Hun Sen’s latest antic unbecoming of a premier

I wonder whether it is still proper to address Mr Hun Sen as the prime minister of Cambodia.  Or whether he deserves to be addressed Mr Prime Minister, given his latest antic displayed over the weekend at the Thai-Cambodian border.

The timing of Mr Hun Sen’s weekend visit to the border was viewed with great suspicion in Thailand as it coincided with the escalated political activities of the Thai red-shirt movement to increase pressure on the Abhisit government ahead of the February 26 Judgement Day when a verdict on deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s 76 billion baht worth of frozen assets is to be delivered by the Supreme Court’s criminal division for political office holders. 

The real issue here is not his visit which can take place anytime Mr Hun Sen so wishes.  But his unprovoked insulting remarks against Prime Minister Ahisit Vejjajiva and the false allegations against Thailand and the Thai armed forces which are most disturbing and totally unacceptable from the leader of a neighbouring country who has repeatedly announced that he holds no grudges against this country but only against Mr Abhisit and his “illegimate” government.

Xbox 360 Games: Buy Two, Get One Free

Amazon has a special deal on select Xbox 360 games: You can get three Xbox 360 Platinum Hits for the price of two.

Games to choose from include Assassin’s Creed, Fable 2, Gears of War, and Halo 3. The cheapest game will be the one dropped from the total; the titles range in price from $16 to $30 on Amazon. It’s good deal.

Scoring binge puts Thunder’s Durant in MVP company

 Kevin Durant ,shooting guard of Oklahoma City Thunders,has been taking the NBA’s biggest names and scoring his way right on past them.

First Kobe. Then LeBron. Next up, Carmelo.

With a tear that began just before Christmas, Durant has climbed into a virtual tie with Denver’s Carmelo Anthony for first place in the NBA scoring race. He’s had at least 25 points in each of his last 23 games — a feat none of the other superstars has ever accomplished and no one else has ever done at his age.

Durant says he only cares about wins — and those are rising, too. With Durant leading the way, the Oklahoma City Thunder are right in the thick of the playoff race and making that dismal first season seem like ancient history.

Creator of Australia’s ‘Skippy’ dies

The creator of iconic Australian children’s television series “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo”, one of the country’s earliest and best-known cultural exports, died Wednesday, a report said.

John McCallum, 91, who began his theatre career in London, wrote, directed and produced all 91 30-minute episodes of the series, which was syndicated to 128 countries around the world.

“Skippy” followed the exploits of kangaroo Skippy, her young owner Sonny and the rangers of the Waratah Park, and was screened in Australia between 1966 and 1968.

State radio reported his death, which was understood to be from natural causes. McCallum is survived by his actress wife Googie Withers.

HUA HIN, Thailand – Efforts to save the wild tiger are at a critical point and it will take greater political will and cooperation from Asian countries to prevent the big cats from becoming extinct, conservationists and the World Bank warned Wednesday.

The dire message was offered to 13 tiger range states attending the first Ministerial Conference on Tiger Conservation. The aim of the three-day meeting is to convince countries to pledge to spend more on tiger conservation and set targets for boosting their numbers — vows that would then be finalized by heads of state in September at a meeting in Vladivostok, Russia.

“There will be no room left for tigers and other wildlife in Asia without a more responsible and sustainable program for economic growth and infrastructure,” World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a video message to the 180 delegates.

“The tiger may be only one species, but the tigers’ plight highlights the biodiversity crisis in Asia,” he said.

Thailand’s Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Suwit Khunkitti told delegates the time had come for his fellow ministers to commit to “bold commitments and actions so that we can collectively turn the tide of extinction on the tiger.”

Tiger numbers have plummeted because of human encroachment, the loss of more than nine-tenths of their habitat, and poaching to supply the vibrant trade in tiger parts. From an estimated 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century, the number today is less than 3,600.

John Seidensticker, head of conservation ecology at the Smithsonian National Zoological Park and chairman of the Save the Tiger Fund, recalled how he watched the Javan and Bali tigers disappear in the 20th century, adding that “losing a tiger is like losing a very close, dear relative and I’m still saddened by that experience.”

He said conservationists have over the years been successful in banning trade in tiger parts, outlawing hunting and boosting protection measures. But he said he and others never foresaw the breakneck economic development in Asia that would “pave over” key tiger forests and grasslands and create a market for tiger parts that has caused poaching to skyrocket.

Still, Seidensticker and others said the meeting itself offered hope, showing that the bid to save tigers has gone beyond passionate environmentalists and scientists and is now being embraced by government officials and key donors like the World Bank.

