He’s been in office only six months, but already there’s a strong sense of déjà vu around the way Americans are seeing and hearing from President Barack Obama.
The president keeps returning to the same communications tactics over and over, and all the pages of his PR playbook have one thing in common: a big dose of Obama.
His prime-time news conference Wednesday night, one of the standbys, brings his total to four. That’s the same number that George W. Bush did — in eight years as president.
But as Obama’s once-lofty approval ratings dip — and voters express skepticism over his plans for health care and the economy — the longevity of the White House’s go-to techniques is being put to the test. One challenge for Obama’s team in coming weeks: not overusing the president.
“They have to be careful about that,” said former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry. “There are diminishing returns if you see the president too much. ... Part of this is just because he’s fascinating and popular right now. Inevitably, they’re going to hit some potholes, and they’re going to have to adjust their strategy.”
One troubling sign for the White House: TV networks were slow to sign on to Wednesday’s prime-time news conference. And Obama’s latest polls offer a strong reminder for the new White House that a president’s popularity is perishable — and time is ticking.
“They’ve got their eye on the expiration date, and they’re going to tap that well until it expires,” said former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer. “And if they’re successful, the well gets replenished. And success means that cap and trade and health care reform get signed into law.”
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the idea of Obama overload. “It’s important that the president continue to remind the American people what’s at stake,” Gibbs said Tuesday, when asked about Obama’s nine health care speeches in nine days. “I don’t think he can probably say that enough.”
Here’s a peek inside the playbook and the reasons why the White House keeps rinsing and repeating the same tactics:
The town-hall-style meeting
Call it Obama unplugged.
This has been one of Obama’s favorite ways to get his message out. Since taking office, he has held more than a dozen town halls in eight states, as well as one streaming live online from the White House and one in Strasbourg, France.
For the White House, the events play to Obama’s strengths. The crowds are adoring. He can give a speech laying out his message, unfiltered. And he can play Washington outsider for a few hours while demonstrating how popular he still is.
There’s always the risk of a curveball question — but a small risk indeed, compared with the much greater chance for a funny, touching or downright lump-in-the-throat moment, like when Obama hugged a homeless woman in Florida and promised to help.
But the White House seemed to stack the deck a bit at Obama’s last town hall in Virginia — where the White House picked the questions for Obama from those that were submitted online and through its social-networking sites.
And it scrapped a planned town hall in Michigan recently — changing it at the last minute to a speech rolling out a higher education initiative. But Obama will hold one Thursday in Ohio.
The major address
This brings out Obama’s inner professor — as he explains in sometimes painstaking detail his views on a particular topic.

When the president is pitching a big initiative, he gives many smaller speeches on the topic. The ideas in those remarks are then collectively brought to a crescendo in a “major address” — a soup-to-nuts explanation of his views.

Obama has done this on the economy, detainees and torture policy, Iraq and U.S. relations with the Muslim world, but not yet on health care — so stay tuned.

“He tests out his message before he does the big speech and then after they do their big speeches, they don’t let it drop because people’s attention span is very short,” said Gerald Rafshoon, former White House communications director for former President Jimmy Carter. “They follow through and cover all the bases.”

The major address gets plenty of media coverage in the days beforehand, and the White House believes the “closing argument” approach is a powerful way to put Obama’s message into political conversation. These lengthy speeches are heavy on detail, and their effectiveness is debatable. It’s unclear how much the public takes in, as most of these addresses are nearly an hour long and have been delivered in the middle of the day. 

The solo prime-time news conference

For Obama, the prime-time news conference is just another version of the town hall. Except reporters are the ones in the audience asking the questions, and because of the prime-time slot, it offers him an unfiltered hourlong slot. His message goes directly to viewers at home.

“It’s not like going to doing something during the day, and it gets edited for the evening news,” Rafshoon said. “He is getting through the filter. ... He can give it as long an answer as he wants, and they don’t cut away from it. They don’t edit it.”

Like the town hall, Obama gets to deliver an opening statement laying out his message. The topics of questions are usually predictable. It’s generally a cordial atmosphere, so even if the questions are tough, reporters only push so far and Obama gets to monopolize the time.

But, also like the town hall, the White House recently received criticism after an Obama news conference for suggesting ahead of time to a Huffington Post reporter that he would possibly get to ask the president a question about Iran.

