HOUSTON – A spokeswoman for actor Mickey Rourke says he won't be taking his role as a professional wrestler into a real-life ring after all.
Paula Woods told The Associated Press on Wednesday night that Rourke will not wrestle WWE superstar Chris Jericho at Wrestlemania 25 in April at Houston's Reliant Stadium.
Woods wrote in an e-mail that the Oscar-nominated actor "will not be participating in Wrestlemania. He is focusing entirely on his acting career."
Rourke portrays professional wrestler Randy the Ram in the acclaimed movie "The Wrestler." He made a surprise announcement about the wrestling event Sunday night on the red carpet before the Screen Actors Guild Awards in Los Angeles.
Rourke had said he was going to toss Jericho "around the ring like tossed salad."
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and external engineers are dedicating their time building the next-gen toilet for space exploration. Clean and easy to use, this wearable personal toilet is similar to a diaper and worn at all times.
How does it work? A sensor activated automatic rear mounted suction (pump?!?!?) unit sucks the XXX out of your XXX... Once your business done, an automatic washer and dryer leaves your skin smooth and clean.
Web-based email is great because you can check it from any computer, but there's one little catch: it's inherently limited by your internet connection. From public WiFi to smartphones equipped with 3G, from mobile broadband cards to fledgling in-flight wireless on airplanes, Internet access is becoming more and more ubiquitous -- but there are still times when you can't access your webmail because of an unreliable or unavailable connection.
Today we're starting to roll out an experimental feature in Gmail Labs that should help fill in those gaps: offline Gmail. So even if you're offline, you can open your web browser, go to gmail.com, and get to your mail just like you're used to.
Once you turn on this feature, Gmail uses Gears to download a local cache of your mail. As long as you're connected to the network, that cache is synchronized with Gmail's servers. When you lose your connection, Gmail automatically switches to offline mode, and uses the data stored on your computer's hard drive instead of the information sent across the network. You can read messages, star and label them, and do all of the things you're used to doing while reading your webmail online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. And if you're on an unreliable or slow connection (like when you're "borrowing" your neighbor's wireless), you can choose to use "flaky connection mode," which is somewhere in between: it uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you're using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.
Offline Gmail is still an early experimental feature, so don't be surprised if you run into some kinks that haven't been completely ironed out yet. We've been using offline Gmail internally at Google for quite a while (I've read thousands of messages and answered hundreds en route to visit my son and my daughter). And it's saved me more than once when my home network connection ran into issues (we have squirrels at home that love to chew through outside cable wires). Now we're ready to have a larger set of people try it out, so we're making it available in Gmail Labs for those of you who want to test out Gmail's latest and greatest and send us your feedback.
We're making offline Gmail available to everyone who uses Gmail in US or UK English over the next couple of days, so if you don't see it under the Labs tab yet, it should be there soon. Once you see it, just follow these steps to get started:
Click Settings and click the Labs tab.
Select Enable next to Offline Gmail.
Click Save Changes.
After your browser reloads, you'll see a new "Offline0.1" link in the upper righthand corner of your account, next to your username. Click this link to start the offline set up process and download Gears if you don't already have it.
2008 was a great year for Flock. We launched Flock 2.0, added integration with MySpace, Digg and WebMail, secured new funding and received numerous awards. And we reached an important milestone: Flock has been downloaded over 6 million times. While our technical accomplishments, partnerships and kudos from bloggers and the press mean a great deal to us, the most gratifying accomplishments of the year came from you, the people that use Flock every day.
Together you‘ve made over 41 million log-ins across applications like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Flickr and Twitter. You’ve accessed nearly seven million photos and videos using the Media Bar and 25 million feeds via the Feeds Sidebar. You’ve stayed in touch with your friends by collectively loading more than 150 million people each and every month into the People Sidebar! And you’ve made almost one million blog posts using Flock. What you value inspires our direction and you’ve rewarded us by using Flock in record numbers. And by telling your friends about Flock. Your recommendations have been invaluable and, by our estimates, have contributed to more than 90% of our growth in 2008! You continue to show us that we’re on the right track.
