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Models tend to do anything they can to make sure they always look their best - they're much more likely to be nibbling at a solitary salad leaf than taking part in dangerous motor sports. But Chesca Miles isn't like most models. The 20-year-old motorbike fanatic has become the first woman in the country to turn professional as a stunt rider - and it's just seven months since she started learning how to do the tricks by herself.

RIO DE JANEIRO (AFP) – US President Barack Obama held up emerging powerhouse Brazil on Sunday as a model of economic and democratic transformation that leaders in the troubled Middle East should try to copy. Obama's keynote address in Rio de Janeiro was the highlight of his visit to Brazil, the first stop on a three-nation Latin America tour overshadowed by US-led military action in Libya. The speech came after France, the United States and Britain launched missile and bomb attacks on Libyan air-defense targets to prevent Moamer Kadhafi's forces from crushing a month-old uprising against his rule. Obama did...

Soros: The Chinese Model Of Suppressing Individuals Could Become The Envy Of The World Courtney Comstock Apparently, Soros is considering the possibility that people might some day want to be censored and live in a socialist society like China's. He said yesterday at the Traveller’s Club in Paris, according to Dealbook: “The world does need order, and that order needs maintenance. The idea that markets can correct their excesses turned out to be false. “Perfect order and global governance are not realistic expectations. However, it is a sad fact that Western democracies provide less successful leadership than China.”

The marriage proposal was apparently a rather romantic affair. On Christmas Eve, the couple watched a late-night movie together and then exchanged gifts: for him a framed photograph of their King Charles Spaniel, for her an engagement ring. ‘She burst into tears,’ he revealed on Twitter at the weekend. ‘This is the happiest Christmas in memory.’ ‘The most memorable Christmas ever,’ she tweeted in agreement. ‘I love him.’ All of which might be rather more touching if the ­prospective groom was not Playboy tycoon Hugh Hefner who, at 84, is 60 years older than his fiancée, a platinum blonde model...

CORAL GABLES — Police on Tuesday arrested and charged a local model in a traffic accident that killed a University of Miami student last month. Valentina Hubsch, 45, of Coral Gables, was charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving a death.

France has been convulsed by violent demonstrations against modest pension reforms. Britain is imposing a tough fiscal “austerity” regime to plug a cavernous budget gap. Crisis-torn Greece is struggling to avoid a sovereign-debt default. Ireland, Portugal, and Spain are grappling with their own major-league financial woes. Is it fair to say that the much-ballyhooed European model is crumbling? That depends on which “European model” you’re referring to. Though Western Europe is often lazily portrayed as a monolithic bastion of welfare-state sclerosis, it is in fact robustly heterogeneous. France has a brittle pension system and rigid labor markets, but the Dutch,...

One of the most controversial topics in investing is the price of gold. Eleven years ago, gold dropped as low as $252 per ounce. Since then, the yellow metal has risen more than five-fold, easily outpacing the major stock market indexes—and it seems to move higher every day.Some goldbugs say this is only the beginning and that gold will soon break $2,000, then $5,000 and then $10,000 per ounce.But the question is, “How can anyone reasonably calculate what the price of gold is?” For stocks, we have all sorts of ratios. Sure, those ratios can be off…but at least they’re...

The bookish, twice-unsuccessful Democratic presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson once sighed that if most thinking people supported him, it still wouldn’t be enough to get elected in America because “I need a majority.” For some reason, Democrats have chosen to follow the disastrous model of Stevenson and not that of the feisty, man-of-the-people Missourian Harry Truman — though the former nearly wrecked the party and the latter got elected. Former president Jimmy Carter likewise seems to feel that he’s still too smart for us. Carter, who turns 86 on Friday, is hitting the news shows to explain why he remains America’s...

This the kind of question Mrs Merton might ask. "So, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, what do you see in a 24-year-old, sensationally beautiful gymnast with a penchant for posing semi-naked that you don't see in your lovely, middle-aged, matronly wife Ludmilla?" It is also the kind of question that hardly needs answering for the millions who have tuned in to the YouTube film of Alina Kabaeva performing a decidedly provocative gymnastic routine.

A Romanian model wants to improve the country's image by starting a political party for beautiful people, according to Orange news. Sanziana Buruiana would tax obese citizens and criminalize 'dumb blonde' jokes, saying "anyone like that needs to be put in prison." The party platform calls for a fine of $130 for adultery, and would limit all tourist guides to models in bikinis. Buruiana says the goal of the party platform is to boost Romania's tourism industry.

