“Historic visit”

This comment was made by most US and international news agencies and media when covering the official visit to the US by Vietnamese State President Nguyen Minh Triet.
State President Nguyen Minh Triet and his wife returned to Hanoi on June 24, successfully concluding the official visit to the US at the invitation of US President George W. Bush and his wife. The success of the visit has opened a new page in the history of Vietnam-US relations.

This was considered a historic visit, as it was the first official visit to the US by a leader of unified and independent Vietnam since the end of the war 32 years ago, marking a new period of completely normalized bilateral relations. The visit has affirmed the two countries’ partnership, as well as their mutual respect for the role and position of each country. Both sides are now focused on strategic issues related to the development of bilateral ties, namely friendship and cooperation in the fields of economics, trade and investment.

During his five-day visit to the US, Mr Triet noted that Vietnamese people were willing to put aside the past and ready to boost friendship, solidarity and cooperation with the US. The image of the Vietnamese President walking and doing morning exercises together with American people in Washington, and visiting a farmer’s family in Virginia would be remembered by the American people as a symbol of the friendliness and open-heartedness of the Vietnamese people.

Striving for peace and cooperation is a common wish as well as an inevitable trend in the development of bilateral relations. Before and during the visit, a number of Vietnamese language newspapers in foreign countries had assumed that talks between President Triet and President Bush at the White House would be tense, and that Mr Bush would criticize Vietnam about human rights and religious matters. In fact, the talks between the two leaders took place in a friendly and open manner. Both sides agreed to focus on developing trade and economic relations in order to create a solid foundation for promoting bilateral cooperation in science and technology, education and settlement of war-related issues. With regard to issues left over by historical conditions and characteristics of each country, they pledged to continue dialogues in the hope of achieving a better mutual understanding and preventing the negative impacts of these issues on the development of bilateral ties.

Doan Xuan Hung, Director of the Foreign Ministry's Department of Economics said the two leaders consider trade and economic relations a pillar in bilateral relations in the future. The US is the world’s largest economy and considers Vietnam a significant market in the region. Now that Vietnam is developing strongly, not only the US but also many other countries regard Vietnam as a development center where their investors can enjoy good opportunities to do business in the long run.

While visiting New York, Washington and Los Angeles, President Triet met with leaders of US leading economic groups, delivered speeches at business forums and called on US businesses to further invest in Vietnam. Mr Triet also called at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), the financial centre of the US economy, where he delivered a message that Vietnam was determined to develop a market economy and turn the stock exchange into an important capital mobilization channel for the national economy. The message was warmly welcomed by US investors.

Many Vietnamese business leaders accompanying President Triet on the occasion signed economic agreements and contracts totally worth US$11 billion. This record figure shows prospects for long-term economic co-operation and also indicates the fine development of friendship between the two countries.

President Triet’s visit to the US aimed not only to promote Vietnam’s image of friendship, dynamism and openness to the US but also to reaffirm the Vietnamese Party and State’s policy of considering Vietnamese residents abroad and those in the US in particular as an indispensable part of the Vietnamese nation. Currently, as many as 1.5 million Americans of Vietnamese origin live in the US, accounting for half of the total number of overseas Vietnamese in the world.

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'Chemical Ali' sentenced to hang

A cousin of the late Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death by an Iraqi court for the mass murder of Kurds in 1988.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali" for using poison gas in the Anfal campaign, was convicted of genocide.
About 180,000 Kurd civilians died in the campaign, prosecutors say.
Two fellow defendants were also sentenced to death, two others received prison sentences and a fifth had charges dropped for lack of proof.
Saddam had also been on trial for the Anfal campaign when he was executed in December 2006 for other crimes.
According to Sunday's verdicts:
Ali Hassan al-Majid ("Chemical Ali"), ex-Baath leader in northern Iraq, was sentenced to death for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity
Sultan Hashim Ahmed, former defence minister, was sentenced to death by hanging for war crimes and crimes against humanity
Hussein Rashid al-Tikriti, ex-Republican Guard head, was sentenced to death for war crimes and crimes against humanity
Farhan al-Jibouri, ex-military commander, was sentenced to life in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity
Saber Abdul Aziz, ex-intelligence chief, was sentenced to life in prison for war crimes and crimes against humanity
Taher Muhammad al-Ani, ex-governor of Nineveh province was cleared of war crimes and crimes against humanity for lack of evidence
Majid stood in silence as his death sentence was pronounced. Others shouted they were innocent on hearing their verdicts.
It was not clear if any of the defendants planned to appeal.

