Jumpers

Kara DioGuardi will not be back for “American Idol’s” tenth season, FOX confirmed Friday.

After a two-season run behind the judges’ table, followed by months of rumors, Kara announced her departure from the show on Friday night, just after 5 PM.

VIEW THE PHOTOS: Kelly! Jordin! Carrie & More Of Your Former ‘American Idols’

“I felt like I won the lottery when I joined ‘American Idol’ two years ago, but I feel like now is the best time to leave ‘Idol,’” Kara said in a statement to Access Hollywood. “I am very proud to have been associated with ‘American Idol’ – it has truly been an amazing experience. I am grateful to FOX, FremantleMedia and 19 Entertainment, as well as the cast, crew and contestants, for all they have given to me. I look forward to my next challenge, and want to thank everyone who has supported me. All the best to everyone on Season 10!”

Just last month, a source close to Kara told Access that the artist and record company executive tried to quit “Idol” two months ago, but as of August 24, she hadn’t received any word from FOX or Fremantle regarding her future on the show.

In July, however, Kara seemed excited about “Idol’s” Season 10, the show’s first without Simon Cowell.

“I’m not getting butterflies as much as I was, but I’m sure there are thousands of kids who are getting them and I’m ready to find new talent and great talent,” she told Access Hollywood at the time. “I love to do that. I do that all year long whether it’s in my job at Warner Bros. or ‘American Idol.’ It’s exciting. It’s exciting to hear somebody that’s really talented that’s never gotten that shot.”

Just weeks later, several reports surfaced that Kara had been let go from the show, which began a flurry of rumors regarding a number of celebrity names being bandied about for the judging panel. Steve Tyler of Aerosmith has since joined the fold, and, according to reports, Jennifer Lopez is still in the running to sit at the judges’ table. No official statement about new judges has yet been made by FOX.

As for Kara’s departure, “Idol” creator and executive producer Simon Fuller has said that he’ll miss her.

“Kara is one of the world’s best songwriters,” Simon said in a statement to Access. “She has been passionate and committed to IDOL over the last two seasons. I will miss having her on the show, but I look forward to working with her in music for many years to come.”

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/article/tv.accesshollywood.com/tv.accesshollywood.com-kara-dioguardi-officially-out-american-idol

New Orleans exhibit features animal heroes of World War II
12:00 AM CDT on Sunday, August 1, 2010

The Associated Press
Smoky the Yorkshire terrier, Lady Astor the pigeon and a host of horses and mules are among war heroes and heroines featured in an exhibit at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

“Loyal Forces: The Animals of WWII” continues through Oct. 17 and features four kinds of animals most often brought into the war: dogs, pigeons, horses and mules.

In the museum’s mezzanine, where a Sherman tank and a halftrack represent the period’s most common cavalry, is a figure of a Coast Guardsman on shore patrol with his horse. Shore patrols were set up after German saboteurs twice landed on American beaches.

North Africa and the Mediterranean are represented by pigeons such as Lady Astor, who brought an urgent message to Allied forces from the front lines in North Africa in spite of pellet fire that broke one leg and took half the feathers from one wing.

An oral history from Hiram Boone, a mule handler for the Army’s Mars Task Force, is part of the China, Burma and India exhibit.

Dogs such as Smoky represent the Pacific front. The terrier, found in a foxhole in New Guinea, was a mascot who became a war heroine when she helped engineers string 70 feet of telegraph wire through an 8-inch culvert under an airfield.

Contact: 504-528-1944; www.nationalww2museum.org

The Associated Press

“Anytime there’s an elephant death, it’s important for the USDA to investigate, especially for anything unexplained or unexpected,’’ Doyle said. “Dondi was in the prime of her life. She wasn’t an old elephant.’’

Dondi also spent time with the public, which puts everyone who came in contact with her at risk if she had died from a disease transferable from elephant to human, Doyle said.

The elephant had a tooth infection before her death, but there were no other indicators of disease, said Betsey Brewer, one of the zoo’s owners. The necropsy reports will not be available for six to eight weeks.

The USDA did not return calls or e-mails for comment yesterday, but Brewer said inspectors visited the zoo as a procedure after Dondi’s death and did not find anything out of the ordinary.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,’’ Brewer said. “She was a healthy, well-cared-for elephant.’’

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/31/animal_rights_group_wants_zoo_to_release_elephants_records/

Pamela Anderson is in the doghouse again. And she doesn’t mind one bit.

Anderson, the honorary chairman of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, was in New Orleans earlier today to help relocate about 50 dogs from Louisiana to Virginia.

Why the big move?

Shelters in the area have apparently become more crowded than ever since the BP oil spill. Many pets are being brought in by people who can longer care for them after losing their jobs and income because of the spill.

