Unique Replica Watches, Hottest Watches, Charming Elegance Online Sale

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said that former House Speaker Newt Gingrich would be "the last person" he'd vote for in a presidential election when speaking at a town hall meeting in his home state last week, the Tusla World reports.

"[Gingrich] "is a super-smart man, but he doesn't know anything about commitment to marriage," explained the conservative Senator. "He's the last person I'd vote for for president of the United States. His life indicates he does not have a commitment to the character traits necessary to be a great president."

The criticism comes in the wake of reports that Gingrich is strongly considering making a bid for the White House in 2012.

Earlier this month, ex-wife of the former Speaker, Marianne Gingrich, offered a rare glimpse into the personal life and relationship history of the possible presidential contender.

In an Esquire profile she said of her one-time husband, now on his third marriage, "[He] believes that what he says in public and how he lives don't have to be connected" and added, "If you believe that, then yeah, you can run for president. ... He always told me that he's always going to pull the rabbit out of the hat."

MIAMI (AP) -- Forecasters say Earl has strengthened into a Category 1 hurricane as it barrels toward several islands in the eastern Caribbean.

Meanwhile, the Category 1 Hurricane Danielle was bringing dangerous rip currents to the U.S. East Coast.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami says Earl could make landfall over the Northern Leeward Islands as soon as Sunday night. It could become a major hurricane by Tuesday.

Forecasters warn Hurricane Earl could bring battering waves and storm surge reaching up to 3 feet above normal tide levels in some areas. Hurricane warnings and watches had been issued for several islands, and heavy rains could cause flash floods and mudslides.

Earl was 225 miles (360 km) east of Antigua and had maximum sustained winds of 75 mph (120 kph).

Tiger is on top of the leaderboard for the first time this year just days after his divorce!
Tiger Woods is looking like the #1 golfer in the world again just days after his divorce from Elin Nordegren as he topped the leaderboard at the Barclays Golf 2010 Tournament on Aug. 26. Tiger had one of his season best performances as he shot 6 under par, showing that he just needed the drama of his divorce and affairs to be over to get back to the top of his game!

Tiger has yet to even finish in the top 3 at a tournament this year, making his performance even more impressive. It looks like all the incredibly private golfer needed to return to form was all the stress and drama of his personal life to finally be lifted!

There are still three more rounds to play, but if this first round is any indication, Tiger could be winning his first tournament in a long time and start to dominate the PGA tour again!

Drew Barrymore gives an interview to the London Daily Standard in which she talks about her new romantic comedy 'Going the Distance' and what it was like working with her boyfriend, Justin Long.

Drew also rips into the previous reporter she had spoken with, calling her a bitch and discussing the violent things she wanted to do to the woman:

I gesture at the clippings on the table and say I'm exhausted reading about her "wild child" past. Does she ever lose patience talking about it?
She nods angrily. "You should have heard this bitch I had to do an interview with before you. God, I wanted to punch her, she would just not drop the youth thing. I have no problem talking about it. I am not someone who is ashamed of my past. I'm actually really proud. I know I made a lot of mistakes, but they in turn were my life lessons.

"It's actually good to get it done young and have a great life later. But yeah, man, I wanted to rip this woman's face off. She just would not shut up about it."

Drew is not known for being a closed book about her personal life. She recently talked about her success at phone sex.

Thomas Pridgeon had been faced with losing his home since 2009, when New York-based BNY Mellon filed an action against him in Cook County Court.

At a hearing on Monday, his home was to be sold to a lender in North Carolina, who bought the property at a tax auction. He would have had 30 days to leave his house on the 7300 block of South Laflin and turn it over to its new owners.

But instead of attending a foreclosure hearing, Pridgeon was immediately arrested at the Daley Center. He arrived to the court building carrying a fully loaded .45-caliber handgun.

According to a release from the Cook County Sheriff's Office, a courthouse deputy noticed the outline of the weapon on the X-ray image of Pridgeon's briefcase.

His motivations are unknown: though clearly in desperate straits, Pridgeon told officials that he simply forgot it was in the case.