BBC News

Searchers scour fields, woods, for missing woman

About 1,000 volunteers turned out to search for a pregnant mother Saturday, the third straight day searchers picked through rural areas of eastern Ohio.
Ned Davis, the father of 26-year-old Jessie Davis, begged volunteers to continue their efforts, spending much of the morning giving pep talks to groups of searchers.
"I thank them. I remind them to stay hydrated," he said in an interview. "And most importantly I tell them to bring my Jessie back."
Searching on Thursday and Friday of an area near Davis' home yielded nothing more than a marijuana patch.
About 17 square miles have been covered, and coordinators are sending searchers on Saturday to another four square miles of mostly farmland and wooded areas, said Cindy Wisdom, a spokeswoman for search organizer Texas EquuSearch.
Teams of volunteers are also looking in targeted areas around the home of Davis' boyfriend, Canton police officer Bobby Cutts Jr., Wisdom said.
Crews in helicopters were taking aerial photographs of the area and teams were preparing to search an unspecified body of water using sonar equipment, Wisdom said.
On Friday, a baby found three days after Davis was reported missing was ruled out as a clue to her disappearance. (Full story)
Authorities have said they're working around the clock on the case, trying to find the comforter and cell phone that vanished with Davis from her home in nearby Lake Township, and they're collecting information through a tip line.
Investigators have been mum on many details of their work, but they have released a short statement from Davis' 2-year-old-son, Blake, who may be their only eyewitness.
"Mommy was crying. Mommy broke the table. Mommy's in rug," the boy said.
Davis was reported missing one week ago Friday after her mother found the young woman's bedroom in disarray, the furniture overturned and Davis' young son home alone.
Davis' mother, Patricia Porter, was the last person known to have spoken to Davis, on June 13. She said she's focused on finding her daughter.
"We are not stopping and whoever's done this, I hope they don't think that we're going home," she said Friday. "No one's going home and we are not stopping until we find her and find who did this to her." (Watch Davis' mom discuss her fears )
Authorities have talked with Cutts and searched his home, but investigators have repeatedly said he is not a suspect. Cutts, 30, has said he had nothing to do with Davis' disappearance.
The pastor of the church Cutts attends has been praying with him every day and said Friday that Cutts, as a police officer, understands why the boyfriend of a missing woman would be under scrutiny.
"He understands what goes with the territory," said C.A. Richmond Sr., pastor at Logos Baptist Assembly. "Of course he is anxious for a resolution and disposition of the whole matter and he is confident they will find he had nothing to do with her disappearance."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

EU leaders struggle over treaty

European Union leaders have begun a second day of tough negotiations in Brussels amid disagreements over new rules to run the 27-member bloc.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said EU leaders were doing their "level best" to reach a compromise.
Germany, which holds the rotating EU presidency, has drafted proposals to replace a planned constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.
But both the UK and Poland are threatening to veto the blueprint.
Thursday's outline document dropped a reference - at France's instigation - to one of the founding principles of the common market.
The words "undistorted competition" were replaced with talk of a social market economy and full employment, says the BBC's Alex Ritson.

