Oz man auctions entire life on eBay

LONDON, Mar 17: An Australian man has put his entire life up for sale on the auction website eBay, hoping to make a fresh start after a failed marriage.

Ian Usher, 44, decided to put everything he owns-his three-bedroom house, car, and job-up for sale to fund his escape from painful memories.

Bids for the "life package" will start at just one Australian dollar, but he is hoping to pocket 230,000 pounds from the sale on the website, the Daily Telegraph reported.

Mr Usher split from his wife Laura, who he calls "the best girl in the world", last year after five years of marriage.

The split from the woman left him desperate for a new life elsewhere, without the prolonged pain of having to sell off their belongings bit by bit.

He said, "My life here is absolutely fantastic, but I just want to make a clean break and start again literally, so I am selling everything lock, stock and barrel, from the contents of my wardrobe to my kettle, and from my cutlery to my car."

"My tale is a bit of a sad one, but I am not trying to sell anyone a sob story. This is just my way of dealing with what has happened to me," he added.

The successful bidder will also be given access to Mr Usher’s friends and job apart from material goods.

His employer Jenny Jones, who runs a rug store in Perth, agreed to take whoever buys the "life" on a two-week trial, with a view to a permanent job.

The bidding for Mr Usher’s "life" will open on June 22 and last for seven days. He also prepared a comprehensive web site-www.Alife4sale.Com-- <http://www.Alife4sale.Com-->-complete with diaries and videos detailing exactly what is up for grabs, how to buy it, what his life is like and why he is selling it.

(UNI)

Halle Berry has baby girl; Mother and infant doing great

NEW YORK, Mar 17:Hale Berry does not just play a mom in movies anymore.

The 41-year-old actress had a baby girl yesterday, and "is going great," her publicist Meredith O'Sullivan told People.Com the Website of People magazine. It is her first child.

The father is 32-year-old model Gabriel Aubry. The two met while shooting a Versace ad in Los Angeles two years ago.

Berry told Oprah Winfrey on her show last year that playing a mother in her latest movie, "Things We Lost in the Fire," helped convince her that motherhood was for her.

"I think it validated that I was meant to be a mother because every day I dealt with the character as a mother and thinking as a mother," Berry said. "It let me know that I must be a mother."

Berry won the best-actress Oscar for 2001's "Monster's Ball." She also won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for 1999's "Introducing Dorothy Dandridge."

Berry had said she and Aubry don't plan to marry, but feel fully committed to each other. (AGENCIES)

Male fertility depends on 'hormone levels in early pregnancy

LONDON, Mar 17: Moms-to-be, please note -- your baby boy's future reproductive health is set in your womb. It depends on male hormone levels early in your pregnancy, a new study has revealed.

Researchers at University of Edinburgh have found that male fertility problems such as common genital disorders, low sperm count and testicular cancer are linked to low hormone levels or androgens at eight to 12 weeks of gestation period.

In their study on rodents, the researchers also found that the level of androgen hormone at this time of pregnancy was related to the distance between the base of the penis and the anus.

This measurement could be an early warning system of future reproductive problems in baby boys, the researchers reported in the latest edition of the 'Journal of Clinical Investigation'.

According to the study's lead author, Dr Michelle Welsh, "We know from other studies that androgens work during foetal development to programme the reproductive tract. But our assumption was that it would be much later in pregnancy.

"The anogenital measurement would be a useful tool. Say a clinician were to examine a 30-year-old man with testicular cancer -- previously there would have been no way of knowing what hormones he was exposed to in the womb.

"We would suggest that this measurement, even at this later stage in life, could offer an indication of hormone exposure. For example, the shorter the distance, the less confident we can be that hormones have acted correctly and at the right time." (PTI)

Lutfi to stay away from Britney Spears for longer

LOS ANGELES, Mar 17: Sam Lutfi, the former self-styled manager of Britney Spears, has agreed to stay away from the troubled pop star for 30 more days while lawyers argue over a temporary restraining order against him, a spokesman for Lutfi said.

