Twins Separated from Bangladesh Intensive Care: Hospital

SYDNEY news update: Bangladeshi twins Trishna and Krishna have left intensive care as they continue their remarkable recovery from surgery to separate their conjoined heads, the hospital said.
The two-year-old girls, rescued from a Dhaka orphanage, moved to a shared room on the normal ward on Monday, just a week after the 32-hour operation to disconnect their fused skulls, brains and blood vessels.

“They are sharing a room together and settling into their new environment,” Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital said in a statement.

“The girls are getting to know the new staff who will be caring for them now that they have left intensive care.”

The twins’ heads remain heavily bandaged but they have appeared otherwise well, with Trishna awake and talking two days after surgery and Krishna blowing a signature raspberry when she was woken from a medical coma on Saturday.

Their condition has amazed medical staff who nursed them back to fitness after they arrived in fading health from Bangladesh two years ago, and gave them just a 25 percent chance of both recovering completely from the separation.

“We’re all so proud of our children’s hospital and we’re so proud of the quality of the nurses and the staff and the doctors that we’ve got there,” Victoria state Premier John Brumby told Fairfax radio.

“This was just another great example where these two children, who I think, to be honest, many of us thought were not going to get through, have come through, fingers crossed at this stage, with flying colours.”

The girls’ 22-year-old mother, who was unable to care for the sickly babies and handed them to an orphanage soon after their birth, has said she hopes to travel to Australia to see them.

Indian Hindus Fate of TV station

MUMBAI : Seven people were arrested in Mumbai on Friday after activists from a Hindu regional political party ransacked a television station’s offices and beat up staff, police and the network said.

About 25 men breached security at the Network 18 group premises in Vikhroli, in the east of the city, breaking glass windows with dustbins, overturning chairs and attacking journalists and other staff.

“Seven people have been arrested. We will keep them in custody and go deep into this matter to find out why and how these things have happened,” Mumbai police chief D. Sivanandan said.

The Network 18 group operates CNBC-TV18, which is India’s leading business channel, the English-language general news channel CNN-IBN and regional language equivalents, IBN-7 in Hindi, and IBN-Lokmat, in Marathi.

The broadcaster said the IBN-7 and IBN-Lokmat newsrooms were targeted by the protesters, who were shouting slogans in support of the Shiv Sena, a local political party that pushes a protectionist regional agenda.

The network’s website said attackers told employees that they would not tolerate reports criticising Shiv Sena while TV pictures showed a Network 18 outside broadcast van also being targeted in Pune, southeast of Mumbai.

The chief minister of Maharahstra state, Ashok Chavan, told IBN-7: “I have told the police to take the strictest action possible against all the people behind it. I assure the media that this will not be tolerated at any cost.”

India’s Broadcast Editors’ Association described the incident as “an attack on freedom of expression” and “the handiwork of elements who want to undermine the role of pen, microphone and camera”.

“Such attacks go against the basic tenets of democracy and need to be condemned in the harshest possible terms,” it said in a statement.

U.S. Forces Under Pressure: Mullen

WASHINGTON: Top US military officer Admiral Mike Mullen said on Tuesday that US forces were under strain from fighting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq but were not at a “tipping point.”
The mental fitness of American troops has come under intense scrutiny after a shooting rampage at Fort Hood by an army psychiatrist this month and amid a rise in suicides and depression.

Suicides in the US Army are on track to reach a new high this year.

With 140 suspected cases reported among active duty soldiers since the start of 2009, the number of suicides was already at last year’s level, the army’s vice chief of staff, General Peter Chiarelli, told reporters on Tuesday.

But Mullen told a gathering of top business executives that he stood by a previous comment that the military was not at a breaking point despite two protracted wars.

“I still even subsequent to that don’t think we’re near a tipping point but,” he said at the event sponsored by the Wall Street Journal, adding, “I would not want to understate the seriousness of the stress issue for individuals and for families.”

As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mullen said “the health of the force” was one of his top priorities and that he also had been impressed with the resilience displayed by many soldiers and families.

United Nations to Recall 600 Staff in Afghanistan

KABUL: The United Nations said Thursday that it is temporarily relocating more than half its staff in Afghanistan following last week’s deadly Taliban attack against U.N. workers.
The U.N. mission is still reeling from a pre-dawn assault on a guesthouse in the capital last week that left five U.N. staffers dead. The Kabul attack was the most direct targeting of U.N. employees during the organization’s decades of work in the country.

