Cyprus' banks to remain closed until Thursday

A TV channel employee watch the Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades speaks during a live, televised address to the nation from the Presidential Palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 25, 2013. A deal to provide Cyprus with an international bailout was clinched in the early hours of Monday in a Brussels meeting between the 17-nation eurozone's finance ministers. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias,Pool)

A TV channel employee watch the Cyprus' President Nicos Anastasiades speaks during a live, televised address to the nation from the Presidential Palace in the capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 25, 2013. A deal to provide Cyprus with an international bailout was clinched in the early hours of Monday in a Brussels meeting between the 17-nation eurozone's finance ministers. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias,Pool)

A man passes a sprayed entrance of a store that buys gold which reads in Greek " thieves" in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 25, 2013. Cyprus secured what its politicians described as a ?painful? solution to avert imminent bankruptcy, agreeing early Monday to slash its oversize banking sector and make large account holders take losses to help pay to secure a last-minute euro10 billion (US$13 billion) bailout. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A statue atop a monument representing Cyprus' liberty, seen standing as the moon rises behind, in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 25, 2013. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

A man uses the ATM machine as another man sits outside of a closed branch of Laiki bank in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 25, 2013. Cyprus clinched a last-minute solution to avert imminent financial meltdown early Monday after it agreed to slash its oversized banking sector and inflict hefty losses on wealthy depositors in troubled banks to secure a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout. (AP Photo/Petros Karadjias)

An elderly woman sells Greek, Cypriot, and EU flags before the start of a parade for Greek Independence Day celebrations in capital Nicosia, Cyprus, Monday, March 25, 2013. Cyprus secured what its politicians described as a ?painful? solution to avert imminent bankruptcy, agreeing early Monday to slash its oversize banking sector and make large account holders take losses to help pay to secure a last-minute euro10 billion (US$13 billion) bailout. (AP Photo/Petros Giannakouris)

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) ? Cyprus ordered banks to remain closed for two more days over fears of a run by customers trying to get their money out, after striking a pre-dawn bailout deal Monday that averted the country's imminent bankruptcy.

The sudden midnight postponement of the much anticipated Tuesday bank opening by all but the country's two largest lenders was sure to hammer businesses already reeling from more than a week of no access to their deposits.

ATMs have been dispensing cash but often run out, and an increasing number of stores and other businesses have stopped accepting credit or debit cards. The two largest lenders, the struggling Laiki and Bank of Cyprus, have imposed a daily withdrawal limit of 100 euros ($130).

Cyprus clinched an eleventh-hour deal with the 17-nation eurozone and the International Monetary Fund early Monday for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout. Without it, the country's banks would have collapsed, dragging down the economy and potentially pushing it out of the euro.

Under the deal, the country agreed to slash its oversized banking sector and inflict hefty losses on large depositors in troubled banks.

The country's banks have been closed since March 16 to avert a run on deposits as the country's politicians struggled to come up with a way to raise enough money to qualify for the bailout. An initial plan that would have raised 5.8 billion euros by seizing up to 10 percent of people's bank accounts enraged depositors and was soundly rejected by lawmakers early last week.

But with the immediate crisis averted, worry spread across Europe that the deal could boomerang, spooking investors and hurting the eurozone's efforts to keep its debt crisis from spreading.

"The Cypriot bailout has a powerful legacy which may alter the security with which depositors elsewhere in the eurozone view the safety of banks," said Jane Foley, an analyst at Rabobank International.

The initial plan to seize a percentage of all deposits sent jitters across the eurozone. European officials, anxious to prevent any further spread of the financial crisis that has already left Greece, Ireland and Portugal dependent on bailout funds, had been at pains to point out that Cyprus was a unique case.

The country of about 800,000 people has a banking sector eight times larger than its gross domestic product, with nearly a third of the roughly 68 billion euros in the country's banks believed to be held by Russians. Germany in particular long insisted that Cypriot banks, which attracted foreign investors with high interest rates, needed to contribute to the bailout.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister who chairs the Eurogroup gathering of the eurozone's finance ministers, said Monday that inflicting losses on the banks' shareholders, bondholders and large depositors should become the eurozone's default approach for dealing with ailing lenders.

