The world’s first partial face transplant took place in France. The total time to perform the surgery was 15 hours, using tissues, muscles, arteries and veins from a woman who has committed suicide.

Isabelle Dinoire had been disfigured by her dog when she was passed out from taking medicines to calm herself down after having an argument with her daughter.

Isabelle Dinoire, 38, smiled and laughed awkwardly in her first appearance before reporters since the operation in November and spoke in slurred and laboured tones.

Despite her trauma, Dinoire said the transplant was now part of her and she did not refer to any identity crisis caused by having part of someone else’s face grafted on to her.

“I can now smile and make faces so I think I have taken over the face,” Dinoire told a packed news conference at Amiens hospital 110 km (70 miles) north of Paris.

[Reuters]

The pledges need to materialize soon.

Because from what I’m understanding, there are so many wonderful pledges of money that could come in the next few years but this winter is in the next few weeks, and so many people are in danger of possibly freezing to death.

Jolie is in Pakistan with lover Brad Pitt to bring awareness to the area devastated by the earthquake in Pakistan. Once again our favorite pillow lipped actress is making the world a better place.

No additional news on the addition to the Jolie family yet.

[AP]

The company will pay the cost of the one-year course, beginning in 2007, the Mainichi Shimbun reported Monday.

Louis Vuitton and Keio have signed a contract mediated by the French Embassy. Details have yet to be confirmed.

Expect to learn how to tell a real LV bag from a knock off you found at some place like Canal Street in NYC or you local eBay auction. Also being taught is how to match a LV bag with what you have in your closet.

[UPI]

The British government said Sunday that a strain of bird flu that killed a parrot in quarantine is the deadly H5N1 strain that has plagued Asia and recently spread to Europe.

Scientists determined that the parrot, imported from South America, died of the strain of avian flu that has devastated poultry stocks and killed 61 people in Asia the past two years, according to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The virus is spread by migrating wild birds and has recently been found in birds in Russia, Turkey and Romania, spurring efforts around the globe to contain its spread.

Scary things are happen in this world.

Via AP

Google Earth, an Internet site launched in June this year, allows users to access overlapping satellite photos. Although not all areas are highly detailed, some images are very high resolution, and some show sensitive locations in various countries.

[AP]

…al Qaeda had “vacant positions” for video production and editing statements, footage and international media coverage about militants in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chechnya and other conflict zones where militants are active.

I guess even terrorist group need to find workers. This must be a ploy to capture would be informants or spies that may attempt to join and bring the organization down.

The public has generally embraced the park, which began construction in 2003. But environmentalists protested the park’s now-aborted plan to serve shark-fin soup at banquets. Neighbors have complained about the noise and smoke from nightly fireworks shows. And social critics have been worried about the influence of American culture.

But the biggest complaint among some of the thousands who got a sneak peak at the park during a soft opening period in the past month has been that Hong Kong Disneyland is too small. It’s Disney’s smallest park at 40 hectares (about 100 acres)

I wonder if Mickey will be outfitted in the new Communist Red?

Western Siberia has warmed faster than almost anywhere else on the planet, with an increase in average temperatures of some 3 °C in the last 40 years. The warming is believed to be a combination of man-made climate change, a cyclical change in atmospheric circulation known as the Arctic oscillation, plus feedbacks caused by melting ice, which exposes bare ground and ocean. These absorb more solar heat than white ice and snow.

The man, identified by his family name, Lee, started playing Starcraft on 3 August. He only paused playing to go to the toilet and for short periods of sleep, said the police.

More than 15 million people, or 30% of the population, are registered for online gaming in South Korea. The country also host the annual World Cyber Games.

When you are spending this much time playing computer games you know you have a problem. You know you have a really big problems when you quit you job to play computer games. I have no idea how people can play this long. After playing for a few hours I am already tired and my eyes are already sore from looking at all those moving graphics. I guess they are all trying to get a job playing computer game that pays upwards of $100,000.

Jennings had a 41-year career with ABC, having joined the network in 1964. He soon went head-to-head with the toughest competition in the business, anchoring the network’s prime-time news from 1965 to 1967 at a time when Walter Cronkite on CBS and the team of David Brinkley and Chet Huntley on NBC were dominant.

About 55,000 people from Japan and abroad gathered in Hiroshima on Saturday to commemorate the 60th anniversary.

People are forgetting that Japan started the war of aggression against its Asian neighbors which lead to the atomic bombing of Hiroshima six decade ago. People never talk about the bad things that they do, only the bad things that happens to them.

Deepak Jahagirdar, 55, laid a blanket over the 22-year-old woman who was returning from a vacation, unfastened her seat belt, unbuttoned her pants and assaulted her by touching her genitals.

How dumb can a person get. This is just stupidity, you would think he would know there is no escape when your thousands of feet up in the air. It was just his luck that there were four Secret Service Agents returning from assignment on the flight. On top of the seven year prison term he also must pay a $25,000 fine and be supervised by authorities for two years after his release. He is going to know what being molested feels like in his new prison cell.

According to the newspaper, the guide recommends that if lethal force is needed to stop someone who fits a certain behavioral profile, the officer should “aim for the head.” The intent is to kill the suspect instantly so the person could not set off a bomb if one is strapped to the person’s chest, the newspaper said.

What does this mean to everyone? I fear that there will be more police shooting that will be classified as “Suspect was assumed to be a suicide bomber”. The description of the signs to look for in a suicide bomber can be the description for many non suicide bombers. To avoid this I guess you must not wear heavy coat in warm weather, don’t carry your iPod in your backpack with the head phone wires protruding or stop your excessive sweating in the heat. You must always make eye contact. If these are not followed you will have a high chance of being shot in the head.