Lisa Robin Kelly, the former star of “That ’70s Show”, was arrested on suspicion of DUI on Saturday, June 22. Kelly’s car was parked on the 5 Freeway, blocking a lane of traffic. Police officers arrived and the former actress failed a series of sobriety tests. She was arrested for driving under the influence. This ...
A normal collar is fine for taking your dog on a short walk, but for serious hiking, he'll be safer and more comfortable in a full body harness. Before you run out and buy one though, try to make your own with paracord.
Instructables user mymyjames2000 shows you how easy it can be. You'll just need some paracord, plastic buckles, and a candle. He shows you how to properly tie the paracord into a harness, attach the buckles securely, and fuse the loose ends of the cord with a candle to prevent them from fraying. It doesn't look too difficult, but it does require lots of fairly complicated knot tying, so be sure to set aside some time before taking this on. Once you're finished, the harness will fit snugly around your pet's midsection and neck to distribute the tension of your leash more evenly.
Sprint was on hand at last night's Pepcom showcase to highlight its next cream-of-the-entry-level-crop, the LG Optimus F3, available now for a mere $30 on contract. It's undoubtedly a starter phone, designed specifically with the blind and visually impaired thanks to its bundled Google TalkBack software. With extensive text-to-speech capabilities, the F3 is the go-to device for those looking for a budget-conscious, entry-level-friendly handset.
Spec-wise, the F3 packs a 4-inch WVGA display, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor, and Gorilla Glass 2, adding up to a fact sheet that's both underwhelming for the power user yet totally respectable for the first-time buyer. The real star here is Google's TalkBack, which lends its extensive capabilities to the visually impaired-centric F3.
The Optimus F3 ships in both silver and purple and is available now in Sprint stores and on sprint.com for $29 with a two year contrac.t Shots of the device can be found after the break.
The BBC's David Shukman explains the impact and cause of the haze
Pollution levels soared for a third day in a row in Singapore, as smoky haze from fires in Indonesia shrouded the city state.
The Pollutant Standards Index (PSI) hit 401 at 12:00 on Friday (04:00 GMT) - the highest in Singapore's history.
The index also reached 400 in one part of Indonesia, which is readying helicopters and cloud-seeding equipment in an effort to tackle the fires.
Indonesia has said it is unfair to blame it solely for the forest fires.
A senior official in the Indonesian president's office said fires had been spotted on land owned by 32 companies in the region, some of them based in Malaysia and Singapore.
Schools in parts of Malaysia and Indonesia have closed temporarily.
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsieng Loong warned on Thursday that the haze could remain in place for weeks.
"We can't tell how this problem is going to develop because it depends on the burning, it depends on the weather, it depends on the wind," he said.
"It can easily last for several weeks and quite possibly it could last longer until the dry season ends in Sumatra which may be September or October."
'Life threatening' Continue reading the main story
Analysis
Karishma VaswaniBBC News, Jakarta
Indonesia is struggling to contain the raging forest fires that are causing the thick smog which is enveloping Singapore, parts of Malaysia and some Indonesian cities.
On Friday, the government despatched helicopters to the worst affected areas, in a bid to create artificial rain. The plan is to seed the clouds once the temperature is a bit cooler to induce rain over the burning forestland.
It is a big challenge. Fire-fighters on the ground have been working around the clock to put out the blazes, but they have spread to peatlands and are proving to be very difficult to extinguish. Officials have complained about a lack of resources and say they desperately need some rain to help.
Indonesia's weather agency says rainfall is not likely until 29 June. Singapore and Malaysia have both urged Indonesia to do more to solve this crisis. Singapore has offered aircraft to help with the cloud-seeding operation, but there needs to be clouds in the sky for it to work. This time of year is typically the hottest and driest on the island of Sumatra.
A PSI reading above 300 is defined as "hazardous", while Singapore government guidelines say a PSI reading of above 400 sustained for 24 hours "may be life-threatening to ill and elderly persons".
"Healthy people [may also] experience adverse symptoms that affect normal activity," the government says.
The PSI dropped down to 143 at 17:00 (09:00 GMT), although this is still classed as "unhealthy".
