BEIJING: China showed no sign Tuesday of throwing its support behind new sanctions against Iran following talks with Britain’s foreign minister, who had hoped to persuade Beijing to join a growing international consensus for more stringent measures.

Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi maintained that sanctions weren’t the solution to disagreements over Iran’s nuclear program and that more talks were the way forward.

“Sanctions do not provide a fundamental solution to the Iranian nuclear issue. Ultimately, this issue has to be appropriately resolved through peaceful negotiations,” Yang said at a joint news conference with Britain’s David Miliband following their discussions in Beijing.

With Russia appearing to move closer to supporting new sanctions, China — which depends on Iran for much of its energy needs — would be the only one of five veto-wielding permanent U.N. Security Council members opposed to the measures.

Further punishment of Iran is among a host of issues dividing the nations, whose relations deteriorated badly last December after China ignored personal appeals from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown not to execute 53-year-old Akmal Shaikh for drug smuggling.

Shaikh’s family said he was mentally unstable and was lured to China from a life on the street in Poland by men playing on his dreams to record a pop song for world peace.

Brown said he was “appalled” by the execution — China’s first of a European citizen in nearly 60 years — prompting a warning from Beijing that such comments threatened to damage ties.

Even before that exchange, the two had clashed over who was to blame for the failure to reach a binding agreement on emissions reductions at December’s U.N.-sponsored Copenhagen climate talks.

Neither Yang or Miliband offered indications of a clear improvement in ties following the discussions.

However, a state television report about Miliband’s courtesy call on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was somewhat more upbeat.

China “highly values” relations with Britain and invites British companies to explore opportunities in the booming Chinese economy, CCTV quoted Wen as telling Miliband.

Miliband said rights dialogue was a part of Britain’s “strategic partnership” with China and indicated Beijing’s diplomatic disputes with Europe were not seen as part of a larger rivalry.

“I don’t believe China is a political competitor of the European Union,” he said.

On Iran, Miliband said international concern was rising over its nuclear intentions, citing Iran’s refusal to agree to stop processing uranium and instead accept shipments of nuclear fuel processed overseas and the U.N.’s inability to exclude the possibility of military dimensions to the Iranian nuclear program.

Without mentioning sanctions directly, Miliband said China and other nations remained united behind the goal of ensuring Iran does not become a nuclear weapons state.

“The fact that we have a shared goal leads me to believe that we can find the tactics to achieve it,” Miliband said.

Conan o Brien Tour, whose exit from “The Tonight Show” and NBC bars him from taking another TV job until September, will launch “The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour” in Eugene, Ore., on April 12. He, sidekick Andy Richter and his “Tonight Show” band led by Max Weinberg will hit 30 cities over the course of two months.

O’Brien announced the tour Thursday morning (March 11) on his Twitter feed: “Hey Internet: I’m headed to your town on a half-assed comedy & music tour.

The tour includes dates at the Gibson Amphitheater at Universal Studios in L.A. — an NBC Universal-owned property that’s just a stone’s throw from O’Brien’s “Tonight Show” soundstage — and Radio City Music Hall in New York, just up the street from NBC headquarters. O’Brien and Co. will also hit Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Austin, Chicago, Toronto and Washington, D.C., during the tour, as well as the Bonnaroo music festival in Tennessee on June 11.

Google is testing a new television programming search service with Dish Network Corp., The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the service runs on TV set-top boxes using Google’s Android operating system.

It said it allows users to search content from Dish, which has some 14 million satellite TV subscribers, as well as Web video like YouTube and to personalize a lineup of shows.

The Journal said users can search by typing on a keyboard instead of using a remote control.

It said Google hopes to link the TV search service with its TV ad-brokering business, Google TV Ads. This would allow the Internet giant to target ads to individual households based on viewing and TV search data, the newspaper said.

The Journal said the test began last year and is limited to a very small number of Google employees and their families. It said the test could be “discontinued at any time.”

