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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Obama as you’ve never seen him before

Lisa Jack stands next to an exhibition 

He was tall and stunningly good looking, a guy who could appear pensive and serious one moment and then, with smoke from an unfiltered cigarette swirling around his face, morph into the hippest looking dude this side of James Dean.Which is why budding photographer Lisa Jack knew the moment she saw Barack Obama walk into the campus snack shop at Los Angeles’ Occidental College in 1980 that she had to get the freshman in front of a camera.‘I was doing portraits of fellow students, the cool people on campus,’ Jack, a slender, 49-year-old bundle of energy, recalled this week as she stood in a West Hollywood photo gallery surrounded by framed black-and-white photos of the president as a young man.‘A friend of a friend said there’s this really cool guy, really good looking, you have to get his picture.’ And as he said it, he walked in. He said, ‘Hey Barry, come here.’Soon after, they had made arrangements for a photo shoot at Jack’s small off-campus apartment, a nondescript hovel furnished with little more than a worn couch that had been salvaged from the side of the road and an overturned shopping cart that doubled as an end table.To Jack’s surprise, the future president, dressed in jeans and a shirt with sleeves rolled up, arrived with his own props, including a leather bomber jacket, a wide-brimmed Panama hat and a package of cigarettes.‘He had so much charisma, even back then, it was amazing,’ the photographer said, looking at a portrait of Obama, a broad grin on his face, one palm outstretched as though he’s about to welcome a visitor. In another his head is tilted back, eyes closed, a grin again fixed on his face.‘Some of these are goofy. He could be a goofball,’ Jack said, chuckling as she surveyed them.Then she moved on to view photos of the future president looking pensive and sometimes lost in thought, still others of him in his classic cool pose, cigarette smoke swirling around his face, others in the bomber jacket, hat off, showing a medium-length Afro.She shot just one 36-exposure roll of film, going on to earn an A in her photo class. Then Jack buried the images away and moved on to other things.She had once dreamed of becoming a professional photographer but ended up teaching instead. After earning a doctorate from the University of Southern California, she became a psychology professor in Minneapolis, where she lives with her family.Over the years, she has continued to bump into Obama from time to time. Not long after the photo session, she was vacationing in Hawaii when she ran into him at a nightclub. Three years ago, she dropped by his Senate office during a visit to Washington.

Microsoft unleashes Bing to counter Google

US software giant Microsoft has unveiled its new search engine, Bing, a new search engine to compete against the hugely dominant Google. Bing should be available online on May 1 in the United States.Microsoft on Thursday unveiled a new search engine, Bing, designed to intuitively understand what people are searching for on the Internet and challenge online king Google.The US software colossus refers to Bing as a "Decision Engine" and said it will have it deployed worldwide at bing.com by Wednesday."Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don't do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find," said Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer."When we set out to build Bing, we grounded ourselves in a deep understanding of how people really want to use the Web."Bing search employs semantic technology intended to help it recognize not just key words but what is intended by phrases typed in as online queries, according to Microsoft.Internet search engines have traditionally relied on matching key words to words found at websites.Bing is built to "go beyond today's search experience" by recognizing content and adapting to query types, according to the Redmond, Washington-based company.Bing takes aim at Microsoft arch-rival Google, which dominates the online search market. Bing will replace MSN Live search, which has languished in a distant third place behind Google and Yahoo!

Indian tennis star Sania Mirza gets engaged

Sania Mirza 

Leading Indian player Sania Mirza has become engaged to a business scholar from her hometown of Hyderabad but has no plans to retire from competitive tennis, domestic media reported on Friday.The 22-year-old Mirza is a youth icon in a nation starved for sporting success after she became the first Indian to win a WTA tour title and break into the world’s top 50 in 2005 but has struggled to live up to early expectations.The pair are unlikely to tie the knot in the near future, as her 23-year-old fiancĂ© Sohrab Mirza plans to pursue higher studies, reports quoted family members as saying.Mirza has been plagued by injuries over the last two seasons but has continued playing despite being frustrated by a series of court petitions attributed mostly to people trying to grab media attention. She also had to fend off the ire of Muslim clerics opposed to her playing in normal tennis attire.

Indian growth unexpectedly strong

India's economy grew 5.8% in the first three months of the year compared with the same period last year, which was better than had been expected.The official gross domestic product figure was down from 8.6% annual growth seen in the first quarter of 2008.Although growth has slowed from last year, the economy is still expanding faster than most other countries.It grew 6.7% in the full financial year, which was down from a rate of 9% in the year to the end of March 2008.

