US admits economy is in ...downturn

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has admitted that the US economy is facing a "sharp decline" at the moment but hoped for a recovery later in the year.

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Beijing Olympics under question

And with all these things going on in China with the Tibet issue getting bigger day after day it was natural that there will come the first to suggest boycotting Beijing Olympic Games. What’s coming next is how strong this voice will become and how the governments are going to deal with this including the Chinese government; don’t forget that in the past athletes have demonstrated in many ways their political …views!

Obama’s US cannot ignore race

So this was it, in the end everything came down to race and gender while Mr. Obama was insuring everybody that it was about ideas and tomorrow! Speaking in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city seen as the cradle of US democracy, Mr Obama gave a speech that drew on America's long history of racial inequality - and called on the US to move beyond it.

"The anger is real; it is powerful; and to simply wish it away, to condemn it without understanding its roots, only serves to widen the chasm of misunderstanding that exists between the races," he said. As the child of a black father and white mother, he said he understood the passions of both sides in what he called "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years" - and said he was not so naive as to believe it could be overcome in one election cycle.

What is coming next? The line between been the person we’ve seen for so long and good old Jesse Jackson is very thin and a lot of his opponents would love to see him crossing it.

Today's Ovi magazine

Check today's Ovi magazine

Nunobark by Nunobark. Nunobark is a Lisbon-based illustrator, artist, graphic designer... and proud father. He was the founder of several fanzines, maintains the Public Secret Blog. Here is a selection of his work.

Sarkozy: Leave French people alone - Part 3 by Akli Hadid. Like many French personalities, including France's highest ranked politicians, Nicolas Sarkozy has made several statements that show how racist and anti-Semetic he is.

"I wander" by Bohdan Yuri. "To have great poets there must be great audiences too." - Walt Whitman

iBite by Thanos Kalamidas. iBite is a snappy selection of news from around the world accompanied by a cynical, albeit humourous, comment from Mr T. Kalamidas.

The end of the apartheid

Today is a day to remember internationally, a very unique day, in 1992, white South Africans have backed an overwhelming mandate for political reforms to end apartheid and create a power-sharing multi-racial government. In a landslide victory for change, the government swept the polls in all four provinces, and all but one of 15 referendum regions. It won 68.6% of the vote in a record turn-out, which, in some districts exceeded 96%.

China premier attacks Dalai Lama

Unfortunately not by throwing at him red book or spiritually! Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of masterminding recent violence in Tibet's main city, Lhasa. Well he is a …mastermind after all! Speaking at the close of parliament, Mr Wen also said that the exiled Tibetan leader's claim of "cultural genocide" in Tibet was nothing but lies.

China's response to the violence had been restrained, the premier said. China says 13 people were killed by rioters in Lhasa. Tibetan exiles say at least 80 protesters were killed in a crackdown by Chinese security forces.

You must really love it when they come with things like that, violence has been restrained, right if they are not killed, they will be soon! The family pays the bullet, in the case of the monks the bill goes to ….Dalai Lama!

Mills’ £24.3m settlement with Mr. Beatle

Heather Mills got Lucy in the sky with Diamonds literally, £24.3m for her divorce from Mr. Beatle, Sir Paul McCartney!

Speaking outside London's High Court, Ms Mills said she was "glad it's over" and "it was an incredible result to secure mine and my daughter's future". As part of the deal, Ms Mills will receive £14 million for herself and £2.5m to buy a house in London. The couple failed to reach an agreement in court last month, leaving the judge to determine the final figure.

The woman is just …incredible! How the hell she excused all these money from Mr. Beatle? It makes you suspicious for the reasons she marry him.

Desperate times need desperate measures

Markets from New York to Tokyo have recorded heavy losses in reaction to the emergency bailout of US investment bank Bear Stearns over the weekend. In New York the Dow Jones Industrials tumbled 194 points, more than 1.5%, in early trading before recovering. London's FTSE 100 index was down 2.7%, in Paris the Cac 40 slumped 2.9% and Frankfurt's Dax fell 4.1%. The Bank of England on Monday made an extra £5bn ($10bn) available for UK banks to borrow to ease credit fears.

The money was five times over-subscribed. Meanwhile, on the markets US, UK and European banks were hammered; Lehman Brothers fell 30%, UBS lost 13%, HBOS 10% and Commerzbank fell 7.9%. Investors are worried that the collapse of Bear Stearns, one of Wall Street's biggest names, is a sign that the credit crunch is getting worse and lending might seize up.

