Southern California Earthquake

Southern California was hit by an earthquake this morning. Read about it below. Updates, photos and videos are being added as they become available.

Southern California Earthquake

At 11:42 am (PT) a 5.4 magnitude earthquake struck the town of Chino Hills, 33 miles east of Los Angeles in San Bernardino County. The United States Geological Survey said it struck at a depth of 7.6 miles.

Residents are saying it felt like a much larger earthquake than 5.4 magnitude. It was felt from throughout Southern California and Nevada. There have been multiple after shooks.

Eye witness reports are that it was a violent shake. The San Diego City Counsel was in session and recessed until it was determined that San Diego was not the epicenter of the quake. The San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, between Los Angeles and San Diego, is reportedly in good condition and no damage was sustained to the grids there.

We are waiting for the mayor of Los Angeles to report and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will be speaking shortly. Right Pundits will continue to provide updates as needed.

UPDATE 1:47 (PT): Los Angeles is experiencing power outages. Chino Hills is reporting minimal damage and no injuries. There have been problems with cell phone service.

Acting Mayor report:

• minor structural damage around the center.
• some people were stuck in an elevator
• no extraordinary calls for emergency services
• All phone services are now back up and running.
• Airport is functioning properly. It lost radar services for only one minute, but was immediately back up.
• Ports are functioning properly with no damage reported.
• One water main break. There was flooding at one department store.
• Five minor injuries reported.
• There is a 5% chance that this is a fore shock to a larger earthquake.

Update 2:25 p.m. (PT): The following photo of earthquake damage was sent into the LA Times by a reader.

Damage in Santa Monica
Southern California Earthquake - Photos

Update 2:30 p.m. (PT): Press conference with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

• Monitoring situation closely
• Have evacuation plan for family and pets.
• No major infrastructure damage
• No major injuries
• After shocks are occurring and will continue to occur
• All state agencies are directed to provide support
• All emergency responders are doing their things
• Earthquake downgraded to 5.4 magnitude
• upgrading infrastructure and emergency response systems helped minimize damage and injuries

Harry Potter 6 - New Photos and Movie Trailer ???

USA Today unveiled two new shots from the upcoming “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” First photo of a young Tom Riddle (Frank Dillane) and Dumbledore’s (Michael Gambon) firestorm that he uses in the caves. These two shots will also appear in the full-length trailer that’s due to be released today (Tuesday) and in theaters on Friday before “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.“

Director David Yates said that editing is complete and the studio will soon be shown the finished product four months in advance of its theatrical debut. The biggest reveal is the young Tom Riddle, played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin, who grows up to become Lord Voldemort.

Hero is Ralph Fiennes‘ (who plays Voldemort) nephew in real life, however Yates explained that his relationship to Ralph “wasn’t the primary reason for choosing him.” Instead, “I went for Hero because of this wonderful haunted quality that seemed to bring Tom Riddle alive on-screen for us.” This last bit should give you a chill down your spine. “Even at a very young age, Tom Riddle shows tendencies toward cruelty and maliciousness,” Yates says. “And it’s a very unsettling thing to see.”

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is again directed by David Yates, of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix previously, and written by Steve Kloves, who also wrote “Sorcerer’s Stone”, “Chamber of Secrets”, “Prisoner of Azkaban”, and “Goblet of Fire” but not “Order of the Phoenix.” This is the sixth book in J.K. Rowling’s immensely popular series.

“Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” arrives in theaters on November 21st this Thanksgiving.

Harry Porter The Half Blood Prince Trailer Long Version

I read the comment from die hard fans of Harry Porter and The Half Blood Prince from youtube.

"He is really angry at Warner Bros for releasing the only 23 second trailer"

So I updated the long version Harry Porter Half Blood Prince trailer for any hard fans for Harry Porter. Watch this really impressing trailer and enjoy.

The Harry Porter film's directors ,David Yates, said that films editing are complete and be ready for fully view for Harry Porter full movie from Warner Bros.

McCain Takes Swipe at Obama ???

McCain Takes Swipe at Obama, Germans Over Berlin Visit

Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Republicans are zeroing in on Obama's reception in Berlin

A spokesman for Republican presidential candidate John McCain blasted Barack Obama for cancelling plans to visit wounded US soldiers while in Berlin, adding that the Democrat prioritized "throngs of fawning Germans."