There was one round in the chamber of the weapon, and seven more in the clip.

The Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune report that Pridgeon was arrested and charged with unlawful use of a weapon.

WASHINGTON — A senior U.S. commander on Monday wouldn't predict when Afghanistan might take control of its own security and warned that NATO needs at least another year to recruit and train enough soldiers and police officers.

The assessment by Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell, the head of NATO's training mission in Afghanistan, further dims U.S. hopes that the planned U.S. withdrawal next year will be significant in size.

President Barack Obama has said that troops will begin pulling out in July 2011, the size and pace of withdrawal depending on security conditions. Defense officials, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have said they believe next summer's pullout would be modest.

In a Pentagon briefing, Caldwell told reporters that Afghan army and police forces won't reach sufficient numbers until Oct. 31, 2011 – three months after Obama's deadline to start U.S. withdrawals.

NATO has set the goal of creating an Afghan military and police force of 305,600 personnel – 171,600 army and 134,000 police.

There are currently 249,500 personnel – 134,000 army and 115,500 police.

But Caldwell predicted that desertion and injury rates are so high among Afghan forces that NATO will have to recruit and train 141,000 people to ensure it has the 56,000 additional personnel needed next fall.

Because Afghanistan is still scrambling to recruit and train its security forces, Caldwell said there was no accurate estimate on when Kabul might take control of even the more peaceful parts of the country.

"It doesn't mean in small isolated pockets that they can't have the lead with coalition" support, Caldwell said of Afghan forces. "But to say that they'll be able to do much more before October of next year would be stretching it, only because we haven't finished the development of their force."

RIO DE JANEIRO — Heavily armed drug gang members engaged in an intense firefight with police, then fled into a luxury hotel popular with foreign tourists and held about 30 people hostage for three hours Saturday before surrendering.

The upscale, beachside neighborhood of Sao Conrado where the Intercontinental Hotel sits was transformed into a war zone as upward of 50 gunmen with high-caliber rifles, pistols and even hand grenades faced off with police.

A police spokeswoman said the gunbattle began when police spotted about 10 cars and vans leaving the Vidigal slum heading toward the nearby Rocinha slum, one of Latin America's largest.

Both shantytowns are controlled by the Amigos dos Amigos (Friends of Friends) drug gang, and the spokeswoman said the gang members were leaving an all-night party in Vidigal when they ran into the police patrol and began shooting.

Bullets flew for about 40 minutes, terrifying residents of Sao Conrado, which contains a road linking the two slums. Most of the gunmen fled into Rocinha, but 10 ran into the Intercontinental where they quickly grabbed hostages and holed up in the hotel's kitchen.

Spent casings littered the streets around the hotel. One woman was killed, and four bystanders and three policeman were wounded.

Police said initially that the dead woman was an innocent bystander, but later said she was with the gunmen and had a warrant out for her arrest for alleged drug gang involvement.

"It seemed as if I was in Iraq," neighborhood resident Jose Oliveira e Silva told the Globo television network.

Amateur video aired on Globo showed a group of black-clad police taking heavy fire and returning it from behind a garbage truck. Sanitation workers in bright orange jumpsuits also huddled behind the truck, waiting for the onslaught to end.

Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com

Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) on Thursday demanded that the Obama administration surrender the data and algorithms behind its increasingly controversial estimate that most of the oil spilled in the Gulf no longer presents a risk of harm.

At an unusual recess hearing of his Energy and Environment Subcommittee, Markey said the report, issued with great fanfare by the administration earlier this month but now being challenged by independent scientists, may be lulling emergency responders and the public into complacency.

"People want to believe that everything is OK and I think this report and the way it is being discussed is giving many people a false sense of confidence regarding the state of the Gulf," he said.

Gulf residents in particular, Markey said, "don't want this to be downplayed or low-balled, which is to some extent what has happened since that was released."

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration senior scientist Bill Lehr told Markey the report was compiled as part of the emergency response, and that his agency is only now conducting a scientific peer review to confirm the findings.

