From the high desert to the Pacific Ocean, out-of-control wildfires continued to engulf swaths of drought-parched Southern California on Monday, having already claimed one life, destroyed several homes and a church in Malibu and forced an entire community to evacuate.Thousands more homes remained at risk as hot, dry Santa Ana desert winds continued to churn into the region.

Firefighters started the weekend on high alert as forecasters warned of strong winds. But by Sunday night, they had to admit they were overwhelmed.

“You do not expect something to stretch our resources to this magnitude,” said Los Angeles County Fire Insp. Sam Padilla. “To try and staff something this big, you cannot predict it.”

The Malibu fire was among about a dozen blazes that burned more than 14,000 hectares from north of Santa Barbara to San Diego. Late Sunday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in seven Southern California counties.

Things weren’t improving Monday: Two new wildfires broke out in San Diego county, bringing to four the number of blazes burning there.

In the city-state’s first major penal code amendments in 22 years, Parliament repealed a section criminalising “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.

Parliament however kept the penal code’s section 377A, which makes sex between men a criminal offence, rejecting a petition by gay rights activists and their non-homosexual supporters to abolish the law as well.

Opponents of the law say it is a relic of British colonial rule.

The law punishes offenders with up to two years in jail, although it has rarely been enforced.

Under the just-approved amendments, new offences were enacted to tackle child prostitution and sex tourism, as well as cover crimes committed with the use of technology such as the internet and mobile phone text messaging.

But a rare petition read in Parliament to abolish the law banning sex between men sparked the most passionate debates in the normally staid legislature dominated by the ruling People’s Action Party.

Legislators supporting the law’s retention centred their arguments on the need to maintain family and moral values in the conservative Asian society, while proponents appealed for equal treatment of minorities guaranteed by the constitution.

Member of Parliament Siew Kum Hong, who supported the petition, said legalising sexual acts between two consenting heterosexual adults, while refusing to decriminalise the same acts between homosexual men, was discriminatory.

But Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong weighed in for the retention of the law, saying that Singapore remains a conservative society - with the traditional family as its main building bloc - and homosexuals cannot set the tone for the mainstream.

Abolishing the law could “send the wrong signal” and push gay activists to ask for more concessions, such as same-sex marriage and parenting, Mr Lee said.

Gays “are free to lead their lives and pursue their social activities,” the Prime Minister said, citing the existence of gay websites and gay bars.

“But there are restraints, and we do not approve of them setting the tone of mainstream society,” he said.

“They live their lives, that’s their personal space. But the tone of the overall society, I think, it remains conventional, it remains straight and we want it to remain so.”

Lee said keeping the statute unchanged, while not aggressively enforcing it, remained the best option.

Singapore would adapt to global economic changes in order to stay competitive, but must take a more cautious approach when it comes to moral values, Mr Lee said.

“We were right to uphold the family unit when Western countries went for experimental lifestyles in the 1960s - the hippies, free love,” he said.

“But I’m glad we did that, because today, if you look at Western Europe, the marriage as an institution is dead, families have broken down, the majority of children are born out of wedlock and live in families where the father and the mother are not husband and wife living together bringing them up.”

Gay rights activists say the law against homosexual sex affects about 200,000 people in the wealthy island-republic of more than four million.

Kid Rock spent most of Sunday in jail after he got into a scuffle with a man outside a suburban Atlanta waffle house, cops said.

The rocker, whose real name is Robert Ritchie, and five members of his entourage were charged with simple battery after the predawn fight with a man police identified as Harlen Akins. The fracas erupted as Kid Rock and his crew pulled up at the Waffle House restaurant about 5:15 a.m. after a gig at The Tabernacle in Atlanta.

Akins, 39, got into a shouting match with a female friend who was accompanying Kid Rock’s posse and then got into a physical fight, police said.

Akins allegedly broke a window at the restaurant and suffered cuts from flying glass that required treatment at a local hospital.

Kid Rock, 36, and his pals jumped into their tour bus and drove off, but cops said they stopped the bus nearby and arrested them. Akins was charged with felony criminal mischief. Kid Rock and his pals were hit with misdemeanors. The singer walked out of the DeKalb County jail after putting up bond - and signed autographs as he walked back to his bus

History repeated itself in a classic Brazilian Grand Prix confrontation yesterday, as outsider Kimi Raikkonen came through to snatch the world championship from McLaren’s grasp in a race when everything went right for Ferrari and everything went wrong for erstwhile series leader Lewis Hamilton.