Hours before Obama arrived back in the US on Saturday, McCain's spokesman Tucker Bounds questioned why the Democratic senator cancelled Friday's scheduled meeting with American troops at the Landstuhl military hospital in Germany.

"You know, it really speaks to the experience that Barack Obama lacks," Bounds told Fox News.

"He prioritizes throngs of fawning Germans over meeting with wounded combat troops in Germany," he added, referring to the crowd of over 200,000 people who gave Obama an effusive welcome at his outdoor address on Thursday evening in Berlin.

McCain's team also raised the cancelled hospital visit in a new television ad in which a narrator berates Obama for making time to go to the gym, but not finding the time for injured soldiers.

Obama team sought to protect soldiers

The Obama campaign explained at the time of the cancellation that the senator had made a decision to avoid drawing wounded troops into the back-and-forth of campaign politics. The campaign also noted that reservations about the visit had been expressed by the Pentagon.

Some analysts see the McCain team's attack as a case of sour grapes following the overwhelmingly positive public response to Obama in Europe. Republicans are instead trying to brand the trip -- which saw Obama stop in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kuwait, Jordan, Germany, France and the UK -- a shallow political stunt.

Democrats are Driving Obama's Berlin Bounce

Mixed news on the day, as Barack Obama gets two relatively weak results in state polling while continuing to gain ground in the national trackers.

In California, Obama leads John McCain by 10 points according to Rasmussen. This is quite a step down from Rasmussen's result in June, when Obama had led McCain by 28 points. Their other California polling, however, had been closer, showing Obama in the lead by margins ranging from 7 points to 15. Regardless, California polling is mostly an academic endeavor in this year's election. The state is not competitive, and so far as I can tell, the Obama campaign does not even have a field office open there.

In South Carolina, it's McCain by 13 in a new Research 2000 poll for DailyKos.com. This is Research 2000's first poll in South Carolina, and so there are no trendlines for comparison. Nevertheless, this is the first South Carolina poll to show McCain with a lead in the double digits.

shows him ahead by 7 points, tying his best-ever margin in that poll, while Obama is just about at his high water marks in the national tracking polls, however. GallupRasmussen has him ahead by 6. What Obama's foreign policy trip may have done, and particularly his speech in Berlin, is to refresh enthusiasm among his core supporters. Fully 60 percent of Democrats now have a very favorable opinion of Obama, according to Rasmussen's latest numbers.

That number is improved from 53 percent a week ago. During that time frame, Obama has gained 6 points of support among Democrats, capturing 82 percent of their votes rather than 76. Half of that gain comes from undecided voters, while the other half comes from McCain.

Pregnant man - Thomas Beatie's first picture of baby girl

Thomas Beatie, better known as the world’s first pregnant man, has sold a picture of his baby girl to an American magazine for a rumoured £150,000 ($300,000).

Thomas Beatie with his baby: The labour lasted 40 hours Photo: GETTY IMAGES

Transgender Mr Beatie is shown cradling four-week-old Susan Juliette as she rests on a bed in the photo published on the front cover of the celebrity title People.

Wearing a white dress with purple and green detail and a large bow, the baby bears a striking resemblance to her father.

Susan Juliette was born at the St Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon on June 29 weighing 9lbs, 5oz, three months after news of her pioneering conception made headlines across the world.

"She's so precious, I just can't stop staring at her," Mr Beatie told the magazine, disclosing that the labour lasted 40 hours.

"When Susan finally came out, it was like in slow motion," he said. "I was full of wonder."

Mr Beatie, who was born a woman but is legally a man after undergoing partial sex change procedures ten years ago, fathered the child with sperm from an anonymous donor. He was able to do so because he had kept his reproductive organs.

His wife Nancy is breastfeeding the baby girl, using hormones and a breast pump to stimulate lactation.

But the couple have been criticised for embracing the publicity that their case has generated.

They have previously sold photos of Mr Beatie in the late stages of pregnancy to a British tabloid, and in April showed off his ultrasound scans during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show.

Mr Beatie and his wife received around $300,000 from People for the baby photos, according to a magazine source quoted on the New York gossip website Gawker.

The sum, while substantial, is significantly less than is offered for the first photos of the babies of Hollywood A-list celebrities. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have reportedly sold images of their new-born twins for $11 million.