The agreement comes one day before attorneys for Lutfi and Jamie Spears, the father who controls the 26-year-old singer's personal and business affairs, will appear in a Los Angeles courtroom where they had been expected to detail issues dealing with the temporary order issued in February.

The extension means the temporary order stays in place for now, Lutfi's spokesman Michael Sands told Reuters yesterday in an e-mail.

The court hearing remains scheduled for this afternoon, when details about the relationship between Spears and Lutfi are expected to emerge.

Britney Spears has seen her life spiral downward since her split from ex-husband Kevin Federline in late 2006. Since then, she has been in rehabilitation, lost custody of her sons to Federline and was hospitalised twice in January for mental observation.

Last month, a Los Angeles family court gave temporary control of her affairs to her father and a co-conservator, attorney Andrew Wallet. That order is in place to July 31.

At the same time, the temporary restraining order was issued against Lutfi, who had been her constant companion throughout much of 2007.

(AGENCIES)

Australia pressures China on Tibet; global protests

CANBERRA, Mar 17: Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said China's crackdown in Tibet was disturbing while scuffles broke out at protests in Paris and New York as international pressure mounted on China to show restraint.

Western governments have expressed concern about the unrest in Lhasa which yesterday spread to neighbouring Tibetan enclaves in China.

Beijing has given ''troublemakers'' from Friday's deadly riots in Lhasa until midnight tpday to turn themselves in.

''These most recent developments in Tibet are disturbing. I would call on the Chinese authorities to exercise restraint,'' Rudd told reporters today.

China is Australia's top trading partner.

Rudd, a former diplomat who speaks fluent Mandarin, said Australia had long recognised China's sovereignty over Tibet. He said human rights issues were regularly raised in top level discussions with Chinese leaders.

The Australian Greens criticised Rudd's comments, comparing his call for restraint with calls for targeted sanctions against Myanmar when its soldiers shot and jailed Buddhist democracy demonstrators last year.

''Our prime minister and this government has got to get some backbone over Tibet and speak up and look the Chinese communist dictatorship in the eye when Kevin Rudd gets to China,'' Australia Greens Senator Bob Brown told reporters.

Australia's plea for restraint echoed similar calls from the United States, Europe and Japan.

France said it was monitoring the situation in Tibet ''with close attention with our European partners''.

''With the approach of the Olympic Games, which ought to be a great show of fraternity, France would like to draw the attention of the Chinese authorities to the importance of respecting human rights,'' a Foreign Ministry statement said.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier phoned his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi, his office said in a statement yesrerday, and expressed the German government's very serious worries.

''Everything must be done to prevent a further escalation of the situation and to enable a peaceful end to the conflict,'' the statement said.

''Minister Steinmeier calls on his Chinese counterparts to offer as much transparency as possible over the events in Tibet and asks them to do everything possible to ensure the safety of German citizens and tourists.''

PROTESTS

There have been daily pro-Tibet protests around the world since last Monday, the 49th anniversary of an uprising against Chinese rule.

Yesterday, French riot police used tear gas to disperse around 500 pro-Tibetan supporters from around the Chinese embassy on Paris's chic avenue George V.

Protesters held up banners with slogans such as ''I Am With The Dalai Lama'' and ''China's Lying, Tibetans Are Dying''.

At one point, a demonstrator climbed onto the first floor balcony of the embassy to take down the Chinese flag and replace it with the Tibetan one.

In New York, police said protesters threw rocks at officers gathered outside the Chinese consulate in Manhattan.

There were also ugly demonstrations in Australia at the weekend.

A leading Vietnamese dissident Buddhist monk condemned the violence in Tibet and said ''brute force cannot engender peace'' in the Himalayan region ruled by China.

Thich Quang Do, whose Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam is outlawed by the Communist Party government, has been imprisoned or lived under restrictions at his monastery in Ho Chi Minh City over decades of opposition to authorities.

