NEWS TODAY: Quick tips on car hire

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NEWS TODAY - Up until last year, we hired a car at Alicante airport every summer during our vacation. I guess it is pretty much the same all around Europe on how to rent a car. So allow me not to go into it.

But, I found some special issues which you might consider on your next car hire in Alicante:

* Baby/Children Seat
If you are travelling with a baby or child (we did over many years) you should really consider bringing your baby/child-seat with you. Sure, you can hire them with your car - but we tried this twice - and always got just dirty and insecure seats. We are certainly not the only one, because whenever I wait for my luggage at the airport I see people carrying there baby seats.

So don't care if it means a little bit of hassle - for your childrens safety it is worth it!
* Air Condition
Starting from April until November temperatures can be up to 40 C. Even now (in March) we already had days with 28 C. Needless to say that either air condition or opening the window manually are the two choices you have. (I go for the first option :-)

* Booking at Home
Please make sure you book your car via your travel agency or via an internet travel agent. It is cheaper and easier, as particularly during summer season car rental companies are heavily booked. Book your car from home - before you travel to Alicante.

* Extra Driver
It doesn't matter if you booked an extra driver at home - make sure at the car rental desk that they got the extra driver registered. If you and your partner want to drive the car - it must be in the papers you sign at the airport - (it does not matter what you might have ordered at your travel agency).

My wife and I had exactly this problem some years ago. So - please double check, if the extra driver is in the paper.

NEWS TODAY : T-Mobile

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NEWS TODAY - T-Mobile is a mobile network operator headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom and belongs to the FreeMove Business alliance.

T-Mobile is a group of mobile phone corporate subsidiaries (all under the ownership of Deutsche Telekom) that operate GSM and UMTS networks in Europe and the United States. The "T" stands for "Telekom." Most subsidiaries of Deutsche Telekom have names beginning with "T-" like T-Home, T-Systems and T-Online. T-Mobile also has financial stakes in mobile operators in Eastern Europe. Globally, T-Mobile has 101 million subscribers, making it the world's sixth largest mobile phone service provider by subscribers and the third largest multinational after the United Kingdom's Vodafone and Spain's Telefonica.

T-Mobile International has a substantial presence in eleven European countries: Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Macedonia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and the United Kingdom as well as in the United States.

In recent years Deutsche Telekom attempted to acquire rival mobile network operator O2, but in 2006 it was acquired by Spain's Telefonica.

As well as kit sponsors for FC Bayern Munich, Ferencvárosi TC and West Bromwich Albion, and a supporting sponsor of Birmingham City F.C., T-Mobile is also a sponsor of several sports events, some of which carry the company name. For example, it sponsors the Austrian first division football competition, the T-Mobile Bundesliga. It was also the official global mobile phone carrier for the 2006 FIFA World Cup (football) in Germany and sponsored its own cycling team, the T-Mobile Team.

T-Mobile USA is the United States based subsidiary of T-Mobile International AG. The US company was previously known as VoiceStream Wireless or Powertel. In May 2001, VoiceStream was acquired by Deutsche Telekom for US$24 billion, and in September 2002 changed the company name nationally to T-Mobile. Headquartered in Factoria, Bellevue, Washington, T-Mobile USA is currently the fourth-largest wireless carrier in the U.S. market with approximately 27 million customers as of August 2007 and annual revenue of US$17.1 billion.

The US T-Mobile network predominately uses the GSM/GPRS 1900 MHz frequency-band, making it the largest 1900 MHz network in the US. Service is available in 46 of the top 50 US markets, reaching 244 million potential customers. By mid-2008 the network is forecast to expand to 98 of 100 largest markets and 259 million potential customers.

On September 17, 2007 T-Mobile USA announced that it will acquire SunCom Wireless for US$2.4 billion. The acquisition will improve network coverage in North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, and Puerto Rico. At the end of the second quarter of 2007, SunCom had more than 1.1 million customers. The acquisition is subject to governmental and regulatory approvals as well as approval by SunCom shareholders. The companies expect the deal to close in the first half of 2008.

