MOSCOW : US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is in Moscow to meet with senior Russian officials and to join top international diplomats in assessing the stalled Mideast peace process.

Clinton arrived in the Russian capital Thursday morning after an overnight flight from Washington. She is to be joined later by the Obama administration’s special envoy for Mideast peace, George Mitchell.

Clinton aides said she will discuss a range of issues with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (SEHR’-gay LAHV’-rahf) on Thursday, including negotiations on a new U.S.-Russian nuclear weapons treaty.

On Friday Clinton will participate in a meeting of the so-called Quartet of Mideast peacemakers, comprising the U.S., Russia, the United Nations and the European Union.

33 abducted children have been reunited with their families. A group of American missionaries attempted to kidnap these children on January 29.
The children left the safe environment of the children’s village that welcomed them during the process. The children stayed in SOS village for seven weeks. While the Haitian Child Authority traced the parents and cleared the paperwork the children, aged between four months and twelve years, were placed in a SOS Children on the outskirts of Haitian capital Port-au-Prince.
More than 400 unaccompanied and orphaned children have found their way to the SOS Children’s village since the earthquake, SOS Children said.

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Catherine Ashton arrived in Amman on Wednesday to talk to Jordanian officials on how to speed the start of peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

Ashton held a meeting with Jordan’s foreign minister Nasser Judeh and top officials on ways to boost relations between Jordan and the EU, according to Jordanian officials.
During a news conference at the foreign ministry, Ashton said her regional trip is meant to support US efforts to kick off talks between the Palestinians and Israel.

“I am here today because I will be visiting later on today Israel and Palestine and I will be going into Gaza tomorrow and I come from a number of other countries where I have had important dialogues.

I am also on my way to the quartet meeting in Moscow on Friday where this will be an opportunity to do more to try and support exactly, as you say minister, the move to proximity talks with a view to these leading to formal negotiations and a resolution to the issues that are so difficult at current time.”

The head of CIA, director Leon Edward Panetta claimed that aggressive attacks against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal region have driven Osama bin Laden and his top deputies deeper into hiding and disrupted their ability to plan sophisticated operations.

Panetta was speaking during an interview to American Newspaper “The Washington Post”, where he added that al-Qaeda’s is in disarray to an extent that one of its commanders, in a recently intercepted message, pleaded with Bin Laden to come to the group’s rescue.

Panetta praised the efforts and contributions of the Pakistani Armed Forces in the war on terror. He said Al-Qaeda will continue to look for ways to strike inside the United States, and he noted that the organization is seeking to recruit people who lack criminal records or known ties to terrorist groups. He claimed that the current operation is the most effective operation against Al-Qaeda.

SAN FRANCISCO : Social-networking star Facebook surpassed Google to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time last week, industry analysts showed.

Facebook’s homepage finished the week ending March 13 as the most visited site in the country, according to industry tracker Hitwise.

The “important milestone,” as described by Hitwise director of research

Heather Dougherty, came as Facebook enjoyed a massive 185 percent increase in visits in the same period, compared to the same week in 2009.

By comparison, visits to search engine home Google.com increased only nine percent in the same time — although the tracker does not include Google property sites such as the popular Gmail email service, YouTube and Google Maps.

Taken together, Facebook.com and Google.com amounted to 14 percent of the entire US Internet visits last week, Dougherty said.

Google has been positioning challenges in recent months to Facebook and the micro-blogging site Twitter by adding the social-networking feature Buzz to its Gmail service.

In what could signal an escalating battle between Facebook and Google, the leading social-networking service celebrated its sixth birthday earlier this year with changes including a new message inbox that echoes Gmail’s format.

Facebook boasts some 400 million users while Gmail had 176 million unique visitors in December, according to tracking firm comScore.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday hailed the “unshakeable bond” between the United States and Israel in an effort to quell the diplomatic spat that has rocked ties between Washington and its closest Middle East ally.