Interviews, interviews, interviews

Obama has given more interviews than any recent president at this point in his term, according to a tally kept by veteran White House historian Martha Joynt Kumar.

Obama does the obvious: doling out different types of exclusives to the three networks and bringing cable into the fold, as he did in Africa with a one-on-one with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.

But he also regularly sits for round-table interviews with regional reporters. He often speaks to foreign news outlets before arriving abroad to set the tone, and he courts specialty media, such as the Hispanic and black press.

The interview-palooza works because Obama is the star and he does not go off message. Plus, regional and foreign news media tend to be softer interviews and give better play than members of the White House press corps.

“It’s more of a softball,” said Greg Jenkins, the Bush White House’s director of advance. “For anybody who doesn’t get a crack at the president every day of the week, you’re like, ‘Oh, wow, OK. I’ll ask my question and listen to what he says and move on.’ ... You tend to get more traction out of those interviews.”

The personal note

Part of Obama’s broad appeal is his youth and perceived coolness. As president, he tries to maintain his street cred as a regular guy, husband and dad.

Obama usually infuses some type of pop culture element into his communications smorgasbord. The White House has leaned heavily on a variety of websites — streaming video of the Foo Fighters show on the South Lawn on whitehouse.gov and popping up websites for the recovery act, health reform and other specific initiatives.

During the stimulus debate, Obama paused to chat with ESPN and often peppers his interviews with tidbits about family life in the White House — both prompted and unprompted. He routinely ignores shouted questions when in earshot of his press corps but has responded to weigh in on the NBA finals and make a quip about the first dog, Bo.

Obama has also twice written intimate pieces for Parade magazine — no Professor Obama here, pitching policy prescriptions. The first was a letter to his daughters just before his Inauguration, and the second an essay for Father’s Day.

Read More Stories from POLITICOAbortion roils tense health debateDeMint defends 'Waterloo'Vulnerable Dems get a pass -- for nowWhat should he say tonight?Blue Dogs get a deal on health costs

LONDON (AFP) –
British women hanker after a curvy hourglass body shape rather than trying to be ultra slim, preferring Kate Winslet to Kate Moss, according to a poll published Wednesday.

Sixty percent admitted to being either an "apple" or "pear shape," but 75 percent said they wanted a figure like Catherine Zeta-Jones or Marilyn Monroe, against only 10 percent who wanted to squeeze into a slim size 10 dress.

The findings reflect changing attitudes in Britain -- where obesity is a growing problem -- among women tired of the so-called Size Zero culture long fuelled by advertising and the fashion industry.

"The report shows that women's attitudes to slimming over the last 50 years have changed with their figures," said Laura Bryant of the food company which commissioned the poll of 2,000 women.

"It seems British women have lost their waists but now they are demanding them back."

And she added: "They are more concerned about getting a curvy hourglass shape like their grandmothers instead of being the perfect size 10 which shows a marked shift in attitude from the 80s and 90s, when success and failure when slimming was benchmarked against fitting into certain sized clothes."

A top-10 list of female celebrities whose shape inspired women was topped by buxom TV cook Nigella Lawson and actresses Helen Mirren, Judy Dench, and Joanna Lumley.

The findings might raise eyebrows in neighbouring France, which has the highest proportion of clinically underweight women in Europe, according to a study published in April.

Only half of those French women think they are thin, said the study, noting that in Britain, Spain and Portugal, the number of women who see themselves as seriously skinny easily outstrips the number who actually are.

A study last December found that one in three adults in England will be obese by the time London hosts the 2012 Olympics.

Between 1993 and 2004 the proportion of obese people rose "significantly", from almost 13.6 percent to 24 percent among men and from almost 17 percent to 24.4 percent among women, according to University College London researchers.

Personalized Pens

A pen (Latin penna, feather) is a writing instrument used to apply ink to a surface, usually paper. There are several different types, including ballpoint, rollerball, fountain, and felt-tip. Historically, reed pens, quill pens, and dip pens were used.

Quill pens began being replaced with steel dip pens in the first years of the 1800s. In Newhall Street John Mitchell pioneered mass production of steel pens. The first fountain pens making use of all these key ingredients appeared in the 1850s. While a student in Paris, Romanian Petrache Poenaru invented the fountain pen; an invention which the French Government patented in May 1827. Starting in the 1850s there was a steadily accelerating stream of fountain pen patents and pens in production.