Internet hotspots (802.11 WiFi)

In addition to mobile phone service, T-Mobile also operates WiFi hotspots in the United States and Europe. In the USA alone, it operates over 8,000 (as of December 22, 2006) T-Mobile HotSpot locations for Internet access — including such locations as airports, airline clubs, Starbucks coffeehouses, Kinko's, Borders Books and Music, Hyatt and Red Roof Inn Hotels. The US WiFi infrastructure was completely replaced when T-Mobile bought the Wireless ISP MobileStar. In addition, Sony Computer Entertainment on behalf of T-Mobile introduced a HotSpot Locator and HotSpot Promotional Period (6 months from activation) for the Sony PSP system and Sony Mylo system. Both promotions are separate, and, by combining the total time allotted for each system, users can have up to one year free access, by using six months on the Mylo, and six months on the PlayStation Portable.

As of September 2007, T-Mobile USA has received 6 consecutive J.D Power Awards for customer service, a feat that has yet to be matched in any industr

NEWS TODAY: Los angeles criminal

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NEWS TODAY-The criminal defense attorneys charge in different ways. Most of the times they charge you on an hourly basis. They would calculate the number of hours that they would have spent on your case and charge you accordingly. Some of the attorneys charge a flat fee where the client is required to set up an escrow account and the attorney withdraws money as per the requirement. However, in case of complicated cases it becomes difficult. Usually the attorneys offer hybrid fee agreement that comes with a minimum refundable retainer but this goes up as the case passes that amount.

There are other attorneys that charge on contingency basis. This means that if the attorney is successful in getting you justice only then would he charge you the fees. However, this type of fees structure is not ethical in criminal defense cases. It is suggested that when you approach a criminal defense attorney then you should talk by issues related to fees in the first meeting itself. Ask the attorney what are the things that you are billed for.

Los angeles criminal defense attorney

If you or any of your loved one is charged with a crime then hiring the right attorney can be a difficult task. When hiring a criminal defense attorney it is very important to consider issues like ability, price, and experience. Similarly it is also important how is your relation with your attorney.

Selecting a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney

The first thing that you should determine is what are the qualities you are looking for in your criminal defense attorney. Do you wish to have someone who is young and hardworking or someone that has well-established credentials? Also consider the fact that does the attorney need to have knowledge about a certain area of criminal law to deal with your case. You can start by asking your friends if they know any criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles. You should also find out the legal organization that the attorney is a member of either the State of the County Bar Association. If the attorney belongs to a National or State association then it is a good thing.

You should make sure that the criminal defense attorney has previous experience in dealing with such cases. You should ask the attorney about the level of experience that he or she has and whether he would solely be handling your case or you would have to consult his legal staff. Also make sure that the attorney to whom you speak should not refer your case to any other attorney in the middle of the case. It is very important that when you hire a criminal defense attorney you should be comfortable in talking to the attorney and should discuss all the minor and major things that can have an affect on your case.

Los Angeles criminal defense attorney

If you are charged with a criminal case and are looking for criminal defense attorneys in Los Angeles then here is something that can be of help to you. Below are mentioned some of the criminal defense attorneys located in Los Angeles.

Kestenbaum, Eisner & Gorin, LLP:
They have more than 50 years of experience in dealing with criminal defense cases. They represent people who are charged with crimes like general criminal offenses, both misdemeanors and felonies, DUI, white collar crimes, domestic violence, sex crimes, juvenile crimes, drug crimes, and theft. You can contact them at Airport Center
9841 Airport Boulevard,
#1200; Los Angeles, CA 90045;
confidential consultations: 877-781-1570.


How can you help the criminal defense attorney?

When you are charges with a criminal case then it is important that you offer all the information that you can to your criminal defense attorney. The more the information that you provide to your criminal defense attorney in the first meeting the better representation you would get and the attorney would charge you with a realistic fee. When you call the attorney you should have information about court date and the other important details like charges, bail amount, court location, and contact information for your bondsman.

