Bo the Portuguese water dog made his White House debut under cloudy skies Tuesday afternoon, spending several minutes taking his new family on a lively romp over the South Lawn with frequent stops for hearty sniffs at his new surroundings. Bo landed on all four feet at his fourth home in his six short months of life, fulfilling President Obama’s campaign promise to get his daughters a dog in return for all the time he spent on the road during the long presidential fight. “He’s a star.
Tag Archives: black
Washington Wrestles the Somali Pirate Problem On Land
The celebrating over Sunday’s daring rescue of Richard Phillips, the ship captain held hostage by Somali pirates, didn’t last too long at the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged Monday that the kind of Navy snipers who took out the three captors are only a stopgap way of dealing with pirates now sailing the Gulf of Aden. “There is no purely military solution to it,” Gates told an audience of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, Va.
New population of endangered orangutans found
Conservationists have found a new population of orangutans in a steep, mountainous corner of Indonesia — a discovery that significantly adds to the number of the endangered red-haired primates. About 65,000 orangutans are thought to remain in the wild, limited to rain forests on two islands in Malaysia and Indonesia: Borneo and Sumatra.
Poll: Three-quarters favor relations with Cuba
A new poll shows that two-thirds of Americans surveyed think the U.S. should lift its travel ban on Cuba, and three-quarters think the U.S
Huge Baghdad rally marks 6-year anniversary of Hussein’s fall
Thousands of followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr rallied in Baghdad on Thursday to mark the sixth anniversary of the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime. They rallied at Firdous Square, where Hussein’s statue was pulled down on April 9, 2003, shortly after the U.S
Out-of-wedlock births hit record high
Had she been born a generation earlier, Kim Hoffman might have had a shotgun wedding. As it turned out, she and Steve Miller took the time to plan their dream nuptials — outdoors, on an organic farm, and with their 10-month-old daughter in tow. A pre-marriage birth certainly wasn’t what her father wanted for his only daughter, said Hoffman, of Oakland, California.
Google improves Gmail for iPhone, Android
Google has released a new Web-based version of Gmail that gives iPhone and Android phone users a more sophisticated version of the online e-mail service, including access to messages that’s faster and that works even when offline. Google demonstrated the Web-based mobile version of Gmail last week and announced its availability Tuesday on the Google Mobile blog. “You’ll notice that it’s a lot faster when performing actions like opening an e-mail, navigating, or searching.
U.S. lawmakers meet with Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro, the longtime communist leader of Cuba, met with visiting members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday, a day after his brother, Raúl, who succeeded him as president, did the same, according to a U.S. official in Havana.
Relative says missing Nebraska family alive and well
Authorities in South Dakota and Nebraska on Friday suspended a search for a missing Nebraska family after a relative told authorities he spoke to his kin and said they are doing well. Law officers still don’t exactly know the location of Matthew Schade of Creighton, Nebraska; his wife Rowena, and their two children — a daughter, 11, and a son, 8. But authorities think they might be in Nebraska because officials received a tip that a brush truck they suspect the couple stole from a volunteer fire department in South Dakota has been found abandoned in Antelope County, Nebraska
A Blacklist for Websites Backfires in Australia
It must have seemed like a good idea at the time. If you want to reduce citizens’ exposure to dangerous and illegal activities online, why not gather up all the URLs for sites that promote such acts — child pornography, extreme violence, weapon-making and so on — and have Internet Service Providers simply block them