VARANASI, India (AFP) –
The longest solar eclipse of the 21st century cast a shadow over much of Asia on Wednesday, plunging hundreds of millions into darkness across the giant land masses of India and China.

Ancient superstition and modern commerce came together in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity likely to end up being the most watched eclipse in history, due to its path over Earth's most densely inhabited areas.

While bad weather confounded some eclipse watchers, tens of thousands of people gathered at dawn on the banks of the Ganges river in Varanasi where a largely cloudless morning offered a stunning view.

With Hindu priests conducting special prayers, the crowds cheered and then raised their arms in salutation as the sun re-emerged from behind the moon, before they took a spiritually purifying dip in the river's holy waters.

A total solar eclipse usually occurs every 18 months or so, but Wednesday's spectacle was special for its maximum period of "totality" -- when the sun is wholly covered by the moon -- of six minutes and 39 seconds.

Such a lengthy duration will not be matched until the year 2132.

State-run China Central Television provided minute-by-minute coverage of what it dubbed "The Great Yangtze River Solar Eclipse" as the phenomenon cut a path along the river's drainage basin.

Millions of people in areas of southwestern China enjoyed a clear line of sight, according to images broadcast on CCTV, but the view was obstructed along much of its path by cloudy weather.

Shanghai viewers braved rain and overcast skies to witness the spectacle as darkness shrouded China's commercial hub at 9:36 am (0136 GMT).

"It is working hours now, but with such a spectacle going on, you don't want to miss it. The experience is truly thrilling," said Allen Chen, a Shanghai office worker, who stepped out into the street to witness the event.

And despite the weather, hotels along Shanghai's famed waterfront Bund packed in the customers with eclipse breakfast specials.

Those who could afford it grabbed expensive seats on planes chartered by specialist travel agencies that promised extended views of the eclipse as they chased the shadow eastwards.

The cone-shaped shadow, or umbra, created by the total eclipse first made landfall on the western Indian state of Gujarat shortly before 6:30 am (0100 GMT).

It then raced across India and squeezed between Bangladesh and Nepal before engulfing most of Bhutan, traversing the Chinese mainland and slipping back out to sea off Shanghai.

From there it moved across the islands of southern Japan and veered into the western Pacific.

In Mumbai, hundreds of people who trekked up to the Nehru planetarium clutching eclipse sunglasses found themselves reaching for umbrellas and rain jackets instead as heavy overnight rain turned torrential.

"We didn't want to watch it on television and we thought this would be the best place," said 19-year-old student Dwayne Fernandes. "We could've stayed in bed."

Others opted to stay home and shuttered their windows, fearful of the effects of the lunar shadow which some believe can lead to birth defects in pregnant women.

Superstition has always haunted the moment when Earth, moon and sun are perfectly aligned. The daytime extinction of the sun, the source of all life, is associated with war, famine, flood and the death or birth of rulers.

The ancient Chinese blamed a sun-eating dragon. In Hindu mythology, the two demons Rahu and Ketu are said to "swallow" the sun during eclipses, snuffing out its light and causing food to become inedible and water undrinkable.

Some Indian astrologers had issued predictions laden with gloom and foreboding, and a gynaecologist at a Delhi hospital said many expectant mothers scheduled for July 22 caesarian deliveries insisted on changing the date.

The last total solar eclipse was on August 1 last year and also crossed China.

The next will be on July 11, 2010, but will occur almost entirely over the South Pacific, where Easter Island -- home of the legendary moai giant statues -- will be one of the few landfalls.

Los Angeles (E! Online) –
Here's hoping Mischa Barton's head is feeling better.

With regard to the undisclosed condition that landed her in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center's psychiatric department last week, rep Craig Schneider told E! News Tuesday that the troubled 23-year-old is "improving and still under care, with the intentions of being able to resume production on The Beautiful Life next week."

Interestingly, the start of production on the hotties-with-issues drama was pushed back from July 22 to July 31—but not because of Barton, the network insisted.

A CW rep told E! News yesterday that sets are still being built and the delay had nothing to do its recently rehabbed star, who plays a supermodel struggling to stay on top of her game in the face of fierce competition.