It is very important that you be honest with your attorney and provide him or her with a clear account of all the things that have happened in a sequential order. If there are any witnesses to your case then you should provide your attorney with the name and address of the person. You should be sure that you do not sign any papers without the consent of your attorney and you should provide the maximum details to the questions that the attorney asks you about your case.

News To Day: Pangeran dan Putri Jepang Akishino di terima Presiden SBY

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News To Day : "Presiden SBY"
Rencananya, Presiden SBY akan menerima mereka di Istana Negara, Jl Medan Merdeka Utara, Jakarta, Sabtu (19/1/2008) sekitar pukul 11.00 WIB.

Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono dijadwalkan akan menerima kunjungan kehormatan Pangeran dan Putri Kekaisaran Jepang Akishino. Mereka datang ke Indonesia sebagai utusan dari Kaisar Jepang Akihito.

Rencananya, Pangeran dan Putri Akishino akan berada di Indonesia hingga 24 Januari 2008. Selama di Indonesia, mereka dijadwalkan akan mengunjungi kampus UGM. Mereka juga akan berwisata ke Candi Borobudur dan Candi Prambanan.

Agenda utama kedatangan Pangeran dan Putri Jepang itu adalah untuk menghadiri peringatan tahun emas hubungan RI-Jepang. Puncak acara peringatan akan berlangsung di TMII pada Minggu 20 Januari 2008.

Mereka juga akan meninjau pelaksanaan sejumlah proyek yang dibiayai oleh JICA.

News Today : Astronauts Earn Honors

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News To Day : "Astronauts"

Astronauts Robert D. Cabana and Bryan D. O'Connor along with former astronauts John E. Blaha and Loren J. Shriver will be added to an elite list of Hall of Fame members that include Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Alan Shepard, Jim Lovell, Sally Ride and John Young.

The 2008 inductees were selected by a committee of former NASA officials and flight controllers, journalists, historians and Hall of Fame astronauts.

With four space shuttle missions to his credit, Cabana was the commander of the first International Space Station assembly mission. Currently, he is the director of NASA's Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.

O'Connor was shuttle pilot on mission STS-61B and commander of STS-40, the first shuttle mission dedicated to life science studies. He now serves NASA as the Chief, Safety and Mission Assurance with responsibility for the safety, reliability, maintainability and quality assurance of all NASA programs.

Over the span of 17 years, Blaha flew on five space shuttle missions and set the American men's space record for time in space during his four months on orbit. Blaha retired from NASA in 1997 and is active in private industry.

Shriver, a veteran of three shuttle flights, commanded the STS-31 mission to deploy the Hubble Space Telescope and served at NASA's Kennedy Space Center as the Launch and Payload Processing deputy director from 1997 to 2000.

This esteemed assembly is the seventh group of space shuttle astronauts named to the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame and brings the total number of inductees to 70.

A public ceremony to commemorate the veteran astronauts will be held on May 3 at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

sumber: cnn.com

NEWS TO DAY : Singer Lily Allen Suffers Miscarriage

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News To Day : "Entertainment News"

British pop star Lily Allen got some tragic news shortly after returning from vacation with boyfriend Ed Simons of the band the Chemical Brothers.

"Lily Allen's
Life and Loss
Shortly after returning home from vacation with boy friend Ed Simons, 37, pop singer Lily Allen, 22, suffered a miscarriage. Her pregnancy was first reported just last month. "I have got my eye on the prize, which is having kids and getting married and cooking dinner and doing homework with my children," she said at the time."

"We can confirm that Lily Allen has suffered a miscarriage. She and her partner Ed Simons will be making no further comment and we ask that their privacy be respected during this difficult time," a spokesman told The Sun.

Before becoming pregnant last year, Allen was known as a notorious party girl. But pending motherhood had inspired her to change her ways.