"If I finance a bank and I know if the bank will get in trouble I will be hit and I will lose money, I will put a price on that," Dijsselbloem said in a joint interview with the Financial Times and Reuters. "I think it is a sound economic principle. And having cheap money because the risk will be covered by the government, and I will always get my money back, is not leading to the right decisions in the financial sector."

However, forcing losses on large deposits could encourage investors to pull money out of weaker southern European economies to more stable nations in the north, like Germany.

That concern was evident in markets. The euro currency, used by more than 330 million Europeans, initially rose against the dollar to about $1.30 on news of the bailout agreement, but tanked below $1.29 ? its lowest level since November ? following Dijsselbloem's remarks. European stock market indexes also lost their earlier gains, with bank shares hardest-hit, particularly in financially weak countries like Italy and Spain.

On Wall Street, stocks reversed an early rise as traders returned to worrying about the eurozone, and the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 0.4 percent.

After a whirlwind of nervous market reactions, Dijsselbloem issued a terse clarifying statement, saying Cyprus was "a specific case with exceptional challenges which required the bail-in measures."

"Macro-economic adjustment programs are tailor-made to the situation of the country concerned and no models or templates are used," he added.

Under the new Cyprus bailout plan, the bulk of the funds will be raised by forcing losses on accounts of more than 100,000 euros in the country's second- largest lender, Laiki, and its top lender, Bank of Cyprus, with the remainder coming from tax increases and privatizations.

People and businesses with more than 100,000 euros in their accounts at Laiki face significant losses. The bank will be dissolved immediately into a so-called bad bank containing its uninsured deposits and toxic assets, with the guaranteed deposits being transferred to the Bank of Cyprus.

Deposits at Bank of Cyprus above 100,000 euros will be frozen until it becomes clear whether or to what extent they will also be forced to take losses. Those funds will eventually be converted into bank shares.

It's not yet clear how severe the losses will be to Laiki's large bank deposit holders, but the euro finance ministers noted that the restructuring is expected to yield 4.2 billion euros ($5.4 billion) overall. Analysts have estimated investors might lose up to 40 percent of their money.

Speaking about the marathon 10-hour negotiations in Brussels that resulted in the deal, Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades said "the hours were difficult, at some moments dramatic. Cyprus found itself a breath away from economic collapse."

The agreement, he said, "is painful, but under the circumstances the best we could have ensured. The danger of Cyprus' bankruptcy is definitively overcome and the tragic consequences for the economy and society are averted."

____

Juergen Baetz in Brussels contributed to this story.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-03-25-Cyprus-Financial%20Crisis/id-22a5dbbaa2e34018935e4e87f0cc4038

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Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini Release Date Set in June or July 2013?

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Source: www.ibtimes.com --- Sunday, March 24, 2013
Photos of the alleged Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini emerged online last week that stirred the upcoming release of the device. ...

Source: http://www.ibtimes.comhttp:0//www.ibtimes.co.in/articles/449805/20130325/samsung-galaxy-s4-mini-release-date-rumors.htm

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Laser empties atoms from the inside out

Public release date: 25-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Caron Lett
caron.lett@york.ac.uk
44-019-043-22029
University of York

An international team of plasma physicists has used one of the world's most powerful lasers to create highly unusual plasma composed of hollow atoms.

The experimental work led by scientists from the University of York, UK and the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of Russian Academy of Sciences demonstrated that it is possible to remove the two most deeply bound electrons from atoms, emptying the inner most quantum shell and leading to a distinctive plasma state.

The experiment was carried out using the petawatt laser at the Central Laser Facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to further understanding of fusion energy generation, which employs plasmas that are hotter than the core of the Sun.

The results are reported in the journal Physical Review Letters.

A hollow atom occurs when an electron buried in an atom is removed, usually by being hit by another electron, creating a hole while leaving all the other electrons attached. This process creates plasma, a form of ionised gas. An X-ray is released when the hole is filled.

Normally the process involves removing electrons from the outer shells of atoms first and working inwards. The team of scientists demonstrated a new mechanism for creating hollow atoms that involved emptying atoms from the inside out.

