SOCIALLY ACTIVE

Time magazine has picked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg as its annual Person of the Year, the figure it believes had the most influence on events in 2010.

The 26-year-old billionaire was the subject of a 2010 film, The Social Network, charting Facebook’s rise.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange earlier won a Time readers’ poll on 2010’s most influential person. The annual feature has been a fixture since the 1920s, with the winner appearing on the front cover of Time.

The conservative Tea Party political movement was second choice of the magazine’s editors and correspondents, followed by Mr Assange, Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the 33 trapped Chilean miners.

In the readers’ poll, more than 382,000 favoured naming Mr Assange as Person of the Year, ahead of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan and pop star Lady Gaga. Mr Zuckerberg only made tenth place in the poll, garnering less than 20,000 votes.

Time managing editor Richard Stengel said Mr Zuckerberg’s social networking service was “transforming the way we live our lives every day”.

Mr Zuckerberg co-founded Facebook while a student at Harvard University in 2004. It now has more than 500 million users worldwide and employs more than 1,700 people.

In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg said the Time award was “a real honour and recognition of how our little team is building something that hundreds of millions of people want to use to make the world more open and connected. I’m happy to be a part of that.”

THE CORE ISSUES

Congresswoman Dina Titus on Main Street Mantra with Ajay Dayal.

Congresswoman Dina Titus addressed the concerns of the hardworking families across the state and nation on Main Street Mantra Talk Show with Ajay Dayal. The issues ranged from education to economy.

The key issue was jobs and how to get the hard working men and women on the main street get back on their feet in these hard economic times. Congresswoman presented various scenarios that she is and has been working to benefit the families.

To listen to the entire interview please click on the link above.

To listen to the entire show Listen to the entire show!

Thousands of people have been displaced and hundreds feared dead or missing.

But the capital, Manila, which is still recovering from severe flooding last week, was not affected. Parma had been thought to be heading to Taiwan, but forecasters say it is now “interacting” with another typhoon and could return to the Philippines.

Officials said another typhoon, Melor, was expected to enter Philippine waters from the east on Monday afternoon. Tens of thousands of residents were evacuated from their homes ahead of Typhoon Parma, amid warnings of a potential disaster.

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Mara Francesca Yulo
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IMPORTANCE OF BABY STEPS

President Barack Obama has said he intends “to get something done this year” on healthcare reform. In an interview for ABC News ahead of his key speech to Congress, he said he was open to new ideas and would not be “rigid or ideological”.

Mr Obama said the speech would offer “a lot of clarity about what I think is the best way to move forward”. Members of Congress are preparing to fight over the details of the reforms, as they return after the summer recess. The president is expected to speak about the politically divisive option of having a publicly run insurance scheme.

When asked if Americans will find out in his speech whether or not he is willing to sign a healthcare reform bill without a public scheme, he said: “Well, I think the country is going to know exactly what I think will solve our healthcare crisis.” Mr Obama said the speech will be directed at the American people, as well as members of Congress.

At stake for the president: getting Democratic factions on board with his plan and convincing Americans of the need for health care reform. “Wednesday night’s health care speech may be one of the toughest he has faced,” said David Gergen.

Obama, for the most part, has issued broad reform ideas, but he has left most of the specific legislative details to leaders in Congress, who have faced sometimes contentious negotiations.

GOP strategist Ed Rollins said that Obama must be “clear and very honest” with Americans on the specifics.

Donna Brazile, a Democratic strategist, added that Obama must speak to the uninsured on what he’ll support and show Americans how he’ll “help them find insurance and keep insurance.”

Some have even deemed it one of the key legislative speeches of his presidency to date.

SOLVING LIFE'S MYSTERY

A woman who walked into a US police station claiming she was kidnapped 18 years ago is likely to be telling the truth, police in California say. DNA tests were being carried out, local police said, with officers almost certain that the results would back up the woman’s story.

Jaycee Lee Dugard disappeared in 1991, aged 11, from outside her Lake Tahoe home, apparently taken by two people. Two people are now said to have been taken into custody, US reports say. Police in California are due to hold a news conference later on Thursday, at which it is widely expected that they will formally confirm that Ms Dugard is alive and well.

Lt Les Lovell of the sheriff’s department at El Dorado, California, said a woman walked into a local police station and announced that she was Jaycee Lee Dugard.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, said the reappearance of Dugard is “absolutely huge.”

KENNEDY BROTHERS

Kennedy, the youngest and last-surviving brother of a heralded Kennedy generation, was laid to rest on a hillside at Arlington National Cemetery alongside his slain brothers, the late President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy — both assassinated more than four decades ago.

Cardinal Theodore McCarrick read a recent letter from Kennedy to the pope at the private burial ceremony in Arlington, Virginia.

Veteran US Senator Edward Kennedy died at 77, after a long battle with a brain tumor.

He became a Democratic Massachusetts senator in 1962, replacing his brother when he resigned to become president, and was re-elected seven times. Senator Kennedy was a dominant force in US politics for almost 50 years.

Kennedy, nicknamed “Ted,” was the younger brother of slain President John F. Kennedy and New York Sen. Robert Kennedy, who was gunned down while seeking the White House in 1968. However, his own presidential aspirations were hobbled by the controversy around a 1969 auto accident that left a young woman dead, and a 1980 primary challenge to then-President Jimmy Carter that ended in defeat.