Google currently makes the vast majority of its revenue from online advertising.

Story: Muncipalty Ghatkopar, a street kid in Mumbai, finds a two-month baby abandoned on the steps of a children’s home. He begins a hunt for the infant’s mother because he does not want him to grow up motherless like him. His friends, other street kids, help him in this towering mission.

Movie Review: It is important to point out one fact that might help you view Thanks Maa with a totally different perspective. Irfan Kamal’s film on slummy street kids was first screened at the International Film Festival at Goa in 2008. Which means, it was made before Slumdog Millionaire, the film that swept the world with its take on Indian kids who survive and succeed despite the mean streets of Mumbai.

But no, it did not have the backing of Hollywood, the roar of the Oscars, the international marketing blitzkrieg…hence it’s relative obscurity and its delay in the release which unfortunately, for no fault of its own, might just give it a has-been feel. But don’t let the strange marketing logic of unconventional Indian cinema beguile you, because Thanks Maa is a film that will make you cry and laugh, even as it fills you with admiration and warmth for the next decrepit kid you see on the red light, running nose et al.

What strikes you at the onset is the authenticity of the film. Having used a sterling cast of kids literally drawn from the underbelly of Mumbai, the film anchors their story too in the grime and dust of the megapolis that seems to be brimming over with jagged and broken souls. So, you have our heroes — the bunch of street kids — living off the local train stations, picking pockets, polishing shoes and sharing their booty on an abandoned terrace before retiring for the night at home: a dilapidated car in a junk yard.

It’s here that young Muncipalty (Shams) brings his foundling and tries to hide him from the tough cops with the help of his buddies, Dedh Shana, Cutting, Sursuri and Soda. His objective is to re-unite the baby with the mother who abandoned him. Indeed, a journey that takes him through the dregs of the city and has him meeting pimps, hookers, incestuous dads, adulterous husbands (Ranvir Shorey), drug addicts doubling over as cabbies (Sanjay Mishra), models who abandon illegitimate kids (Rukhsar), distraught mothers, paedophile caretakers (Alok Nath) of juvenile homes or what you will….All this without losing their basic goodness and innocence. For despite drawing out the devilish map of uncaring Mumbai, the director manages to retain the humaneness of the story by showcasing his protagonists as little heroes, standing up for the good and the right.

Watch out for the kids. They leave you spellbound with their guttural, gutsy act. Surprisingly, and thankfully, the Censor Board has displayed a sense of maturity too by letting them speak in hardcore street lingo (read abusive). The film, ostensibly inspired by Tsotsi, Gavin Hood’s film that won the Oscar, does get a bit long-winded in the second half and the climax might seem schmaltzy, but these are forgivable in view of the sledgehammer impact of the film. It fills you with a yearning to do something, anything….

Swamis and Scandals, Swami Paramhansa Nityanand: The founder of the Nityanand mission, which claims to have 1,000 branches across 33 countries, has been untraceable since certain Tamil TV channels recently aired a video which allegedly shows him in a compromising position with a Tamil actress. Nityanand, who has ashrams in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Puducherry, hails from Tamil Nadu and has a sprawling ashram in Bidadi, 30 km from Bangalore. He claims to lead a worldwide movement for meditation and peace. Lenin Karuppan, a former disciple, has said that he shot the video to expose the swami. Lenin has alleged that his life has been under threat from the swami, adding that he also suspected foul play behind the death of a woman inmate a year ago. In the complaint filed with Chennai City Police Commissioner T Rajendran, Lenin, who claimed to be an inmate of the ashram in Bangalore since 2006, said the swami used to lure young women devotees claiming that he was the reincarnation of Lord Krishna.