All weekend the English rookie had borne the stamp of a man ready to embrace his destiny. From his maiden laps of the tricky Interlagos tracks, to the dignified but firm manner in which he dealt with a fractious and partisan journalist, to the way he drove his last race of his polemics-ridden rookie season of Formula One, he had world champion stamped through him.

He dropped the ball in China a fortnight ago, but when the chips were down in Brazil, he seemed ready to deliver in style.

If it was going wrong for Hamilton, there was always a good chance it would happen in the tight first corner, especially as he was starting from the dirtier side of the grid.

And it did.

Felipe Massa made a great start from pole position, to Hamilton’s right, and carved across to protect the inside line. At the same time Kimi Raikkonen boiled up from the second row, on Hamilton’s right. By the first corner the two Ferraris were ahead, and as Hamilton had to back off momentarily to avoid contact with Raikkonen, Alonso snatched his chance to go down the inside of his team-mate. It was touch and go, as they were inches apart, but the Spaniard got the job down. Hamilton’s response, an attempt to go round the outside at the next corner, proved his undoing as he slid wide and dropped to eighth.

At the end of the lap, Raikkonen, running second to Massa, had 108 points. Alonso, third, had 109, Hamilton, eighth, 108. A lap later Hamilton passed Jarno Trulli’s Toyota. Five laps later he pulled a move down the inside of Nick Heidfeld to snatch sixth place in the first corner, appropriately named after the late Ayrton Senna. Now it was Alonso 109, Raikkonen 108, Hamilton 110. But then came disaster on the eighth lap as McLaren number two momentarily slowed to a crawling pace, until Hamilton managed to coax it into life again, now down in 18th place.

There were 63 laps left in which to attempt a salvage operation.

Meanwhile, Alonso backed off, content to run third as the two Ferraris pulled away. There was nothing that the Spaniard could do, if Ferrari engineered a switch between their drivers. Thirteen laps into the race, Massa was 1.7seconds ahead of Raikkonen, with Alonso cruising 8.3seconds further back. Hamilton, up to 16th, was stuck firmly in midfield traffic. He was back up to 11th by the 17th lap, but when both McLaren drivers pitted on the 22nd lap, Hamilton dropped back to 14th. But where the Spaniard’s car was fitted with another set of harder compound tyres, his crew opted for the softer tyres and a light fuel load to try and catapult him past the slower cars immediately ahead.

Meanwhile, Robert Kubica in the BMW Sauber was challenging Alonso for third place, and the Pole moved ahead in Turn One at the start of the 33rd lap. That dropped the champion’s score to 108, while further back Hamilton overtook Vettel and gained another place when Ralf Schumacher pitted. That left the Englishman ninth, just outside the points, on 107 overall. Raikkonen, still second but catching Massa, had 108. Half distance loomed.

Hamilton’s final pit stop, on lap 36, dropped him a lap down on the Ferraris, but he retained ninth place and a chance of points. It wasn’t over just yet.

By lap 40, Kubica’s second pit stop had put Alonso back to third, thus he had 109 points to Raikkonen’s 108 and Hamilton’s 107, but all Ferrari had to do was slow Massa and let Raikkonen lead, and the Finn would have 110 points… Alonso was thus far from safe.

Hamilton came back into the picture as David Coulthard pitted from eighth place on lap 42. Now he was eighth and had another point, and had his sights set on Jarno Trulli’s Toyota. He and Raikkonen now had 108 to Alonso’s 109. But then Massa ran wide in one corner, losing a lot of ground to Raikkonen, on the 44th lap. Ferrari’s end game was unravelling.