The experimental work used an intense laser, which at one petawatt delivers approximately 10,000 times the entire UK national grid, delivered in a thousand-billionth of a second, onto an area smaller than the end of a human hair.

Dr Nigel Woolsey, from the York Plasma Institute, Department of Physics, at the University of York was the Principal Investigator for the experimental work.

Dr Woolsey said: "At such extraordinary intensities electrons move at close to the speed of light and as they move they create perhaps the most intense X-rays ever observed on Earth. These X-rays empty the atoms from the inside out; a most extraordinary observation and one that suggests the physics of these interactions is likely to change, as lasers become more powerful."

Analysis and theoretical work was led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA and Osaka University, Japan.

The analysis showed the mechanism for hollow atom generation was not due to the collision of electrons or driven by the laser photons, but was driven by the resulting radiation field from the interaction.

Lead author Dr James Colgan, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said: "The conditions under which the hollow atoms were produced were highly non-equilibrium and the production mechanism was quite surprising. These results indicate that a little-explored region of physics is now starting to become accessible with the unprecedented intensities reached by the world's leading laser facilities."

Co-author Dr Alexei Zhidkov, from Osaka University, said: "This experiment has demonstrated a situation where X-ray radiation dominates the atomic physics in a laser-plasma interaction; this indicates the importance of X-ray radiation generation in our physics description. Future experiments are likely to show yet more dramatic effects which will have substantial implications for diverse fields such as laboratory-based astrophysics."

If the scientific and technological challenges can be overcome, fusion offers the potential for an effectively limitless supply of safe, environmentally friendly energy. The experimental work was designed to further scientists understanding of how intense lasers can create electron beams with speeds close to the speed of light, then use these beams to heat fusion fuel to thermonuclear temperatures.

Co-author Dr Sergey Pikuz, from the Joint Institute for High Temperatures RAS, said: "The measurements, simulations, and developing physics picture are consistent with a scenario in which high-intensity laser technology can be used to generate extremely intense X-ray fields. This demonstrates the potential to study properties of matter under the impact of intense X-ray radiation."

Co-author Rachel Dance, a University of York PhD physics student, said: "This was a very dynamic experiment which led to an unexpected outcome and new physics. The hollow atom diagnostic was set to measure the hot electron beam current generated by the laser, and the results that came out of this in the end, showed us that the mechanism for hollow atom generation, was not collisional or driven by the laser photons, but by the resulting radiation field from the interaction."

###

The UK researchers received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Royal Society.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Public release date: 25-Mar-2013
[ | E-mail | Share ]

Contact: Caron Lett
caron.lett@york.ac.uk
44-019-043-22029
University of York

An international team of plasma physicists has used one of the world's most powerful lasers to create highly unusual plasma composed of hollow atoms.

The experimental work led by scientists from the University of York, UK and the Joint Institute for High Temperatures of Russian Academy of Sciences demonstrated that it is possible to remove the two most deeply bound electrons from atoms, emptying the inner most quantum shell and leading to a distinctive plasma state.

The experiment was carried out using the petawatt laser at the Central Laser Facility at the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) Rutherford Appleton Laboratory to further understanding of fusion energy generation, which employs plasmas that are hotter than the core of the Sun.

The results are reported in the journal Physical Review Letters.

A hollow atom occurs when an electron buried in an atom is removed, usually by being hit by another electron, creating a hole while leaving all the other electrons attached. This process creates plasma, a form of ionised gas. An X-ray is released when the hole is filled.

Normally the process involves removing electrons from the outer shells of atoms first and working inwards. The team of scientists demonstrated a new mechanism for creating hollow atoms that involved emptying atoms from the inside out.

The experimental work used an intense laser, which at one petawatt delivers approximately 10,000 times the entire UK national grid, delivered in a thousand-billionth of a second, onto an area smaller than the end of a human hair.

Dr Nigel Woolsey, from the York Plasma Institute, Department of Physics, at the University of York was the Principal Investigator for the experimental work.

Dr Woolsey said: "At such extraordinary intensities electrons move at close to the speed of light and as they move they create perhaps the most intense X-rays ever observed on Earth. These X-rays empty the atoms from the inside out; a most extraordinary observation and one that suggests the physics of these interactions is likely to change, as lasers become more powerful."