''The peaceful protests of Buddhists all over Asia -- in Tibet, Burma and Vietnam -- are being quelled with brutality and bloodshed,'' Do said in a statement distributed by e-mail through the Paris-based International Buddhist Information Bureau.

''The Chinese government says repression will bring 'order and stability'. But we Buddhists know that violence cannot dispel violence, that brute force cannot engender peace.'' (AGENCIES)

SC to hear Govt appeal against Hasina verdict

DHAKA, Mar 17: Former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's appeal against High Court verdict will be heard today.

Additional Attorney General Salahuddin Ahmed said the High Court handed down the cancellation of case as Hasina in her writ petition had only contended that the inclusion of the case for trial under the emergency powers rules was "illegal".

He said granting bail under the law when the emergency powers. Rules were in force was completely "against the rule" and outside the jurisdiction of the High Court. "The inclusion of the case under the emergency power rules was proper and in line with the Constitution,'' Ahmed contended as quoting in The Independent.

The Appellate Division on February 26 had stayed the high court's dismissal of the case after accepting the government's leave to appeal petition against the verdict. Security inside the court and around was tightened and security personnel were frisking everybody at the entrances to the apex court.

Hasina was arrested on July 16, 2007 in the case later the same day after inclusion of the case proceedings under the emergency powers. Charges were framed against the accused, including Hasina's sister Sheikh Rehana on January 13 (UNI)

China sends troops to tackle Tibetan unrest

BEIJING, Mar 17: Chinese troops moved to tackle more unrest in ethnic Tibetan enclaves today, as a deadline loomed for ''troublemakers'' who took part in protests against Chinese rule in Lhasa that some say killed up to 80 people.

Lhasa, capital of the remote, mountainous region, was under tight police watch, but reports and officials said demonstrations by ethnic Tibetans flared in at least two Chinese provinces at the weekend, piling pressure on the Communist authorities.

''We are completely capable of protecting the security of the Tibet people. Right now the overall situation in Tibet is very good,'' the mayor of Lhasa, Doje Cezhug, said from Beijing, in remarks posted on the Tibet government's Web site.

But protests hit ethnic Tibetan areas in the Chinese provinces of Sichuan and Gansu yesterday, reducing the chances of an early end to the instability that is a major challenge to China's leaders just months before it hosts the Olympic Games.

In the Sichuan region of Aba, two ethnic Tibetans said hundreds of People's Liberation Army vehicles moved in overnight, after unrest in which police said a crowd of Tibetans hurled petrol bombs and set a police station and a market on fire.

''They've been driving through all night. It's just tailing off now,'' the man said, adding that word had spread of protests in other parts of the region as well.

In Gansu's Machu town, a crowd of 300-400 carried pictures of Tibet's exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, and shouted slogans as they marched on government buildings, breaking windows and doors and setting fire to Chinese shops and businesses, the Free Tibet Campaign said.

The London-based group said 100 Tibetan students staged a sit-in at Northwest Minority University in Gansu's capital, Lanzhou, a worry for a country with a history of student unrest, notably the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 that ended in a bloody military crackdown.

MIDNIGHT ULTIMATUM

In Lhasa, the situation was quiet but tense, with a heavy police presence ahead of today midnight deadline that Tibet's government set for protesters to give themselves up to the police.

Otherwise, they would be ''sternly punished'', the region's judicial authorities warned.

The government advised foreign tourists to leave and confirmed it had stopped granting foreigners tourist permits.

''If the Tibetans in Lhasa take to the streets again in large numbers and really challenge the Chinese authorities, I think we'll see a very harsh crackdown,'' said Kenneth Lieberthal, a political scientist at University of Michigan.

The Tibetan Centre for Human Rights and Democracy, a non-governmental group in the Dalai Lama's base of Dharamsala, said security forces has already begun house-by-house raids.

Western governments have called for restraint in China's response to the violent protests, and Chinese official media tried to defend the security measures used in quelling them.

''Throughout the incident, Lhasa police officers exercised great restraint. They remained patient, professional and were instructed not to use force,'' Xinhua news agency said.