Anup Kumar Sahay: A self-proclaimed godman in Ghaziabad, he was booked on Sunday for abducting his cousin. According to a complaint filed by Subha Srivastava, mother of the victim, the accused along with his brother Ashok Kumar Sahay abducted her daughter Priyanka Srivastava on February 15. The self-proclaimed godman has been booked under sections 363, 313 and 366 of the IPC which pertain to kidnapping and forcing a woman to undergo abortion without her will.

Kripaluji Maharaj: Ram Kripal Tripathi aka Kripaluji Maharaj, at whose ashram near Pratapgarh in UP 63 people died in a stampede last week, was charged with kidnapping and rape in two cases in Nagpur in 1991. He was acquitted after the witnesses turned hostile. He was arrested in 2007 after a Guyanese woman in South Trinidad filed a rape case against him.

Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale: Shiv Murti Dwivedi alias Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale (39), a self-styled godman, was arrested by the Delhi Police last month on charges of operating a high-profile sex racket involving former airhostesses and students.

Asaram Bapu: Two minor boys of the Asaram Ashram-run gurukul in Ahmedabad were found dead in the Sabarmati riverbed two days after they mysteriously went missing from the gurukul in February 2008. The police booked Asaram Bapu in a criminal case pertaining to attempt to murder last year in December on the basis of a complaint filed by Raju Chandak, a former disciple of Asaram. Chandak was shot at by two persons on December 5 and he sustained injuries on his chest and shoulders. Chandak alleged that he was targeted at the behest of Asaram, as he had testified before the D K Trivedi Commission probing into the death of the two boys.

Jayendra Saraswati: The influential Kanchi math Shankaracharya was arrested by the Tamil Nadu Police in Mehboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh in November 2004 in connection with the murder of a former accountant of the math.

Santosh Madhavan: The temple priest-turned-astrologer wanted by the Interpol – was arrested in Alappuzha in May 2008. Apart from a Rs 50 lakh fraud case that has a Dubai-based businesswoman as the complainant, Madhavan, who had turned himself into Swami Amritachaitanya presiding over a posh ashram and flaunting high connections in the state’s political circle and the bureaucracy, was also charged with raping a 15-year-old girl repeatedly.

Premananda: Also known as Trichy Sai Baba, he was awarded life imprisonment in 1994 for two terms on the charges of multiple criminal offences including rape and murder. Premananda, who reportedly had powerful supporters in the AIADMK, had not only raped many of the inmates of his ashram at Trichy but also carried out crude medical terminations of some of the consequent pregnancies with the help of a couple of associates. He was also charged with the murder of an engineer who had opposed the nefarious activities at the ashram.

NEW YORK : People who are obese are at increased risk of becoming depressed, and people who are depressed are at increased risk of becoming obese, Dutch researchers have found.

“There is a reciprocal association over time between depression and obesity,” Dr. Floriana S. Luppino, of Leiden University Medical Center, the Netherlands, told Reuters Health by email.

Obesity, Luppino and colleagues found, increases the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals by 55 percent and depression increases the risk of obesity in initially normal-weight individuals by 58 percent.

Luppino said the analysis was not designed to determine a given person’s risk of depression, only to figure out how much obesity increased that risk. However, for comparison, a recent study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health found that nearly one out of four cases of obesity is associated with a mood or anxiety disorder.

These findings, the NIMH notes on its website, appear to support what other studies have found – that obesity, which is on the increase in the US – is associated with increasing rates of depression and other mental health problems.

The new findings stem from pooled data from 15 published studies that looked at whether being overweight or obese is associated with depression, and vice versa.

The studies, which collectively involved more than 58,000 people, used body mass index, or BMI, to gauge how fat or thin a person is. For reference, a US adult with a BMI of 25 or more is considered overweight, while one with a BMI of 30 and above is considered obese.

Being obese, Luppino told Reuters Health, not only increases the risk of depression, but is more likely to fuel the onset of clinical depression, rather than merely depressive symptoms.

In contrast to obesity, the association between depression and being overweight (but not obese) did not run the other way, Luppino noted. Being overweight increased the risk of depression in initially non-depressed individuals somewhat, but depression did not increase the risk of being overweight over time.