Analysis and theoretical work was led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA and Osaka University, Japan.

The analysis showed the mechanism for hollow atom generation was not due to the collision of electrons or driven by the laser photons, but was driven by the resulting radiation field from the interaction.

Lead author Dr James Colgan, from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, said: "The conditions under which the hollow atoms were produced were highly non-equilibrium and the production mechanism was quite surprising. These results indicate that a little-explored region of physics is now starting to become accessible with the unprecedented intensities reached by the world's leading laser facilities."

Co-author Dr Alexei Zhidkov, from Osaka University, said: "This experiment has demonstrated a situation where X-ray radiation dominates the atomic physics in a laser-plasma interaction; this indicates the importance of X-ray radiation generation in our physics description. Future experiments are likely to show yet more dramatic effects which will have substantial implications for diverse fields such as laboratory-based astrophysics."

If the scientific and technological challenges can be overcome, fusion offers the potential for an effectively limitless supply of safe, environmentally friendly energy. The experimental work was designed to further scientists understanding of how intense lasers can create electron beams with speeds close to the speed of light, then use these beams to heat fusion fuel to thermonuclear temperatures.

Co-author Dr Sergey Pikuz, from the Joint Institute for High Temperatures RAS, said: "The measurements, simulations, and developing physics picture are consistent with a scenario in which high-intensity laser technology can be used to generate extremely intense X-ray fields. This demonstrates the potential to study properties of matter under the impact of intense X-ray radiation."

Co-author Rachel Dance, a University of York PhD physics student, said: "This was a very dynamic experiment which led to an unexpected outcome and new physics. The hollow atom diagnostic was set to measure the hot electron beam current generated by the laser, and the results that came out of this in the end, showed us that the mechanism for hollow atom generation, was not collisional or driven by the laser photons, but by the resulting radiation field from the interaction."

###

The UK researchers received funding from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Royal Society.

---

[ | E-mail | Share ]

?

AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-03/uoy-lea032513.php

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UK police: No 'third party involvement' in Russian tycoon's death

By Daniel Arkin, Staff Writer, NBC News

British police said evidence at the home of Boris Berezovsky, an exiled Russian oligarch who was found dead near London on Saturday, does not indicate "third party involvement."

?It would be wrong to speculate on the cause of death until the post mortem has been carried out. We do not have evidence at this stage to suggest third party involvement,? Detective Chief Inspector Kevin Brown, Deputy Senior Investigating Officer in the case, said in a statement.

Berezovsky, 67, amassed a mammoth fortune as an oil and automobiles magnate during Russia?s post-Soviet privatization of state assets in the early 1990s. He also accrued immense political influence, catapulting Boris Yeltsin to re-election in?1996 and brokering Vladimir Putin?s rise to prominence.

But when Putin became president of Russia in 2000, Berezovsky became one of his harshest critics and?often clashed?with the Kremlin. He soon fled to Britain, where he was granted political asylum three years later.

Police said the tycoon?s death was ?unexplained? and are working to make sense of Berezovksy?s final hours.

?The investigation team (is) building a picture of the last days of Mr. Berezovsky?s life, speaking to close friends and family to gain a better understanding of his state of mind,? said Brown.

Authorities announced Sunday that radioactive, biological and chemical specialists sent to conduct tests gave the scene an ?all clear,? The Associated Press reported.

?Officials found nothing of concern in the property, and we are now progressing the investigation as normal,? according to the police statement.

Heightening the intrigue is the fact that Berezovsky was a close friend of Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian dissident who was fatally and mysteriously poisoned with radioactive polonium in London in 2006.

Berezovsky was an outspoken opponent of Putin in recent years, charging the president with dictatorial policies and domestic terrorism. Berezovsky, who survived assassination attempts ? including a bombing that decapitated his driver ? said he feared retributive violence after criticizing the government, according to Reuters.

A spokesman for Putin on the Russia 24 television station said that he was not aware of the president?s reaction to the news of Berezovsky?s death, but that ?news of anyone?s death, no matter what kind of person they were, cannot arouse any positive emotions.?

NBC News? Becky Bratu contributed to this report.

