Gymnastics world champion Uchimura to join Konami+

Report: Brazil's president to privatize terminals
A Brazilian newspaper is reporting that newly inaugurated President Dilma Rousseff has moved to privatize new terminals in Sao Paulo's two airports to prepare for the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. The Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper reports that the measure would ease the flow of travelers through the airports of Guarulhos and Viracopos, among the nation's busiest. Congress must approve it. The newspaper report published Monday says the president has started discussions with Airlines i...

Nikki Stone: An Olympic Hero Everyone Should Resolve To Be Like
To kick off the New Year, I wanted to share a story on a man that everyone should resolve to be like. Shortly after my Retirement from aerial skiing, I was elected to the U.S. Olympic Committee's Athlete Advisory Council. At my very first meeting, I was fortunate to hear a special Olympic guest talk about a program he'd started to help the most disadvantaged Children in the world. He told us about a young girl so traumatized by seeing both her parents killed in the Rwandan Genocide that she be...

What the Olympics would be like without pro hockey
Last February I argued that NHL players should not be allowed to play in the Winter Olympic Games. We see Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin face each other several times a year (including at this weekend's the Winter Classic). The Olympics should be the place where hockey fans get to see the next Sidney Crosby and the next Alex Ovechkin. Well, if you want to see the next Crosby or Ovechkin in action -- and get a taste of what the Olympics would be like without NHL superstars -- tune in to the NHL...

Study: DNA can predict hair color
ROTTERDAM, Netherlands, Jan. 3 (UPI) -- Dutch researchers say crime-scene DNA can be used to predict a person's likely hair color, allowing police to search for a suspect with a particular color. In research to be published in the journal Human Genetics, Researches at Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam say it is possible, on the basis of DNA information, to determine with an accuracy of more than 90 percent whether a person has Red Hair, with a similarly high accuracy whether a person has black...

Hair colour predicted from genes
Scientists say they have developed a way to predict a person's probable hair colour using markers in their DNA. The study paves the way for a forensic test that could estimate the hair colour of a suspect from DNA left at a crime scene. The information could then be used to refine the description of an unknown but wanted person. A Dutch-Polish team of researchers have published details in the journal Human Genetics. They could estimate with an accuracy of more than 80% whether a person'...

Nick Clegg may have to back down on scrapping control orders
Nick Clegg has yet to strike a deal with the increasingly determined Home Secretary, Theresa May, over how to replace control orders or allow suspected Terrorists to be detained for more than 14 days without charge in exceptional circumstances. Faced by growing calls from senior former cabinet members to retain control orders, it appears that the Liberal Democrat leader is willing to seek a Compromise, and will recognise that some form of replacement to control orders is necessary - even though ...

Weston Gentry: Why College Football Fans Really Hate the BCS
There is no more contentious topic in the sports community this time of year than College Football's Bowl Championship Series (BCS). Secondary to a fierce devotion to the game itself, college football fans and pundits love nothing more than to hate the BCS. While they clamor for a Playoff or "plus-one" system under the guise of fairness, I suspect their real frustration goes much deeper. Jocks hate nerds. It's that simple. They always have and they always will. Jocks are especially peeved wh...

President Obama Blasted by FOX Analyst who Calls for Vicks' Execution
Fox News commentator and Animal Rights Activist Tucker Carlson recently suggested Michael Vick should be executed for the dogs he killed and tortured that resulted in him being incarcerated. Carlson also took a jab at President Barack Obama. Carlson finds it hard to believe that President Obama would endorse Vick’s second chance based on his past. Carlson issued the following: “I’m Christian. I’ve made mistakes. I believe fervently in second chances. Michael Vick killed d...

Rock solid
Last year saw rags to riches fable Slumdog Millionaire win prize after prize, including eight Academy Awards. But its helmsman Danny Boyle, named Best Director at the 2009 Oscars, seems unaffected by his Hollywood success. The British film-maker, whose other movies include 28 Days Later and Trainspotting, says living in the UK keeps him grounded. "There's nothing wrong with Hollywood," he explains. "If you want to be a big-time director, then you should go. "But I'v...

Canada's juniors close in on perfection
Before it began, Canadian winger Marcus Foligno asked his father for advice. Canada was facing the United States in the semifinals of the world junior hockey championship, and Foligno’s father Mike — a former player, a current coach — would surely know what to say. He did. “He just told me to play my heart out,” said Foligno. Done, and done, from everybody. In a game that seemed destined to be a coin flip, Canada overwhelmed the defending champions, 4-1, in a game t...

Dispatch From Sudan: Is the End in Sight?
Juba, Sudan—In just four days, the people of southern Sudan will begin voting in a Referendum on whether to become an independent nation. In hundreds of interviews over the past six years here, I have yet to meet a southerner who doesn’t want freedom from northern rule. People here are literally counting down the minutes until the vote. (At a roundabout in...

Politics 2011: an astonishing tale of derring-do
When MPs left Parliament Hill in December, they didn’t know what the future promised. Only the Prime Minister knew, and even he didn’t know. He was watching the polls and the hockey scores. He promised himself that, if the Leafs and the Oilers won a total of six games in January, he would go to the people. Michael Ignatieff: Is he just acting? Is the fix in on fixed election law? So, first of all, he prorogued Parliament, as he explained it, “to recalibrate the barometer.&rdquo...;

Destroying America
BALTIMORE (Map, News) - I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white-bread, too self-satisfied, too rich … then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an Autopsy of history would show that all great...