Before this week's episode, the previous air pollution record was from September 1997 during the 1997-1998 South East Asian Haze, when the PSI peaked at 226.
Singapore resident Nicole Wu told the BBC that she had stayed indoors for the past two days.
"It's terrible. In my flat the windows are all closed with the air conditioning on," she said. "My mother has to wear a mask to go shopping."
"I can't even see what's happening outside my house due to the smog. You can't see birds [or] moving objects," she added.
Philip Koh, a doctor, told AFP news agency that the number of medical consultations he had had in the past week had increased by 20%.
Continue reading the main story
"My patients are telling me they are worried about how long this is going to last and how much higher this is going to go," he said.
In Indonesia's Riau province, where the fires are concentrated, the PSI reached 400 on Friday, the head of the local health office told the BBC.
Schools there are to remain closed until the air quality improves.
The chief of the health department Zainal Arifin said there was an "increasing number of asthma, lung, eye and skin problems due to higher CO2 levels".
"I call for residents to stay at home and reduce outdoor activities," he said.
Diplomatic strain Continue reading the main story
?Start Quote
The face masks which are in high demand in Singapore can protect against the worst of the smog... [but] are unlikely to provide total protection?
End Quote
Singapore's National Environment Agency has started providing hourly PSI updates on its website, in addition to the three-hourly updates it previously provided.
Around 300 schools in southern Malaysia have now been closed as a result of the smog. Schools in Singapore are currently closed for the holidays.
There are also reports of flight delays affecting both Singapore's Changi airport and Riau province in Indonesia.
The fires are caused by illegal slash-and-burn land clearance in Sumatra, to the west of Singapore.
The smog has strained diplomatic relations between Singapore and Indonesia - two countries that usually share good relations, the BBC's Karishma Vaswani in Jakarta reports.
Continue reading the main story
Slash-and-burn clearances
Slash-and-burn farming is a technique that involves cutting down vegetation and burning to clear land for cultivation
It is cheaper than using excavators and bulldozers
The illegal burning of forests to clear land for palm oil plantations has long been a problem in Indonesia - particularly during the dry season in the summer
Indonesia's Environment Minister Balthazar Kambuaya has said the government is investigating several palm oil companies in this respect
Some producers have already denied their companies use slash and burn land clearance
Mr Lee said Singapore had provided satellite date to Indonesia to help it identify companies involved and said that if any Singapore firms were involved, that would be addressed.
Indonesia's National Disaster Management Agency said it would deploy two helicopters to conduct "water-bombing" operations, as well as planes with cloud seeding equipment.
One of the Malaysian companies named by the Indonesian presidential official denied that it was burning forest to clear land, but said some small farmers operating on its property were doing so.
Palm oil giant Sime Darby said in a statement that it was strictly following its zero-burning policy throughout its operations, but that it could not control the activities of local growers farming on its concession area.
More than 100 Indonesian firefighters are attempting to put out the fires in Sumatra.
Selina Latiff, from Novena, Singapore, filmed this footage of the smog from a 29th floor balcony
However, an official in Riau province said they were "overwhelmed and in a state of emergency".
"We have been fighting fires 24 hours a day for two weeks," Ahmad Saerozi, the head of the natural resources conservation agency in Riau, told AFP news agency.
He added that the fires were in peat around three or four metres below the ground, making it particularly hard to fight them.
"It is still burning under the surface so we have to stick a hose into the peat to douse the fire," he said.
"We take one to two hours to clear a hectare, and by then another fire has started elsewhere."
Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said "all the country's resources" would be mobilised to extinguish the fires.
Send your pictures and videos to yourpics@bbc.co.uk or text them to 61124 (UK) or +44 7624 800 100 (International). If you have a large file you can upload here.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) ? An ambulance carrying Nelson Mandela to a hospital two weeks ago had engine trouble, so the 94-year-old was transferred to another ambulance for his journey to the hospital, the South African government said Saturday.
Care was taken to ensure the condition of the former president was not affected, it said.
The anti-apartheid leader remains in serious but stable condition in a hospital, the office of President Jacob Zuma said in a statement.