“People can’t afford to feed their families, so the family member that gets left behind and has to go is the pet,” Anderson told me before flying to New Orleans late last night.

Once the dogs are in Virginia, PETA will work with the Virginia Beach SPCA to find homes for them. “There are so many more pets than homes, but we think that by bringing attention to it, people are going to be inspired to help and adopt some,” Anderson said.

Anderson is leading by example. She adopted two small dogs this morning and named them after actresses Gina Lollobrigida and Brigitte Bardot.

Read more: http://ca.eonline.com/uberblog/marc_malkin/b193356_pamela_anderson_adoptstwo_oil.html#ixzz0vX5tGRc4

Sheltered animals killed in fire
By TIFFANY REVELLE The Daily Journal
Updated: 08/03/2010 12:00:12 AM PDT

COVELO — Fire leveled a home that served as Bones Pet Rescue Saturday night, killing at least 23 dogs and six cats, according to Fire Chief Bill Baker of Covelo Fire Protection District.
The fire ignited inside the home of Barbara Thrasher, who runs the rescue, at about 5:30 p.m., according to Cal Fire. Baker said the cause is still under investigation.
“We suspect it might be electrical,” he said.
The blaze spread and burned eight acres of wildland, not the 40 acres originally reported, according to Cal Fire and Baker.
Baker said the fire jumped Refuge Road and threatened three homes, two of which were on Oak Lane. He said the blaze burned around the homes before firefighters stopped it.
About 65 firefighters responded from Covelo and Cal Fire, according to Baker, and firefighters contained the blaze in about an hour, then mopped up until about 10 p.m.
Margie Mullen, a friend of Thrasher’s who stepped in to help after the fire, said Thrasher lost all but two of the animals she kept inside the home that were old, handicapped or in need of special attention.
Mullen said Thrasher had been helping one of the inside animals and had been in the home about 10 minutes when the flames ignited in a bedroom.
Baker said about 125 animals that were in kennels outside survived the fire.

http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/ci_15664917

A childless mortal monkey has launch a way to replete her matriarchal propulsion follow a girl from added species, zookeepers estimation today.
The fuss, a golden-headed lion leoncita named Matriarchal Juanita, lives at the ZSL London Zoo. She took a liking to her near’s baby an saturniid marmoset retributive weeks after it was dropped.
Now the alternate mum can be seen actuation around zoo exhibits with the 2-month-old kid on her corroborate. The sovereign leoncita’s solon embody and writer moustache stands out against its “care’s” fiery orangeness hair. The baby leoncita is already viewing signs of an individual’s signature mortal moustache. In fact, the animals are cerebration to bang been named after the Emperor of Deutschland, Nymphalid Wilhelm II, due to their interminable, author moustaches.
“Juanita has never had a soul before so it seems same her mothering instinct has righteous kicked in this reading around,” said Lucy Hawley, a last zookeeper at the zoo. “Who knows what brute she’ll be carrying around succeeding?”
Nymphalid tamarins, indigene to Southmost Ground, are unremarkably increased by their fathers who bear them until they are old sufficiency to fend for themselves.
Despite the monkey mix-up, there does not seem to be any shrewd feelings between Juanita and her neighbour the biological parent of the saturniid marmoset.