Massa pitted for the last time on lap 50, but crucially Raikkonen went three laps longer. This time he kept the lead, and with 10 points in his grasp he now led the title chase with 110, Alonso, who pitted on lap 52, was back to fifth behind Raikkonen, Massa, Rosberg and Kubica, and thus had 107 points. Hamilton, now unlapped in eighth, still had 108. But then Rosberg’s stop on lap 54 moved Alonso back up a place, on to 108 too, and when Hamilton made a third stop on lap 56 he dropped back to ninth behind Coulthard again. Down to 107, but only until the 57th lap when he grabbed eighth back from the Scot. Back to 108, two places needed. But just to complicate things further, Kubica’s third stop on lap 58 moved Alonso back to third, and 109 points. People were starting to get dizzy…

Now Hamilton’s hopes lay in the duelling BMW Saubers and Rosberg’s Williams doing something nasty to one another, for Trulli in seventh was well beyond his reach. On lap 61 Rosberg dived inside Heidfeld, both ran wide, and Trulli closed in as Kubica gratefully jumped back to fourth. But none of it helped Hamilton, until Trulli pitted on lap 63.

Now it was Raikkonen 110, Alonso 109, Hamilton 109.

And, in quite possibly the most dramatic race of the season, and against all the odds, that was how it finished. Raikkonen was Finland’s third world champion, Hamilton was his runner up on results countback. After leading almost all season, he had lost at the last gasp. But he lost with dignity, and he will be back.

TEHRAN — Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, a relative moderate who struggled against the uncompromising agenda of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has resigned his high-profile post, government officials announced Saturday.

The resignation of Ali Larijani dealt a major setback to Iranian moderates trying to forge a compromise over Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology, which is strongly opposed by the West.

It’s a good thing that Kim Kardashian has a new show on E! titled “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” because it appears that it may be a bit difficult to do so.  The pal of Paris Hilton stars with her extended and blended family on the Ryan Seacrest produced show.  It’s Kourtney and Khloe, half sisters Kendall and Kylie, mom Kris and stepfather Bruce Jenner doodling through life.

Kim Kardashian Sex Tape Part 2, Playboy: Keeping Up With the Kardashians

Many believe that Kim Kardashian doesn’t do enough to have a show that is based on “keeping up with her” as mainly she is famous for who she is friends with (as in Paris) who she dates (New Orleans Saints RB Reggie Bush) and who she sleeps with on film (Brandy’s brother Ray J) or her Playboy shoot.

***

Speaking of that second to last last item, there appears to be another tape where Kim is going at it and it is all on film according to a press release from Vivid Entertainment.  The short relases has this, “Vivid can’t take all of the credit from Kim’s success, we can’t let our fans (and Kim’s) know that we’re not finished with her sexy escapades on tape. New footage has emerged and will soon be making its way to KimKSuperstar.com,” said the entertainment company on the release of the second tape. Is it with Ray J?  Some other random guy or gal?  I can hardly keep up.  Wait - maybe Seacrest has something going here. Maybe I should be watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians

Meg White is reportedly the star of a new sex video.

The White Stripes drummer can allegedly be seen engaged in a variety of sex acts in the X-rated footage which has been leaked onto the Internet.

On the tape, a woman bearing a striking resemblance to Meg is seen having full sex with a man on a bed in a variety of sexual positions.

The White Stripes, which also includes singer-and-guitarist Jack White, recently cancelled all their tour dates for the rest of 2007 because Meg is
suffering from “acute anxiety”.

Rumours are now rife Meg pulled out of the shows because she is embarrassed about the sex tape.

On September 11 the band posted the following statement on their official website: “The White Stripes have cancelled all remaining tour dates through the end of the year due to health issues. This includes all dates in the UK this autumn. They thank you for your understanding and well wishes.

“Meg White is suffering from acute anxiety and is unable to travel at this time. The White Stripes sincerely apologise to their fans.”

Representatives for the band are yet to confirm or deny the video is genuine. - Bang Showbiz

Friends is a US situation comedy about a group living in the New York City borough of Manhattan that was originally broadcast from 1994 to 2004. It was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and produced by Kevin S. Bright, Marta Kauffman and David Crane. The show has been broadcast in over one hundred countries and still continues to attract good ratings for its episodes in syndication. The final episode of the show was watched by an estimated 51.1 million viewers.^[ 

That was roughly two-thirds of the audience gathered by the “Cheers” and “Seinfeld” finales, but along the lines of what NBC had been predicting.

Nielsen estimated that just under 36 million people warmed up for the last episode by watching highlights of the past 10 seasons during the hour preceding Thursday’s finale.

Television’s most popular comedy provided the ending most of its fans were hoping for, with the on-again, off-again couple declaring their undying love and the gang heading out for one last cup of java.