“I definitely have got my eye on the prize, which is having kids and getting married and cooking dinner and doing homework with my children," Allen told Bazaar.

Despite her excitement about being a mother, Allen had turned down requests to put out a line of maternity clothes.

"I'm not the best example. I'm pregnant and a bit young, aren't I? My demographic is generally young girls, so I don't think a maternity line is suitable. It isn't the best impression to give them," she told the Mirror in December.

sumber : cnn.com

News To Day : Police: Tiger attack victim was drinking, admitted taunting

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News To Day : "attack "

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- One of the three victims of San Francisco Zoo tiger attack was intoxicated and admitted to yelling and waving at the animal while standing atop the railing of the big cat enclosure, police said in court documents filed Thursday.

aul Dhaliwal, 19, told the father of Carlos Sousa Jr., 17, who was killed, that the three yelled and waved at the tiger but insisted they never threw anything into its pen to provoke the cat, according to a search warrant affidavit obtained by the San Francisco Chronicle.

"As a result of this investigation, (police believe) that the tiger may have been taunted/agitated by its eventual victims," according to Inspector Valerie Matthews, who prepared the affidavit. Police believe that "this factor contributed to the tiger escaping from its enclosure and attacking its victims," she said.

Sousa's father, Carlos Sousa Sr., said Dhaliwal told him the three stood on a 3-foot-tall metal railing a few feet from the edge of the tiger moat. "When they got down they heard a noise in the bushes, and the tiger was jumping out of the bushes on him (Paul Dhaliwal)," the documents said.

Police found a partial shoe print that matched Paul Dhaliwal's on top of the railing, Matthews said in the documents

The papers said Paul Dhaliwal told Sousa that no one was dangling his legs over the enclosure. Authorities believe the tiger leaped or climbed out of the enclosure, which had a wall 4 feet shorter than the recommended minimum.

The affidavit also cites multiple reports of a group of young men taunting animals at the zoo, the Chronicle reported.

Mark Geragos, an attorney for the Dhaliwal brothers, did not immediately return a call late Thursday by The Associated Press for comment. He has repeatedly said they did not taunt the tiger.

Calls to Sousa and Michael Cardoza, an attorney for the Sousa family, also weren't returned.
Toxicology results for Dhaliwal showed that his blood alcohol level was 0.16 -- twice the legal limit for driving, according to the affidavit. His 24-year-old brother Kulbir Dhaliwal and Sousa also had alcohol in their blood but within the legal limit, Matthews wrote.

All three also had marijuana in their systems, Matthews said. Kulbir Dhaliwal told police that the three had smoked pot and each had "a couple shots of vodka" before leaving San Jose for the zoo on Christmas Day the affidavit said.

Police found a small amount of marijuana in Kulbir Dhaliwal's 2002 BMW, which the victims rode to the zoo, as well as a partially filled bottle of vodka, according to court documents.

Investigators also recovered messages and images from the cell phones, but apparently nothing incriminating in connection with the tiger attack, the Chronicle reported.

Sam Singer, a spokesman for the zoo, said he had not seen the documents but believed the victims did taunt the animal, even though they claim they hadn't.

"Those brothers painted a completely different picture to the public and the press," Singer said. "Now it's starting to come out that what they said is not true."

sumber: cnn.com

News To Day : Tape: American al Qaeda member renounces citizenship

News To Day : "Al Qaeda"
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Topic - Tape: American al Qaeda member renounces citizenship
(CNN) -- On a videotape released Sunday, American al Qaeda member Adam Yahiye Gadahn renounces his U.S. citizenship, destroys his passport and cites U.S. President Bush's upcoming trip to the Middle East.

The 50-minute tape -- titled "An Invitation to Reflection and Repentance" -- was released by As Sahab, al Qaeda's video production wing and was provided to CNN by www.LauraMansfield.com, a Web site that analyzes terrorism.

In it, Gadahn renounces his citizenship to protest the imprisonment of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, a blind Egyptian Muslim leader serving a life sentence for his role in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center; and John Walker Lindh, the American Taliban who was arrested in Afghanistan in 2001, and others.

