Mid Day International News |
- Barack Obama sings to me all the time, says wife Michelle
- 73 killed, 1,000 hurt in Egypt football stadium violence
- Facebook ventures into stock market; seeks to raise 5 billion US dollars
- Michelle Obama makes Jay Leno eat his greens
- Separated at birth, twins meet in Sweden
- 4 planned to launch a 'Mumbai-style' attack on London
- Prince Harry to race against lightning bolt
- Costa Concordia souvenirs on eBay
| Barack Obama sings to me all the time, says wife Michelle Posted: First Lady Michelle has revealed that President Barack Obama serenades her all the time by singing songs from Al Green, Marvin Gaye and other R 'n' B greats.
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| 73 killed, 1,000 hurt in Egypt football stadium violence Posted: At least 73 people were killed and up to a 1,000 injured following clashes and a stampede at a football stadium in the Egyptian city of Port Said Wednesday night.
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| Facebook ventures into stock market; seeks to raise 5 billion US dollars Posted: Seeking to raise USD 5 billion, giant social networking site Facebook has filed for its long awaited initial public offering It filed paperwork to go public yesterday. Facebook's IPO would surpass rival Google's 2004 offering of USD 1.9 billion. Earlier Google held the record for the largest US Internet IPO.
For longtime followers of the social network, this is an exciting time and a culmination of the site's eight-year rise from Mark Zuckerberg's Harvard dorm room to world domination. Investment bank Morgan Stanley will act as lead underwriter, with Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and others to take secondary positions. Shares are expected to hit the market in May under the stock symbol "FB". The company is seeking to raise USD 5 billion, according to this early filing, amounting to a lofty (and still tentative) valuation of almost USD 100 billion. Going public also provides a rare glimpse into the internal stats previously kept private. The service has 845 million active users, nearly half of which log in and actuate 2.7 billion likes and comments each day. It also shed light on the company's prior revenue and earnings, with profits of USD 229 million and USD 606 million in 2009 and 2010, respectively- easily bested by a whopping USD 1 billion in 2011. As for the Zuckerberg, his 2011 salary of USD 500,000 will be cut to USD 1 as of January 2013, but he'll be more than comfortable, thanks to a 28.4 per cent stake in the company. Meanwhile, Wall Street banks hope the IPO opens door to more work with the company down the line, and that work can mean more fees. The Morgan Stanley brokers hope an IPO leads to handling money for some of those suddenly rich Facebook employees.
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| Michelle Obama makes Jay Leno eat his greens Posted: US First Lady Michelle Obama cajoled TV talk show host Jay Leno into nibbling on apples, sweet potato fries and a pizza made with eggplant, green peppers and zucchini on the Tonight Show, breaking his long-held aversion for all-things-healthy in his diet.  Healthy laughs: Michelle cajoled the host into trying out some apples and sweet potato fries after Leno said he hadn't eaten a vegetable since 1969. pic/afp Obama earlier poked fun at him in a Twitter post, hinting she would "get Jay to eat some veggies" on the NBC show. He did. "That does smell very good. I assume this is sausage-pepperoni," the comedian quipped as he eyed the pizza made with a whole-wheat crust. She convinced Leno to dip an apple in honey made from beehives in the White House garden: "It will help it go down easier," she assured him. She swooned over her husband's singing saying he sang a bit of little Marvin Gaye. "He does have a beautiful voice, and he sings to me all the time," she told Leno.
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| Separated at birth, twins meet in Sweden Posted: Indonesian girls put up for adoption separately reunite 29 years later Twins born in Indonesia and put up separately for adoption, have been reunited after finding each other living just 40 kilometres apart, in southern Sweden, three decades later. Non-identical twins Emilie Falk and Lin Backman -- strangers until last year -- were separated nearly 29 years ago.  Happy reunion: According to the DNA test, which Emilie Falk and Lin Backman did, there is a 99.98 per cent chance of them being sisters. Pic/afp According to a DNA test the pair had done two months after reuniting in January last year, there is a 99.98 per cent chance of them being sisters. A complex string of events led up to that revelation. Both were adopted from an orphanage in Semarang in northern Indonesia by Swedish couples, but there was no mention in either of their documents of the fact that they had a twin. When Backman's parents left the orphanage with her all those years ago, the taxi driver had turned around and asked them, "What about the other one, the sister?" and they jotted the girls' Indonesian names down on a piece of paper. Discrepancies The name helped Backman's parents track down the Falks back in Sweden, and the two families got together when the girls were babies to compare notes. "They went through the adoption papers and there was a lot in the papers that didn't add up ... And there were no DNA tests back then," Falk said. Among the discrepancies were different names for the girls' fathers. And although the records showed they had the same mother, the families decided that it was an error. The two couples in the end wrote off the idea. Although their parents had told them the story as children, both Falk and Backman later forgot about it. "But when I got married two years ago I started thinking about family and my adoption, and when I asked my mother she told me this story again, and I decided to look for Lin," Falk said. Lot in common She had a name and began searching through a network for Indonesian children adopted by Swedish families, and found her on Facebook. "I am born on March 18, 1983 in Semarang and my biological mother's name is Maryati Rajiman," Falk said she wrote, and quickly received the reply, "Wow, that's my mother's name as well! And that's my birthday!" They found they had a lot in common. They are both teachers, they got married on the same day one year apart and even danced to the same wedding song. "When Lin called me (with the DNA test results), I remember I was sitting in the car and when she told me I started laughing, because it just felt so strange," she said, adding: "I suddenly started thinking that we shared a womb. It was really strange, but really cool too." Since then the two have kept in close touch, and have talked about going to Indonesia to search for their biological parents. Asked if she wished she had found out about her twin earlier, Falk insisted "there's no use in being sad about something I didn't know about. I am only happy to have found her."
