World News in Pictures

[Mr Lick]

I didn't authorise anyone to purchase votes: PM Manmohan



NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today appeared to raise doubts over the veracity of diplomatic correspondence cited by the Wikileaks and insisted that he had "not authorised anybody" to purchase votes nor was he involved in any such "transactions"

[Mr Lick]

Tayo Kitamura, 40, kneels in the street to caress and talk to the wrapped body of her mother Kuniko Kitamura, 69, after Japanese firemen discovered the dead woman inside the ruins of her home in Onagawa









Evacuees are given hot soup at an evacuation centre in the coastal city of Rikuzentakata







A fire truck sprays water at reactor 3 of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Tomioka




Members of Japan's self-defence forces carry the body of a victim found in a car amid the rubble at a destroyed residential area of Kesennuma, Miyagi




An elderly woman cries in front of a destroyed building in the devastated town of Rikuzentakata in Iwate

[Mr Lick]

A rebel fighter holds a RPG launcher as he shouts "Allahu Akbar!" in Benghazi



An injured rebel fighter sits on a car in Benghazi




A Libyan policewoman loyal to Muammar Gaddafi shouts slogans during a protest outside the hotel where members of the foreign media are staying in Tripoli



Libyan government spokesman Dr Ibrahim Musa pauses as he reads a letter sent to US President Barack Obama by Muammar Gaddafi at a press conference in Tripoli, warning international forces they would 'regret' intervening in Libya



An F-18 growler jet fighter flies over the Nato airbase in Aviano, Italy. Nato's top decision-making body met in an emergency session to review military plans for a no-fly zone over Libya



French president Nicolas Sarkozy welcomes British prime minister David Cameron before a crisis summit on Libya at the Elysee palace in Paris



Barricades are set up in the centre of Benghazi as Colonel Gaddifi's forces enter the town where residents are preparing to defend their neighbourhood with petrol bombs

[Mr Lick]

Libya: ceasefire announcement challenged by West

The West on Friday challenged a ceasefire announcement by the Libyan authorities but by nightfall had held off from immediate air strikes on the regime's military facilities



Nicolas Sarkozy's government, which has led calls for military action, gave the most sceptical response to Gaddafi's ceasefire

[Mr Lick]

Libya: Col Gaddafi told to leave now or face the bombers


Col Muammar Gaddafi was on Friday night warned that he must surrender large swathes of Libya or face military action from Britain, France and other Western countries this weekend



British warplanes were poised to participate in bombing raids against tanks and other targets after David Cameron and Barack Obama issued an ultimatum to the Libyan leader.

The Prime Minister said that Britain would not tolerate Libya "festering" on Europe's borders, alluding to fears that Col Gaddafi may support terrorist attacks in this country.


In a statement on Friday night, the US president warned Col Gaddafi that he must withdraw troops from towns previously held by rebels, including Misurata and Zawiyah. The regime should also stop its advance on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi immediately, he said, and basic services including water and electricity should be returned to the areas.

[Mr Lick]

Colombia 'scorpion kick' keeper Higuita runs for mayor



The maverick former goalkeeper of Colombia, Rene "El Loco" Higuita, has announced plans to stand for political office.

As a player he was perhaps best known for inventing the "scorpion kick" he used to make a save against England at Wembley in 1995.

Higuita says he intends to run for mayor of a municipality near Medellin.

[Mr Lick]

London man convicted in Indian paedophilia case



India's Supreme Court has convicted two Britons of sexually abusing boys at a children's shelter in Mumbai.

Duncan Grant, of Hampstead, north London, and Allan Waters, of Hampshire, had been acquitted by the High Court in Mumbai in 2008 for lack of evidence.

But the Supreme Court overturned that decision and upheld guilty verdicts from the trial court in 2006 which sentenced the men to six years.


Grant, a charity worker, had set up Anchorage shelter in Colaba, Mumbai, in 1995. Waters, of Porchester, was a visitor to the home, Indian police said.

The pair were charged in 2001 with sexual assault after five boys complained to the police about repeated sexual and physical abuse by the men.

William D'souza, an Indian citizen who managed the shelter, was convicted of aiding and abetting the men and sentenced to three years. He had also earlier been cleared by the High Court, in 2006.

