Top Stories –
Tragedy in Haiti –
A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hits Haiti in the north Atlantic sea. Early estimates are that the death doll is between 45,000 – 50,000 [Note: final Haiti government estimates were a death toll of 316,000]

Fallen idol –
Simon Cowell dramatically announces he is quitting American Idol the day before the series starts to air. The big question seems to be who will replace him? [Answer Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler]

Palin to significance –
Former Governor of Alaska Sarah Palin signs up to be a contributor on the Fox News Channel, 2 years after she gained fame as the presidential running mate of Republican John McCain.
Sarah Palin

Top Video –

Timefreeze Worx | 2009 from Real Creations on Vimeo.

Top List –

Top 100 films of the Noughties (2000-2009)
List from Daily Telegraph By David Gritten, Tim Robey and Sukhdev Sandhu
Part 3 – 80-71

• 80 The Return

Andrei Zvyagintsev, 2003: This emotionally subtle drama about two brothers dealing with the return of their missing father signalled a new dawn in Russian cinema.

• 79 Spider-Man

Sam Raimi, 2002: The first hit for an amiable comic-book franchise set the tone with humour, a warm romance and Tobey Maguire’s likeable hero.

• 78 The Hurt Locker

Kathryn Bigelow, 2008: The one Iraq drama that mattered, shaking us with the street-level view of America’s perilous occupation.

• 77 Children of Men

Alfonso Cuar”n, 2006: This apocalyptic vision of a world in which man can no longer procreate gnawed at the imagination.

• 76 Antichrist

Lars von Trier, 2009: Instant notoriety was the name of the game in von Trier’s lavish, rusty-scissored attack on bourgeois sensibilities.

• 75 The School of Rock

Richard Linklater, 2003: The chameleonic Linklater teamed up with Jack Black to create a hugely endearing take on the rags-to-riches rock movie template.

• 74 Los Angeles Plays Itself

Thom Anderson, 2003: Copyright issues mean it will likely never be commercially released, but this archive-essay

exploring cinematic depictions of LA was an underground smash.

• 73 Master and Commander

Peter Weir, 2003: A magisterial seafaring epic from Weir, serenely adapting Patrick O’Brian and putting a brave focus on the quotidian.

• 72 Uzak

Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2002: One of the great revelations of the decade was this Turkish auteur whose portraits of broody masculinity seduced art house audiences.

• 71 A History of Violence

David Cronenberg, 2005: Cronenberg switched tack with a bruising study of dormant criminality, anchored by the ever-improving Viggo Mortensen.

Top News –

Arts and culture

• People in 16 countries in 44 cities from Adelaide to Zürich cause “scenes of chaos and joy in public places” by removing their trousers in public, with 3,000 people doing it in New York alone. (BBC) (The Independent) (Ottawa Citizen)

Business and economy

• The People’s Republic of China conducts a land-based high-altitude anti-ballistic missile test. (SINA News) (Yahoo! News)
• The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences reports that more than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age will be without spouses by the end of the decade, citing an uneven birth rate. (Global Times) (BBC)

Health

• UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon outlines seven priorities for 2010 and urges a renewed focus on sustainable development, ending poverty, disease and hunger. (UN News Centre) (Sudan Tribune)
• Wolfgang Wodarg, the Council of Europe‘s head of health affairs, claims that the 2009 flu pandemic was a “false pandemic” orchestrated by the pharmaceutical industry to sell vaccines. (The Sun)
• The New York City Health Department seeks national reduction of salt in food. (CNN)
• The United Nations seeks to virtually eliminate mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS in Africa. Michel Sidibé visitedSauri in western Kenya, which is a village of the Millennium Villages Project. (UN News Centre)

International relations

• North Korea proposes a peace treaty, replacing the Korean War armistice. (Yonhap) (AFP)
• The Low Couch diplomatic spat between Israel and Turkey. Turkey demands Israeli apology.[1]

Law and crime

• Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a challenge to California Proposition 8 and likely a landmark case regarding same-sex marriage rights in the United States, begins in San Francisco. (The Associated Press)
• Hundreds of prisoners are transferred from the Ignacio Allende prison in Veracruz, Mexico, in preparation for a controversial Mel Gibson film shoot. Protests from relatives of the prisoners are ignored. (BBC) (Hindustan Times)(CBC News)
• Northern Ireland‘s First Minister Peter Robinson temporarily hands over his position to Arlene Foster in the wake of the ongoing political scandal surrounding his wife and fellow politician Iris Robinson.

Politics and elections

• Thousands of supporters of former Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra gather outside the home of a royal adviser accused of involvment in the 2006 coup that ousted the Prime Minister. (Thai News Agency) (Reuters) (Al Jazeera)

Science and technology

• Tombs discovered near Egypt’s great pyramids reinforce the theory they were built by free workers rather than slaves.(BBC News)

Sport

• Angola makes two arrests over an attack on the Togo national football team in Cabinda Province. (Angola Press)(CNN) (Xinhua)
• The 2010 African Cup of Nations continues without Togo as Malawi unexpectedly beat World Cup qualifiers Algeria by three goals. (BBC) (The Times) (Al Jazeera)

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