4aae

AP - Parents’ hopes of quick reunions with more than 400 children removed from a polygamist sect’s ranch were dashed Friday after their attorneys and a judge clashed over proposed restrictions.

AP - Hillary Rodham Clinton said Friday she expects uncommitted superdelegates to begin making the choice that will decide her marathon Democratic primary race against Barack Obama soon after the Tuesday’s primaries.

AP - A construction crane snapped and smashed into an apartment building with a thunderous roar Friday, killing two workers in the city’s second such tragedy in 2 1/2 months and renewing fears about the safety of hundreds of cranes towering over the New York skyline.

AP - Myanmar’s obstruction of international efforts to help cyclone victims cost “tens of thousands of lives,” Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Saturday in his strongest condemnation to date of the military government there.

AP - The Boston Celtics got past an old nemesis to set up an NBA finals matchup with another rival the Los Angeles Lakers.

AP - As it turned out, Sameer Mishra provided more than just comic relief at the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. He ended up winning the title.

AP - Tornado warning sirens chased lawmakers to the statehouse basement, a semitrailer was blown from a roadway and homes and an airport building were damaged as severe storms battered parts of Illinois and Indiana on Friday.

AP - Scientists for the Phoenix Mars Lander are wrestling with an intermittent short circuit on the spacecraft.

AP - A Los Angeles hospital provided liver transplants to four Japanese gang figures, including one of Japan’s most powerful gang bosses, over a period when several hundred area patients died while awaiting transplants, according to a published report.

AP - Now, the waiting begins. A Texas Supreme Court ruling paves the way for members of a polygamist sect to get their children out of foster care, but it remains unclear when that might happen or what kind of restrictions might be imposed.

AP - When Tina Meier’s 13-year-old daughter committed suicide after being bullied on the Internet, her grief was so encompassing she felt at times she couldn’t breathe. She had trouble being around loved ones who reminded her of her child. Even today, recollections of those first holidays after Megan’s death are foggy at best.

AP - Religious and social conservatives vowed Thursday to fight Gov. David Paterson’s directive requiring state agencies to recognize gay marriages performed legally elsewhere, saying it flouts traditional values and is a big step toward legalizing same-sex unions in New York.

AP - The 35-story indoor ski mountain would soar over bucolic pine barrens and farms at the twin forks of Long Island.

AP - The University of Wisconsin-Madison is set to become the biggest university with an openly gay leader, according to gay rights advocates who hail the appointment as a milestone for the movement.

AP - No one has mastered the look of spelling bee despair better than 10-year-old Veronica Penny.

AP - A storm bearing hail and possible tornadoes struck central Nebraska Thursday night, damaging businesses, derailing train cars, tearing down trees and disrupting power to thousands.

AP - A proposed state constitutional amendment defining a fertilized human egg as a person was certified Thursday for the November ballot, moving Colorado a step closer to an election battle over abortion rights.

AP - Opposition is forming against Gov. David Paterson’s directive to state agencies to recognize gay marriages legally performed in other states and countries.

AP - Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan defended his bombshell book about the Bush administration on Thursday, saying he didn’t speak up against the overselling of war in Iraq at the time because he, like other Americans, gave the president the benefit of the doubt.

AP - The economy plodded ahead at a 0.9 percent pace in the first quarter slightly better than first estimated but still underscoring caution on the part of consumers and businesses walloped by housing, credit and financial problems.

AP - The long, drawn-out Democratic presidential primary season finally draws to a close next Tuesday. Hillary Clinton takes her campaign today to one of the last two states voting, South Dakota. Rival Barack Obama is taking a breather back home in Chicago. And Republican John McCain will be talking to voters in Wisconsin.

AP - A helicopter crashed at a hospital on Thursday, sending thick, black smoke over downtown and forcing the evacuation of patients from the building.

AP - The United States has filed a complaint with the World Trade Organization over European tariffs on three categories of high-tech goods, including flat-panel computer monitors and some computer printers.

AP - Microsoft Corp. said its next operating system will be made for touch-screen applications, an alternative to the computer mouse, and its top executives reaffirmed interest in joining forces with Yahoo Inc.

AP - The set-top box, a necessary appendage for millions of cable television customers for decades, is moving toward extinction.

AP - Three prizes worth $1 million apiece were awarded Wednesday to seven scientists for their discoveries in neuroscience, astrophysics and the study of vanishingly small structures.

AP - Japanese youngsters are getting so addicted to Internet-linking cell phones that the government is starting a program warning parents and schools to limit their use among children.

Reuters - South Africa’s Wireless Business
Solutions (WBS) said on Wednesday it had commercially launched
its WiMax broadband network system in partnership with Vodacom
and Intel Corporation.