[Mr Lick]

India doctors suspended over deaths of pregnant women

Tens of thousands of women die in India annually during pregnancy

Authorities in the Indian state of Rajasthan have suspended three senior doctors in connection with the deaths of 18 pregnant women last month.

The doctors have been charged with negligence and irregularities in purchases of medicines.

The women died after they were given infected intravenous (IV) fluids at two hospitals in the city of Jodhpur.

Laboratory tests had confirmed that IV fluids supplied by a local company were "tainted", officials said.

The women died after severe haemorrhaging after the IV fluids were administered, authorities say.

India accounts for the highest number of maternal deaths in the world, with tens of thousands of women dying every year due to pregnancy-related problems.

[Mr Lick]

Knut the polar bear dies at Berlin zoo




Knut, the polar bear cub, has its first public appearance with his keeper Thomas Doerflein in the Berlin zoo on March 23, 2007. A Berlin zoo official says world-famous polar bear Knut has died. Bear keeper Heiner Kloes said that four-year-old Knut died Saturday, March 19, 2011 while alone in his compound. He says the cause is not yet clear.

[Mr Lick]

Kabul, Afghanistan: Ahmadullaha, an Afghan boy looks on as he walks past washing hung over wire in the compound of an abandoned Russian building. Ahmadullaha and his family have there since they returned from Pakistan, where they were refugees for years



Kiev, Ukraine: A model displays a creation from the ready-to-wear collection by popular Ukrainian fashion designer Volodymyr Podolyan during Ukrainian fashion week



Ras Ajdir, Tunisia: Men from Ghana, who used to work in Libya and fled the unrest in the country, warm themselves next to a fire as they wait to be repatriated from the refugee camp at the Tunisia-Libyan border



Malkiya, Bahrain: A Bahraini girl shouts 'Allahu Akbar' (God is great) from a window in a Shi'ite Muslim village south-west of the capital of Manama



Jebel Marra, Sudan: Members of the government forces keep watch while sitting in a vehicle during a visit by Ibrahim Gambari, the civilian head of Unamid



Sukuiso, Japan: Japanese fire trucks line a road in the devastated region




Port-au-Prince, Haiti: A police officer rides on a vehicle carrying Haiti's former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide as he arrives home. Aristide, who was forced to flee Haiti due to a rebellion in 2004, returned after seven years of exile in South Africa, days before Haiti's presidential runoff election on Sunday



Tripoli, Libya: A woman attends a rally in support of Libya's leader Muammar Gaddafi




Babchin, Belarus: A roe deer stands in a forest in the state radiation ecology reserve in the 30km exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor near the village of Babchin. Still inhospitable to humans, the area is now a nature reserve

[Mr Lick]

6 Nations - Ireland v England



Ashton making an early run



Ireland score first as Jonathan Sexton kicks 3 penalties,one after a Brian O'Driscoll try is disallowed for a forward pass earlier in the move



The Irish over the line with Bowe with England all at sea.



Flood on the board with a penalty but Ireland lead 17-3 at the break



O'Driscoll over for a try and Sexton makes the conversion to lead 24-3. Where are England?



Steve Thompson comes on and immediately runs 40 yards to score a try. Conversion missed by Wilkinson 24-8



Heavy rain in Dublin means the match is strewn with errors and the game ends with a well deserved Irish victory, crushing England hopes of a Grand Slam in the final match. They do however win the Championship as Wales lose 28-9 in Paris

[Mr Lick]

English Premiership - Man Utd v Bolton



Hernandez receiving some close attention



Jonny Evans derservedly receives a Red Card in the second half for a poor challenge on Stuart Holden who is stretchered off the field. Man U down to 10 men



Substitute Berbatov knocks in the rebound after Jussi Jaaskaleinen spills a shot from Nani in the 88th minute. Utd win 1-0

[Mr Lick]

Spurs v West Ham



White Hart Lane falls silent in tribute to the victims of the Japanese Tsunami




Despite an entertaining game the match ends goaless


West Brom v Arsenal



Steven Reid gets the Baggies off to a flyer with a goal in the 3rd minute



Odemwingie doubles their lead in the 58th minute



Andre Ashavin gives hope to the gunners when he lashes in a goal with 20 minutes remaining