It was not clear if the wording would affect EU competition policy, or whether that policy was underpinned by remaining references to free markets.
Talks between the German and Polish leaders opened proceedings on Friday, but the agenda was otherwise fairly loose, with bilateral talks likely to focus on key issues.
After two-way talks, the 27 leaders are set to gather again at lunchtime.
The Germans are at some stage expected to produce a new draft of the mandate for the future treaty.
'Absurd' statement
British Prime Minister Tony Blair - attending his final EU meeting before leaving office next week - has set out a number of "red lines" beyond which he will not compromise.
These include proposals to make the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding.

BBC News

13 die in Iraq suicide bombing

A suicide bomber rammed his explosives-laden truck into a government building in northern Iraq Thursday killing at least 13 people, police said.
At least 35 people were wounded by the blast at the building, which house the police headquarters and mayors office for the city of Sulieman Pek, 50 miles (80 km) south of Kirkuk.
Earlier, at least four mortar rounds landed inside Baghdad's heavily-fortified Green Zone which houses the U.S. embassy, an Iraqi interior Ministry official said.
A column of black smoke was seen rising from the Green Zone.
On Wednesday, three Iraqi police officers were killed and 10 people wounded when a suicide car bomb exploded at an Iraqi police checkpoint in Ramadi about 65 miles west of Baghdad Wednesday afternoon, an Iraqi interior Ministry official said.
Also Wednesday, several Sunni mosques were attacked in what police believe are reprisals for a massive truck bombing that damaged a Shiite mosque and killed 87 people a day earlier, authorities said.
The mosques, all located in Babil province -- parts of which comprise the violence-wracked Triangle of Death -- were attacked Tuesday night, hours after the bombing outside Khalani Mosque, police in Hilla said.
Militia members attacked two mosques in Iskandariya and another near Mahawil, police said.
Authorities said they believe the attacks were perpetrated by Shiites angered by the bombing at Khalani Square, which damaged the nearby mosque of the same name Tuesday afternoon. At least 214 people were injured in the blast, according to the Interior Ministry.
The apparent reprisal attacks, all of which came within about 75 minutes of each other, began when gunmen stormed Osama bin Zaid, a mosque in Iskandariya, and set off bombs about 9:45 p.m.
Fifteen minutes later, a bomb exploded inside Abdulla al-Jabouri, another Iskandariya mosque that was attacked as recently as last week. The bomb caused minor damage, police said. (Watch cockpit videos of air attacks in Iskandariya )
About an hour later, in Ajbala, near Mahawil, militia members bombed the Asfouk Mosque and the house next door, which belonged to a local imam, police said.

CNN's Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this report.

New Orleans nurses offered immunity in deaths

Two nurses accused in the post-Katrina deaths of four patients at New Orleans' Memorial Medical Center have been offered immunity to testify before a special grand jury, sources close to the investigation tell CNN.
Sources also told CNN the grand jury has been told as many as nine patients may have died after being administered what Louisiana's attorney general called a "lethal cocktail" of medications by hospital staff.
Family members said staffers used the drugs to kill patients so caregivers could flee appalling conditions inside the hospital after the storm.
Dr. Anna Pou and nurses Cheri Landry and Lori Budo were arrested in July 2006 after a 10-month investigation. Louisiana Attorney General Charles C. Foti charged them with second-degree murder.
Sources close to the investigation told CNN the two nurses are expected to testify before the grand jury in the next two weeks, which could signal a possible wrapping up of the case. It could also signal the main target of the investigation is Pou, a physician who was under contract with Memorial Medical Center when Katrina struck.
Attorneys for Landry and Budo did not immediately return calls from CNN regarding their testimony. Pou's attorney, Rick Simmons, provided a statement saying Pou has had no role in the grand jury proceedings.
"We remain confident that once all the facts are known, all medical personnel will be exonerated of any criminal charges," the statement continued. "The fact that certain witnesses may or may not be talking to the grand jury does not change that fact."
'Lethal cocktail' administered
The investigation determined that the four patients -- ages 63, 68, 91 and 93 -- were given a "lethal cocktail" of morphine and midazolam hydrochloride, both central nervous system depressants, Foti said.
None of the patients had been prescribed the drugs by their caregivers and none of the accused treated the four before the injections, Foti said.
"This was not euthanasia," Foti said at a news conference last summer. "This was homicide."
Pou, Landry and Budo have denied the charges, and their attorneys have said they acted heroically, staying to treat patients rather than evacuating.
The case has languished since. Foti said he turned his findings over to Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan, who by law must either file charges or reject the case.
Instead, Jordan impaneled a grand jury, and has vowed to let it decide what charges, if any, should be sought. Jordan also directed New Orleans Coroner Frank Minyard to hire outside forensic experts to review the case.
But sources close to the investigation say the case has moved very slowly. And one of the forensic experts in the case told CNN he has yet to testify.
Dr. Michael Baden, the former chief medical examiner for New York City, said Minyard hired him to review the deaths. Baden said he has not been asked to appear before the the grand jury.
Minyard has testified in the case. So have two investigators for the Louisiana attorney general's office.
CNN has learned a third nurse, not charged in the investigation, has also testified, saying she accompanied Pou on the seventh floor of the hospital to make sure all the patients left behind were deceased.
Dalton Savwoir, a spokesman for the district attorney's office, said the slow movement of the case is intentional.
"It's definitely still in the investigatory phase," Savwoir told CNN. He would not confirm the witness list and refused to speculate on whether the two accused nurses have been offered immunity if they testify.