Yeah, yeah, we'll say it... ironic.
Meanwhile, Schneider has had no comment on the root of the problem, i.e. why exactly the former O.C. star was placed on an involuntary psychiatric hold last Wednesday, or on whether doctors opted to keep Barton hospitalized past the requisite 72 hours of the original evaluation period.

A source who spoke to Barton just hours before she was hospitalized tells E! News that the starlet was acting increasingly erratic.

Theories on what's ailing her have ranged from self-esteem issues to an eating disorder to substance abuse.

But since it's hard to know exactly which stresses lurk in the brains of those whose every move, outfit and attitude is subject to scrutiny, we'll just send some general get-well vibes her way.

'Cause either way, issues are issues.
________

Watch a clip of Mischa in The Beautiful Life, premiering Sept. 16 on the CW, right here.

··· THEY SAID WHAT? Get today's most commented stories now at www.eonline.com

NEW YORK – Kiefer Sutherland's legal troubles for allegedly head-butting a fashion designer in a New York City nightclub are over.
The Manhattan district attorney's spokeswoman said Tuesday that misdemeanor assault charges against the actor are being dropped because the alleged victim wouldn't cooperate with prosecutors.
The star of the Fox TV show "24" was charged in May after designer Jack McCollough said Sutherland head-butted him and broke his nose in a Manhattan nightclub.
Sutherland and McCollough issued a joint statement a few weeks later saying they had resolved their differences. Sutherland apologized to McCollough in the statement.
Sutherland's attorneys declined to comment Tuesday.

VARANASI, India (Reuters) –
A total solar eclipse began its flight on Wednesday across a narrow path of Asia, where it was expected to darken the skies for millions of people for more than six minutes in some places.

The longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century will be visible in a roughly 250 km-wide (155 miles) corridor, according to the U.S. space agency NASA, as it travels half the globe and passes through the world's two most populous nations, India and China.

The eclipse began at 5:28 a.m. local time (2358 GMT) in India and will last up to a maximum of 6 minutes, 39 seconds when it hits the Pacific Ocean, according to NASA.

Eclipses allow earth-bound scientists a rare glimpse at the sun's corona, the gases surrounding the sun.

Starting on India's west coast north of financial capital Mumbai, it took in the ancient Hindu holy city of Varanasi on the Ganges river.

Tens of thousands of people snaked through the narrow lanes of Varanasi and gathered for a dip in the Ganges, an act considered to lead to salvation from the cycle of life and death.

Amid chanting of Hindu hymns, men, women and children waded into the river with folded hands and prayed to the sun as it emerged in an overcast sky.

"We have come here because our elders told us this is the best time to improve our after-life," said Bhailal Sharma, a villager from central India, who came to Varanasi with a group of about 100 people.

The eclipse was due to sweep through Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and China's financial hub Shanghai, before heading to the Pacific.

"In the 21st century this is the longest," said Harish Bhatt, dean at the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Astrophysics.

"This is indeed quite an important event for scientific experiments. Its long duration provides you an opportunity to make very complicated, complex experiments."

MIXED BLESSING

Scientists in China will be snapping two-dimensional images of the sun's corona -- up to 2 million degrees Celsius (3.6 million F) hot -- at roughly one image per second, Bhatt said.

The eclipse is seen as a mixed blessing for millions of Indians. Crowds across the country will bathe in holy rivers and ponds for good fortune as they consider the solar blackout auspicious.

But according astrologers' predictions, the eclipse spells bad luck for others and expectant mothers have asked doctors to advance or postpone births, fearing complications or a miserable future for their children.

Parents in several schools in India's capital, New Delhi, said they would not send their children to class as the eclipse coincides with breakfast. According to Hindu custom, it is inauspicious to prepare food during an eclipse.

In ancient Chinese culture, an eclipse was a bad omen and linked to natural disasters or deaths in the imperial family. Chinese officials and state media have been at pains to reassure the public that city services will run normally.

But in modern China, people who want to see the astronomical rarity may have to escape thick pollution caused by the rapid industrial growth, which smudges the horizon, even on clear days.

"The majority of people decided to go to Tongning, in Anhui, because they're worried about the serious air pollution from industrial areas in Shanghai," said Bill Yeung, the president of the Hong Kong Astronomical Society, who organized a trip by 120 eclipse watchers from Hong Kong.