Robin van Persie equalises to earn his team a point

[Mr Lick]

Coalition launches Libya attacks















The mother-in-law in fine fettle



The greens out in support of their leader



Allied forces

• UK: Providing Typhoon and Tornado jet fighters; surveillance planes; HMS Westminster and HMS Cumberland; submarines
• France: Carried out mission with at least 12 warplanes including Mirage fighters and Rafale jets; deploying aircraft carrier, warships
• US: Firing guided missiles from USS Barry and USS Stout; providing amphibious warships, and command-and-control ship USS Mount Whitney
• Italy: Nato base at Naples understood to be central hub; other Mediterranean bases made available
• Canada: Providing six F-18 fighter jets and 140 personnel

[Mr Lick]

Yemeni troops on streets, two party members quit




Anti-government protesters shout slogans during a rally demanding the ouster of Yemen's President Ali Abdullah Saleh in Sanaa March 19, 2011

[Mr Lick]

US, British warships launch more than 110 Tomahawk missiles against Gadhafi's air defenses




Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Barry (DDG 52) launches a Tomahawk missile in support of Operation Odyssey Dawn in the Mediterranean Sea in this handout photo taken March 19. This was one of approximately 110 cruise missiles fired from US and British ships and submarines that targeted about 20 radar and anti-aircraft sites along Libya's Mediterranean coast. Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn is the US Africa Command task force established to provide operational and tactical command and control of US military forces supporting the international response to the unrest in Libya and enforcement of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1973.

[Mr Lick]

Japan



Electric company workers repair a power transmission tower at the devastated town of Otsuchi, Japan, March 19.



A woman collects water leaking from a manhole in Ishimaki, Japan, March 19.



Manholes poke out from the ground on March 19, due to the liquefaction triggered by the 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Urayasu, Japan.



Shigemasa Kanno, 74, holds a photograph of his missing 68-year-old wife Sueko Kanno, at the debris of his destroyed house in Rikuzentakata, Japan, March 19.



A man shovels debris through the window of a building in Kesennuma, Japan, more than a week after the area was devastated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami, March 19.



A man walks after shopping at the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo March 19. Fishmongers at the popular market reported that the number of customers and amount of sales were sharply down due to fears about blackouts and the nuclear disaster in northern Japan following last weeks earthquake and tsunami.



A man uses a pole to mark the site where his house once stood in the ruins of the destroyed residential area of Kesennuma more than a week after the area was devastated by an earthquake and tsunami March 19.



In this Thursday, March 18 photo, a farmer checks leeks cultivated in a vinyl house in the earthquake and tsunami-stricken town of Yamamoto, Japan. Japan said Saturday, March 19, that radiation levels in spinach and milk from farms near its tsunami-stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power complex exceeded government safety limits.



Heavy equipment is used to clear debris from streets in the devastated town of Kesennuma, Japan, March 19, eight days after an earthquake and the subsequent tsunami.



Evacuees stretch while doing exercise at an evacuation center in Rikuzentakata, northern Japan, Saturday, March 19, 2011,




Members of the Fairfax County, Virginia, Task Force 1 Urban Search and Rescue team head down a flight of stairs to start their operations in Ofunato March 16, 2011. The area was devastated by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami

[Aussie Tigger]

Keep them coming mate,happy no photos of the Aussie cricket team after the loss to pakistan.

[Mr Lick]

"Supermoon" Tonight: Biggest Full Moon in 18 Years




It may not be faster than a speeding bullet, but tonight the moon will make its closest approach to Earth in 18 years—making the so-called supermoon the biggest full moon in years.
And despite Internet rumors, the impending phenomenon had no influence on the March 11.

The monthly full moon always looks like a big disk, but because its orbit is egg-shaped, there are times when the moon is at perigee—its shortest distance from Earth in the roughly monthlong lunar cycle—or at apogee, its farthest distance from Earth.
Likewise, because the size of the moon's orbit varies slightly, each perigee is not always the same distance away from Earth. Tonight's supermoon will be just 221,566 miles (356,577 kilometers) away from Earth. The last time the full moon approached so close to Earth was in 1993, according to NASA.

