Agatha Sangma: Youngest minister fumbles, but earns applause

She went slow and fumbled twice, but the entire hall at Rashtrapati Bhavan erupted in applause and smiles as Agatha Sangma, the

Agatha Sangma, daughter of former Lok Sabha speaker P A Sangma, waits to take the oath as the youngest minister in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet. (AFP Photo)
youngest minister in the Manmohan Singh government, took oath on Thursday.

Wearing a traditional stole and sarong in beige and white, 28-year-old Sangma folded her hands into a gentle namaste for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson Sonia Gandhi sitting in the front row, before taking her place beside President Prathibha Patil to take oath in Hindi.

However the mike had to be specially adjusted for the petite first-time minister.

Daughter of former Lok Sabha speaker PA Sangma, who was present at the swearing-in ceremony Thursday and looked on appreciatively as his daughter took oath, Agatha hails from Meghalaya and is a lawyer by profession.

Quite a few faces had an anticipatory look as Agatha Sangma fumbled more than once mid-sentence. However, Sonia Gandhi kept smiling throughout her oath taking, nodding appreciatively and then clapping with everyone else as Agatha completed her oath taking.

Walking back to take her seat, a number of people either folded their hands into a namaste to greet her or shook hands with the young minister.

Team Manmohan was finally inducted on Thursday with 14 cabinet ministers and 45 ministers of state taking oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to wrap up the 79-member council of ministers that will shepherd the Congress-led UPA's second tenure in office.

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Powerball: One Winner in South Dakota

Many Alabamians raced to the border to buy a chance at winning the $232 million dollar Powerball jackpot drawn Wednesday night. One ticket matched the winner numbers, but it was sold in South Dakota. The winner has yet to come forward. Several tickets matched five numbers, winning 200-thousand dollars. None of those tickets were sold in Tennessee.

Here are the winning numbers for Wednesday, May 27, 2009: five, six, twelve, 16 and 21. The Powerball was seven.

Powerball is played in 30 states, Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

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Visteon Corp Files for Bankruptcy

Auto supplier Visteon Corp., a former unit of Ford Motor Co., put its U.S. operations into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection Thursday, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Fellow auto supplier Metaldyne Corp. also sought Chapter 11 protection Thursday.

Chrysler’s sale hearing kicked off Wednesday and will continue Thursday. At Wednesday’s hearing, former Chrysler president Tom LaSorda testified that the partnership with Fiat will make Chrysler a stronger company. Read the Daily Bankruptcy Review story here.

U.S. lawmakers are considering banning the controversial practice of bankruptcy “forum shopping” by requiring companies to seek protection from their creditors in their home states. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is circulating a measure that seeks to “combat” forum shopping, an attorney familiar with the legislation told DBR.

Some California lawmakers are pushing a plan that could make it tougher for cities and counties to seek bankruptcy protection, WSJ reports.

The former head of K-mart testified Wednesday that he kept directors fully informed of the company’s financial woes in the months leading up to its 2002 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, according to the Associated Press, via USA Today.

French fashion house Christian Lacroix has sought protection from its creditors in France,

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Girls using sex as currency

Right under our noses, girls are trading oral sex for pretty shirts and sex for money.

For her new book and film Oral Sex is the New Goodnight Kiss, Canadian journalist Sharlene Azam interviewed teenage and pre-teen girls about sexual attitudes and found many who use sex as currency.

Even in middle-class Canada, girls are being recruited — often by other teens — to provide sexual services to groups of men and boys.

“I was most surprised to learn that there are girls recruiting other girls,” Azam told Metro. “It is chilling to sit across from a teenage girl who talks about targeting a pretty, popular girl at her school because she thinks she has everything and is jealous of her.”

Parents often believe that their daughters are safe when they are at school, at the mall or chatting on the Internet. But Azam found girls as young as 12 were actually giving oral sex to groups of boys and telling their parents they were hanging out with friends. All the boys had to do was say they “want a piece” of her, and she’d perform oral sex while the others watched, reports Azam, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Vancouver. She also interviewed girls who were willing to pose nude on their webcam and get paid to send the pictures to anonymous men.