Source: http://feeds.nbcnews.com/c/35002/f/653387/s/29ef10ea/l/0Lworldnews0Bnbcnews0N0C0Inews0C20A130C0A30C240C174419710Euk0Epolice0Eno0Ethird0Eparty0Einvolvement0Ein0Erussian0Etycoons0Edeath0Dlite/story01.htm

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Police: No hazardous material at Berezovsky site

LONDON (AP) ? Chemical and radiation experts found no hazardous materials in their search of the property where Boris Berezovsky's body was found, as British police on Sunday investigated the unexplained death of the self-exiled Russian tycoon who went from Kremlin kingmaker to fiery critic.

Berezovsky, who fled to Britain in the early 2000s after a bitter falling out with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found dead Saturday at the property in Ascot, a town 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of London. He was 67, and Thames Valley police say his death is being treated as "unexplained."

Police said Sunday that officers specially trained in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear materials have given the scene the "all clear."

"Officers found nothing of concern in the property and we are now progressing the investigation as normal," a statement from police said, adding that the majority of the cordon put in place around the property has now been lifted.

Berezovsky ? who had survived a number of assassination attempts ? amassed a fortune through oil and automobiles during Russia's chaotic privatization of state assets following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Once a member of Russian President Boris Yeltsin's inner circle, Berezovsky fell out with Yeltsin's successor, Putin, and fled Britain in the early 2000s to escape fraud charges that he said were politically motivated.

He became a strident and frequent critic of Putin, accusing the leader of ushering in a dictatorship, and accused the security services of organizing the 1999 apartment house bombings in Moscow and two other Russian cities that became a pretext for Russian troops to sweep into Chechnya for the second war there in half a decade.

Putin's spokesman acknowledged Sunday that the Russian president considered Berezovsky an enemy with clearly stated intentions to fight.

"We know for certain that he spared no expense in support of processes, within Russia and beyond, that could be said to have been directed against Russia and Putin," spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on the independent cable television channel Rain. "He definitely was Putin's opponent, and unfortunately not only his political opponent, but most likely in other dimensions as well."

In recent years, Berezovsky fended off legal attacks that often bore political undertones ? and others that bit into his fortune.

Russia repeatedly sought to extradite on Berezovksy on a wide variety of criminal charges, and the tycoon vehemently rejected allegations over the years that he was linked to several deaths, including that of slain journalist Anna Politkovskaya and ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko.

Berezovsky won a libel case in 2010 against a Kremlin-owned broadcaster that aired a show in which it was suggested he was behind the poisoning of Litvinenko, who had fled Russia with Berezovsky's help after accusing officials there of plotting to assassinate political opponents.

He took a hit with his divorce from Galina Besharova in 2010, paying what was at the time Britain's largest divorce settlement. The figure beat a previous record of 48 million pounds ($73.1 million) and was estimated as high as 100 million pounds, though the exact figure was never confirmed.

Last year, Berezovsky lost a multibillion-pound High Court case against fellow Russian Roman Abramovich and was ordered to pay 35 million pounds ($53.3 million) in legal costs.

Berezovsky had claimed that Abramovich, the billionaire owner of Chelsea Football Club, cheated him out of his stakes in the oil group Sibneft, arguing that he blackmailed him into selling the stakes vastly beneath their true worth after he lost Putin's good graces.

But a judge threw out the case in August, ruling that Berezovsky was a dishonest and unreliable witness, and rejected Berezovsky's claims that he was threatened by Putin and Alexander Voloshin, a Putin ally, to coerce him to sell his Sibneft stake.

It also recently emerged that Berezovsky ran up legal bills totaling more than 250,000 pounds in just two months of a case against his former partner, Elena Gorbunova, with whom he had two children and who claimed the businessman owed her millions.

Earlier this week, The Times of London newspaper reported that Berezovsky was selling property ? including an Andy Warhol portrait of the former Soviet Union leader Vladimir Lenin ? to settle his debts and pay expenses owed to lawyers.

News of Berezovsky's death has prompted conspiracy theories along with speculation as to his state of mind, given his recent financial setbacks.

Ilya Zhegulev, a journalist with the Russian edition of Forbes magazine, said he spoke with Berezovsky the day before he died and discussed the tycoon's decision to flee Russia in 2000.