© 2007 Cable News Network.

Mourinho's melon metaphor for youth

Premiership - Jose Mourinho has produced a bizarre metaphor to explain the trouble with bringing youth players through the ranks at a Premiership football club - and it is all to do with melons. With escalating transfer fees in England and UEFA's future commitment to ensuring that clubs feature home-grown players, it is becoming more important that they identify and nurture the talent at their disposal.
Speaking to the Daily Mirror, Mourinho said: "Young players are a little bit like melons. Only when you open and taste the melon are you 100 percent sure that the melon is good.
"Sometimes you have beautiful melons but they don't taste very good and some other melons are a bit ugly and when you open them, the taste is fantastic.
"One thing is youth football, one thing is professional football. The bridge is a difficult one to cross and they have to play with us and train with us to taste the melon.
"For example Scott Sinclair, the way he played against Arsenal and Manchester United, we know the melon we have."
Sinclair, who was on loan at Plymouth for part of last season, has returned to Home Park on a season-long deal.
"Now it is a question of the best thing for his short-term future because his long-term future will be at Chelsea," Mourinho clarified.
Chelsea lost out in the Premiership title race to Manchester United, but gained a measure of revenge by trumping Sir Alex Ferguson's side in the FA Cup final.

Jonathan Symcox

Clearer picture for IPTV tech?

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.-Microsoft thinks the TV is about ready for software.
Granted, Microsoft has been thinking that for more than a decade. But there's some reason to think that this time the folks from Redmond could be right. Although the first stabs at interactive TV fizzled, WebTV topped out as a niche product and most of the cable industry decided it could live without Microsoft running its set-top boxes, a key technology shift may have cracked open the door that Microsoft has been knocking on all these years.
The change is TV's move beyond satellite and cable to so-called IPTV, that is, television that is distributed using Internet Protocol technology, usually by telephone companies. On Monday, Microsoft is introducing the latest version of its software, adding support for sharing digital photos and music throughout the home. And unlike its past TV efforts, Microsoft is finding some big name companies willing to bet on its technology.
AT&T for example, said in January, it was accelerating its IPTV plans, and Microsoft has a number of key overseas telecommunications companies signed on for its technology, including Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, Swisscom and British Telecom.
IPTV has been on the cusp of reality for some time, gaining increasing importance as telecommunications companies feel the pinch in their telephony business from Internet-based calling and look to offer a "triple play" of voice, video and Internet services. But after years of talking about offering TV, the telephone companies are starting to invest serious dollars in their IPTV efforts.
Microsoft's entry into IPTV had humble origins. Back in 2002, most of the company's TV unit was focused on developing software for cable set-top boxes. But two people--Jim Baldwin and Peter Barrett--were thinking about sending video streams over the Internet.

