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Mandisa Hundley didn't let weight issues stop her from auditioning for the fifth season of "American Idol." But the singer's joy from making it onto the show soon vanished when sharp-tongued judge Simon Cowell joked that they would need a "bigger stage" to accommodate her. Now 80 pounds thinner, Hundley tells ETonline.com what it was like to relive the painful memory that was recently replayed on "American Idol Rewind." "My favorite memory started out as my least favorite memory and that was when Simon Cowell made fun of my weight on the very first show," she said. "That was my worst nightmare come true. When I saw Simon the next time, I told him I forgave him because an important part of my faith is forgiving others because I have been forgiven. I will never forget that reaction: the look on his face - humbled and giving me a big hug." Though Hundley, 33, didn't go on to win the singing competition, she returned to the rec...

Thursday, October 08, 2009 ROME: Italy's Constitutional Court threw out a law that shielded Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from prosecution while in office, paving the way for corruption proceedings to resume against him.A defiant Berlusconi slammed the court as primarily "left-wing" and vowed to see out his five-year mandate won in April 2008, saying he had the support of 70 percent of the Italian people.The combative media tycoon also took a swipe at the media, which he said was "72 percent left-wing", and traded barbs with President Giorgio Napolitano, questioning the former communist's impartiality.Berlusconi's cabinet ministers and his main ally, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, closed ranks behind the premier, who is already under fire over allegations about his private life including links to call girls."We won't give up," said Bossi, who was with Berlusconi when the court ruling was announced.Berlusconi, 73, said he expected...

Thursday, October 08, 2009 PARIS: Stunned astronomers have discovered a new mega-ring around Saturn and believe its genesis is a small, distant moon of the giant planet.Phoebe, a Saturnian satellite measuring only 214 kilometres (133 miles) across, probably provides the record-breaking tenuous circle of dusty and icy debris, they report on Thursday in Nature, the weekly British science journal.The largest ring identified so far in the Solar System, the circle starts about six million kilometres (3.7 million miles) from Saturn and extends outwardly by another 12 million kms (7.4 million miles), within the orbit of Phoebe.A trio of US astronomers led by Anne Verbiscer of the University of Virginia used NASA's orbiting Spitzer telescope in February this year to get a close look at space in Phoebe's neighbourhood."This is one supersized ring," Verbiscer was quoted by NASA as saying."If you could see the ring, it would span the width of two full moons' worth of s...

Thursday, October 08, 2009 KARACHI: Pakistan’s foreign exchange reserves swelled owing to the loan tranches of $410 million from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB), Geo News reported Thursday.Talking to Geo News, the spokesman of State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) Syed Wasimud Din said the national forex reserves surged to the level of $14.74 billion with an addition of $257.7 million within the week ending on October 3.Of these reserves, the central bank has $11.16 billion and commercial banks have $3.58 billion.Syed Wasim said Pakistan received tranches of a total of $410 billion from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and World Bank (WB) in the last trading week.

Herta Mueller, a novelist and poet who wrote about harsh life behind the Iron Curtain, won the 2009 Nobel Prize in literature Thursday. The choice of Mueller, who is little known in the United States and in many other parts of the world, stoked recent criticism that the Nobel committee favors European writers. Mueller, an ethnic German born in Romania, was censored and harassed for her depictions of life under the Romanian communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu. The Nobel judges praised Mueller, "who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed." The writer, who lives in Berlin, is the third European in a row to win the $1.4 million prize. It is has been 15 years since an American won the Nobel for literature; in 1993 it was given to Toni Morrison. "I am very surprised and still cannot believe it," Mueller said in a statement released by her publisher in Germany. "I can't say anything more at the mo...