The meeting is being organized by Thailand and the Global Tiger Initiative, a coalition formed in 2008 by the World Bank, the Smithsonian Institute and nearly 40 conservation groups. It aims to double tiger numbers by 2022.

“That this meeting is happening is hugely important,” said John Robinson, executive vice president of conservation and science for the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

Robinson said the political will to save the tigers must be strengthened, funding increased for impoverished countries where tigers remain and forests expanded to ensure that tigers and humans don’t clash — a problem especially common in India and Indonesia.

Relocating communities is an option as long as the villagers are compensated adequately, Robinson said.

The World Bank said countries must work to minimize the impact of roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects on tiger habitat — something the bank has vowed to do in projects it funds. It also called on countries to better train and equip their forest rangers and reduce corruption in the government agencies tasked with running national parks and protected areas.

“Corruption has been rampant and all pervasive in some of the countries as far as forest management is concerned,” said Keshav Varma, the Global Tiger Initiative’s program director, told delegates. “Corruption is gradually and persistently nibbling away at our natural resources. The politics of money is drowning out the weak voices of the tiger and the poor.”

The 13 countries attending the meeting are Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Nepal, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Unstoppable iPhone

From the day it launched two years ago, Apple’s iPhone has been a tornado of disruption ripping through the wireless phone market. With the release of the iPhone 3G S and, at least as important, a new version of the basic software for all iPhones, the upheaval will intensify and spread to new markets.

The latest moves seem designed to wreak havoc on the competition. The iPhone 3G S hardware is a relatively modest update of the current phone, but the changes address the few areas where Apple lagged rivals. For example, the mediocre camera has been replaced with a 3-megapixel autofocus unit capable of quality video recording. A faster processor boosts performance, and storage is doubled, to 16 or 32 gigabytes. For this, you pay either $199 or $299 with a two-year AT&T contract. Battery life is significantly improved when you are on a Wi-Fi network, but not when you are on 3G. And you can not only voice-dial but also use speech to control many iPhone functions. At the same time, the existing 8 GB iPhone 3G remains in the lineup at a market-threatening $99.

Competitors have at least as much to fear from the new software, which is free for the original iPhone and iPhone 3G and a $10 upgrade for the iPod Touch (a Wi-Fi equipped iPod you can think of as a phoneless iPhone). Apple moved to match and, in many cases, leapfrog the competition. You can now cut and paste text in any application. The on-screen keyboard works well in both vertical and horizontal orientations. A technology called push notification can be used to wake a sleeping app, such as an instant-messaging program. And app publishers can sell add-ons such as extra game levels, or content such as e-books, from within their programs and bill the purchases through the App Store.

The most obvious targets of Apple’s moves are other phonemakers. The brand-new Palm Pre suddenly seems overpriced at $300 before a $100 mail-in rebate. Microsoft’s yet-to-be-released Windows Mobile 6.5 already looks lame, and many of the competitive software advantages of Google’s Android have been erased. In European and Asian markets, Nokia’s dominance will take a hit. And over time, new security features added to the iPhone could chip away at BlackBerry’s lock on the corporate market.

But Apple’s ambitions and the impact of the iPhone go far beyond the handset business.

For example, Apple now allows users to download apps that provide turn-by-turn directions while you drive, and the iPhone’s big screen makes it an excellent navigation device. One of those apps, from TomTom, is actually a whole driving kit that includes a window mount. The iPhone now threatens both stand-alone personal navigation devices and wireless carriers’ subscription navigation services.

Another big shift: Shooting and editing videos and uploading them to YouTube is now as easy on an iPhone as on a Flip camera. That should give Cisco Systems pause; the company recently bought Flip maker Pure Digital for $590 million.

To make matters worse for competitors, the vibrant community of developers who dream up uses for the iPhone never imagined by Apple shows no sign of slowing. From silly apps, such as virtual watermelon seed spitting, to uses as serious as real-time intensive-care patient monitoring, it is third-party software that will continue to make the iPhone a force of creative destruction–one competitors will have a devil of a time stopping.

PlayStation 3 slims down in size, price

COLOGNE, Germany (Hollywood Reporter) – Before it even started, Sony stole the show.

On the eve of the inaugural edition of gamescom, Europe’s largest gaming conference, Kazuo Hirai, chairman and CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, unveiled the hotly anticipated, slimmed-down version of its PlayStation3 console, to the excited gasps of the geek-heavy crowd.

Sony will roll out the slick, black and slimmer PS3 worldwide in September. The hope is that the console, about a third smaller and lighter than the current PS3, will help boost key holiday sales.