When Prince Andrew was pictured on a yacht getting touchy-feely with a woman half his age, the denials came thick and fast. They're just friends, said a source, and anyway, she's married. But now it turns out 25-year-old Alexandra Escat is in fact single - and the pair have since been seen jetting off together. The Duke of York, 50, was seen engrossed in a playful conversation with the Filipino model on a luxury yacht last week.

To become the nation's first black president, Barack Obama not only won heavy percentages of the black and Hispanic vote but also managed to trim the Democratic Party's traditional deficit among white voters. Four years after Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) lost the white vote by 17 percentage points, Obama lost it by 12, according to exit polls. While the 2008 gains were generally attributed to Obama's strength with young voters -- he won by 10 points among whites 18 to 29 years old -- he managed to improve on Kerry's showing with white voters across every age demographic.

Link only to online gallery of six pictures. Scott Brown was a catalog model for ten years during the 1980's. The last picture is the best.http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gallery/Brown_model/

Pressured by an aging population and the need to rein in budget deficits, Canada's provinces are taking tough measures to curb healthcare costs, a trend that could erode the principles of the popular state-funded system. British Columbia is replacing block grants to hospitals with fee-for-procedure payments and Quebec has a new flat health tax and a proposal for payments on each medical visit -- an idea that critics say is an illegal user fee. In some ways the Canadian debate is the mirror image of discussions going on in the United States. Healthcare in Canada is delivered through a publicly...

If the European Union wants to endure, perhaps its architects should look at how Canada keeps disparate regions together in one union. One of the magic ingredients, as we Canadians know only too well, is equalization payments — i.e. transfers of income from the richest to the poorest provinces – specifically, from Alberta and Ontario (although Ontario is faltering) to the Maritimes and Quebec. Does the EU have the same capacity to make equalization payments? It would seem not. The Germans, who pay their taxes, are quite disenchanted about supporting Greek citizens, who, by and large, avoid taxes and have...

An immigration proposal circulated by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would make it easier for foreign fashion models to work America’s catwalks. Just don’t bother asking Schumer’s office how it got there. Or why it’s now out of the bill. POLITICO put the question to Schumer’s office five times. The main response: The provision won’t be in the final version of the bill. So does that mean that the next Gisele Bundchen might have to wait in line with other foreign workers for visas?

(edit)  The Boeing B-50 bomber is so big it holds the title as the world's largest electric model aircraft, It is classified as a light aircraft and is licensed by the Civil Aviation Authority.Built by Tony Nijhuis in his garage the aircraft is a scale version of the US bomber and has a 20ft wingspan and weighs just over seven stones.It took Mr Nijhuis, from Hastings, East Sussex, two years to make the radio-controlled plane that he calls the 'jolly green giant' and cost him £8,000.   (edit)  t has 96 batteries that power four electric motors which drive...

The doughty Government Investment Corporation of Singapore is not often a hotbed of heretical thought. Recently, however, a debate has been bubbling at the GIC that has fascinating implications for investors round the world. The issue at stake revolves around the so-called Harvard or Yale investment model. During most of its recent history, the GIC – like many other sovereign wealth funds round the world – has looked at these huge university endowment funds with envy and admiration. For the Harvard or Yale model seemed to offer an exciting vision for any long-term investment group that wanted to do more...

Naomi Campbell 'Attacked Driver' Supermodel Naomi Campbell was being sought by police in New York after her driver claimed she attacked him. 02 Mar 2010 Ms Campbell took anger management classes after pleading guilty to throwing her mobile phone at a maid in 2006 Photo: PA New York police said the 39-year-old model is accused of striking her driver from behind and causing his head to hit the steering wheel of the car around 3pm (2000 GMT). The driver, who was hired for the day, was said to be left with bumps and bruises after the incident. By the time...

She may have the face of an angel, but authorities say this city society gal has the heart of a thieving little devil. Kashmir Snowdon-Jones, 21, a sometime model and increasingly well-known Manhattan party girl, was charged Wednesday afternoon with identify theft and multiple counts of grand larceny for rack ing up $3,821.71 in unauthorized charges on a frenemy's credit card, according to cops and prosecutors. The blond beauty, whose family claims to be descended from British bluebloods, allegedly used the stolen plastic to charge takeout burritos and Domino's pizza and buy a pair of $800 leggings, bathing suits and...