Batman : The Dark Knight

The Dark Knight: Batman is a Hamlet for our times

If Shakespeare had been alive today, he would have found abundant raw material in this most reimagined of comic book characters

An icon for our times ... Batman (Christopher Nolan version)


As the new Batman film - The Dark Knight - grinds towards us, like some slow-moving juggernaut whose driver isn't strong enough to turn the wheel, it occurs to me that the Caped Crusader is really something special. Batman is the icon for our times, Shakespearian in his ability to withstand multiple reinterpretation, a Hamlet or Lear for the 21st century.

In this, Batman is by far the most resonant superhero - far more fertile ground for modulation and restyling than that doughty veteran Superman, or that hyperactive new kid on the blockbuster block, Spider-Man. Johnny-come-latelies like X-Men, Hellboy or Iron Man are, frankly, knee high to all this.

Batman

In the same way that any given Shakespeare text is remodelled, refurbished and redesigned for one generation or another, so too has been Batman. The character is now part-way through its fourth serious movie phase. (Like another popular, but lesser, icon, Doctor Who, Batman regenerates as and when necessary.) The "Nolan" Batman is a serious-minded work, preoccupied with the inner life of the vigilante, and does its level best to ground the traditional tales of supervillains and hi-tech gadgetry in some kind of coherent sense of reality. Batman Begins and The Dark Knight share much with high-testosterone action thrillers like Die Hard and The Terminator: a high-myth narrative superstructure bolted on to a recognisable quotidian milieu.

Do you see this?!!!

How do we enumerate the Batman phases? The first, we can call the "Pop Art" Batman - Adam West and Burt Ward, fight-noise cards, and mini-skirted go-go dancers. Played strictly for laughs, they come from an era that couldn't take kiddie superheroes remotely seriously. The "Burton", or "neo-gothic" Batman, taking its cue from the Frank Miller graphic novels, inhabited a patently artificial and aestheticised universe, inspired by New York art deco, black-and-white gumshoe movies and trace elements of German expressionism. The third Batman phase - the "Schumacher" or "uber-camp" - concentrated on extravagant architectural design, fetishist rubberware, and narratives of sugar-rush complexity. (The original model, the first folio if you like, is of course the prewar Bob Kane comic strip.)

It's fair to say that the current Batman phase is a determined reaction against the Schumacher couplet (Batman Forever and Batman & Robin), which aroused deep hostility with its ill-judged foray into camp mannerism just at the point that, culturally speaking, the world was looking for something more serious. Nolan's films, whatever we think of them are giving us what we want.

Dark Knight’ : A Movie for the Times
By Stephane Dunn

I exercise my deepest hero longings by escaping into the fantasy ones on the big screen. Unsurprisingly then, I am especially drawn to Marvel’s unlimited vault of superheroes whose mission is to save the world or at least their city from hopelessness or the bad guys.

So I braved the crowded parking lots and lines and dragged along a reluctant, anti-Batman lover to see Dark Knight.
It would be too easy to get sidetracked by the tragic aura surrounding this newest Batman flick. Heath Leger’s tragic death at twenty-six has naturally stirred up more hype than Marvel’s big budget superhero flicks usually already do.

Before his death, word was already circulating around Hollywood that Ledger had turned in a stunningly brilliant turn as ‘the Joker’ a role imbued with more of the dark psychotic edge of the original comic strip’s character. The hype about that performance is true so much so that the fact of his death adds pathos amid the bleak, edgy undertones of the character but does not overshadow the fact that Ledger makes the Joker alone stand out.

Yet, there’s more to appreciate about Dark Knight beyond, even, the record breaking $166 million plus that it took in at the box office during this first weekend out. The action sequences, character complexity and fine performances all around from Christian Bale (Batman), Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent) and of course Ledger’s movie stealing Joker performance are but a few more reasons why this latest Batman film is a stand out. Sitting at the movie last Saturday night, I alternately cringed, laughed, and became just plain enthralled by the sophisticated treatment of that almost clichéd good vs. evil staple that defines superhero comics and films.

Carla Bruni - new album on the web ???

Carla Bruni has unveiled her third album online

Carla Bruni has surprised fans by putting her new album on the internet today ahead of its feverishly anticipated release.

All 14 tracks from the French first lady’s album, Comme si de rien n'était (Simply), went up on her website at 8.30 GMT this morning, allowing fans to listen for free for up to two hours, until July 21, to her breathy love songs.