Bugger, missed it as the article was published yesterday

[Mr Lick]

The tiny dot of the moon seems to graze Earth's atmosphere as seen by an Expedition 26 astronaut aboard theInternational Space Station on March 6.
Expedition 26 will come to a close March 16, when three of the six crew members return to Earth aboard a Russian Soyuz capsule. The remaining crew will start Expedition 27 and will welcome three new astronauts due to arrive at the station on March 31.




Some stars just have a need for speed.

The bright, supergiant star Alpha Camelopardalis—aka Alpha Cam—sits smack in the center of the above frame, a newly released picture from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE.
Unlike some of its slower neighbors, this "runaway" star is zipping through space at between 1.5 and 9.4 million miles (2.4 and 15.1 million kilometers) an hour. At such speeds, radiation from Alpha Cam is slamming into and compressing interstellar gas and dust, creating a bow shock, seen in red.




The Westbrook Nebula is a so-called protoplanetary nebula being formed by the death of a sunlike star. This newly released picture from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope combines visible and near-infrared light to reveal the jets of toxic gases, including carbon monoxide and hydrogen cyanide, spewing from the hidden star.

When stars like the sun die, they don't explode. Instead they puff up and expand, eventually shedding their outer gas layers. The stellar cores become white dwarfs, which heat up the expelled material to create bright planetary nebulae. A protoplanetary nebula represents such a brief stage in this process that only a few hundred are known in the Milky Way.




When a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit Christchurch, New Zealand, on February 21, the temblor broke a 30-million-ton iceberg off the Tasman Glacier. That hunk of ice broke into smaller fragments after falling into Tasman Lake.
On March 2 NASA's Terra satellite snapped this false-color picture of the scene, which shows the pieces of the iceberg congregated at the far end of the lake, near the terminal moraine—a mound of rock that marks the retreating glacier's former extent.

[Mr Lick]

Stars Are Born


Material ejected by newborn stars collides with surrounding gas and dust clouds to create a "surreal landscape" of glowing arcs, blobs, and streaks, according to the European Southern Observatory.

The image, captured by the observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile and released March 16, offers a closeup view of the dramatic effects caused by baby stars in region NGC 6729—one of the stellar nurseries closest to Earth.




Galaxies Far, Far Away


The oldest and most distant galaxy cluster (pictured in a composite satellite and x-ray image) has been discovered, the European Space Agency announced on March 9.
Unlike other structures observed in the early universe, galaxy cluster CL J1449 0856 is already in its prime, which is clear from the cluster's widely distributed x-ray emissions and evolved population of galaxies, according to the ESA's website.




Fresh Off the Rocket


A crew from a Russian Soyuz capsule—including Oleg Skripochka (left), Alexander Kaleri (center), and Scott Kelly—rests minutes after they landed near the town of Arkalyk, Kazakhstan, on March 16.
The team completed nearly six months aboard the International Space Station

[Mr Lick]

Football fan falls 20 feet from stand while celebrating goal



A football fan who plunged 20 feet from the upper tier of a stadium while celebrating his team's goal has been described as 'very, very lucky'.

The 35-year-old Cardiff City fan was watching his team when he toppled from the upper tier of the away end at Millwall's New Den in Bermondsey, south-east London.
He suffered head injuries and was treated by medical staff at the ground for around 20 minutes before being rushed to hospital.

[Mr Lick]

Tiger Woods has a new girlfriend... a 22-year-old student

[Davis Knowlton]

^Excellent. The UCLA student whose anti-Asian rant just went viral. Perfect! They deserve each other!

[Mr Lick]

Just in case, like me, you missed it last night, here is the awfully romantic 'SuperMoon'



In this photo provided by NASA, the full moon is seen as it rises near the Lincoln Memorial, Saturday, March 19, in Washington. The full moon tonight is called a "Super Perigee Moon" since it is at its closest to Earth in 2011. The last full moon so big and close to Earth occurred in March of 1993.



The moon is seen behind street lamps in Lausanne, March 19. Saturday will see the rise of a full moon called a "Super Moon" when it arrives at its closest point to the Earth in 2011, at a distance of 221,565 miles away.




The moon rises behind Century Tower at the University of Florida as seen from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, Saturday, March 19, in Gainesville, Fla. The full moon is at its closest point to the Earth since March 1993.