Michael Brenner: Playing God in the Middle East
We are now in the 10th year of the first decade of the 'War on Terror.' So the inevitable anniversary assessments are beginning to appear. Iraq reappraisals specifically are back in vogue. They favor the drawing of Balance Sheets. Most will be skewed in an alchemic attempt to put the face of success on an unmitigated disaster. Even a more tempered approach at calculating cost/benefits, though, leaves something missing -- something of paramount importance. It is the effects on Iraqis themselves...

Mountain Revolt: Bavarian Farmers Threaten Bid for Olympic Games
Resistance from disgruntled farmers in the Alpine town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen has rattled Germany's dream of hosting the 2018 Winter Olympics. While skating legend Katarina Witt and others scramble to save the bid, Controversy has torn apart the peaceful mountain resort. Before the big snow arrives in Bavaria, Katarina Witt, the former East German Olympic Gold medalist in figure skating, sits in her office in Munich mulling how far she should commit. In the evening there will be a panel dis...

Commodities sell-off hits Asian stocks, dollar up
By Sanjeev Miglani Singapore | Tue Jan 4, 2011 10:39pm EST Singapore (Reuters) - Asian stocks slid on Wednesday following a broad commodities sell-off but the U.S. dollar edged higher after stronger-than expected U.S. factory data offered further evidence of an Economic Recovery. Oil fell for a second day as investors took profits from a sharp year-end rally. Gold inched up, though, after sinking more than 2 percent in the previous session. The fall in commodities to their Lowest Level in sev...

Japan bassist Mick Karn dies
Source: NME Japan bassist Mick Karn has died aged 52. Karn, who revealed in June 2010 that he had been diagnosed with advanced-stage Cancer, passed away at his Chelsea home today (January 4), according to a statement on Mickkarn.net. The statement added that Karn "was surrounded by his family and friends" at the time of his death, and that he "will be deeply missed by all". Born Andonis Michaelides in Nicosia, Cyprus, Karn played with Japan from their formation in 1974 until their split in 1982,...

Dicing with a rice death in festive Japan
Most countries have a few dishes revered as delicacies that pose a risk to health, either in their acquisition, or in their consumption. Expat Stephen Blower thinks Japan has more than its fair share....

Giant tuna fetches record $396,000 in Tokyo
TOKYO -- A giant bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49 million yen, or nearly $396,000, in the first auction of the year at the world's largest wholesale fish market in Japan. The price for the 754-pound (342-kilogram) tuna beat the previous record set in 2001 when a 445-pound (202-kilogram) fish sold for 20.2 million yen at Tokyo's Tsukiji market. Japan is the world's biggest consumer of Seafood, with Japanese eating 80 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins caught. The two tuna species ar...

The small corner of Tokyo that is forever Pyongyang
North Korea's red, white, and blue flag flutters on the campus, signs are written in Hangul, and female Students stroll through the corridors wearing the traditional jeogori costume. Professors lecture beneath iconic portraits of the father-and-son hereditary Dictatorship that has run the reclusive Stalinist state since 1948. Roughly 800 miles from Pyongyang, in Tokyo's leafy western suburbs, Korea University is an anomaly, an intellectual oasis in a society that distrusts and even despises the ...

Giant tuna fetches record $396,000 in Tokyo
TOKYO - A giant bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49 million yen, or nearly $396,000, in the first auction of the year at the world's largest wholesale fish market in Japan. The price for the 754-pound (342-kilogram) tuna beat the previous record set in 2001 when a 445-pound (202-kilogram) fish sold for 20.2 million yen at Tokyo's Tsukiji market. Japan is the world's biggest consumer of Seafood, with Japanese eating 80 percent of the Atlantic and Pacific bluefins caught. The two tuna specie...

Big tuna fetches record $396,000 in Tokyo
TOKYO (AP) — A giant bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49 million yen, or nearly $396,000, in Tokyo on Wednesday, in the first auction of the year at the world’s largest wholesale fish market. The price for the 754-pound (342-kilogram) tuna beat the previous record set in 2001 when a 445-pound (202-kilogram) fish sold for 20.2 million yen, a spokesman for Tsukiji market said. “It was an exceptionally large fish,” said the official, Yutaka Hasegawa. “But we were all s...

Blue fin tuna fetches record price at Tokyo's fish auction
A tuna has sold at auction for a record 32.49m yen in Tokyo, nearly $400,000 (£257,320). The fish was a blue fin, a variety prized for making the finest sushi. It was bought by a joint Japanese and Chinese bid. The first auction in January at Tokyo's Tsukji fish market is a cherished part of Japan's New Year celebrations, and record prices are often set. Japan is the world's biggest consumer of Seafood. After bells rang at 0500 local time (2000 GMT on Tuesday) to start the sa...

Commodities sell-off hits Asian stocks, dollar up
By Sanjeev Miglani Singapore (Reuters) - Asian stocks slid on Wednesday following a broad commodities sell-off but the U.S. dollar edged higher after stronger-than expected U.S. factory data offered further evidence of an Economic Recovery. Oil... Singapore (Reuters) - Asian stocks slid on Wednesday following a broad commodities sell-off but the U.S. dollar edged higher after stronger-than expected U.S. factory data offered further evidence of an Economic Recovery. Oil fell for a second day as ...

Big tuna fetches record $396,000 in Tokyo
Tokyo — A giant bluefin tuna fetched a record 32.49 million yen, or nearly $396,000, in Tokyo on Wednesday, in the first auction of the year at the world’s largest wholesale fish market. The price for the 754-pound tuna beat the previous record set in 2001 when a 445-pound fish sold for 20.2 million yen, a spokesman for Tsukiji market said. "It was an exceptionally large fish," said the official, Yutaka Hasegawa. "But we were all surprised by the price." The massive tuna was bou...