The findings, reported in the latest issue of the Archives of General Psychiatry, also suggest that the link between obesity and later depression is more pronounced among Americans than among Europeans.

Why? “A dose-response association — meaning the higher the BMI, the more people get depressed — might explain the association,” Luppino said. And the average American weighs more than the average European.

However, the effect of the psychological distress should not be neglected, the researcher said. “Overweight and obesity, can induce low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction,” Luppino explained, “especially in Western countries where thinness is often considered a beauty ideal. Both low self-esteem and body dissatisfaction are known to increase the risk of depression.

Japanese electronics giant Sony is developing a new lineup of handheld products to counter Apple’s stable of portable devices, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The newspaper, citing “people familiar with the matter,” said the products under development include a smartphone capable of downloading and playing PlayStation games being developed with Swedish cellphone partner Ericsson.

Another project is a portable device that the Journal said blurs the distinctions between a netbook computer, an electronic book reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP.

The multifunction device is reportedly designed to compete against Apple’s upcoming iPad.

The new smartphone and the multifunction device were expected to work with Sony’s online media platform due to launch this month in the United States offering movies, TV shows and music like Apple’s iTunes, the Journal said.

It said the new products were targeted for launch this year.

Sony Ericsson is to release its first smartphone, the Xperia X10, a device powered by Google’s Android operating system, in April.

Sony refused to confirm the report but stressed that the electronics giant is interested in networked portable products.

“Sony and Sony Ericsson have been strengthening their collaboration in the networked mobile space,” it said in a statement.

“However, it is not our strategy to discuss future products or business plans before we make a formal announcement. Any media report that suggests details of the product or business is based on speculation.”

Apple has sold more than 40 million iPhones. The iPhone and iPod Touch are competing with Sony’s PSP in the handheld gaming market. The iPad is expected to rival the Sony Reader and Amazon Kindle in the e-reader market.

The Hills Have Thighs is a newly developed artist-run space located in the depths of Chicago’s Western Corridor.  Boasting a history as a music venue and installation-themed art loft with Artist’s studios and an audio recording facility,THE HILLS ESTHETIC CENTER is opening their latest venture; a white-walled exhibition space.

The space exists to promote a constant flux of challenging and undervalued contemporary artwork hosted in a non-commercial, artist-controlled environment.Come watch as we throw our proverbial hat (beer hat) into the ring of Chicago Alt-spaces.

Campbell Street, Unit G, in Chicago, IL.  The show “The Hills Have Thighs” features a mini-retrospective of Michael Kloss’ darkly imaginative pen and ink drawings, colorful detritus sculptures, and idiosyncratic minimal collages.  Curated by his closest friends, this exhibition sifts through the deep pile of Kloss’ work and puts forth a strong display of his unique style.  Kloss’ work ravages the pits of emotional, social and cultural despair in an effort to shed a hopeful and humorous light onto his own condition. This prehistoric sludge of lost love, drug and alcohol inducement, fear of society and the dark north woods all work towards the bright light of love and lust, purity found in nature, the warm tropics and humor over pop culture.

Omnipresent are figures, cartoon-like blobs, and animals fixed in Kloss’ imaginary landscapes that reveal themselves to be alive.  Rocks, mountains andhills develop breasts, eyes and thighs, grounding Kloss’ acid-soaked visions of the surrounding world. Through the development of composition, radical sense of humor, and acute attention to his intuition, grows a dark (and grimly hopeful) world. With darkness there is light.

I was sitting in a pub by myself, morosely drinking a pint of stagnant local ale. This man approaches me, vigorously rubbing his face. He says that happiness is not far; that tranquillity can be attained atop a heap of rocks on the horizon. He takes me outside and points to a hill called Bell Tor. He forces me up the hill, until we reach the halfway point.

