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LOS ANGELES (AFP) – A 32-year veteran who helped clean up a corruption-plagued division of the Los Angeles Police Department was unveiled Wednesday as the city's new top cop. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced the appointment of deputy chief Charlie Beck as head of the LAPD following the decision of chief William Bratton to resign earlier this year. Villaraigosa said Beck was "the right man to lead the Los Angeles Police Department at the right time." "He's a man of character and integrity. He's a police officer who is tough on crime, and he's a leader with deep respect...

PRISTINA, Kosovo – Thousands of ethnic Albanians braved low temperatures and a cold wind in Kosovo's capital Pristina to welcome former President Bill Clinton on Sunday as he attended the unveiling of an 11-foot (3.5-meter) statue of himself on a key boulevard that also bears his name. Clinton is celebrated as a hero by Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority for launching NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999 that stopped the brutal Serb forces' crackdown on independence-seeking ethnic Albanians. This is his first visit to Kosovo since it declared independence from Serbia last year. Many waved American, Albanian and Kosovo flags...

LONDON (AFP) – Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on Monday a 16-billion-pound sale of state assets including a high-speed railway and a betting service to cut soaring debt caused by the economic crisis. Brown -- facing a likely election defeat next year by David Cameron's Conservative Party -- wants to halve Britain's deficit in four years. But opposition politicians derided the asset sale as a political gimmick and compared it to a "national car boot sale" and "selling the family silver." The planned disposals, which also include a 33-percent stake in European uranium consortium URENCO and the Student Loan Company....

FRANKFURT (AFP) – Germany on Thursday launched its first full bank nationalisation since the republic's birth in 1949, with a key US investor set to pay a high price as officials try to stabilise financial markets. The government, acting through the Financial Markets Stabilisation Fund (SoFFin), said it would offer shareholders in troubled Hypo Real Estate 1.39 euros per share for their stock. That price means the state, which already holds 8.7 percent of the bank, will have to pay about 290 million euros (385 million dollars) to buy out other shareholders. Investors will have two weeks to tender their...

LOS ANGELES (AFP) – US automaker Tesla Motors unveiled its state-of-the-art five-seat sedan here Thursday, billed as the world's first mass-produced, highway-capable electric car. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk said the company, which last year released a breakthrough two-seater roadster, aims to have its sleek "Model S" sedan rolling off assembly lines by 2011. The futuristic zero-emission vehicle will be powered by lithium-ion battery packs capable of between 160 and 300 miles (257 and 482 kilometers) per charge. The car has an anticipated base price of 57,400 dollars but will cost less than 50,000 after a federal tax credit of...

HARARE (AFP) – Zimbabwe unveiled a 100 trillion dollar note Friday in the latest grim measure of its staggering economic collapse, heightening the urgency of a new round of unity talks set for next week. Veteran leader Robert Mugabe and opposition chief Morgan Tsvangirai are set to hold talks Monday with key regional leaders in a bid to salvage a four-month-old unity accord, which has yet to be implemented. The stalemate over disputed elections last year has only fuelled the economic and humanitarian crisis that has impoverished the country, leaving nearly half the population dependent on food aid as a...

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US president-elect Barack Obama Saturday unveiled a broad proposal to boost job growth and the troubled American economy, a top priority for the incoming administration. "Economists from across the political spectrum agree that if we don't act swiftly and boldly, we could see a much deeper economic downturn that could lead to double digit unemployment and the American Dream slipping further and further out of reach," Obama said in his weekly radio address "That's why we need an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan that not only creates jobs in the short-term but spurs economic growth and competitiveness...

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa unveiled an ambitious long-range plan Monday for securing enough solar power to meet one-tenth of the city's energy needs by 2020, a move aimed at making L.A. a hub of the solar-energy industry. Appearing at a South Los Angeles manufacturing plant where solar panels are made, Villaraigosa said the initiative will help the Department of Water and Power wean itself off of fossil fuels -- natural gas and coal -- as part of the effort to address global warming. The plan calls for enough solar panels to produce 1,280 megawatts of power, a goal that...

In commemoration of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope completing its 100,000th orbit in its 18th year of exploration and discovery, scientists at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., have aimed Hubble to take a snapshot of a dazzling region of celestial birth and renewal. Hubble peered into a small portion of the nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper, left). The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion. It lies about 170,000 light-years away near the Tarantula nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in our Local Group of...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - California on Thursday took a major step forward on its global warming fight by unveiling an ambitious plan for clean cars, renewable energy and stringent caps on big polluting industries. The plan, which aims to reduce pollutants by 10 percent from current levels by 2020 while driving investment in new energy technologies that will benefit the state's economy, is the most comprehensive yet by any U.S. state. It could serve as a blueprint not only for the rest of the United States, ... "This is of tremendous importance, not only for California," Mary Nichols, chairman of...

