Jackson to be buried Tuesday in LA: official

LOS ANGELES: Michael Jackson will be buried at a Los Angeles cemetery on Tuesday shortly before a gala tribute to the pop icon at an arena here, the city's acting mayor said.
The funeral will take place at Forest Lawn Cemetery at 8:00 am (1500 GMT), two hours before the memorial service at the downtown Staples Center, Jan Perry told the local NBC television affiliate Monday.
The funeral would end speculation that the family may wait to clear legal hurdles to bury the King of Pop at his Neverland Ranch, his fantasy estate north of Los Angeles that some fans wanted to turn into a memorial.
Perry, a city councilwoman, is in charge of Los Angeles as Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa is on vacation in South Africa.
Forest Lawn, located near some Hollywood studios, is one of Los Angeles' best-known cemeteries and is no stranger to celebrities.
Screen legends Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow are buried at Forest Lawn.
The cemetery also tries to preserve pre-Hollywood aspects of US history. It features a monument to the country's first president, George Washington.
Jackson's death has unleashed a flurry of fan tributes and media attention, raising fears that his funeral would turn into a circus.
Some 1.6 million people applied for 8,750 registrants to win tickets for the service at the Staples Center arena and a neighboring arena, where the event will be shown on giant screens.
One report said that Jackson's mother Katherine, 79, the guardian of her estate, quashed plans for a procession of his body through Los Angeles, finding the idea ghoulish and traumatic for the King of Pop's three children.
The family had initially considered a funeral at Neverland, some 250 kilometers (150 miles) north of Los Angeles in tony Santa Barbara wine country.
But the plan met opposition in some quarters and presented legal complications as families generally cannot bury bodies in residential areas.

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US troops in Iraq head to Afghanistan

BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.

Cuba's world-famous cigar festival closes in Havana

Sunday, February 28, 2010 HAVANA: Hundreds of wealthy merchants and cigar aficionados from all parts of the world gathered in Havana this week to bid high stakes for humidors full of premium cigars. Cuba's annual Habanos festival ended on Friday night with an auction of ornate humidors of cedar and mahogany stacked with hand-rolled stogies that raised 800,000 euros ($1.09 million dollars). Habanos S.A. executives this month said cigar sales fell 8 percent to $360 million in 2009, so they have created the Julieta, a smaller, milder version of the Romeo y Julieta cigar, aimed specifically at female smokers. Women now make up only 5 to 10 percent of customers for Habanos. But even with the creation of the Julieta, Garcia said Habanos has only modest hopes for 2010 sales, due largely to a weak economy in Spain, the biggest market for Cuban cigars. The flavor of premium tobacco relies on the soil and climate in which it is grown. The western province of Pinar Del Rio, famous fo...

Snake bite deaths

Monday, July 06, 2009 COLOMBO: The Sri Lankan government recorded some 33,000 snake bites in 2008, with most of the victims coming from remote villages.The Department of Government Information said in a statement that most of the snake bite cases could be fatal if neglected.The statement said snake bites are often neglected in Sri Lanka as victims do not seek treatment at hospitals where advanced medication is available. Instead, the victims rush to traditional type of treatment which could be a risk, reports Xinhua.Snake bites death at domestic level, outside hospitals, go unrecorded, said the statement.Most victims of snake bite are from the rural and remote villages where there is no electricity after dusk.Statistics show that Sri Lanka has over 90 species of snake with around 10 species possessing venom capable of killing a human being.In Sri Lanka the annual death rate due to snake bite envenoming is one of the highest in the world being 6 in 100,000 population.

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