He tells me that I must be alone, to banish the sorrow within myself. Until then I hadn’t thought in needed guidance, but the peak seemed to exude some evangelical promise. I traversed up, till I had almost reached the peak, then I saw the same man. I was sure he had walked off in the other direction, but something was altered in his appearance. He looked less groomed, and more savage. He had his throat slit. I noticed a pile of dismembered hikers and tourists behind him. He lunged at me, so thoughtlessly I pushed him over. His head bounced off the rocks, while his body rolled lifelessly behind. He landed in a thick patch of heather.

Before seeing if he had disappeared, I ran down the hill and back to the pub. I saw the man again, and asked him what he was doing up there. He said that was just his brother. He then asked me if I gave him what he wanted. I looked down at my hands to see all my fingers missing. “That’ll do” he said cheerily.

Palo Alto Plane Crash- A twin-engine Cessna crashed into transmission lines shortly after take-off from a small airport, exploding on impact, killing all three people onboard and crashing into an East Palo neighborhood, authorities said.

The plane, authorities said, was bound for Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Southern California and took off in foggy conditions and crashed about 7:50 a.m. near Garden and Beech streets northwest of the Palo Alto airport.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said all three who were on the plane were killed, but there had been no injuries on the ground.

Daniel Morales, who told KTVU he had previously flown with the pilot, identiifed him as a high-ranking official at Tesla Motors. Authorities, however, have not released the names of the victims.

The plane hit transmission lines that are draped 377 feet above the ground near the Dumbarton Bridge. It exploded on impact with the wires, splitting into two pieces and igniting fires at two homes. One of the homes housed a daycare center for 20 children. Fortunately, there were no children there at the time of the crash.

Heather Starnes , who lives in the neighborhood, was leaving her home to take her daughter to school when she saw the crash.

“We heard something and it blew up in the air,” she told KTVU. “There was this big explosion. Part of it hit my neighbor’s house who has a daycare and part of it hit my neighbor’s other house. They are burning.”

Starnes said fortunately there were no children at the daycare at the time of the crash.

“Praise God there were no kids in the daycare, it hit where they would have been in the daycare,” she said.

Starnes said the plane slammed into a power line.

“It hit a power line,” she said. “Then it exploded — then half hit the next door neighbor’s house and the other half hit across the street. We were right in the road.”

Starnes said neighbors immediately flocked to the crash scene to help.

“There was one house, we couldn’t save it,” she said. “(Plane parts) It hit cars, there were a lot of explosions. There weren’t any injuries in the houses.”

Emergency vehicles were on the scene and there were no immediate reports of injuries.

Neighbors said that the area was draped in fog at the time of the crash. Gregor said it would have been up to the pilot to decide how safe it would have been to take off.

“That decision would have been up to the pilot,” the FAA spokesman said.

Patricia Armistead, who lived in the neighborhood, heard the explosion and raced outside.

Fierce winds whipped through Washington announcing a blizzard that is expected to bring 12 more inches to the already snow covered city.
The second major snowstorm to hit the east coast in less than a week, forced federal and local government agencies to close. The storm comes as residents were still trying to dig out from weekend snowfalls of 18 to 32 inches from Washington to southern New Jersey. Some struggled to restock refrigerators and clear fallen trees ahead of the new storm. Schools were closed across much of the region, and many canceled classes for the rest of the week. Cities across the Northeast ground to a halt as the National Weather Service predicted blizzard conditions up the coast with up to 16 inches in New York City, up to 22 inches in Philadelphia and 12 inches in Washington. Hundreds of flights were canceled in the three cities and airlines relaxed ticket policies to allow passengers to change their plans without penalty, moves that could cloud the outlook for an industry already hard hit by the battered economy. Three hours from Washington, in Williamsburg, Virginia, a highway was closed for hours as crews worked to clear a 50-vehicle accident scene. Only seven people were transferred to hospital with minor injuries.