Some 600 nonessential staffers will be moved for four to five weeks to more secure locations in and outside of Afghanistan while the body works to find safer permanent housing, spokesman Aleem Siddique said.

The majority of the U.N.’s 1,100 international staff in Afghanistan live the capital, spread out among more than 90 guesthouses.

The plan is to consolidate those living arrangements so staff can be better protected, Siddique said. He stressed this was not a pullout or a scale-down in operations. About 80 percent of the U.N.’s staff in Afghanistan are Afghan citizens.

“We’ve been here for over half a century and we’re not about to go any time soon,” Siddique said.

In the Oct. 28 attack, gunmen wearing suicide vests stormed a private guesthouse where dozens of U.N. staffers lived, killing five U.N. workers and three Afghans. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the assault, saying they intentionally targeted U.N. employees working on the recent presidential election.

Much U.N. work in Afghanistan has been put on hold since the attack and employees have been given the option to take leave while officials consider how to better protect employees.

The move comes on the heels of a U.N. decision to suspend much of its work in the volatile northwest of neighboring Pakistan because of increasingly targeted attacks.

Though the U.N. insists it is committed to the region, its actions show how much security has degraded in the two countries and raise questions about the future of the U.N. in the area.

In Iraq, a series of attacks on U.N. workers led the world body to shut down operations in 2003 for years.

Burnett to start Game 5 on short rest (AP)

The New York Yankees are chasing championship No. 27 by throwing their top pitchers on three days’ rest. With a chance to clinch the crown, A.J. Burnett is scheduled to start on short rest against Philadelphia ace Cliff Lee in Game 5 of the World Series on Monday night. CC Sabathia went on three days’ rest Sunday night in Game 4, and Andy Pettitte could do the same in Game 6 if the Series…

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Burnett to start Game 5 on short rest (AP)

Obama film sheds new light

A new documentary on Obama’s campaign unveils an emotional side of the president and his staff.

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Obama film sheds new light

‘Dancing?s’ Dieting Secrets

“Dancing With the Stars”Celebrities reveal their weight-loss regimes.

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‘Dancing?s’ Dieting Secrets

Today’s News: Our Take – David Letterman Apologizes to Wife on Late Show

In David Letterman’s first Late Show since the news broke about his sexual relationships with women who worked for him, the late-night host apologized to his wife for his behavior.

Letterman said he’s got his work cut out for him when it comes to repairing his marriage to Regina Lasko. “She has been horribly hurt by my behavior, and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it’s your responsibility, you try to fix it,” he said.

Letterman’s late night rivals take hits at extortion scandal 

He also took the time to apologize to his staff, noting that they’ve been “wonderfully

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Today’s News: Our Take – David Letterman Apologizes to Wife on Late Show

Kim Kardashian poses as ‘Water Goddess’ in sexy beach shoot

American socialite Kim Kardashian was recently pictured in what she calls as her Water Goddess pose.

Kim, 28, could be seen draped in a sparkling silver material, as she stood in the water and later posed on the beach.

The reality TV star then posted the snaps on her website and fans have been gawping at them ever since.

Meanwhile, Kim’s been talking about the sex tape, which brought her to prominence.

“I was devastated,” the Sun quoted her as telling Cosmopolitan.

“But when something negative happens, I pick myself up and move on and I don’t make the same mistake twice,” she added

Letterman makes on-air apology to wife over expose of sexual affairs

American talk show host David Letterman has publicly apologised to his wife Regina Lasko after his sexual affairs were exposed in an alleged extortion plot against him.

The TV host issued the apology during a taping of his “Late Show with David Letterman”, his first appearance since the revelations.

“She has been horribly hurt by my behavior, and when something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it’’s your responsibility, you try to fix it,” People magazine quoted him as saying.

“At that point, there’’s only two things that can happen: Either you”re going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you”re going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed, so let me tell you folks, I got my work cut out for me,” he added.

The 62-year-old also said sorry to the present and former staff of his production company, Worldwide Pants.

He said: “I”m terribly sorry that I put the staff in that position. Inadvertently, I just wasn”t thinking ahead.

“And, moreover, the staff here has been wonderfully supportive to me, not just through this furor, but through all the years that we”ve been on television and especially all the years here at CBS, so, again, my thanks to the staff for, once again, putting up with something stupid I”ve gotten myself involved in.”

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