Gadahn displays his passport to the camera, rips it in half and says, "Don't get too excited -- I don't need it to travel anyway."

Though Gadahn speaks mostly in English, he references Bush -- who is to travel this week to the Middle East -- only in Arabic.

"We raise an urgent appeal to our mujahedin brothers in the Muslim Palestine, the Arabian Peninsula in particular, and the region in general, to be prepared to receive the crusader butcher Bush on his visit to Muslim Palestine and the occupied peninsula at the beginning of January," he said. "They should receive him not with roses and applause, but with bombs and booby-traps."

The video also refers to the Annapolis Conference, indicating it was produced after last November 27, when the conference was held.

National Security Council Spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the U.S. president would not be deterred.

"His comments are indicative of an al Qaeda ideology that offers nothing but death and violence," Johndroe told CNN in a written statement.

"President Bush will travel to the region to stand with the mainstream governments who want liberty and justice for their people."

The self-proclaimed American jihadist, also known as Azzam the American, is on the FBI's Most Wanted List, with a reward of up to $1 million for information leading to his capture.

Gadahn was indicted in 2006 on charges of treason and offering material support for terrorism, the first American charged with treason since World War II.

Gadahn, who grew up in rural California, embraced Islam in the mid-1990s and moved to Pakistan. Since October 2004 he has appeared in at least eight al Qaeda videos in which he speaks in English and praises the terrorist network

News To Day : Al Qaeda taps cell phone downloads

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News To Day : "Al Qaeda"

Al Qaeda taps cell phone downloads - CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- Al Qaeda video messages of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri can now be downloaded to cell phones, the terror network announced as part of its attempts to extend its influence.

he announcement was posted late Friday by al Qaeda's media wing, al-Sahab, on Web sites commonly used by Islamic militants. As of Saturday, eight previously recorded videos were made available including a recent tribute to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the former al Qaeda in Iraq leader killed by U.S. forces in Iraq in June 2006.

"The elite jihadi media group presents the first batch of al-Sahab videos to be downloaded to cell phones," the announcement said.

Ben Venzke, the head of IntelCenter, a U.S. group that monitors and analyzes militant messages, said it was not the first time al-Sahab has released videos designed for cell phones.

He said the group has been releasing them for years, but that between September and December, a few video messages did not come with versions for cell phones.

"They might just be filling in some of the gaps, or just trying to release some that had come out before," Venzke said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.

In a written message introducing the new cell phone videos, al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's No. 2 figure, asked followers to spread the terror group's messages.

"I asked God for the men of jihadi media to spread the message of Islam and monotheism to the world and spread real awareness to the people of the nations," al-Zawahiri said.

Videos playable on cell phones are increasingly popular in the Middle East. The files are transferred from phone to phone using Bluetooth or infrared wireless technology.

Clips showing former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's execution in December 2006 showed up on cell phones soon after his death. In Egypt, images showing police brutality have been passed around via cell phones including one video that showed an arrested bus driver being sodomized with a stick by police in the fall 2006.

Video and audio tapes from various Islamist groups including al Qaeda are available on militant Web sites but require a computer and a fast Internet connection -- often rare in the region -- to download.

But the eight videos currently available to download to cell phones by al-Sahab range in size from 17 megabytes to 120 megabytes, requiring phones to have large amounts of free data capacity. Al-Sahab has promised to release more of its previous video messages in cell-phone quality formats.

The terror network has been growing more sophisticated in targeting international audiences. Videos are always subtitled in English, and messages this year from bin Laden and al-Zawahiri focusing on Pakistan and Afghanistan have been dubbed in the local languages, Urdu and Pashtu.

In December, al Qaeda invited journalists to send questions to al-Zawahiri. The invitation was the first time the media-savvy al Qaeda offered outsiders to "interview" one of its leaders since the September 11, 2001, attacks
sumber : http://www.cnn.com