Sony also used gamescom to announce the European rollout of its PlayStation Network. Starting in November, customers in the U.K., France, Germany and Spain will be able to buy or rent movies from the online service to watch on their PlayStation consoles or PlayStation Portable devices. The service will offer films from the major U.S. studios as well as local players such as Germany’s Universum and Constantin Film.

Fellow games giant Electronic Arts also jumped the gun, using a press event Tuesday night to unveil details of upcoming releases, including “FIFA 10,” the latest version of its hit soccer game and “Star Wars: The Old Republic,” the massive multiplayer online game developed by LucasArts and Bioware that is aimed at loosening the death grip of “World of Warcraft” on the lucrative MMO market.

The premature announcements at gamescom are perhaps the best sign that the games industry views the Cologne event as a marketing platform to be measured at eye level with Los Angeles’ E3 and next month’s Tokyo Games Show.

“It is very clear we now have a third major date on our calendars,” Hirai told the crowd Tuesday night.

The heavyweights of the gaming business are certainly out in force for gamescom, with publishing giants including Microsoft, Activision, Eidos and Ubisoft among the more than 420 exhibitors. The global economic crunch has taken its toll on the games business, once thought to be “recession-proof,” but organizers still expect corporate attendance figures to be on par with last year’s Games Convention in Leipzig, the event Cologne’s gamescom aims to usurp.

Gamescom 2009 runs through Sunday in Cologne.

Man caught at airport with 44 lizards in pants

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – A German man who stuffed 44 small lizards into his underwear before trying to board a flight has been sentenced to prison in New Zealand for plundering the country’s protected species.

Hans Kurt Kubus, 58, will spend 14 weeks behind bars and must pay a 5,000 New Zealand dollar ($3,540) fine before being deported to Germany as soon as he is released, District Court Judge Colin Doherty ruled onTuesday.

Kubus was caught by wildlife officials at Christchurch International Airport on South Island in December, about to board an overseas flight with 44 geckos and skinks in a hand-sewn package concealed in his underwear.

He admitted trading in exploited species without a permit and hunting absolutely protected wildlife without authority, pleading guilty to two charges under the Wildlife Act and five under the Trade in Endangered Species Act.

Department of Conservation prosecutor Mike Bodie told the court Kubus could have faced potential maximum penalties of NZ$500,000 ($355,000) and six months in prison.

Bodie said the department sought a deterrent sentence for “the most serious case of its kind detected in New Zealand for a decade or more.”

The geckos may have been worth 2,000 euros ($2,800) each on the European market, he noted.

Customs records showed that Kubus had also been to New Zealand in 2001, 2004, 2008, and 2009. In 2008, he had been with a Swiss reptile dealer.

Doherty said Kubus had come to New Zealand and set about poaching the animals in a premeditated way which would have had an impact on particular colonies.

There was potential for Kubus to end up with far more animals than he could have housed in his own collection and the rest would have been sold.

“I don’t think you necessarily came here to steal to sell, but I am sure the fact that you might have had excess was figured into your thinking,” Doherty told Kubus.

Go Green! save the world.

Why go green?  Simplest answer is to save our homes.  There are so many way that we all can help little by little to make this world a better place for all of us.  Everything we do has an impact to our planet.  The thing we eat, whatever we do, or where ever we go.  It is difficult to take all the actions to our consideration.  But every choices we make is what we get, maybe not right away.  And that maybe one of the reasons why mother nature is calling.  We can start by something simple like recycling, save power energy.  To us, it may save expenses, to the world, we save lives.

michael jackson tragic death.

Michael Jackson, the king of pop, a man who considered to be one of the most successful singing artist in the history.  Michael Jackson had past away at the age of 50.  The whole world was shock by his sudden death.  But those who were close to him, knew it all along that his time was coming.  The sadist thing is his three children that was left behind without a father.  Michael Jackson had always been a good father to his three children.  He did not want his children to relive has past.  Michael did not have a good relationship with his father as he was growing up.  Michael never call his father “dad”.  Which have others confuse with the relationship he had with his father, so he made sure that his children call him “daddy”

Michael Jackson’s death had officially rule as murder.  Dr. murray who had provided a Propofol and other drugs at the hours before his death. Propofol is a sleeping injection which is to be used in the hospital.  Michael himself had been on a prescription drug for a long time.  They discovered injection marks all over his body.  When he wanted to sleep he told his doctor to provide him the medication.  He could not sleep without his medication.  It is a very sad story to realize that a person will never wake up from his rest.