Feared drowned, girl reappears two days later

MOMENCE, Ill. - A 5-year-old girl who was feared drowned with her grandfather on a boating trip startled searchers Friday when she emerged from the woods — naked, scratched and holding raspberries.
Crews had pulled her grandfather's body from the Kankakee River in eastern Illinois just hours earlier.
"People were like, 'Who's that little girl? That can't be her, can it?'" Kankakee Sheriff's Chief Deputy Ken McCabe said. "I went up to her (and) asked, 'How you doing? What's your name?'"

When authorities told Hannah Klamecki's family — already grieving the loss of her grandfather — that she was alive, the home erupted in screaming.
Hannah was taken to a hospital as a precaution. She slept with her parents and a teddy bear at her side before being released. Cradling the bear, she spoke freely of her ordeal Friday evening.
‘I was scared’"I was scared last night when everybody was gone," she said. "I went searching all over the world to look for the cottage (where her grandparents live)."
Hannah had scratches on her face and body and thick dirt under her nails. She had poison ivy rashes on her legs and couldn't walk because splinters and thorns cut her feet.
Hannah and her grandfather, David Klamecki, 62, were last seen Wednesday evening on the river near Momence, about 45 miles south of Chicago.
Authorities believe the river current swept the girl away from a small island where she and her grandfather had stopped to swim and to the shore of the mainland where she eventually was found.
She told searchers she was wearing floats on her arms and pulled herself from the water with a branch.
"That's a tough little girl, I tell you," McCabe said.
Hannah said she had taken off her bathing suit because it was muddy and itchy, friends of the family said.

© 2007 MSNBC.com

Hamas consolidates power in Gaza

Fatah members were fleeing Gaza Friday as Hamas began trying to round up the remaining elements of the rival faction, Hamas radio reported.
According to Hamas, an unknown number of Fatah officials have left the territory and crossed into Egypt.
The developments came as Hamas was consolidating its power in Gaza a day after claiming control over Gaza City's presidential compound, the final symbol of Palestinian Authority power there.
On Friday, Hamas gunmen were seen going through Fatah-dominated areas, looking for wanted men and collecting weapons, according to CNN's Talal Abu-Rahman.
He reported that several Fatah members, including senior field commanders had been detained.
Loud speakers coming from Gaza City mosques also called for Fatah officials to turn themselves in.
On Thursday, President Mahmoud Abbas, of Fatah, dissolved the Hamas-led Palestinian unity government.
The emergency decree dismissed Prime Minister Ismail Haniya and announced that an interim government staffed by Fatah would be created.
The president vowed to hold new elections "as soon as the situation on the ground permits," Abbas adviser Tayeb Abdel Rahim said.
But Haniya, whose militant Islamic party won control of the Palestinian parliament in 2006, rejected the "hasty" decree and said his government would remain in office.
"Our presence in the government came about from democratic and popular will and through the ballot boxes," he said in a late-night speech. "We restate that we will continue to follow democratic conduct and respect the political system and all of its components which came through the elections."
After four days of intense fighting that left at least 70 Palestinians dead, Hamas fighters waved their green banners atop the headquarters of the Preventive Security Service in Gaza City and took numerous prisoners. (Watch how Hamas crushed Fatah)
Hamas fighters ransacked captured installations Thursday and led away shirtless Fatah prisoners. Their fates were unknown, but a Hamas representative in Lebanon, Osama Hamdan, denied reports that Fatah captives were being executed in the streets.
Abbas and the rest of the Palestinian Authority leadership are based in Ramallah, in the West Bank.
But the collapse of the Fatah-controlled Palestinian security forces in Gaza raised questions in Israel, the United States and the surrounding Arab region about the future of any settlement of the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Hamas and Fatah formed a unity government in February in an effort to stop periodic street battles and restart international funding, particularly from the United States and the European Union. Direct funding was cut off after Hamas refused to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

© 2007 Cable News Network.

