers, they're not ready for the rest home just yet, even if living in the past seems a strange way to show it.
The first Indiana Jones film, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," was already a nostalgia trip when it was released in 1981, a guileless celebration of the old-fashioned Saturday morning adventure serials that were a staple for any kid growing up in the '30s, '40s and '50s. That makes the new film, "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," a throwback to a throwback.
But time is catching up with the series.
The new film is set in 1957, enabling Ford to act his age (or something like it). But this is the outer edge of a time when America could still believe in the simple black-and-white morality Indiana represents. If the Nazis and the Reds couldn't finish him off, the '60s surely would.
Still, in some ways, the extra years suit Ford. Indiana has always been a surly old sourpuss, a pragmatic, world-weary hero in the classic WWII mold. Indy's fondness for griping is part of what makes him human. And when it comes to trading punches, cracking heads or disinterring the dead, Ford can still get it done. If he can't, his stunt double can. Watch what some other critics are saying »
The movie opens in Nevada, where Dr. Jones is caught up in a daring raid on Area 51 led by Soviet agent Irina Spalko, played by a Cate Blanchett in a severe black bob, long black rubber gloves and a rapier. (It's a get-up so outré, even Joe Stalin would smile.) In a twist worthy of "The Twilight Zone," Indy finds himself in an ersatz small town populated by cardboard figures watching "Howdy Doody" -- a test site for an imminent A-bomb explosion.
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This bravura, breakneck opening immediately rekindles the old magic: the mixture of bravado and wit with action sequences that keep piling on layer upon layer of peril. Unfortunately, this is also the high point of the movie, or close to it.
Indiana's brush with the Reds makes him a person of interest to the FBI just after the height of the McCarthy period, a quick, passing nod toward a post-9/11 sensibility that the movie runs away from almost as desperately as Indy scrambles from an army of man-eating ants. At this point, screenwriter David Koepp in effect starts the story all over again, this time with Brylcreemed biker Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) making a clumsy pitch about rescuing his mom from kidnappers in South America.
That, and something about a legendary crystal skull, get Indiana Jones' juices churning, and suddenly the old professor and the young tough are off on an adventure.
This outlandish hokum doesn't bear close scrutiny, so it's probably just as well Dr. Jones is not one for introspection. He does his thinking on his feet, and so does Spielberg, who sometimes seems to be directing this with one eye on the exit signs.
It is good to see Karen Allen back as Marion Ravenwood, easily the pick of Indiana's women. She lends the enterprise some heart that is sorely lacking elsewhere. It's just a pity Koepp can't find more for her to do. (Ray Winstone, as an Indy colleague, is also poorly used.)
A long jungle chase is another bona fide highlight, but Spielberg and Lucas misjudge the film's extravagant CGI climax; I won't spoil it here, but it feels alien to Indy's world. Let's just say we have seen this before, from Spielberg himself, and done better, too.
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"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" has enough going for it to secure the bronze medal in the series and even compete for the silver, but "The Last Crusade" was a more graceful farewell. Indeed, the prospect of a revived series -- either with Ford or LaBeouf in the driver's seat -- isn't especially enticing. "The Adventures of Mutt Williams," anyone?

Kings of Europe!

United are champions of Europe for the third time after a dramatic penalty shoot-out victory over Chelsea at the Luzhniki Stadium.Forty years after first winning the European Cup at Wembley in 1968, and 50 years since the Munich tragedy, fate played a big part as a dramatic final in Moscow went to penalties.
After Cristiano Ronaldo had missed his kick for United, John Terry had the chance to win the cup for Chelsea, but the Blues skipper slipped on the run up and his penalty hit the post. After Anderson and Giggs, plus Kalou for Chelsea, then converted, Nicolas Anelka's sudden death shot was finally saved by Edwin van der Sar, sparking jubilant scenes among United’s rain-soaked travelling contingent.Cristiano Ronaldo had given United a 26th minute lead with a header from Wes Brown’s cross in a first half which the Reds dominated. Carlos Tevez had two clear chances to put United 2-0 ahead, but his efforts were well saved by Chelsea keeper Petr Cech, who also denied Michael Carrick.Chelsea gained a foothold in the game in the final few minutes of the first half, and equalised with almost the last kick of the half, when a deflected