Youth is the quality that we normally associate with the Kennedys, yet it was Ted Kennedy’s longevity that made him such an irrepressible force on Capitol Hill.
Near universal is the view that he was Washington’s most influential lawmaker of the past 50 years, which is all the more remarkable given that he was such a polarising politician.

Civil rights. Disability rights. The minimum wage. Immigration. Education. Campaign finance reform. And his signature issue, healthcare. Most, if not all, of the landmark progressive legislative of the past five decades has his imprint all over it.

While it was his passion for social justice that won him the epithet “Lion of the Senate”, it was his detailed grasp of that institution’s obscure rules and procedures which helped explain his prolific success.

urgeons at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina, removed as much of the tumor as possible the following month. Doctors considered the procedure a success, and Kennedy underwent follow-up radiation treatments and chemotherapy.

A few weeks later, he participated in a key vote in the Senate. He also insisted on making a brief but dramatic appearance at the 2008 Democratic convention, a poignant moment that brought the crowd to its feet and tears to many eyes. Kennedy died one year to the day after that appearance.

VIRTUAL LIBRARY DOMINANCE

Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google’s attempt to create what could be the world’s largest virtual library.

Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works.

“Google is trying to monopolise the library system,” the Internet Archive’s founder Brewster Kahle said. “If this deal goes ahead, they’re making a real shot at being ‘the’ library and the only library.”

Back in 2008, the search giant reached an agreement with publishers and authors to settle two lawsuits that charged the company with copyright infringement for the unauthorised scanning of books.

In that settlement, Google agreed to pay $125m (£76m) to create a Book Rights Registry, where authors and publishers could register works and receive compensation. Authors and publishers would get 70% from the sale of these books with Google keeping the remaining 30%.

Google would also be given the right to digitise orphan works. These are works whose rights-holders are unknown, and are believed to make up an estimated 50-70% of books published after 1923. Comments on the deal have to be lodged by 4 September. In early October, a judge in the Southern district of New York will consider whether or not to approve the class-action suit.

In a separate development, the US Department of Justice is conducting an anti-trust investigation into the impact of the agreement.

Dr. MURRAY'S FINANCIAL TROUBLES

Police have searched the Las Vegas home and offices of Michael Jackson’s doctor as part of a manslaughter investigation into the singer’s death. Dr Conrad Murray’s lawyer, Edward Chernoff, said officials were looking for the star’s medical records.

Dr. Conrad Murray was suffering financially with nearly $435,000 in judgments and liens against him over the past two years, according to court documents. Then he decided to leave his practice and work for Michael Jackson, getting paid $150,000 a month.

Before working with the King of Pop, Murray spent most of his time operating clinics in both Nevada and Texas after graduating from Meharry Medical College, a historically black school in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1989. He spent his internship and residency years in California.

At the clinics in Houston, Texas, and Las Vegas, Nevada, his patients had been surprised to learn that he would be leaving his private practice to work with Jackson.

The search is the second in a week following a similar operation at the doctor’s Houston clinic on 22 July. Dr Murray, who was with Jackson and tried to revive him before he died, has not been named as a suspect.

In a statement, Dr Murray’s lawyer Edward Chernoff said the warrant “authorised investigators to look for medical records relating to Michael Jackson and all of his reported aliases”. He added Dr Murray was present during the search of his home and assisted the officers, who seized mobile phones and a computer hard drive.

Do you think financial troubles of Dr. Murray forced him into some unethical medical acts?

LAS VEGAS NIGHTLIFE

Planet Hollywood Resort today paid a $500,000 fine after the Nevada Gaming Commission commended the resort for steps it has taken since the hotel-casino accepted responsibility for not adequately controlling illegal activity that was taking place at the resort’s Privé nightclub, which is owned by a third party.

Hours after the hearing, the Clark County Department of Business License denied the liquor license applications for the nightclub. They are being forced to end all business operations by next week.

The gaming commission unanimously approved the fine that was recommended by the Gaming Control Board for a nine-count complaint “for failing to maintain sufficient control over a nightclub.”

Nevada Deputy Attorney General John Michela, whose office brought the complaint, told the commission resort’s failure to maintain oversight of the nightclub “led to numerous incidents which reflect or tend to reflect poorly on the reputation of gaming” in Nevada and that could act as a detriment to the development of the gaming industry.

Planet Hollywood Resort agreed to pay the $500,000 fine. The agreement with Planet Hollywood could result in an additional $250,000 fine if another similar complaint is filed against the hotel-casino before July 31, 2011.

“Mr. Chung has been an agent of the People’s Republic of China for over 30 years,” U.S. District Judge Cormac J. Carney said while issuing his ruling. Federal prosecutors accused the 73-year-old stress analyst of using his 30-year career at Boeing and Rockwell International to steal the documents. They said investigators found papers stacked throughout Chung’s house that included sensitive information about a fueling system for a booster rocket — documents that Boeing employees were ordered to lock away at the close of work each day. They said Boeing invested $50 million in the technology over a five-year period.

The judge convicted Chung of six counts of economic espionage, one count of acting as a foreign agent, one count of conspiracy, and one count of lying to federal agent. He was acquitted of obstruction of justice.

The Economic Espionage Act helps the government crack down on the theft of information from private companies that contract with the government to develop U.S. space and military technologies.