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Saturday, February 13, 2010 WASHINGTON: There was snow on the ground in 49 states Friday. Hawaii was the holdout. It was the United States of Snow, thanks to an unusual combination of weather patterns that dusted the U.S., including the skyscrapers of Dallas, the peach trees of Atlanta and the Florida Panhandle, where hurricanes are more common than snowflakes. More than two-thirds of the nation's land mass had snow on the ground when the day dawned, and then it snowed ever so slightly in Florida to make it 49 states out of 50. At the same time, those weird weather forces are turning Canada's Winter Olympics into the bring-your-own-snow games. "I'm calling it the upside-down winter," said David Robinson, head of the Global Snow Lab at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Snow paralyzed and fascinated the Deep South on Friday. Snowball fights broke out at Southern Mississippi University, snow delayed flights at the busy Atlanta airport, and Louisiana hardwar...

Saturday, February 13, 2010 RIO DE JANEIRO: Carnival erupted Friday in Rio with raucous street parties that brought together cheering, drum-beating locals with sweaty foreigners escaping snowbound cities. Thousands of Carnival revelers flooded the cobbled streets of the bohemian Santa Teresa neighborhood in skimpy costumes bordering on blasphemous. At the "Carmelitas" party — named after a nearby convent — groups of young women dressed as sexy police in cutoffs and tank tops, while grown men who donned baby outfits, sucked on pacifiers and showered themselves with talcum powder. The drum line, whose powerful samba beat kept the crowd dancing in the sweltering heat, was made up of young men dressed as nuns, as were many in the crowd. Friday marked the start of dozens of the eccentric, pulsating street parties that are the heart and soul of Rio's pre-Lent festival. The seaside city is opening its arms to more than 700,000 visitors this year, according to tourism...

Saturday, February 13, 2010 PORT-AU-PRINCE: A top UN official in Haiti said many of those made homeless by the massive earthquake one month ago are unlikely to be provided "good shelter" before the coming rainy season. While the United Nations and other organizations involved in aid efforts are aiming to provide some sort of shelter material before the rains begin around May, the deputy head of the UN mission here said the challenge will be immense. "I think it's almost certainly going to be the case there are going to be a lot of people without good shelter by the time the rains really come," Anthony Banbury said in an interview. He said officials debated whether to distribute more sturdy shelter that could better withstand the elements but that would take longer to provide and reach fewer people, or work to hand out something to everyone. "I think for obvious humanitarian reasons, the decision was to give something to everyone," Banbury sai...

Saturday, February 13, 2010 WASHINGTON: Internet giant Google has bought Aardvark, a "social search" service that relies on a user's contacts to provide answers to questions. "I can confirm that we have signed an agreement with Google," Aardvark co-founder and chief technology officer Damon Horowitz said in reply to an email from a French news agency. "We can't comment further at this time." Technology blog TechCrunch put the purchase price at around 50 million dollars. San Francisco-based Aardvark was founded in 2007. Its co-founders include former members of Google. Aardvark uses the contacts in a person's network to provide answers to questions via the Web at Vark.com, instant messaging, email or Twitter. In a recent blog post, Aardvark said it had more than 90,000 users in October 2009 and 87.7 percent of the questions sent to Aardvark received answers from a friend or a friend of a friend. Aardvark said 75 percent of the user...

Saturday, February 13, 2010 SYDNEY: In just one hour, 88 millimeters (3.46 inches) of rain fell over parts of Sydney on Saturday night, causing a large tree to fall and damage two houses. The storm dumped one of the largest amounts of rain on the Australian city in a decade, local media reports said, with the weather bureau is predicting more rain over the weekend. An elderly lady had just returned home from hospital when her roof caved in due to the downpour. "I heard a little noise and I thought it was somebody out here doing something, and then, next thing I heard this crash coming down and it was the ceiling coming down. I couldn't believe my eyes," said resident of the house, Marie Carrol. Firemen are assessing the damage to the house.

For most of the world, the Winter Olympics is a spectacle of strange sports (curling) and even stranger names (luge). For the host Canadians, it's a rare and glorious shot at world domination through sacred winter sports like hockey. So when economist and Olympic prognosticator Daniel Johnson predicted Canada is poised to be top dog, you might expect the country to be thumping its collective shoulder pads in celebration. But hold off on the celebratory poutine. Medal predictions are tricky, perhaps more of an art than a science, and it's not clear that economists or anyone else using objective data are best suited for the endeavor. Does home field advantage matter? Do you take individual sports and athletes into account, or look at broad demographic trends? The most important number, by far, is a country's past medal count. That is the benchmark of all Olympic medal predictions, and it's often hard to beat. (Here's a handy interactive graphic for medal winners...

DUBAI — Afghanistan's fairytale story in the world of cricket continued on Saturday as they defeated hosts United Arab Emirates to reach their first major tournament, the World Twenty20 finals in the West Indies which runs from April 30 to May 16. The Afghans won by four wickets, restricting UAE to 100-9 off their 20 overs - Mohammad Nabi taking 3-17 - and then reaching their target in 19.3 overs with opener Noor Ali topscoring with 38 not out. It is a remarkable feat by the Afghans - most of whom learnt to play cricket in refugee camps over the Pakistan border - as they were in the fifth division of the world cricket league just two years ago. Afghanistan, who showed their talent when they came within one place of reaching the 2011 World Cup finals, will play either Ireland or The Netherlands - both of them are the joint holders from the previous tournament - in Saturday's final. The winners of the final will be placed in Group C alongside India and South Africa while ...