Sunday, December 13, 2009 LONDON: Slanket is the newest apparel that has become a craze this season.The dress, which seems to be a cross between a hospital gown and a blanket, can be worn like an apron.Lakeland, the kitchen and homewares store in America had come up with the item in September last year.Since then, the dress that covers the wearer from neck to feet, has sold nearly a quarter of a million.Even chat show hosts Jay Leno and Oprah Winfrey have worn it on their shows.Also, Bruce Willis donned it on the David Letterman show.“There is something very wrong about someone wearing a slanket. They are definitely not high fashion, but they’ve been an amazing phenomenon,” the Telegraph quoted Tom Dunmore of Stuff magazine, as saying.Lakeland is offering it for 29.99 pounds, while Firebox, an online gadget retailer, is selling them for 25 pounds.
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.
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