China's rulers brook no challenge to their rule, and the unrest comes at a time of growing threats to social stability fuelled by inflation and a yawning gap between rich and poor.

The Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, the year of a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, called for an investigation into what he called cultural genocide. Communist troops entered Tibet in 1950, after taking power in Beijing.

A Nobel peace prize winner, the Dalai Lama is revered in the Tibetan community but reviled as a traitor in China, where authorities stepped up the rhetoric against him.

Xinhua quoted Tibetan officials as saying the Dalai Lama's charge was ''downright nonsense'' and trumpeted its development policies in the region.

Critics say those policies helped fuel the protesters' anger by favouring Han Chinese migration to the region, contributing to a huge wealth gap between Chinese and Tibetans. (AGENCIES)

Australia WW2 warship found, ends 66-year mystery

CANBERRA, Mar 17: Australia's greatest military mystery was solved today with the discovery of a World War Two warship which went down with all 645 crew in a fierce battle with a German vessel more than 66 years ago.

A day after searchers located the wreck of the German merchant raider HSK Kormoran off the West Australian coast, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said they had also found the Australian warship HMAS Sydney, sunk by the German ship.

Rudd, flanked by top military commanders, said it was ''a historic day for all Australians, and a sad day for all Australians''.

''It's very important to understand that this is a tomb and there are 645 Australian sailors entombed there,'' he said.

The sinking of the HMAS Sydney II is Australia's greatest naval tragedy, with all hands lost after a 30-minute battle with the German ship on November 19, 1941. The Sydney vanished after sailing ablaze over the horizon at the end of the encounter.

The sinking devastated Australians, plunging the nation into a deep wartime gloom, and the mystery of its disappearance had remained a national obsession. Several false discoveries of the ship's wreck have occurred before.

The only witnesses to the battle were the 317 survivors on the Kormoran, which was disguised as a Dutch freighter, the Straat Malakka, when it encountered the Australian ship.

The Sydney was found by a government-funded Finding Sydney Foundation ocean research ship at a depth of 2,470 metres (8100 feet), about 240 km (150 miles) west of Shark Bay, off the coast of Western Australia state, Rudd said.

While a photographic survey would not be carried out until next week, high-resolution sonar images showed the wreck was near intact and a protection order had been placed over the ship.

The Sydney's wreck was found 22 km (14 miles) from the wreck of the Kormoran, he said.

Germany's government had also been informed of Kormoran's discovery and the final resting place of 80 German crew.

The navy's official version of the battle (www.Navy.Gov.Au), based on incomplete accounts from Kormoran survivors, says the German ship lured the more heavily-armed Sydney in close and then opened fire with torpedoes and six-inch guns.

It says the Sydney was ''crippled and on fire from bridge to the after funnel'' as it steamed slowly southwards until it disappeared from view and ''all that was seen was a distant glare and occasional flickering''.

Before the wreck's discovery, the only trace of the Sydney came from last year's discovery of the remains of an unknown sailor buried on remote Christmas Island after his body washed up in a navy life raft in February 1942.

Australia's navy chief Vice-Admiral Russ Shalders said there was no doubt the wreck belonged to Sydney as sonar images perfectly matched the 6,800 tonne cruiser, which had previously distinguished itself in the Mediterranean.

''For 66 years, this nation has wondered where the Sydney was and what occurred to her. We've uncovered the first part of that mystery. The next part of the mystery, of course, is what happened,'' Shalders said.

(AGENCIES)

Women more focussed behind the wheel than men

SYDNEY, Mar 17: In a befitting reply to all those men who think women cannot drive well, a survey has revealed that the fairer sex are more focussed while behind the wheel than their male counterparts.

The survey from the motoring group NRMA revealed that when males are behind the wheel, they are often more interested in adjusting the car stereo, listening to music or even reading a map than keeping their eyes on the road.

Distracted men were more likely to have a crash or a near miss in a car than women, it showed.