Markey said NOAA "shouldn't have released" the report if it wasn't ready to make its data and models public. "First you gave the answer, and now you are going to be showing your work. ... and that's the opposite of the way in which a study of that magnitude would be released," he said.

He formally requested supporting documents that would allow independent scientists to assess their conclusion: "Will you release that now?"

Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has revoked the government's approval of genetically altered sugar beets until regulators complete a more thorough review of how the scientifically engineered crops affect other food.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey S. White Friday means sugar beet growers won't be able to use the modified seeds after harvesting the biotechnology beets already planted on more than 1 million acres spanning 10 states from Michigan to Oregon. All the seed comes from Oregon's Willamette Valley.

Additional planting won't be allowed until the U.S. Department of Agriculture submits an environmental impact statement. That sort of extensive examination can take two or three years.

White declined a request to issue an injunction that would have imposed a permanent ban on the biotech beets, which Monsanto Co. developed to resist its popular weed killer, Roundup. Farmers have embraced the technology as a way to lower their costs on labor, fuel and equipment.

The Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance and Sierra Club have been trying to uproot the biotech beets since filing a 2008 lawsuit.

Andrew Kimbrell, the Center for Food Safety's executive director, hailed Friday's decision as a major victory in the fight against genetically engineered crops and chided the Agriculture Department for approving the genetically engineered seeds without a full environmental review.

"Hopefully, the agency will learn that their mandate is to protect farmers, consumers and the environment and not the bottom line of corporations such as Monsanto," Kimbrell said in a statement.

Attempts to reach the Agriculture Department for comment Saturday were unsuccessful. Monsanto, based in St. Louis, referred requests for comment to the America Sugarbeet Growers Association, which pointed to a Saturday statement from the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

In the statement, the sugar beet council said it intends to help the Agriculture Department come up with "interim measures" that would allow continued production of the genetically altered seeds while regulators conduct their environmental review.

Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sought on Friday to put an amicable coda on his tussle with the "professional left," telling the Huffington Post that the President continues to welcome the pressure he gets from his progressive base.

Addressing the issue four days after he initially chastised liberal (cable news) critics for having demands of the White House that he deemed "crazy," Gibbs once again stood by those remarks.

"There are a small number of people on cable and elsewhere who will never be happy, who will never give the President credit for anything, and who will always look for some cardinal sin to be upset about," the press secretary said in an email to the Huffington Post.

But, from there, he offered a far more conciliatory if not diplomatic reflection on the riff that briefly dominated macro-political debate within the Democratic Party.

"I also stand by my statement... that the vast majority of progressives and those on the left, whether that's bloggers or groups or what have you, do not hold those beliefs and are pushing in good faith for a better country as they see it," Gibbs added. "The President has urged those who want change to push for it and hold him accountable, and that's how he feels."

The latter remarks are far more tempered than those Gibbs offered during his daily briefing on Wednesday. Pressed then to expand on why he had disparaged the "professional left" -- for demanding, among other things, the elimination of the Pentagon and Canadian style health care -- Gibbs declined to name names but did little backtracking. Not only did he stand by the criticism, he said, he fully expected progressive voters to go out to vote come November.

The entire episode was greeted with shrugs and jeers within the party, depending, of course, on who was asked. Several progressive lawmakers called for Gibbs' resignation. The more common reaction was offered by DNC Chair Tim Kaine.

"That was definitely one where, you know, it should have stayed in the thought bubble over his head than being spoken," Kaine said, during an appearance on "Morning Joe" on Wednesday. "Look, it's been a hot summer in Washington and I've said things like that too and my temper got the best of me... As Democrats, we tend to be an impatient party. This is something that I know and I kind of love about us. Edison said discontent is the first sign of progress. If you're complacent, you don't push."

On Wednesday, Gibbs gave off the impression that there was little concern inside the White House about the impact his remarks might have. In offering the final clarification to the Huffington Post it stands to reason that the press shop wasn't necessarily satisfied with the impression that had been left.

Driver from www.huffingtonpost.com