Tongning has an 80 percent chance of clear skies, while Shanghai's is only 10 percent, he said.

(Additional reporting by Matthias Williams, Bappa Majumdar, Lucy Hornby and James Pomfret; Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Alex Richardson)

NEW YORK – "Billy Elliot" will begin dancing across North America next March.
Producers of the Tony-winning best musical say the show will begin its tour in Chicago, opening for an extended run at the Ford Center for the Performing Arts, Oriental Theatre.
Exact dates, casting and other cities on the tour will be announced later.
"Billy Elliot," which features a score by Elton John and Lee Hall, is based on the film about a British coal miner's son who dreams to dance.
The musical is currently playing in London and New York.

WASHINGTON – The Senate's top Republican will vote against Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
A senior aide says Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell plans to announce his opposition to President Barack Obama's high court nominee on Monday.
He says her statements show an alarming lack of respect for the notion of equal justice, and that he's worried she'd let her sympathies and prejudices interfere with her decisions as a justice.
McConnell is weighing in as Sotomayor starts to win GOP supporters after a smooth performance at her confirmation hearings. Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana, Mel Martinez of Florida and Olympia Snowe of Maine all announced Friday they would vote for Sotomayor.
She's expected to be confirmed easily.

BERLIN (Reuters) –
German police arrested three men suspected of attempting to blackmail Susanne Klatten, the country's wealthiest woman, by claiming they had a secret video of her affair with a Swiss gigolo, prosecutors said Friday.

Munich state prosecutor Thomas Steinkraus-Koch said the trio had been arrested last week by police in the northern town of Duisburg on suspicion of trying to extort 800,000 euros and a BMW luxury SUV from Klatten, heiress to the BMW empire.

"They sent a letter to her threatening to give the sex video they claimed to have to Italian media if she did not give them 800,000 euros and a BMW," Steinkraus-Koch told Reuters, adding that Klatten immediately forwarded the letter to police.

"We assume the story about the video was contrived. At least we have found no evidence of any such video after searching their apartments and computers. There is nothing to suggest they ever were in possession of such a sex video."

The three men aged 33 to 46 -- including one German and one Serb -- were contacted by a police officer posing as an acquaintance of Klatten, he said. They set up a contact phone number for the blackmailers and that led to their arrest.

Klatten, a member of the Quandt family -- the leading shareholders in carmaker BMW -- went public last year with the story of how her Swiss lover secretly shot intimate footage and later demanded tens of million of euros not to reveal it.

Helg Sgarbi, a former Swiss investment banker, was sentenced to six years in jail by a Munich court after he admitted he had seduced Klatten and three other wealthy women. He persuaded them to pay him nearly 10 million euros under various false pretexts.

Sgarbi, a Swiss army lieutenant, won over Klatten, a 46-year-old married mother of three, at a health centre.

She later handed him a cardboard box containing 7 million euros in 500 euro notes, believing he had paralysed a child in a traffic accident in America and was in need of the money.

Klatten ended the relationship after Sgarbi, 44, demanded more money. He responded by threatening to send photos and tapes of their hotel-room rendezvous to colleagues, family and media unless she gave him 49 million euros. She then went to police.

Klatten's wealth is estimated by Forbes magazine at almost $10 billion (6.1 billion pounds), making her the 68th richest person in the world.

The Quandt dynasty had close ties to the Nazi party and built its fortune supplying German army and railway worker uniforms. The first wife of Klatten's grandfather went on to marry Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

In March, a truck driver from Bochum tried to blackmail Klatten with a similar claim. He was seeking 75,000 euros and is now on trial in Munich for attempted blackmail.

(Editing by Philippa Fletcher)

LIVERPOOL, England (AFP) –
Everton have turned down a bid from Manchester City for defender Joleon Lescott, the Liverpool club confirmed on Friday.

Representatives of the big-spending Manchester club offered 15 million pounds (18 million euro) on Thursday for the 26-year-old England international but the deal was promptly rejected, Everton Chief Executive Robert Elstone said.

"As a club, we have publicly stated as recently as Wednesday night that we do not intend selling any players," Elstone said on the club's website.

"(Team manager) David Moyes' primary focus is on building a squad so that we can continue to compete effectively in what is the most competitive League in world football," he added.