The NRMA surveyed more than 1350 motorists about their driving habits and found that 30 per cent of men narrowly avoided a crash when they were not concentrating on driving, compared with 20 per cent of women, while 75 per cent of all drivers admitted to taking their eyes off the road at times to look at anything from a billboard on the side of the road to a street directory, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The main distraction was tuning the car stereo (76 per cent), followed by 70 per cent who turned their attention to music and 66 per cent who admitted to concentrating on drinking a cold beverage rather than watching the road.

Some drivers admitted to shaving, reading a newspaper, kissing and chasing insects. Eleven per cent of females admitted they had fixed their make-up while behind the wheel. Drivers admitted sifting through CDs and talking on a mobile phone without a hands-free kit, the survey found.

An NRMA director, Coral Taylor, said, ''The survey showed men were not always as focussed on driving as women.''

''While virtually all people surveyed acknowledged that texting while driving was the most dangerous behaviour, one in five drivers admitted to doing it,'' she said.

(UNI)

Four FBI agents were wounded in Pakistan bombing

WASHINGTON, Mar 17: FBI agents were among those wounded in a bomb attack on an Italian restaurant in Islamabad during the weekend, the FBI said.

''Four FBI personnel were slightly injured in the bombing attack in Pakistan. The FBI is providing the necessary assistance to our employees and their families,'' FBI spokesman Richard Kolko said yesterday.

Kolko provided no further details. The US State Department had no addition comment.

A bomb planted in the garden dining area of the Luna Caprese restaurant on Saturday killed a Turkish woman and wounded 11 people, including five Americans.

The restaurant is a popular spot with foreigners in Islamabad.

ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that an investigation was under way to determine whether the attack was based on whether terrorists had learned in advance the agents would be at the restaurant.

(AGENCIES)

UAE, Oman boycott Danish products

DUBAI, Mar 17: Supermarkets in the UAE and Oman have stopped selling Danish products to protest against the new publication in Denmark of a controversial newspaper cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed.

In the UAE, the Union Co-operative Society in Dubai has withdrawn all Danish products from its shelves as a mark of protest against the resurfacing of the blasphemous cartoon controversy, Representatives of the various branches of the Society in the emirate said today.

The recent republication of the 2005 offensive cartoons by several Danish newspapers has sparked a series of protests and anger among Muslims around the world.

"We have been directed to remove the Danish goods, mostly consisting of dairy products from the shelves. Right now, there are no Danish products on the shelves in all the Union Co-operative Society branches in Dubai," an official at the Safa Park branch, said.

In Oman, Al Jadeeda Stores and all its branches will boycott all products from Denmark and the Netherlands, effective from today.

Mukhtar bin Abulridha bin Mukhtar Al Lawati, Director-General of public relations, said all suppliers dealing with Al Jadeeda Stores were notified with the decision last week.

E-mails and SMSs in Arabic urging a boycott of Danish products are doing the rounds in the UAE.

"Through SMS and emails, we are calling for a boycott of Danish products," an Arab resident in Dubai said. (PTI)

Three Bollywood films among high grossers at the box-office

LONDON, Mar 17: Three Bollywood films grossed three million pounds in box-office collections last year, according to industry figures.

Indian films Om Shanti Om, Namastey London and Partner are among the foreign productions that are increasingly collecting large sums in Britain, according to the Film Distributors Association.

For several years now, Bollywood films have figured in the Top Ten blockbusters in Britain as Indian producers increasingly use British Asian diaspora themes, locations and production facilities.

The UK is seen as the world’s number one market for Bollywood productions outside India. DVD distributors also cite a growing interest in foreign language films from UK audiences.

The Film Distributors’ Association said the growing popularity of foreign films reflects an "ongoing process of sophistication" and is helping to bolster already rising UK cinema revenues.

In 2007, there were 525 new film releases in the UK from at least 49 countries, according to the association.

There have also been UK audience gains for less-established exporters, including Romanian cinema with the recently released backstreet abortions drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days. (PTI)

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