“It was really emotional,” said Matthew Perry (search), who watched the finale with the other five cast members. “I pride myself on being a real man, but I shed a few tears.”

Into the wee hours of the morning on Oct. 18, News Corp.’s (NWS) MySpace treated Silicon Valley’s elite to a very L.A.-style party at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Thumping deejay beats, swirling lights, barely clad blonde models, and an open bar greeted Bay Area bloggers, geeks, venture capitalists, and the wunderkinder running successful Web 2.0 startups.

The message was clear: MySpace is on the move northward. Beverly Hills-based MySpace, the world’s biggest social network, is opening a Silicon Valley office and plans to hire hundreds of Valley engineers, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch and MySpace co-founder Chris DeWolfe had said earlier at a conference. What’s more, Murdoch and DeWolfe said they’ll make it easier for software developers everywhere to create applications for MySpace, a move made to much acclaim by rival Facebook in May.

Those were among the few nuggets of news emanating from O’Reilly Media’s annual Web 2.0 Summit, which also featured Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who said as little as possible about reports he’s lining up financing that could value his company at upwards of $10 billion (BusinessWeek.com, 10/17/07).

Iran is capable of firing 11,000 rockets into enemy bases within the first minute after any possible attack, state-run television quoted a top Revolutionary Guards Corps commander as saying Saturday.Gen. Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, the missile commander of the Guards, said Iran has identified all enemy positions and was prepared to respond in less than a minute to any possible attack.

“Enemy bases and positions have been identified. … The Guards ground force will fire 11,000 rockets into identified enemy positions within the first minute of any aggression against the Iranian territory,” the television quoted Chaharbaghi as saying.

Chaharbaghi did not specifically identify the bases or the enemy and did not refer to arch foes Israel or the United States by name. But the U.S. has 40,000 troops on various U.S. bases in other Persian Gulf countries and 20,000 in Mideast waters. Another 160,000 U.S. troops are in neighboring Iraq and about 25,000 are in another one of Iran’s neighbors, Afghanistan.

Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency also quoted Chaharbaghi as saying that Iran’s radar-avoiding rockets cover the entire Persian Gulf and the entire Iran-Iraq border. Both on state-run TV and in Fars, he only used the word rocket, not missile. A rocket is normally an unguided weapon whereas missiles usually have guidance systems. ord = Math.random() * 10000000000000000; document.write(”);

Chaharbagi was quoted by Fars as saying that rockets with a range of 250 kilometers (155 miles) will be delivered to the Guards ground force soon. He didn’t elaborate.

Iran has periodically raised alarms over the possibility of war, particularly when the West brings up talk of sanctions over Tehran’s rejection of a U.N. Security Council demand that it halt uranium enrichment.

Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran over U.S. accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and helping Shiite militias in Iraq that target U.S. troops. Iran denies the claims.

Washington has said it is addressing the Iran situation diplomatically, rather than militarily, but U.S. officials also say that all options are open.

Last month, a top Iranian air force general said Iran has drawn up contingency plans to bomb Israel should the Jewish state attack Iran. He made the comments days after French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said that the international community should prepare for the possibility of war in the event Iran obtains atomic weapons, although he later stressed the focus is still on diplomatic pressures.

Iran on Thursday denounced a warning by U.S. President George W. Bush that the Iran’s nuclear activities could lead to World War III, saying the statement was warlike rhetoric geared at diverting U.S. attention from White House failures in Iraq.

The White House said Bush was simply making “a rhetorical point” when he suggested that if Iran could make nuclear weapons, it could lead to World War III.

Another top Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander warned last month that U.S. bases around Iran would be legitimate targets.

“Today, the United States is within Iran’s sight and all around our country, but it doesn’t mean we have been encircled. They are encircled themselves and are within our range,” Gen. Mohammed Hasan Kousehchi told IRNA in September.

Last month, Iran showed off its military might during a parade that included torpedoes, surveillance drones and what Iran called its new domestically manufactured warplanes.

Iran also has upgraded its Shahab-3 missile to range of about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), capable of reaching Israel and carrying a nuclear warhead.

But last month, Adm. William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander in the Middle East, said he believes Iran is not as strong as it portrays itself. “Not militarily, economically or politically,” he said.