Israel backs flotilla probe ‘to patch up Turkey ties’
By Jean-Luc Renaudie (AFP) – 2 hours ago
JERUSALEM — Israel’s surprise decision to back a UN probe into its deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla was taken in a bid to patch up its ties with Turkey, a senior official said on Tuesday.
UN chief Ban Ki-moon on Monday announced the creation of a four-member panel to investigate the May 31 raid in which nine Turkish activists were killed, and in a surprising U-turn, Israel gave its blessing to the inquiry.
“We have nothing to be afraid of — the facts are on our side,” a senior government official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We also hope that this panel will help us to improve our relations with Turkey… that it will be a turning point in our relations with Turkey,” he said.
Israel has for the past two months consistently rejected diplomatic pressure for an independent probe, with the Jewish state setting up two of its own panels to look into the chaotic pre-dawn raid in international waters.
But Israel’s government made a strategic about-turn by agreeing, for the first time ever, to cooperate with a United Nations inquiry into an Israeli military operation.
The volte-face followed weeks of contact between Israel and the UN, and came after deliberations by the Forum of Seven top Israeli ministers to ensure that “this was indeed a panel with a balanced and fair written mandate,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.
Media reports suggested Israel had come under heavy pressure from Washington to comply with the UN probe — but the official denied the reports. “Israel took its own decision independently,” he insisted.
The UN’s Ban first raised the idea of a UN panel just days after the raid, and over the past month Washington has also thrown its weight behind efforts to push Israel into accepting the inquiry, the Haaretz daily reported.
“The Americans argued that Israeli acceptance would prevent further anti-Israeli resolutions at the UN General Assembly or Security Council over the flotilla issue, and may even result in the abolishment of the committee set up by the UN’s Human Rights Council in Geneva to investigate the incident,” it said.
Last month, the Geneva-based UN Council named its own panel of experts to probe whether the raid breached international law in a move condemned by Israel which would likely jump at the chance to see that probe neutralised.
The decision to cooperate with Ban’s probe caused concern in Israel, with some commentators warning it would set a “worrying precedent.”
“The government has given in to international pressure and for the first time, a UN commission of inquiry is going to look into the actions of the government and the Israeli army which has created a worrying precedent,” political scientist Shlomo Avineri told army radio.
Opposition leader Tzipi Livni took the same view but couched it in slightly stronger terms.
“The government’s stuttering has placed Israel in a situation in which we have five investigative committees probing one military operation that was small by any standard,” she said, her remarks referring to the two UN panels, two internal Israeli committees and another inquiry by Israel’s State Comptroller.
“Now Israel is paying the price… in terms of constraints on the operational capability of the IDF (Israel Defence Forces), which is by far the most worrying thing.”
Ban’s four-man panel will also include Israeli and Turkish participation and is to begin its deliberations on August 10, the UN said on Monday.
Ankara denounced the May 31 raid as a violation of international law and threatened to completely sever ties with Israel unless the Jewish state complied with an international committee, issued an apology and paid compensation to the victims.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jOz6CLCt6JsvSJGk1_uAE2RWc6Rg

If you think you’re too young to worry about your cholesterol, new research suggests you might think again.

In a 20-year study involving 3,258 people between 18 and 30 years old, researchers found that the cumulative effect of even modestly abnormal cholesterol heightens your risk of developing telltale signs of heart disease by age 45.

As is the case with heart disease in older people, the biggest culprit is LDL, or bad cholesterol. The higher the LDL level over a 20-year period, the greater the chance that calcium begins to accumulate in the coronary arteries, the study found. Calcium buildup is a strong predictor of future heart disease, researchers said.

“The exposure you get during young adulthood appears to matter,” said Mark Pletcher, an epidemiologist at University of California, San Francisco and the report’s lead author. “It accumulates in a way that damage lasts and persists into middle age.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704271804575405602444073276.html

The iPhone was released in 2007 but even until early 2009 no other mobile OS makers were anywhere close to making a touch-optimized UI. Microsoft was just releasing paltry updates to their stylus-driven Windows Mobile 6 that made no major improvement with UI. The same was the case with Nokia and their Symbian Series 60 5th Edition, which initially seemed nothing more than a ported version from their non-touch devices. Palm was busy making the Web OS, but everybody was doubtful whether its scale or reach would be big as Apple’s. Ultimately they released the Palm Pre, a CDMA phone in the US but its GSM version didn’t reach Indian shore-at least not officially.

At the same time (i.e. the beginning of 2009), Internet search giant Google also made an entry into the mobile space. Known as Android, they wanted to play their game differently. Following their “Don’t be Evil” corporate slogan, they made their Linux-based mobile OS Open Source. This meant anybody was free to download the source code from Google and change it to their liking, and put it in the device of their choice. But its not like you can download Android and install it on your Nokia in a few clicks, the way you would download and install Linux on your PC. It meant manufacturers, big or small, could easily take Google’s OS and put it in their hardware.

http://www.techtree.com/India/Features/Things_You_Should_Know_About_Android/551-112462-899.html

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — A crucial test — meant to determine whether an effort to seal the ruptured BP oil well in the Gulf of Mexico could proceed — will likely take place Tuesday, according to the company.
The “injectivity” test was initially scheduled for Monday but was delayed because of a small leak, BP said.
Tuesday is also the day the company could also conduct the “static kill,” one of two efforts planned to cap the leaking well once and for all.
“During final preparations to commence with the injectivity test, a small hydraulic leak was discovered in the capping stack hydraulic control system,” BP said in a statement. The injectivity test will be rescheduled until the leak is repaired.
In the test, “base oil” will be pumped into the ruptured well bore to determine whether it will go back into the reservoir, said Kent Wells, BP’s senior vice president. The test will start with pumping one barrel per minute, then two, then three. How much is pumped will depend on how the test goes, Wells said. He added the test is meant to help officials decide whether adjustments need to be made on “how and if” the static kill will proceed.
The static kill would involve pouring mud, possibly followed by cement, into the well from above. The goal is to push all the oil back into the reservoir, and seal the well.
Read More on CNN – http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/08/03/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1