WASHINGTON - President Bush unveiled a $3.1 trillion budget proposal on Monday that supports a sizable increase in military spending to fight the war on terrorism and protects his signature tax cuts. Bush called the document "a good, solid budget," but Democrats, and even a top Republican, attacked the plan for using budgetary gimmicks to project a budget surplus in four years. The budget proposal, which shows the government spending $3 trillion in a 12-month period for the first time in history, squeezes most of government outside of national security, and also seeks $196 billion in savings over the next...

BERKELEY — City leaders on Monday took a hydrogen-powered bus to a solar-powered building made of rice straw bales to unveil an innovative new program to reduce Berkeley's greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. About a year after 81 percent of Berkeley voters approved Measure G, Berkeley city leaders have released the draft Climate Action Plan, a blueprint for getting Berkeley residents and merchants to do their part to save the planet from global warming, city leaders said. "Berkeley is putting meat on the bones of Measure G, which is important. It's a very (inclusive) effort and it's...

LAS VEGAS - A 150-inch high-definiton plasma TV unveiled by Panasonic is the world's largest to date, the Japanese consumer electronics company claimed Monday at the International Consumer Electronics Show. The plasma panel features an 8.84 million pixel image resolution. Its screen is the equivalent of nine 50-inch sets, with an effective viewing area of 11 feet, the company said. It's a step up from Panasonic's 103-inch version, which cost $70,000 when it launched. The company did not say in a news release how much the 150-inch panel will cost. Panasonic's other prototypes introduced at CES include a 42-inch panel...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush unveiled a long-term strategy on climate change on Thursday, with plans to gather the countries that emit the most greenhouse gases and set a global emissions goal. Bush would also cut tariff barriers to sharing environmental technology as part of a strategy announced as he prepared to attend a Group of Eight summit in Germany next weekly likely to be dominated by addressing global climate change. The U.S. strategy calls for consensus on long-term goals for reducing the greenhouse gases that spur global warming, but not before the end of 2008, White House...

NEW YORK, New York, May 16, 2007 (ENS) - Former President Bill Clinton today announced the creation of a $5 billion global effort to fight global warming by retrofitting existing buildings with more energy efficient products, thereby reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. A project of the Clinton Climate Initiative, the program brings together four of the world's largest energy service companies, five of the world's largest banks, and 15 of the world's largest cities to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings. President Clinton announced the Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program at the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit now underway...

WASHINGTON - In a worldwide survey of repressive regimes, 17 countries including Libya and North Korea are singled out by a human rights group as "the worst of the worst" for maltreatment of their citizens last year. Most of the cited countries are repeat-offenders, and 45 countries were rated not free to some degree. The eight countries judged to have the worst records on political rights and civil liberties were Burma, Cuba, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Similarly branded for particularly repressive behavior were two territories, Chechnya and Tibet. Within these countries and territories "state control over...

WINDSOR, Ontario - Canada unveiled a major border security and prosperity initiative Friday, saying it would spend more than $368 million over the next five years to protect its border from terrorist, economic and environmental threats. Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day made the announcement at the Canada-U.S. border crossing between Windsor and Detroit, where one-third of the $1.6 billion in daily trade between the North American neighbors passes. "I even sometimes surprise my American friends when I remind them that the trade that comes across the Ambassador Bridge in total is greater than all of the trade that exists between...

Dixie courthouse unveils the Ten Commandments (headline) Http://www.gainesville.com

HAGA-GUN, Japan (Reuters) - Honda Motor Co. (7267.T) said on Monday it has developed a new and simple diesel powertrain that is as clean as gasoline-fuelled cars, unveiling plans to mount it on a car for the U.S. market by 2009. Diesel engines, which now power half of Europe's new cars, are slowly gaining traction with fuel-conscious consumers around the world since they typically get 30 percent better mileage than gasoline cars. Their weakness has been the higher exhaust levels of nitrogen oxide (NOx), a greenhouse gas, and carmakers are racing to come up with ways to clear the world's...

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. - Consumers needing a cell phone or accessories on the run have a new option now that Motorola Inc. has rolled out a series of what the company calls "robotic stores." The vending machinelike stores unveiled Wednesday will carry about 30 products, initially including 12 phones and 18 accessories, said Bob Many, Motorola's director of automated retailing. The "Instantmoto" will go into 20 malls and airports nationwide as part of a pilot program. Chicago has three outlets operating, including one in the Macy's store downtown. The program will be expanded depending on its success, Many said. Phone customers...