Virginia Tech report: Share mental health data

Cowed by confusing privacy laws, authorities sometimes fail to raise red flags about potentially dangerous students, and peers keep quiet out of a false sense of duty, a federal report on the Virginia Tech shootings concluded Wednesday.
On April 16, Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 fellow students and faculty members before killing himself on the Blacksburg, Virginia, campus in the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.
The 23-year-old student had been described as a loner by his roommates and the violence in his writings had worried his teachers. After Cho expressed suicidal thoughts to a roommate, who then alerted others, Cho was given a psychological evaluation and a judge ordered he be treated.
But that order was not entered into the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, and Cho was able to buy the two guns he used in the shooting spree.
"Accurate and complete information on individuals prohibited from possessing firearms is essential to keep guns out of the wrong hands," the report concluded.
Part of the problem is that educators, doctors and police aren't sure what they're permitted to reveal about someone's medical history, the report found.
"We need to do a much better job educating educators, [the] mental health community and law enforcement that they can, in fact, share information when a person's safety or a community's safety is in fact potentially endangered," Health and Human Services Secretary Michael O. Leavitt told reporters after delivering the report to President Bush.
"When a person is in danger themselves, or when a community is in danger, the existing law does provide the capacity for law enforcement to work with school communities, and school communities to work with the mental health community to get people help," he said.
On April 21, five days after the massacre, Bush asked the heads of the departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services to learn from educators, mental health experts, police and state and local officials in a dozen states how the federal government can help prevent similar calamities.
Communication of concerns was the dominant theme.
"We repeatedly heard reports of 'information silos' within educational institutions and among educational staff, mental health providers, and public safety officials that impede appropriate information sharing," said the report.
On the state level, a Virginia inspector general's report this week recommended that the state look at changing its mental-treatment commitment process to allow such authorities to contribute their observations and opinions. It also recommended increasing the number of "secure crisis stabilization programs" -- basically mental health intensive care units where patients can be held involuntarily for short periods.
State laws do not always ensure that information on people not allowed to own handguns is sent to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, the federal report said.

© 2007 Cable News Network.

Kodak boosts digital camera sensitivity

Eastman Kodak has developed a relatively straightforward change to digital camera image sensors that could help with a major photography bugaboo: poor performance in dim conditions.
The new technology, to be unveiled Thursday and used in products in 2008, increases light sensitivity of existing image sensors by a factor of two to four, said Mike DeLuca, marketing manager for Eastman Kodak's image sensor solutions group.
Translated into photography terms, that means a camera's shutter speed could be cut in half or a quarter, helping cut camera shake or motion blur problems. Alternatively, it could let photographers shoot in low light with less image "noise"--the pesky multicolor speckles that degrade photographs.
"That's the real bane, when you think about it. There's just not enough light to collect," said IDC analyst Christopher Chute. Of Kodak's new method, he said, "It's pretty revolutionary."
Light sensitivity has become a serious problem in digital cameras, particularly as higher megapixel counts have increased noise levels in image sensors. And unlike some efforts to improve digital cameras, the new Kodak technique can be applied to any existing image sensor, leading Kodak to hope it will be able to license the high-sensitivity technology far and wide.
"We absolutely feel there is a big opportunity for this...to become a new standard in the industry," DeLuca said. "We really want to propagate this out as far as the market feels it should be taken."
Kodak's new method better reflects how human eyes actually work, separately registering color and brightness information--and devoting more pixels to brightness, where the human eye is sensitive to detail.
The company's technology doesn't require any new fundamental changes to the heart of the image sensor, where a grid of electronic detectors converts incoming light first into electric signals and then digital information. Instead, the new technology adds some neutral "panchromatic" pixels to the usual array of red, green and blue pixels in the grid, then uses a different software algorithm to reconstruct the full-color images from the sensor output.