Lescott has been linked with a possible move to Eastlands but this is the first time Moyes's claim that none of his squad will be sold has been put to the test.

The rejection will dispel dreams by City boss Mark Hughes of conjuring up a magical defensive pair consisting of Lescott and Chelsea and England skipper John Terry.

UNITED NATIONS – The U.N. imposed new sanctions Thursday against five North Korean officials, four companies and a state agency, and banned imports of two weapons-making materials, in a rare unified push by the world's powers to thwart Pyongyang's nuclear ambitions.
The sanctions, which take immediate effect and are to be carried out by all of the U.N.'s 192 member nations, include travel bans and a freeze on the financial assets against the officials, companies and state agency. Nations also were instructed to refrain from supplying North Korea with certain types of graphite and para-aramid fiber — two of the materials used in ballistic missile parts.
"It is of course significant that we have also put individuals on the list, as this is the first time. This shows that the sanctions are going on a higher level at this moment," said Fazli Corman, Turkey's deputy U.N. ambassador, who chairs the panel.
The newest sanctions were approved against:
_The General Bureau of Atomic Energy in Pyongyang, the chief agency directing the North's nuclear program. That includes the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center and its plutonium production research reactor, as well as its fuel fabrication and reprocessing facilities.
_Three Pyongyang-based companies — Namchongang Trading Corp., Korea Hyoksin Trading Corp., and Korean Tangun Trading Corp. — and one Iranian-based company, Hong Kong Electronics.
_Yun Ho-Jin, director of Namchongang Trading Corp.; Ri Je-Son, director of the General Bureau of Atomic Energy; Hwang Sok-Hwa, chief of the bureau's scientific guidance; Ri Hong-Sop, former director of Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center; and Han Yu-Ro, director of Korea Ryongaksan General Trading Corp.
_Two types of goods used in ballistic missile parts by North Korea — a graphite designed or specified for use in electrical discharge machining; and a para-aramid fiber, filament and tape, which is a Kevlar-like material.
U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said the United States was pleased with the list, which required unanimous approval among the 15 nations that make up a sanctions panel of the U.N.'s powerhouse Security Council. China, North Korea's biggest ally and trading partner, went along with most of the U.S. recommendations.
The U.S. has launched what it calls a major effort to ensure that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, which along with a previous resolution in 2006 serves to authorize the latest sanctions, is implemented effectively.
"These new designations — five individuals, five entities and two goods — strengthen the sanctions regime against North Korea and will serve to constrain North Korea from engaging in transactions or activities that could fund its WMD or proliferation activities," Rice said.
The sanctions panel, which said it plans to add still more names and entities, has been focused on three areas: sensitive dual-use goods, ballistic missile-related items and nuclear-related items.
Pak Tok-hun, deputy chief of North Korea's U.N. mission in New York, told South Korea's Yonhap news agency that the sanctions were "unfair" but said they will not harm his country.
Pak said North Korea "will not accept Security Council resolutions against the North and any sanctions under the resolutions," adding, "Sanctions will not resolve any problems."
A U.S. expert on North Korean sanctions said the latest measures — putting the U.N. seal of approval on measures the U.S. already has prepared to undertake — are "a modest first step" that might scare off some of North Korea's weapons-buying customers.
"We're now into a game of Whack-A-Mole," said Marcus Noland, an economist at Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics, referring to the game in which moles keeping popping up from their holes randomly.
"What's going to happen is that the North Koreans are going to try to reconstitute their entities and form new shell companies, new front companies, to continue these activities," he said. "If there's really going to be comprehensive efforts on this, they're going to have to go after the financial intermediaries, some of which are in China, and after the customers."
North Korea has not indicated how it might react to the sanctions panel's latest decisions.

But on June 13, North Korea's Foreign Ministry threatened to take "countermeasures" including accelerating plutonium reprocessing and starting up uranium enrichment, which would give the regime a second way to make atomic bombs.

North Korea warned that any attempted blockade of its ships would be considered "an act of war" that would draw "a decisive military response." It also has threatened a "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked.

Security Council Resolution 1874, approved on June 12, responded to the North's underground nuclear test blast on May 25. It called for clamping down on alleged trading of banned arms and weapons-related material and stepped-up inspections of suspect shipments by sea and air.

