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WASHINGTON: The White House swayed to Latin beats, as President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted Hispanic musicians and singers on the mansion's south lawn."Even though it is constantly evolving and changing, Latin music speaks to us in a language we all can understand it moves us, and it tends to make us move a little bit ourselves," Obama said in welcoming his guests at the "Fiesta Latina" gala."In the end, what makes Latin music great is the same thing that's always made America great: the unique ability to celebrate our differences while creating something new." Performing stars at the event celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month included Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony and Los Lobos, while guests delighting in the lively rhythms included Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Twenty-eight Palestinians have been held in administrative detention for two to four years, and one has been held for four-and-a-half years, according to a report due to be released early Wednesday morning by two human rights organizations, B'Tselem and Hamoked. The report, entitled "Without Trial," found that more than 1,000 Palestinians had been held simultaneously in administrative detention during the second intifada. At the end of September of this year, Israel was holding 335 administrative detainees, including three women and a minor. Thirty-seven percent of the detainees had been in jail for one to two years. The organizations charged that an administrative detention proceeding may look like a fair judicial process, but actually denies the detainees any chance of reasonably defending themselves.In the vast majority of cases, the judges agree to declare evidence privileged and rely on written reports prepared by the ...

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 MOSCOW: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said the time to slap sanctions on Iran over its atomic programme has not yet come. Earlier, America’s top diplomat met President Dmitry Medvedev during a two-day mission to Moscow to reset US relations with Russia. At a media conference with Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov Clinton praised Russia’s help in tackling the issue. “We are aware that we might not be as successful as we need to be so we have always looked at the potential of sanctions in the event that we are not successful, that we cannot assure ourselves and others that Iran has decided not to pursue nuclear weapons,” Clinton said. The signing of a new arms reduction treaty also topped the agenda and Lavrov indicated significant progress had been made with the US.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 NEW YORK: Images from the twin STEREO spacecraft show, for the first time, a solar tsunami blasting its way through the Sun's lower atmosphere. Solar tsunamis are launched by huge explosions near the Sun's atmosphere, called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Although solar tsunamis share much in common with tsunamis on Earth, the solar version can travel at over a million kilometres per hour.The tsunami took place on 19th May 2007 and lasted for about 35 minutes, reaching peak speeds around 20 minutes after the initial blast. The observations were made by a team from Trinity College Dublin.'The energy released in these explosions is phenomenal, about two billion times the annual world energy consumption in just a fraction of a second. In half an hour, we saw the tsunami cover almost the full disc of the Sun, nearly a million kilometres away from the epicentre,' said Long.STEREO's Extreme Ultraviolet Imager (EUVI) instruments monitor the Sun...

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 WASHINGTON: A second earthquake in less than 24 hours shook Alaska's desolate Aleutian Islands Tuesday measuring 6.3 on the moment magnitude, US seismologists said.The quake hit some 75 miles (120 kilometers) from Nikolski off the coast at a depth of some 8.5 miles (13.7 kilometers) at 2021 GMT, the US Geological Survey reported.It came after a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck the islands late Monday at 9:37 pm (0537 GMT Tuesday) about 91 kilometers (57 miles) southwest of Unalaska, a town of about 4,000 people, according to the USGS.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009 WASHINGTON: The United States has chided Turkey for canceling a NATO military exercise because Israel also was participating.Neither the Turks nor NATO has confirmed that Israel's participation in the exercises over Turkey was Ankara's reason for pulling out.State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Tuesday, however, "as to the question of whether there was a government that was invited to participate and then removed at the last minute, we think it's inappropriate for any nation to be removed from an exercise like this at the last minute."He was asked whether that was what happened and whether Israel was the spurned country. He confirmed both.Muslim Turkey's traditionally close ties with the Jewish state have cooled since the Israel-Hamas Gaza war in January.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 CHICAGO: A clump of the King's hair, which he had cut off before entering the U.S. Army in 1958, is going on the auction block Sunday at Leslie Hindman Auctioneers in Chicago. The opening price has not been revealed, but the auction house says another clump of Presley's hair sold for $115,000 in 2002, according to a US-based news agency. The auction will also feature more than 200 other Elvis items, including clothes he wore, sweat-stained scarves he threw to screaming fans, Christmas cards he sent, and lots of records and memorabilia. The unnamed owner of the rock-n-roll artifacts inherited the collection from Gary Pepper, who was the president of an early Elvis Presley fan club and a close friend of the music legend. He died in 1980. The clump of hair going on auction was reportedly verified to belong to the King, based on existing samples of his hair. The star may have lost the locks when he got his Army-issue crewcut when he went into the service i...

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 SAO PAULO: An intense fire broke out Sunday in a slum in South America's largest city, sending residents running across rooftops to escape the flames.There were no immediate reports of deaths in Diogo Pires, a small shantytown in western Sao Paulo that is home to about 300 families.Two people sought medical treatment for smoke inhalation, according to fire officials.Television broadcasts showed flames leaping 20 meters (65 feet) into the air as some residents fled and others helped firefighters battle the blaze with hoses and buckets of water."The flames were huge. People screamed and quickly ran out of the community," resident Ana Paula Martiniano told Globo television.Fire officials said they did not know what caused the blaze, which began around 6 p.m. (2100 GMT).Two hours after it began, firefighters managed to contain the flames to an area about 1 square kilometer (a square half-mile).They also kept it from spreading to neighboring industri...

Tuesday, October 13, 2009 RIYADH: Saudi security forces shot dead two "suspects" on Tuesday and detained a third at a checkpoint in the southern Jizan province, a local news channel reported. The men had been stopped by police while travelling from Jizan to Aseer province near the border with Yemen. The men opened fire on the officers, injuring three, according to the report. It was not clear whether the men were suspected of smuggling or terrorism.