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| 4 planned to launch a 'Mumbai-style' attack on London Posted: Four radical men have admitted an al-Qaeda-inspired plot to detonate a bomb at the London Stock Exchange. The Muslim fundamentalists' group wanted to send five mail bombs to various targets during the run up to Christmas 2010, discussed launching a 'Mumbai-style' atrocity. A hand-written target list found at one of the defendant's homes listed the names and addresses of London Mayor Boris Johnson, two rabbis, the American Embassy and the London Stock Exchange. The total of nine men admitted various terror crimes at Woolwich Crown Court and will be sentenced next week. Lynchpin Mohammed Chowdhury and his London accomplice Shah Rahman were followed by undercover detectives observing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye and the Palace of Westminster. The conspiracy involved nine defendants -- the London duo, three from Cardiff and four from Stoke -- but was stopped by undercover anti-terror police before firm dates could be set for attacks. They possessed the al-Qaeda magazine Inspire, which contained a feature: 'Make A Bomb In The Kitchen Of Your Mom.' Their agenda is said to have included launching a Mumbai-style attack that would mimic the 2008 atrocity in India that saw terrorists arrive at the port by boat and slaughter 166 people. The nine were not members of al-Qaeda but were inspired by the terror network and its former Yemeni boss, American-born Anwar al-Awlaqi, who was killed last year in a drone strike. The nine defendants 'were implementing the published strategy of AQAP', said Andrew Edis QC, for the prosecution.
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| Prince Harry to race against lightning bolt Posted: The royal is going to challenge the world's fastest man to a race during his trip to Jamaica next month He has taken on the Taliban, trekked across the Arctic and qualified as a combat helicopter pilot to earn his reputation as the Royal family's action man. But Prince Harry will take on a challenge he can only lose when he runs against the fastest man in history on a visit to Jamaica next month.  Call me Harry: Usain Bolt, the world's fastest man, is keen on racing Prince Harry at the rudimentary athletics track where he trains. File pics/ Getty Images The Prince will meet 100m world record holder Usain Bolt when he stops off at the Olympic champion's training track in Kingston during his first solo foreign tour. Royal sources have said that the Prince, who is an Olympic ambassador for Team Great Britain, is hoping to challenge Bolt to a "fun" race if it does not interrupt the athlete's training schedule. "The Prince and Usain Bolt are keen for it to happen," said a royal insider. "Because the visit is at a critical time in the run-up to the London 2012 Games, the whole thing will depend on Usain Bolt's training schedule, which the Prince obviously doesn't want to interrupt." Bolt (25), broke the 100m world record in 2009 by the biggest margin since digital timing was introduced. Despite his achievements, Bolt still trains at a rudimentary athletics track which will be on Prince Harry's itinerary when he visits Jamaica at the beginning of March as the Royal family begin Diamond Jubilee tours of every Commonwealth country. The 27-year-old is also expected to meet Jamaica's Prime Minister, Portia Simpson Miller, who said in January that she intended to remove the Queen as head of state to turn the country into a republic. The Prince will begin his tour in Belize on March 2, moving on to Jamaica and the Bahamas before undertaking a trade mission to Brazil. By the time he arrives in Rio de Janeiro on March 9 his brother, William will be in the Falkland Islands flying his RAF Search and Rescue helicopter on a six-week tour of duty. Prince Harry will then return to training with his Apache helicopter squadron. He has already undergone hostage training, during which he was hooded, threatened and told about the tortures he could face if he crashes and is captured by the Taliban.
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| Costa Concordia souvenirs on eBay Posted: Mementos from disaster liner Costa Concordia are up for sale on eBay -- including a one euro casino chip for �1,140 (Rs 90,000). A seller called gkaac from US, set the 'buy-it-now' price -- and is also inviting bids from $900 (Rs 45,000). Other items for sale include a model of the ship for $199 (Rs 9,800)) and a book for $110 (Rs 5,400).  Meanwhile the ship's doctor yesterday said 'Captain Coward' Francesco Schettino took time to change out of his uniform before fleeing the liner -- which sank, claiming at least 17 lives. Lt Gianluca Marino Cosentino said, "When I heard he'd returned to his cabin to collect his personal effects, that was the final straw." Officials yesterday called off the underwater search for the bodies of 15 people still missing. Schettino is being probed for manslaughter, abandoning ship and wrecking the liner off Italian isle Giglio. -- Agencies Captain Schettino faces 19 charges A group of 19 German tourists has filed criminal charges against Francesco Schettino, captain of the stricken Italian cruise ship Costa Concordia, said a prosecutor in Germany. "Charges have been filed and they must now be examined," said Christian Kuhnert, a prosecutor in Bochum, western Germany. A lawyer for the group, Hans Reinhardt, was quoted as saying his clients were filing charges "on suspicion of negligent bodily harm, abandonment, endangering shipping and failure to offer assistance to persons in danger."
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