NewsFactor - If you like the way you can handle your iPhone by deft finger maneuvers, you’re going to love the future of Windows. The next version of Windows — currently named Windows 7 — will drive all kinds of devices with a similar technology.

Reuters - Russia’s largest
cellphone operator, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) , plans to
spend up to $1.6 billion on a third-generation (3G) network in
Russia through to 2012, it said on Wednesday.

InfoWorld - Ruby on Rails 2.1, a planned upgrade to the popular open-source Web framework, could be released as soon as this weekend, the creator of the framework, David Heinemeier Hansson, said on Tuesday.

Reuters - Microsoft Corp’s attempts to
strike a deal with Yahoo Inc is an “accelerator” of
its online strategy, but not the sole answer to advancing its
Internet vision, the company’s top software executive said on
Wednesday.

AP - YANGON, Myanmar Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi began a sixth year under detention Wednesday as foreign donors said aid would continue to flow into the military-ruled nation to save cyclone victims.

AP - JIANGYOU, China Nearly 160,000 people were evacuated downstream from an unstable earthquake-created lake in central China, while the government warned Wednesday that rebuilding after the disaster would be “arduous.”

AP - A Democratic Party rules committee has the authority to seat some delegates from Michigan and Florida but not fully restore the two states as Hillary Rodham Clinton wants, according to party lawyers.

AP - President Bush, linking the wars of his tenure to the deadliest one in history, is asking the country to commit anew to postwar rebuilding.

AP - When the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division arrived in Iraq’s once infamous “Triangle of Death,” violence there and in neighboring Baghdad was so intense that hundreds were dying every day and the country was virtually in a state of civil war.

AP - Barack Obama has done poorly in the Democratic primaries with women, Catholics and others who will be pivotal in this fall’s presidential election. Yet early polling shows that with several of these groups, he’s competitive when matched against Republican John McCain.

AP - Microsoft Corp. said its next operating system will be made for touch-screen applications, an alternative to the computer mouse, and its top executives reaffirmed interest in joining forces with Yahoo Inc.

AP - Sharon Stone’s “karma” comment is having an instant effect on her movie-star status in China.

AP - A French skydiver’s latest attempt to set a new free-fall record ended when his ride to the sky left without him.

AP - Several leading child welfare groups Tuesday urged an overhaul of federal laws dealing with transracial adoption, arguing that black children in foster care are ill-served by a “colorblind” approach meant to encourage their adoption by white families.

AP - Fred Everts held back tears as he surveyed a pile of splintered wood and metal scraps that the day before had been his and his wife’s home.

AP - A string of shootings in a New York City neighborhood sent eight people, including half a dozen teenagers, to nearby hospitals with gunshot wounds, police said Tuesday.

AP - Same-sex couples in some California counties will be able to marry as soon as June 14, the president of the California’s county clerks association said.

AP - Lebanon’s new president got a red carpet welcome Monday, but was quickly thrust into the political thicket as Hezbollah’s leader warned against any efforts to disarm his Iranian-backed guerrilla group.

AP - Iran may be withholding information needed to establish whether it tried to make nuclear arms, the International Atomic Energy said Monday in an unusually strongly worded report.

AP - Rows of body bags were laid out along streets for all to see. Sobbing parents furious about shoddily built schools that collapsed and killed thousands of children were able to speak freely. Military helicopters carried reporters to tour the disaster zone.

AP - At dawn in a ramshackle elementary school in rural Cambodia, the children think of only one thing: their stomachs. They anxiously await the steaming buckets of free rice delivered to their desks.

AP - Myint Hlaing’s family bathes and cooks with water from an irrigation ditch fouled by human waste and a rotting cow carcass.

AP - European Union defense ministers agreed Monday to keep the bloc’s 2,500 peacekeepers in Bosnia, citing concern that tensions in Kosovo could spill over into other parts of the Balkans.

AP - Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told lawmakers Monday that Israel would not agree to open a key Gaza border crossing, explicitly rejecting a chief condition that the Hamas militant group has set for a cease-fire with Israel.

AP - The former general who revealed the existence of a Peruvian military death squad testified Monday that he is convinced ex-President Alberto Fujimori was behind two massacres, but acknowledged he has no direct evidence.

Reuters - Nigeria signed a $3.1 billion deal with
the local arm of Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) on Monday to plug a
funding gap in their joint venture projects, the country’s
state oil firm NNPC said.

AP - Chinese officials said Monday that the country’s one-child policy exempts families with a child killed, severely injured or disabled in the country’s devastating earthquake.

AFP - Australia’s arts community reacted with anger and amazement Monday to the closure of a photo exhibition of naked children and Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s condemnation of the images as “revolting”.

AP - Online social networking today is more about hanging out with friends behind gated communities than exploring the World Wide Web: Visit another site and you’ll have to rebuild your profile from scratch.