We know what is driving your use of Flock. You’re life isn’t slowing down. You’re engaged and more social than ever before. You want to know what’s going on and there’s a lot you want to share. You’ve got more friends and you want to make sure you don’t miss a thing. And sometimes that can be a bit much. No worries. That’s how we’ll continue to help, by making it easier for you to stay connected, but never tethered or walled in.
With a new year comes new opportunity and the entire Flock team is off and running to make 2009 great. We’ll continue to go where your needs take us, and we’ll do it by maintaining our commitment to innovation. While ‘traditional’ values like quality are important to us, Flock isn’t like your parents’ browser. At Flock we have a new world view of the browser and it’s all about you.
We’ll continue to innovate and find better ways to help you connect with the people, information and things you care about. But you’re the best source of inspiration for Flock, so keep visiting the site and letting us know what you think and what you need. After all, at Flock it will always be all about you.
Japan group launches "toilet poems" to save paper A cubicle is seen at the Oxford Circus lavatories as they re-open to the public in London, May 20, 2005. REUTERS/Dylan Martinez
TOKYO (Reuters) - Poetry in the loo can cut down on paper use too, says a Japanese group campaigning to save toilet paper as part of the country's battle against global warming.
Simply pasting a "toilet poem" at the eye level of a person seated in the cubicle can help cut toilet paper use by up to 20 percent, a study by the research center Japan Toilet Labo showed.
"That paper will meet you only for a moment," reads one poem. "Fold the paper over and over and over again," says another. Or just: "Love the toilet."
Now the group is looking to have its posters displayed in 1,000 public toilets.
"We asked ourselves what we could do for the environment in the toilet?" said Ryusuke Nagahara of the Japan Toilet Labo. "The answer is to save toilet paper and save water."
Toilet paper use in Japan has been increasing in recent years, according to an industry body, possibly because of a rise in the number of public toilets, where people tend to use more paper.
"It's because it's free," said an official at the Kikaisuki Washi Rengokai. "At home, people are more inclined to scrimp."
(Reporting by Isabel Reynolds; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
SINGAPORE: Singapore's Changi Airport handled 2.7 per cent more passengers last year, compared with 2007. Propelled by good numbers in the first few months of last year, Changi serviced a record 37.7 million passengers in 2008. Both the regional and long-haul sectors grew, with passengers heading to destinations like Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. However, traffic to Thailand and China fell. According to the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS), the financial tsunami left its mark in the last few months of 2008. Changi Airport's passenger traffic was down in the months of September, November and December due to negative sentiment and decreased travel demand. The impact of the economic crisis though was more pronounced on the cargo front. Airfreight movements dipped two per cent year-on-year to register 1.86 million tonnes in 2008. Director-General and Chief Executive Officer of the CAAS, Lim Kim Choon, said Changi Airport had performed "commendably" despite the difficult economic climate. However, he said 2009 would be a challenging year, with airlines and airport partners facing a tough operating environment. Mr Lim said CAAS is committed to helping its partners ride out the downturn through schemes such as the extension of the Air Hub Development Fund. As at 1 January 2009, Changi Airport is served by 83 airlines operating more than 4,670 weekly scheduled flights to 190 cities in 60 countries.
(AP) – Bill Clinton earned nearly $6 million in speaking fees last year, almost all of it from foreign companies, say financial documents filed by his wife. Of the former president's $5.7 million in 2008 honoraria, $4.6 million came from foreign sources, including Kuwait's national bank and firms in Canada, Germany, India, Malaysia, Mexico, Hong Kong, and Portugal.
Executives at many of the firms also donated money to the Clinton Foundation. In addition to Bill Clinton's income from speaking fees, Hillary reported joint holdings of between $6.1 million and $30.3 million in a blind trust as well as cash, insurance, and retirement accounts worth between $1 million and $5.2 million. Hillary made between $50,000 and $100,000 in royalties from her 2003 memoir Living History. Her husband earned between $100,000 and $1 million for his 2004 autobiography My Life.