We have an absolute commitment to Israel’s security. We have a close, unshakeable bond between the United States and Israel, Clinton told a news briefing. Her comments marked a turn after days of tough US talk following Israel’s announcement last week that it would approve construction of a housing project in East Jerusalem, a move which infuriated the Palestinians and put hopes for resumption of Middle East peace talks on hold.

The US secretary of state, who last week called Israel’s announcement “insulting”, on Tuesday brushed away suggestions that the US-Israeli relationship was in the midst of its worst crisis in decades.

We share common values and a commitment to a democratic future for the world, and we are both committed to a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, she said. But that does not mean that we are going to agree. We do not agree with any of our international partners on everything, she added.

Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani has admitted that delay in judges’ restoration was his biggest mistake.

During an interview with a UK daily Financial Times, Gilani admitted that “I should have restored the judiciary in the beginning. That is my biggest mistake. Then we would have not wasted our energies on each other. It would have been better that we would have concentrated on the people of Pakistan”.

Enlisting the achievements of the incumbent government Gilani said, “The successes are that we have very ably completed two years with consensus in parliament. We did a lot of legislation. The biggest success is that we have gathered the whole nation together on one platform for fight against terrorism and that is the biggest victory ever. The other biggest victory is accommodating 2.5million IDPs to go back to their homes in the shortest possible time of three months”.

Replying to a question on US-Pak strategic dialogue the PM said, “We want to have a very meaningful and result-oriented meeting in the United States”.

On Afghanistan he said, “Pakistan is the only country which can help Afghanistan and you cannot achieve stability in Afghanistan without Pakistan.”

“A Whiter Shade of Pale” is the debut song by the British band Procol Harum, released 12 May 1967. The single reached number one in the UK Singles Chart[1]  on 8 June 1967, and stayed there for six weeks.

With its haunting tone and Bach overtones, vocals by Gary Brooker, and unusual lyrics by Keith Reid, “A Whiter Shade of Pale” reached #1 in several countries when released in 1967. In the years since, it has become an enduring classic. In 2009 it was the most played song in public places in the UK,[2] and the United Kingdom performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited in 2004 recognized it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years.[3] Also in 2004, Rolling Stone placed “A Whiter Shade of Pale” #57 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

More than 900 recorded cover versions by other artists are known.[4] The song has been included in many music compilations over the decades and has also been used in the soundtracks of numerous films, including The Big Chill, Purple Haze, Breaking the Waves, The Boat That Rocked and notably in Martin Scorsese’s segment of New York Stories. Cover versions of the song have also been featured in many films, for example by King Curtis in Withnail and I and by Annie Lennox in The Net.

The original writing credits were for Brooker and Reid only. On 30 July 2009, Matthew Fisher won co-writing credit for the music in a unanimous ruling from the Law Lords of the House of Lords.

ACAPULCO: Drug-related violence left 17 people dead Saturday in Mexico’s southern Guerrero state, including four people who were decapitated, authorities said.

Five police officers were shot to death by a lone gunman in Tulchingo, near Acapulco, the officials said. One more lawman died later of wounds.

Five more bodies, including two decapitated ones, were found in the Native American village of Tres Palos, west of the resort.

Meanwhile, four civilians were also found dead in and around Acapulco.

In addition, two bodies of decapitated men were found overnight on Scenic Avenue in downtown Acapulco, officials said.

The states of Guerrero and neighboring Michoacan are largely under the control of the vicious “La Familia” drug cartel, one of the most powerful trafficking groups in the country.

Rival drug cartels are fighting deadly battles over lucrative drug routes to the north into the United States.

Drug-related crime has left more than 15,000 dead in the past three years in Mexico, despite a nationwide clampdown on the growing violence involving the deployment of some 50,000 government troops.

Talladega Nights, “Pineapple Express” and “Talladega Nights” among his favorites, has a movie line for just about any occasion. …
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Morello has previously been a part of the soundtracks for Spider-Man, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story. …
The prayer video from “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” was shown along with the Prayer video from “Meet the Fockers.” I was quite shocked to see these videos being used in our church as a tool to show people what they