The former supermodel, 40, has been at the centre of a media storm since it was revealed that lyrics on the album told of her 30 past lovers and compared President Sarkozy to A class drugs.

Carla Bruni

The Colombian government protested over her singing of love “more deadly than Afghan heroin, more deadly than Colombian white," and eyebrows were raised over the references to her past lovers, who include Mick Jagger, Eric Clapton and Donald Trump.

Responding to the press circus, Naïve records, who have been working closely with Elysée Palace on the marketing campaign, pushed the launch date forward from July 21 to July 11.

But this morning, as Bruni gave her first promotional interview, she followed the trend started by Radiohead in unveiling her new album online.

Carla Bruni goes down a storm at a concert in Paris in 2004
– but how will her new album fare?

Speaking to state radio station France Inter, the Italian-born singer dismissed the media storm, saying she didn’t see why presidential wives should give up their livelihoods just because they had wed. She went on to add that they "have the right to work”.

But she conceded that her position ruled out concerts and added that she would donate royalties from the album to charity.

Asked if she would record a fourth album while her husband was in office, she admitted it was unlikely: "I don't know if I will be able to write an album between now and 2012. If I manage to, I would be lucky."

Carla Bruni also admitted the response to her album would not be purely musical.

"If people don't listen because I married the president of the republic, I understand. If they do listen because I married the president of the republic, I will be delighted.

"And if people, especially, like it, that is what counts for me."

Carla Bruni recorded two albums before becoming half of the world’s most glamorous political couple following a three-month romance. Her first album won over critics and sold two million copies, but her second English-speaking release, No Promises, sold less than half-a-million

The Bachelorette Winner - Jesse Csincsak ???

Nice guys really do finish last.In a bit of a stunner tonight on The Bachelorette, DeAnna Pappas rejected wonderful single dad Jason Mesnik - the superior candidate by almost any measure - instead opting for goofy “professional snowboarder” Jesse Csincsak.

In typical Bachelorette fashion, viewers were led to believe Jason Mesnick - a loving father to three-year-old Ty and a grounded businessman from Washington - had it locked up, outshining his competition throughout and charming her family.But it was Jesse Csincsak who DeAnna Pappas chose - and is engaged to.

The Bachelorette Gets Engaged

DeAnna Pappas accepts the proposal of professional snowboarder Jesse Csincsak, stopping her other suitor, account executive Jason Mesnick, in mid-kneel.

DEANNA PAPPAS From Bachelorette to future Mrs. Csincsak

DeAnna Pappas, the latest lady to look for love on ABC's reality romance series The Bachelorette, may be one step closer to finding her ''fairy-tale ending'' after accepting a wedding proposal from 26-year-old professional snowboarder Jesse Csincsak at the conclusion of Monday night's season finale. The couple appeared together on the After the Final Rose special, which aired following the finale, and announced that they have set a date, planning to be married in May 2009.

On the finale, before DeAnna said yes to Jesse on a beachfront platform in the Bahamas, she had to awkwardly stop the show's other finalist, 31-year-old account executive Jason Mesnick, in mid-kneel before he could even say anything. Jason was so shocked at the rejection, he maintained a paralyzed hold on the ring box until well into his departing limo ride.

Back at the platform, Jesse told DeAnna ''the thought of not being with you kills me.... DeAnna Marie Pappas, will you spend forever with me?'' The bachelorette said ''Yes'' and finally got to share her true feelings, telling Csincsak she had fallen in love with him during her visit to his hometown.

After being dumped at the altar by Austin, Tex., bar owner Brad Womack on the season 11 finale of The Bachelor (Womack chose not to stay with either finalist), Deanna Pappas, a 26-year-old real estate agent, returned as the star of the show. After both Jesse and Jason met DeAnna's family in her native Newnan, Ga., they returned to the Bahamas for one final date.

A surprise awaited viewers as Jeremy Anderson, a Dallas real estate attorney who seemed to be an early favorite but was left without a rose last week, returned for one last chance to plead his case. But DeAnna stayed the course and tearfully sent him packing for good. (Some had thought/hoped that ousted bachelor Graham Bunn, whom she seemed to really like, might make a last-minute return, but no dice.)

For more details about the finale and the After the Final Rose special, check back later for our complete TV Watch recap, where you can post your thoughts and comments on the season finale.