Since then, the council also has condemned and expressed "grave concern" over North Korea's recent firing of seven ballistic missiles on U.S. Independence Day. The missile launches off the nation's east coast defied three previous council resolutions and further aggravated tensions already high after North Korea's May 25 test blast.

Japan, which lives in constant fear of a nuclear-armed North Korea, asked all Southeast Asian nations, except junta-ruled Myanmar to enforce the U.N.'s North Korea resolutions.

A North Korean ship, the first to be monitored under the June 12 resolution, turned back before reaching port, possibly in Myanmar, with its suspected illicit cargo of weapons.

Most promotional items are relatively small and inexpensive, but can range to higher-end items; for example celebrities at film festivals and award shows are often given expensive promotional items such as expensive perfumes, leather goods, and electronics items.

Business gifts used to foster customer goodwill and retention are the most common use for promotional items at 18.5%. Other objectives that marketers use promotional items to facilitate include tradeshow traffic-building, brand awareness, public relations, employee relations and events, dealer and distributor programs, new customer generation, not-for-profit programs, employee service awards, new product introductions, internal incentive programs, safety education, customer referrals and marketing research.[citation needed]

Promotional Items

LONDON – A British Muslim convert was jailed Friday for plotting to carry out a suicide bomb attack on a shopping mall in southern England.
Isa Ibrahim, a 20-year-old doctor's son who was educated at some of Britain's most exclusive private schools, was convicted of planning to kill himself and scores of innocent shoppers.
Judge Neil Butterfield said Ibrahim would be jailed for a minimum of 10 years.
"You are a dangerous young man, well capable of acting on the views you held in the spring of 2008," when he was arrested, the judge said.
Ibrahim — who changed his given name from Andrew and converted to Islam in 2006 — was convicted by a jury of making an explosive with intent to endanger life, and of making explosives with intent to cause serious injury or damage to property.
Prosecutors at Winchester Crown Court in southern England said Ibrahim probably planned to target the Broadmead shopping mall in Bristol, 120 miles (190 kms) southwest of London.
Ibrahim had been seen carrying out reconnaissance trips to the mall, and, following his arrest in April 2008, police found a supply of the homemade HMTD explosive, detonators and a suicide vest at his home.
Detective Superintendent Nigel Rock, the police officer who led the inquiry into Ibrahim's plot, said it "could have been a matter of days" before Ibrahim attempted to carry out his attack.
Ibrahim had claimed in court that he planned to detonate the vest safely, without wearing it, and post a video of his experiment on the YouTube Web site.
Prosecutors said Ibrahim had been increasingly interested in radical Islamic ideas and in violence. They told a jury that he had described Britain as a "dirty toilet" and had said the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States were a justified response to Western aggression toward Muslims.
"The device that Ibrahim was making was viable and he had taken steps to make it even more destructive by acquiring ball bearings and airgun pellets. He had identified a target. Had he carried out the attack he had been preparing, serious civilian casualties would have been inevitable," said Moira Macmillan, a counterterrorism lawyer with Britain's Crown Prosecution Service.
Police said Ibrahim was not known to authorities and appears to have become radicalized by researching extremist Islamic material posted on the Internet.
Prosecutors said that Ibrahim was a former drug addict who had been expelled from several private schools, including Downside School, a Catholic boarding school in southern England.
Rock said that Ibrahim was arrested after a tip-off from Muslims in Bristol. Ibrahim had bragged to members of a mosque about his plans to carry out an attack, and appeared for prayers with cuts and bruises over his hands and feet — likely caused by his attempts to develop a viable bomb.
"Without the support of the Muslim community, the worst could have happened," Rock said.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – Space shuttle Endeavour is closing in on the international space station following a two-day chase.
Before docking at the space station Friday afternoon, Endeavour will perform a backflip so the station crew can photograph its entire surface. NASA wants to see whether the shuttle suffered any significant launch damage. An unusually large amount of foam insulation peeled away from a the fuel tank during Wednesday's liftoff.
Endeavour's thermal tiles were dinged in several places by foam. But that damage is considered minor.
The shuttle and its seven astronauts are delivering the last piece of Japan's space station lab, a porch for experiments. Endeavour will remain at the space station for 1 1/2 weeks.