“There is very little education or awareness of what is happening to girls because the problem is so new and it is well hidden.”

Why are girls today more promiscuous than in the past? “The Internet has sped up teens’ sexual willingness and behaviour,” says Azam. “Girls are surrounded by a hypersexualized culture where they are being groomed and encouraged to think of themselves as: Hooter’s Girl, Stripper, Porn Star. Exposure affects behaviour.”

Girls who are looking for attention know that a sexy video or picture can give them power and launch them into fame.

This behaviour can have long-term health effects. It could affect the girls’ ability to trust men later in life and to have normal, living relationships, says Azam, who is married with a young daughter. In addition, many girls are getting STDs. One public health nurse told her that at the four schools she visits, hundreds of kids have Chlamydia.

Azam suggests that parents pay close attention to their daughters during their teen years and have regular conversations with them about sex. “The parents that I interviewed wished they had paid attention to the warning signs. When you learn that your daughter has traded sex for $60 or has sold her virginity for $1,000, your whole life stops,” she says.

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Woman who fired a gun at President Gerald Ford

The woman who fired a gun at President Gerald Ford in 1975 says in an interview that she believed the country would change only through a violent revolution.

Sara Jane Moore tells NBC's "Today" show that she now realizes the world did not share the radical views that many people held in California in those turbulent times.

The interview broadcast Thursday was her first TV interview since she was released on parole in late 2007, NBC said.

In September 1975, Moore, then 45, fired on Ford as he waved to a crowd in San Francisco. A man near her knocked the pistol out of her hand and the shot went astray. On politics, she said she now knows she was hearing only one side of the story. The radicals were calling for change and she genuinely thought that shooting Ford "might trigger that new revolution."

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Jet America Airlines To Fly For 9 Dollar Tickets

Low cost airlines start to fly in the travelers' radar as Jet America Airlines introduces 9 dollar fares and will start operations on July 13. One wonders how is Jet America going to make money with 9 dollar fares? Or is this only to create some initial buzz about cheap airline tickets?

Jet America Airlines 9 dollar cheap tickets will get the discount travelers from Newark, NJ to Toledo. There will be only nine seats in each flight that will cost nine dollars each. According to Tampabay Jet America Airlines will make money from additional fees, just like other low cost airlines.

Jet America Airlines opens for business today. Airline ticket reservations can already made from its website and some aspects of its business is modeled by other low cost successful European airlines such as Ryanair. Tampabay.com writes that "Jet America will charge an additional $20 for a round-trip with an assigned seat, $20 to buy a ticket by phone and $10 to book on the Web site (www.jetamerica.com). The airline will begin with one leased jet and grow to four planes in a year, said chief executive John Weikle, former boss at now-defunct Skybus. The four initial cities — Toledo, Ohio, South Bend, Ind., Lansing, Mich., and Melbourne on Florida's east coast — are subsidizing Jet America by waiving airport fees and helping with marketing and advertising."

According to Jaunted.com Jet Ameria Airlines is on track to deliver air passengers on July 13 in a Boeing 737-800 jet from Toledo to Newark, N.J., Melbourne, Fla., Lansing, Mich., and South Bend, Ind.

By the way, don't confuse Jet America Airlines with the private jet service Jet America LTD. The later's website is Jetamerica.net while the website of Jet America Airlines is Jetamerica.com, which we could not access at this point. Probably many travelers are trying to book a flight.

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Florida Powerball Winning Numbers May 27!

Here are tonight’s May 27 2009’s Florida Lottery Powerball Winning Numbers. Florida Powerball’s winning numbers tonight could net someone the highest purse in years.

$232 million is on the line, the biggest Powerball paycheck in one year, and second biggest in two years. Powerball is currently in 30 U.S. states.

Moments ago press confirmed for tonight there was only ONE winning ticket, sold in South Dakota. There are also over 12 who matched 5 of the six numbers that will net them $200,000 each. Those tickets were sold in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wisconsin.

