General Petraeus to step down in Afghanistan (AFP)

General Petraeus to step down in Afghanistan (AFP)

General Petraeus to step down in Afghanistan (AFP)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 10:34 PM PDT

Commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan US General David Petraeus at Kabul International Airport on July 11, 2011. The general is leaving to take charge of the CIA and a change of command ceremony is scheduled for Monday morning to hand control of the mission to Lieutenant Colonel David Rodriguez.(AFP/File/Shah Marai)AFP - General David Petraeus was to step down from his post as the top US commander in Afghanistan on Monday, after a week in which two of Afghan President Hamid Karzai's closest allies were assassinated.

VIDEO: Behind the wheel of a GT4 race car

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 10:33 PM PDT

Chris Partridge has now been trying out one of the racing cars ahead of his own race in the GT4 series later this summer.


Physicists Create a Hole In Time to Hide Events

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 10:05 PM PDT

Physicists at Cornell have created a "hole in time" capable of hiding events from outside observers.


The iPhone, Android, and the FCC: Obeying the Prime Directive

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:58 PM PDT

It's been a few weeks since the FCC issued its mammoth 15th Annual Wireless Competition Report. Anal


Asian stocks lower on debt woes in Europe, US (AP)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:47 PM PDT

The DAX board and trading floor are pictured at the Frankfurt stock exchange April 4, 2011. Deutsche Boerse does not plan to sweeten its takeover bid for NYSE Euronext after Nasdaq and IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) made a higher offer, German newspaper Die Welt reported on Monday, citing a source close to the company. A spokesman for Deutsche Boerse referred to a statement on Friday that the company strongly believes a merger of Deutsche Boerse and NYSE Euronext is the best possible combination. REUTERS/Alex DomanskiAP - Worries about Europe's banking woes, debt problems in the U.S. and the global economy dragged down most Asian stock markets Monday.

Analysis: China's big banks cushioned from local govt debt (Reuters)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:44 PM PDT

A woman leaves a branch of Bank of China in Beijing July 6, 2011. REUTERS/Jason LeeReuters - While investors fret about a jump in bad loans from China's local government entities, the country's so-called "Big Four" banks are busy squirreling money away for the day when borrowers start defaulting in large numbers.

Trial of UAE bloggers set to resume

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:44 PM PDT

Five bloggers arrested in April after calling for political reforms in the United Arab Emirates.


British Open, Women's World Cup Make For A Day To Remember For ESPN

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 08:47 PM PDT

Sunday was one of the most dramatic days of programming in the 32-year history of ESPN. It began ear


Harry Wilson & The Art Of Restructuring

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 03:40 PM PDT

The investor's insights on Greece, the U.S. debt ceiling and fostering economic growth.


Italy Pushes to Narrow Growth Gap With Peers

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:38 PM PDT

Italy is hoping to halve the gap between how fast its economy grows and the average growth rate of the euro zone within three years thanks to several deregulation and tax-relief measures, according to a top government official.


Egyptians fear army rulers acting as new Mubaraks (AP)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:00 PM PDT

Egyptian Ramy Issam gestures as he recalls his ordeal at the courtyard of the Egyptian museum while visiting it for the first time since his detention, in Cairo, Egypt Wednesday, July 6, 2011. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)AP - The soldiers shouted, "Raise your head high, you're Egyptian."

In booming Brazil, crack strikes late but hard (AP)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:00 PM PDT

In this June 27, 2011 photo, a man covers himself with a blanket as he walks through an area popularly known as 'Crackland' in downtown Sao Paulo. About two decades after the U.S. emerged from the worst of its own crack epidemic, Brazilian authorities are watching the cheap drug spread across their country. In Sao Paulo, the first place in Brazil to have a large consumer market for the drug beginning in the 1990s, police seizure of crack went from 595 kilos in 2006 to 1,636 kilos in 2009, according to federal police. (AP Photo/Andre Penner)AP - In the dark before dawn, social workers advance slowly down a narrow road dividing two vast slums, entering a landscape of littered streets and broken-down shacks, where an open-air crack cocaine market does business among piles of rubble.

Australian hospital gives 2 mothers wrong babies (AP)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:11 PM PDT

AP - Staff at an Australian hospital accidentally mixed up two newborns and gave them to the wrong mothers, who breast-fed the infants before the mistake was caught, the hospital said Monday.


Bahamas under tropical storm watch

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 06:25 PM PDT

Bret has become the second tropical storm of the 2011 Atlantic hurricane season, according to the National Weather Service.

China Blasts Dalai Lama's Visit to White House

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 08:46 PM PDT

China lodged formal protests with the U.S. government over President Barack Obama's private meeting with the Dalai Lama, accusing Washington of "grossly" interfering in China's internal affairs and damaging bilateral relations.