The government confirmed reports about transport problems when the former leader was taken to the hospital for what officials have said is a recurring lung infection. CBS News reported that Mandela had to be transferred in wintertime temperatures to another ambulance in the early morning of June 8 after waiting on the side of the highway for 40 minutes.
The government said doctors are satisfied that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate suffered "no harm" at the time.
Mandela was taken from his home in the Johannesburg neighborhood of Houghton to a hospital in Pretoria, the capital, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) away.
"The fully equipped military ICU ambulance had a full complement of specialist medical staff including intensive care specialists and ICU nurses. The convoy also included two quick response vehicles," the presidency said. "When the ambulance experienced engine problems it was decided that it would be best to transfer to another military ambulance which itself was accompanied for the rest of the journey by a civilian ambulance."
The statement added: "All care was taken to ensure that the former president Mandela's medical condition was not compromised by the unforeseen incident."
In recent days, reports from the government, former President Thabo Mbeki and a grandson of Mandela have indicated that the health of Mandela is improving, although he has been in the hospital for treatment several times in recent months.
Close family members have been visiting him daily in a Pretoria hospital amid an outpouring of prayers and messages of support from South Africans and people around the world.
Zuma's office appealed for Mandela's privacy to be respected "and that he be accorded the doctor-patient confidentiality that all patients are entitled to in terms of medical ethics."
Mandela was jailed for 27 years under white racist rule and was released in 1990. He then played a leading role in steering the divided country from the apartheid era to democracy, becoming South Africa's first black president in all-race elections in 1994. As a result of his sacrifice and peacemaking efforts, he is seen by many around the world as a symbol of reconciliation.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investigators have found what they believe are human remains in a search of the former home of late New York mobster Jimmy Burke, suspected mastermind of the 1978 Lufthansa cargo heist, New York City Medical Examiner spokeswoman Ellen Borakove told Reuters on Thursday. She said the medical examiner's Office is checking material FBI agents scouring the Queens home found a day earlier, and it appears they are human remains. "I think they are," Borakove said, declining to comment further. ...
Say hello to Hank, the National Zoo's sloth bear cub, born in December. (Hi Hank!)
He's spent the last six months with his mother inside a den, where he could be seen on a webcam.
But now you can meet Hank in the fur, as it were. This little guy made his public debut on the zoo's Asia Trail on Thursday morning.
Check out pictures from Hank's first day! Story continues below...
Hank the sloth bear cub says "hello" to public
"Oh, hey there!"
Hank the sloth bear cub makes public debut June 20, 2013
Hank and his mother, Hana, cuddling up
Hank and Hana
Hank climbing on the sloth bear exhibit's rocky terrain
Hear Hank roar!
Hank likes to sniff
But you can't eat rock!
Hank likes to dig!
Sloth bear cub Hank makes his public debut June 20, 2013
Hank the sloth bear cub
Mother and son, Hana and Hank
Hank checking some tree branches
Hank and Hana on Mother's Day
Like mother, like son! Sloth bear Hana and her cub, Hank, enjoy some play time in their indoor enclosure. Sloth bear moms are the only bears that carry their young on their backs. After emerging from the den, cubs stay at their mother's side for two to three years before heading off on their own.
The adorable Hank, whose name was chosen by the public via Facebook and is a combination of his parents' names -- Hana and Francois -- is the first sloth bear cub born at the Zoo in seven years.
Hank is one of only seven sloth bears born in North America under the species survival plan. The sloth bear is considered a "vulnerable" species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Hank alone raised the population of sloth bears under human care by three percent.
According to the zoo, Hank's climbing skills have developed enough to tackle the rocky terrain of the sloth bear exhibit. We recommend you verifying that claim by paying Hank a visit yourself.
Take a look at some of the other cute animals that were born recently at the zoo!
Lisa Robin Kelly, the former star of “That ’70s Show”, was arrested on suspicion of DUI on Saturday, June 22. Kelly’s car was parked on the 5 Freeway, blocking a lane of traffic. Police officers arrived and the former actress failed a series of sobriety tests. She was arrested for driving under the influence. This ...
