Miss Kosovo

"Since February Kosovo has been trying to consolidate its independence ? build up its governance structures and get its foot in the door to international and regional institutions like the EU, NATO, World Bank and IMF. But its most important effort has been at attempting to secure recognition of its independence from the community of sovereign states ? a legal and diplomatic requirement for legitimizing a country?s independence. To date, Kosovo?s efforts have lagged. Only 43 countries have formally recognized Kosovo?s independence, and progress has stalled. Whilst amongst the 43 are big names like the UK, US, Japan and several European neighbors, it is widely perceived to be an insufficient number: a critical mass of support has yet to be achieved.

But all that was overshadowed last night as for the first time in history Miss Kosovo took her place amongst the 81 finalists of the Miss Universe pageant watched by a television audience of 1 billion. Now that?s international legitimacy if ever there was! Sandwiched between Miss Korea and Miss Malaysia, Zana Krasniqi was a 5?7? green-eyed beauty whose star really shone through.

Miss Kosovo was an instant crowd favorite, and the judges agreed ? putting her through to the Top 10 finalists ? a fantastic feat for a first-time participating country and visibly nervous contestant. If further proof was required that Kosovo had indeed come out from behind Serbia?s shadow, Miss Kosovo easily trounced all her cross-Balkan rivals including Miss Serbia. " (Century Foundation)

- Slow News Day -

Katie is going back to Antarctica for the third season and I'm green with envy.

"after Obama joined King Abdullah II for dinner at the palace in Amman, the Jordanian leader hopped into his Mercedes and drove Obama to the airport himself." (Time)

The fact above is striking. Head of state just don't drive their guests around. This time, the King himself drove the car. He is probably glad to have a hang out buddy with similar age who's most likely to be the next President of the United States.

I'd buy you ...nothing ?

"Zimbabwe's troubled central bank introduced $100 billion banknotes Saturday in a desperate bid to ease the recurrent cash shortages plaguing the inflation-ravaged economy.

The bills officially come into circulation Monday, although they were on the foreign currency dealers market Saturday.

As high as they are, though, the bills still aren't enough to buy a loaf of bread. They can buy only four oranges." (CNN)

"A top aide to Gordon Brown has been a suspected victim of a ?honeytrap? operation by Chinese intelligence agents.

The aide, a senior Downing Street adviser who was with the prime minister on a trip to China earlier this year, had his BlackBerry phone stolen after being picked up by a Chinese woman who had approached him in a Shanghai hotel disco.

The aide agreed to return to his hotel with the woman. He reported the BlackBerry missing the next morning.

The aide, whose identity is known to The Sunday Times, immediately reported the theft to the prime minister?s Special Branch protection team and was informally reprimanded." (Timesonline)

"The arrest of Radovan Karadzic, one of the most wanted war criminals for the massacre of nearly 8,000 Muslim men and boys, ended a 13-year hunt" (NY Times)

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Ha..ha..ha..He looks like a goofball.

The ever awesome Worldchanging has a cool site and a number of cool ideas imagining if things can be different (click to view the full post with many more interesting ideas and super interesting comments, like this one)....

Imagine no garbage cans. Imagine recycling everything that comes through your door. It's not a pipe dream. With a new generation of zero-waste approaches, cities are building systems where everything you buy is designed to be recycled, composted, or disassembled and reused. Instead of being thrown away, materials flow again and again through closed loops. This process saves huge amounts of resources and energy, reduces toxics and creates jobs. So next time you're taking out the trash, imagine what the world would look like without it. Imagine no garbage cans.

Imagine no warning labels. Imagine bringing nothing into your home that isn't safe for you, your children or your pets. It's not a pipe dream. With ideas like non-toxic production and green chemistry we could eliminate the use of chemicals now feared to cause cancer, birth defects and reproductive problems, and remove them from our homes and ecosystems. Scientists have already developed safe non-toxic alternatives for hundreds of once questionable products, from kitchen cleaners to baby toys. So the next time you go to the market, imagine not needing to read the fine print. Imagine no warning labels.

Recession-Plagued Nation Demands New Bubble To Invest In

WASHINGTON?A panel of top business leaders testified before Congress about the worsening recession Monday, demanding the government provide Americans with a new irresponsible and largely illusory economic bubble in which to invest.

"What America needs right now is not more talk and long-term strategy, but a concrete way to create more imaginary wealth in the very immediate future," said Thomas Jenkins, CFO of the Boston-area Jenkins Financial Group, a bubble-based investment firm. "We are in a crisis, and that crisis demands an unviable short-term solution."

Wii overtakes XBox 360 as the best selling console in the US.

"The most recent comprehensive study on the emotional state of those with kids shows us that the term ?bundle of joy? may not be the most accurate way to describe our offspring. ?Parents experience lower levels of emotional well-being, less frequent positive emotions and more frequent negative emotions than their childless peers,? says Florida State University?s Robin Simon, a sociology professor who?s conducted several recent parenting studies, the most thorough of which came out in 2005 and looked at data gathered from 13,000 Americans by the National Survey of Families and Households." (Newsweek)

"Citigroup has lost about $17.4 billion in the last three quarters and incurred more than $58 billion of write-downs and increased credit costs since the middle of 2007.

On Thursday, Merrill Lynch announced a loss of $4.8 billion, surprising even the most pessimistic analysts. The loss was largely caused by another $9.7 billion in write-downs in mortgage investments. Merrill was forced to raise capital by selling assets like its 20 percent stake in Bloomberg, the financial data service mostly owned by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York.

Also on Thursday, JPMorgan Chase said its quarterly income fell 53 percent from the second quarter last year." (NY Times)

Is this the bottom? The banks have been performing writedowns for the past 9 months now. It has to end somehow.

This search engine is actually paying you for your searches (finally one model that lets you participate in the big money Google/Yahoo/MSN and all those others are making with your search traffic).

Scour is paying you for your searches, for voting on search results and for commenting on search results. And yes, if you spread the word, you'll get paid for that too... - so please follow my link ;-)

They're trying to create more relevant search results by having users vote/comment on the search results they've received.

Really curious to see if it will at some point become normal that you do get paid for searching stuff online (there's really no reason why the search engine / parking programs / ISPs / toolbar programmers should get to keep the the money advertisers pay while the person searching for something doesn't get a share of that).

There are a lot of good news happening in terms of deescalating the tension in the middle east (from news in Iraq, the Israel-Hezbollah swap, US sending a diplomat to Iran talks) - but there's this persistent thought that there's still a chance of an Iran related war before the end of the year (Read "All systems go for war")

I don't think there's a chance in hell for a new conflict (which is great) but predicting the future is never my forte.

"While now may be a good time to start a business, the main message of the book, he says, is to try to discourage people from becoming entrepreneurs unless they are deadly serious and driven to such an extent that they cannot stop themselves." (Economist)

"As Opal Henderson, a 78-year-old auto salvage yard owner, put it, ?Why can?t those foreigners just stay at home and leave us what we have??" (NYTimes)

He's talking about the Belgians buying Anheuser-Busch for 52 billion dollars.