AP - Google Inc.’s online communities have little traction in the United States, but the search leader continues to seek a spot in the social-networking hierarchy. First, it must contend with Facebook, the No. 2 online hangout behind MySpace.

AP - Microsoft Corp. is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable, a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google Inc.

AP - China’s biggest mobile phone company will take over a smaller fixed-line carrier, a state news agency said Friday, in what was expected to be the start of a sweeping industry restructuring.

AP - The lack of high-speed Internet access in some areas of the U.S. has been hotly debated, even as that digital divide has narrowed. But a new, wider gap is being created by technology that will make today’s broadband feel as slow as a dial-up connection.

Reuters - A court in Moscow suspended the main
opposition website in the troubled south Russian region of
Ingushetia on Monday while prosecutors investigate regional
government’s accusations it spreads extremist material.

PC World - RIM says its technology does not allow giving access to Indian government to e-mails and other information on the BlackBerry…

AFP - India’s Reliance Communications said Monday it was in tie-up talks with MTN after rival mobile operator Bharti Airtel hung up on discussions with the South African phone giant in a dispute over control.

PC World - Users are grumbling about bugs in the upcoming version of the open source browser, but it’s a must-have update nonetheless.

Reuters - The chief financial officer of
business software maker SAP does not believe an out
of court settlement with Oracle is likely at present,
he told German Sunday weekly Euro am Sonntag.

PC World - IBM has set up a center for language translation services in India.

Reuters - Games like “Rock Band” and “Guitar
Hero III” have proved their ability to breathe new life into
classic rock sales. But can they do the same for new music?

AP - One of the most powerful aftershocks to hit quake-ravaged central China killed one person, left dozens more injured and leveled homes Sunday, as soldiers carrying explosives hiked to a blocked-off river to alleviate the threat of floods.

AP - Michel Suleiman was sworn in as Lebanon’s president Sunday after parliament elected him in long-delayed vote following an 18-month political stalemate that brought the country to the brink of another civil war.

AP - U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he is hopeful “a turning point” has been reached in Myanmar’s cyclone crisis as an international conference Sunday pledged tens of millions of dollars for some 2.4 million survivors in need of aid.

AP - President Robert Mugabe threatened Sunday to expel the U.S. ambassador for providing advice to the opposition opponent in the upcoming presidential runoff.

AP - The U.S. military distanced itself Sunday from remarks declaring al-Qaida in Iraq close to defeat, saying the terror network is “off-balance and on the run,” but remains a very lethal threat.

Reuters - An American Kalitta Air cargo plane
slid off the runway at Brussels’s Zaventem airport on Sunday
and broke in two but there were no casualties, the fire brigade
spokesman said.

AP - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in comments published Sunday that nothing has been achieved in six months of peace talks with Israel and he fears a corruption probe of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will bog things down.

AP - Colombia’s Defense Ministry said Saturday it believes the legendary leader of Latin America’s largest guerrilla army is dead and President Alvaro Uribe announced he is willing to offer rebels who free hostages “conditional liberty” and passage abroad.

AFP - Belgian officials have arrested Jean-Pierre Bemba, former vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on a warrant by the International Criminal Court for war crimes in the Central African Republic.

Reuters - Myanmar was promised nearly $50 million
in cyclone aid on Sunday, but some Western donor countries said
their cash was contingent on the junta keeping its word on
letting in foreign aid workers and assessment teams.

AP - Online social networking today is more about hanging out with friends behind gated communities than exploring the World Wide Web: Visit another site and you’ll have to rebuild your profile from scratch.

AP - Google Inc.’s online communities have little traction in the United States, but the search leader continues to seek a spot in the social-networking hierarchy. First, it must contend with Facebook, the No. 2 online hangout behind MySpace.

AP - Microsoft Corp. is abandoning its effort to scan whole libraries and make their contents searchable, a sign it may be getting choosier about the fights it will pick with Google Inc.

AP - Comcast Corp. is trying to sell 46 smaller cable systems serving 400,000 to 500,000 subscribers as it seeks to improve efficiency by shedding disparate operations.

AP - Yahoo Inc. on Thursday postponed a looming showdown for control of its board, giving itself more time to prepare a defense or negotiate a sale to Microsoft Corp. that would cause activist investor Carl Icahn to call off the mutiny.

Reuters - German police are investigating a couple
after they offered their eight-month-old son for sale on
internet auction site eBay.

Reuters - Verizon Wireless said on Friday it
is trying to forge a deal with consumer groups and regulators
that would reduce the fees customers are charged when they
cancel their cell phone service early.

AP - An Indian telecommunications company has called off merger talks with South Africa’s largest mobile phone network operator, MTN Group Ltd., a company statement said.

PC World - Users are grumbling about bugs in the upcoming version of the open source browser, but it’s a must-have update nonetheless.