Southern Exposure for Europe Banks

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 09:03 PM PDT

Europe's banks are sitting on vast quantities of loans to individuals and businesses in cash-strapped Southern European countries, highlighting another potential risk to the Continent's banking system.


Baseball Helps Japanese Town Mend

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 07:27 PM PDT

Takata High School's baseball team, hailing from Rikuzentakata, which was hard-hit by the March 11 tsunami, played in the first round of a summer tournament.


Rebekah Brooks' fall from grace (The Christian Science Monitor)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 12:29 PM PDT

The Christian Science Monitor - Rebekah Brooks dined with Britain's prime minister over Christmas and got a public show of support from her boss Rupert Murdoch before the cameras this month as allegations of phone hacking on her watch mounted.Now the 43-year-old U.K. media executive is a criminal suspect, her world of power and connections shattered by scandal.Brooks, who quit as head of Murdoch's British newspapers Friday, was arrested Sunday in a widening investigation into years of alleged phone hacking of hundreds of celebrities, politicians and even murder victims, as well as bribing police for information, at the now-shuttered tabloid News of the World.The arrest sealed Brooks' swift transformation from one of Britain's most powerful female executives to a figure of scorn and even parody.On Sunday, an Irish discount airline seized on perceptions of Brooks as an outlaw, placing an ad in The Observer newspaper that showed a photograph of the longtime Murdoch confidant, said to be so close to him that she was seen as family."Hacked Off with High Fares... I'm outta here with Ryanair!" the caption crowed.The implications of Brooks' arrest stretch far beyond her own circumstances, with questions about the extent to which the scandal rocking Britain's media establishment will dismantle the chain of command in Murdoch's business empire and erode the stature of Prime Minister David Cameron and other politicians who had once-cozy ties to the 80-year-old press baron.Another of Murdoch's chief executives, Wall Street Journal publisher Les Hinton, also had to resign Friday after more than 50 years with Murdoch. James Murdoch, head of European and Asian operations for his father's company, News Corp., is under increasing scrutiny. He and the senior Murdoch, along with Brooks, face questioning Tuesday by British lawmakers investigating the scandal.Brooks has been at the center of the storm since the scandal broke.Recognizable by a long shock of curly red hair, the 43-year-old Brooks was a loyal lieutenant of Murdoch and served as editor of the News of the World for part of the time when the tabloid's journalists allegedly hacked into telephone messages.Reports of illegal eavesdropping had percolated for years, but revelations that journalist had hacked into the voice mail of a 13-year-old murder victim, Milly Dowler, in 2002 caused a public uproar.The scandal was deemed toxic for the tabloid, and Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old newspaper. Brooks was vilified for initially clinging to her job while 200 other journalists lost theirs.Brooks' career with the News of the World began in 1989, after briefly working for Murdoch's group as a secretary. She started as a features writer, then became features editor, associate editor and ultimately deputy editor. She left the tabloid in 1998 to become deputy editor of Murdoch's other London tabloid, The Sun, where she stayed for two years.When Brooks returned to the News of the World as editor in 2000, she was only 31 years old â€" a feat for Britain's press establishment.She peppered the tabloid with celebrity scandals, and drew praise for using the newspaper as a platform to help get sex offender legislation, known as "Sarah's Law," passed in Britain. Brooks' controversial campaign to publicly identify pedophiles drew criticism from some police, who said it disrupted investigations and could lead to cases of mistaken identity, but she defended it on the grounds that the public had the right to know.In another stint at The Sun, another Murdoch tabloid, Brooks became its first female editor in 2003. She thumbed her nose at critics who expected her to end tabloid's daily topless model pictures on page 3, attaching a headline that said "Rebekah from Wapping" to the photo of a nude model of the same name on her first day on the job.Six years and a host of scoops later, Brooks was named chief executive of News International, joining the elite circle of Murdoch confidants.No longer drafting the headlines from her perch in the executive suite, Brooks has still made plenty of them â€" from her lunches and social calls with top politicians to one unusual brush with the law.In 2005, Brooks was arrested for allegedly attacking her husband, soap-opera star Ross Kemp. No charges were filed.Brooks's second marriage, to former racehorse trainer Charlie Brooks, came in 2009. The couple have been known to rub shoulders with some of Britain's most prominent politicians and appear at society events from Windsor Castle to Wimbledon.Brooks cultivated a close friendship not just with Cameron of the Conservative Party, but with the wives of ex-Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and Tony Blair of Labour.


With Hugo Chávez in Cuba for chemotherapy, who's running Venezuela? (The Christian Science Monitor)

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 11:13 AM PDT

The Christian Science Monitor - Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez touched down last night at Havana’s José Martí airport in another twist in the tale of his newly public battle with cancer.


VIDEO: Hacking scandal: Is Australia next?

Posted: 17 Jul 2011 08:01 PM PDT

Support is galvanising for further investigations into Rupert Murdoch's media empire in Australia, where the Greens Party have called for a parliamentary review of the nation's media.


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