The journalist quoted Berezovsky as saying that during his years in London he had lost the meaning of life.

"I no longer want to be involved in politics," Zhegulev quoted Berezovsky as saying in a story published Saturday on the Forbes.ru website.

He said Berezovsky told him that he wanted nothing more than to return to Russia. The former oligarch said he had changed his views on Russia, saying he now understood that it should not look to Europe as a model.

"I had absolutely, idealistically imagined that it was possible to build a democratic Russia. And idealistically imagined what democracy was in the center of Europe. I underestimated the inertia of Russia and greatly overestimated the West. This took place gradually. I changed my understanding of Russia's path," he quoted Berezovsky as having said.

___

AP writer Lynn Berry in Moscow contributed to this report. Cassandra Vinograd can be reached at http://twitter.com/CassVinograd

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-no-hazardous-material-berezovsky-111027399--finance.html

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A diplomatic star is born in Chinese first lady

BEIJING (AP) ? Glamorous new first lady Peng Liyuan has emerged as Chinese diplomacy's latest star, cutting a very different profile from her staid predecessors on her debut official visit abroad to Russia.

A well-known performer on state television, Peng featured prominently in Sunday's state media coverage of husband and President Xi Jinping's activities in Moscow, Xi's first state visit since assuming the presidency earlier this month.

Peng watched song and dance routines at a performing arts school on Saturday, but did not join in as some media reports had suggested she might. Xi's trip continues this week with stops in Tanzania, South Africa and Congo, during which Peng is expected to hold other public events.

Chinese newspapers on Saturday ran images of Xi and Peng descending arm-in-arm from their aircraft after arriving in Moscow on Friday, and state broadcaster CCTV ran a report on its main Sunday news broadcast about her visit to the school.

The popular Beijing News tabloid ran a full page of items on Peng's appearances on Sunday, alongside a photo of her arriving at a speech Xi gave Saturday dressed in an elegant Chinese-style silk tunic and skirt.

"In her role as first lady on this visit abroad, Peng Liyuan is exhibiting China's soft power," the paper quoted Wang Fan, head the Institute of International Relations at China Foreign Affairs University, as saying.

"As a singer and artist and a long-term advocate for poverty relief and other causes, Peng has an excellent public image," Wang said.

Much of the coverage focused on her personal style, with a report on the mass-market sina.com website noting with satisfaction that the black leather clutch she paired with the outfit was made to order by a Chinese firm in the southwestern city of Chengdu, a flattering contrast with prominent Chinese female politicians scorned publicly for appearing decked head to toe in foreign designer brands.

"In practical terms, this is an important show of support for China's domestic industries, but in the larger sense, it should raise national self-respect and confidence," read a posting on China's popular Weibo microblogging service left by Lin Zhibo, Gansu provincial bureau chief of the Communist Party's flagship newspaper, People's Daily.

The wives of China's top officials have traditionally been mostly invisible at home and attracted little attention while accompanying their husbands on state visits abroad. And the contrast is even sharper in the case of Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, who was widely hated and later imprisoned for her role as leader of the radical Gang of Four that mercilessly persecuted political opponents during the chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution.

More recently, former Premier Wen Jiabao's wife, Zhang Peili, became known for her role in the country's gem trade and was never seen in public with her husband.

Peng, 50, is famed for her CCTV performances and serves as an ambassador for the World Health Organization, but largely retired from public life after Xi was made China's leader-in-waiting in 2007. While sometimes described as a folk singer, she holds the rank of major general in the People's Liberation Army and is best known for her stirring renditions of patriotic odes, often while wearing full dress uniform.

Peng and Xi have one daughter, a student at Harvard who remains out of the limelight.

Peng works on tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS outreach for the WHO. She made headlines last year by appearing alongside Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates as part of a campaign to discourage smoking, a high-profile cause in a country where about two-thirds of men smoke.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/diplomatic-star-born-chinese-first-lady-082435770.html

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Miranda Lambert Cleared of Allegedly Threatening to Punch Store Owner

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/03/miranda-lambert-cleared-of-allegedly-threatening-to-punch-store/

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