Tonight’s winning numbers are:

5-6-12-16-21
PB7 x3

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Earthquake in Honduras, Belize

A strong earthquake killed at least one man early Thursday as it collapsed homes in Honduras and Belize and sent people running into the streets in their pajamas as far away as Guatemala City. The magnitude-7.1 quake struck at 3:24 a.m. (0824 GMT) at the relatively shallow depth of 6 miles (10 kilometers), according to the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colorado. The epicenter was 80 miles (130 kilometers) northeast of La Ceiba, Honduras.

"People were running for the door," said Alfredo Cedeno, an employee at the Gran Hotel Paris in La Ceiba. "You could really feel it and you could see it — the water came out of the pool." A man died after his house collapsed in Pineda de la Lima, 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of the capital, Tegicugalpa, according to Carlos Gonzalez, deputy director of Honduras' Permanent Emergency Commission. A neighbor's house also collapsed, he said.

"Dozens of workers have been evacuated from factories in San Pedro Sula (in northern Honduras) because the buildings have cracks," he said. "There are cracks in the roads in several cities." Juan Sevilla, a spokesman for Honduras' firefighters, said wooden homes collapsed in Puerto Cortes, 120 miles (200 kilometers) north of Tegucigalpa, as did a stadium wall in Comayagua, 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of the capital.

Osman Hernandez, a spokesman for the mayor of El Progreso, told Radio Satelite there was "serious damage" to Democracy Bridge, a 1957 span across Honduras' biggest river, the Ulua. He did not provide details of the damage.Tegucigalpa Mayor Ricardo Alvarez appealed for calm as officials reported electricity, telephones and Internet connections were cut across a large part of Honduras."It was an earthquake of great proportions that was felt in almost the entire country," said Ana Maria Rivera, spokeswoman for the emergency commission.

In Belize, people rushed from their homes as glasses and framed pictures crashed off of shelves. At least five wooden houses on stilts collapsed in three towns and a water tower toppled in the town of Independence, local officials said. Electricity was out all the way to the Mexican border. "I urge you not to panic, but to remain calm," National Emergency Minister Melvin Hulse said on the radio. "Your government is monitoring the situation and will be keeping you informed."

A tsunami watch was discontinued for Honduras, Belize and Guatemala. Raul Gonzalez, a receptionist at the Gran Hotel Sula in San Pedro Sula, said guests ran into the streets in their pajamas. "I ran out of the building and kept going for about a block before I looked back and everything had calmed," he said. "It was really strong. I have never felt anything like that." He said the hotel did not suffer damage. A two-story warehouse caught fire in San Pedro Sula but no injuries were reported, according to firefighter Lt. Col. Daniel Flores.

People ran into the streets as far away as Guatemala City, but firefighter Byron Juarez said a survey of firefighting offices throughout Guatemala revealed no reports of major damage. The quake occurred in a region where the North American and Caribean plates come together, according to Gonzalo Cruz, head of geophysics at Honduras' National Autonomous University. The USGS said a magnitude-4.8 aftershock struck off Honduras about three hours after the quake.

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The Portable Spin Gym by Forbes Riley

If you are looking for a cheap and easy way to tone and strengthen the muscles on your upper body, then you should check out the Portable Spin Gym by Forbes Riley. The product states that it is portable, and it is not wrong, as it is small enough to be carried in your purse, briefcase or even your pocket.

The gadget comes fully assembled and is ready to use once you remove it from the box. The Spin Gym weighs less than one pound, but is able to produce over 20lbs of resistance per pull. Just a five-minute workout is all it takes to re-energize yourself.

The Spin Gym by Forbes Riley allows you to sculpt and tone your abdominals, arms, back, chest, shoulders and much more. The SpinGym comes with an additional strength cord, instruction and Training guide, “Anywhere in a Chair” workout DVD all in a neoprene carrying bag.The SpinGym can be yours for just $29.95

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