Iran Blames U.S. For Deadly Mosque Bombing

Iran blamed the U.S. and Israel on Friday for a bombing in a Shiite mosque in southeast Iran that killed 25 people, saying the countries were trying to stoke sectarian tension with the Sunni Muslim minority.Iran has repeatedly accused the U.S. and other Western countries of backing militants and opposition groups in the country — charges they have denied. The blame could be intended to mask real sectarian issues between Iran's Sunnis and majority Shiite population.Thursday's bombing took place in the remote city of Zahedan, which has witnessed attacks by an Islamic militant group called Jundallah that claims to be fighting for the rights of Sunnis and is believed to have Al Qaeda links.Zahedan, located some 1,000 miles southeast of Tehran near Pakistan and Afghanistan, has also seen frequent clashes between drug smugglers and Iranian police.The Martyr Foundation, a government organization that provides financial support to victims of terrorist attacks in Iran, said 25 people were killed in the bombing in Zahedan's second-largest Shiite mosque. Earlier official reports Friday said 20 people were killed."I announce that ... those who committed the bombing are neither Shiite nor Sunni. They are Americans and Israelis" who want to stoke sectarian conflict in the country, Iranian Interior Minister Sadeq Mahsouli said on the ministry's Web site.Jalal Sayyah, a senior security official in Zahedan, said 145 people were injured in the bombing and three suspects have been detained."Hire of the terrorists by the U.S. was verified based on investigation," Sayyah told The Associated Press. Sayyah did not say whether the terrorists belonged to a specific group. In 2007, Jundallah, or God's Brigade, killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in Zahedan.Iran blamed a similar bombing of a Shiite mosque in the country's southwest in April 2008 on three men it said had ties to the U.S. The bombing in the city of Shiraz, located some 550 miles south of Tehran, killed 14 people.Last month, Iran hanged the men, who the court said were members of a little known monarchist group that wants to overthrow the country's ruling Islamic establishment.

Pakistan ups Taliban chief reward

Pakistan has increased its reward for a Taliban chief in the Swat valley to 50m rupees ($600,000, £372,000).The figure is more than 10 times the original bounty for radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah.Officials acted after Pakistani Taliban leaders warned of more bomb attacks in cities in retaliation for a government offensive in the north-west.Authorities in Peshawar have banned public gatherings a day after at least 10 people died in two separate attacks.On Wednesday at least 24 people died in a bomb attack in Lahore which targeted a police station and intelligence agency offices.As fighting continued in Swat on Friday, the army said 28 militants had been killed in the last 24 hours and seven arrested. It said five soldiers and two civilians were injured in clashes. The figures cannot be independently verified.

'Taliban killed' in Afghan province

At least 35 Taliban fighters have been killed and another 13 wounded in fighting in the Afghan province of Zabul, the US military has said.The fighters were killed when a US and Afghan patrol convoy came under attack, according to a statement released by the military on Thursday."The Afghan-led force was conducting a combat reconnaissance patrol early this morning, when the convoy came under heavy fire from militants using small arms and mortar fire," said the statement.The incident happened hours after the US military said its forces and Afghan troops killed 29 fighters in neighbouring Paktika province in clashes in Wor Mamay district.Details of the clash in Zabul's Daychopan district could not be independently verified.The province borders Pakistan's Baluchistan, which is rife with  regional insurgency and where attacks have been blamed on Taliban fighters. 

Sri Lanka fighting 'killed 20,000'

More than 20,000 civilians were killed in the final days of the Sri Lankan military's operation against the separatist Tamil Tigers, Britain's Timesnewspaper has reported. Citing confidential UN documents, the newspaper on Friday reported that the civilian death toll in the government-designated no-fire zone soared from late April, with around 1,000 civilians killed ever day until May 19.Hundreds of thousands of civilians were trapped between the remaining Tamil Tiger fighters and government forces in the final days of the bitter conflict.During the fighting hospital officials in the conflict zone and Tamil Tiger sources repeatedly accused the military of shelling civilians, while the government said the separatists were using them as human shields.Both sides denied the allegations.

North Korea 'tests another missile'

North Korea has fired another short-range missile off its east coast, the sixth such launch since it tested a nuclear weapon on Monday, South Korea's Yonhap news agency has reported.Friday's reported test-fire followed a statement from North Korea's foreign ministry pledging to respond if the UN Security Council agreed any fresh sanctions over the tests."If the UN Security Council provokes us, our additional self-defence measures will be inevitable," the foreign ministry said in a statement."Any hostile acts by the UN Security Council will be tantamount to the demolition of the armistice," it said in a reference to the truce that ended the Korean War in 1953.The North has previously test-fired short-range missiles into the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan, often during periods of tension in the region.North Korea conducted its second nuclear test on Monday and followed it up with a series of short-range missile launches, all in violation of a UN resolution.

Obama unveils 'cyber czar' role

Barack Obama, the US president, is to appoint a "cyber czar' in a bid to combat growing threats to the nation's private and government computer networks.The US president said on Friday that the co-ordinator, who has not yet been named, would work with various government offices to protect their networks and others such as air traffic control and the US stock exchange.Obama also said the US had to provide the education required to keep pace with technology and attract and retain a cyber-savvy work force, and called for a new education campaign to raise awareness of cyber security threats."Cyberspace is real and so are the risks that come with it. It is the great irony of our information age [that] the very technologies that empower us to create and to build also empower those who would disrupt and destroy," he said.