They’ve been talking about the crisis coming for years and it seems that they always do something to save the day the very last moment. What remains is to see what they are going to do this time and which time they will be …too late! That’s why they take desperate measures all the time and I hate these doom-day scenarios but the same time it is amazing how much our lives, our everyday lives are connected with the stocks and these markets!

New parliament opens in Pakistan

Why do I have the idea that this sounds like, free elections in Iran? Pakistan's new parliament has convened for the first time since President Pervez Musharraf and his allies suffered a heavy blow in elections. Correspondents say the stage is set for a confrontation between President Musharraf and the government.

The parties of assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and another former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, have agreed a coalition.

More than 300 members of the National Assembly were sworn in. The 18 February polls delivered a huge blow to President Musharraf's parliamentary allies, making his position more precarious.

Wish them good luck? But they have all the luck as long they lick Musharraf’s …ass!!!

Kosovo’s Serbs

The big question was from the beginning how the Kosovo Serbs will react to Kosovo’s independence and furthermore how the rulers Kosovo Albanians will react to Kosovo Serbians reactions. And it is natural for the Serbs to react to what illegally the Albanians did and it is natural to demand their return to Serbia.

Unfortunately once more this American administration helped from UK and the usual suspects saw the tree and missed the forest ignoring for the high coast in the area. An area that has suffered for centuries and obviously will continue suffering, in the past were the Turks now will be the Albanians who terrorise of course with a little help from the …Turks who as usual work from the dark corners of history and hypocrisy

Sarkozy in trouble

Voters in local elections haven’t been so …kind to President Sarkozy handing key cities to the left. So the socialists got Toulouse, Caen, Strasbourg, Amiens and Reims and they held the power in Paris and Lyon and they are close to get Marseille, the stronghold for the conservatives.

Times are difficult for Sarkozy and his popularity is well on the way down after the last elections on May with him finding more difficult to pass his program.

The revenge of the socialists or people realize that apart of marriages and divorces there is nothing else to come form Mr. Sarkozy?

Ovi magazine articles for today

Today Ovi magazine articles include:

Ms. Kern's right and paid sex by Thanos Kalamidas. Two US officials came to the centre of the news last week each for very different reasons. One is resigning, perhaps facing legal implications, and the other enjoys full protection from the party she represents and local authorities; what were the charges

Refreshing the cinematic palette by Asa Butcher. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deemed 'You Can't Take It with You' to be the Best Picture of 1938 and awarded it so at the 11th Academy Awards, plus they bestowed Capra with his third and final Oscar for Best Director.

An Alternative to a Dehumanized Civilization by Emanuel L. Paparella. Edwin Arthur Burtt once wrote, "An adequate cosmology will only begin to be written when an adequate philosophy of mind has appeared, and such a philosophy of mind must provide full satisfaction..."

Behind The Iron Doors of Hell by The Ovi Team. Having had a marriage from hell and a chilling divorce in the notorious British secret family courts, Ivana Kelly stumbles across a hidden world of misogyny. WARNING: ARTICLE CONTENT MAY BE UPSETTING

Britney Spears hospital reports

Hospital staff in Los Angeles will lose their jobs for reading Britney Spears' medical records, reports suggest. The Los Angeles Times says workers at the UCLA medical centre looked at Spears' confidential files when she was admitted to the hospital in January.

Jeri Simpson, the hospital's head of human resources, confirmed to the AP news agency that several staff would be disciplined or fired over the incident. "It's very frustrating and it's very disappointing," she said. According to the Los Angeles Times, 13 staff - none of them doctors - will lose their jobs. Another 12 will be disciplined for looking at Spears' computer records, it reported. However, the hospital would not confirm these figures, nor would it say when the incident took place.

The funny thing is following the reports in the streets you didn’t need to be a doctor to understand that there is something wrong with this girl and I know that I will sound a bit odd but from the minute everybody realized that the girl needed help everybody should let her do so and not continue harassing her even in the hospital bed or trying to get the hospital reports.

In this sense it is good that the hospitals taking cars for that and it is obvious that it was not just curiosity that made these people go after Britney’s medical reports but …money!

F1 for Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton started the F1 season in the best position winning the opening Australian Grand Prix on his way for his first world title. The Englishman dominated from the start in his McLaren

to beat Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber and Nico Rosberg's Williams.

World champion the Finn Kimi Raikkonen threw away a chance to challenge Hamilton with a mistake while trying to pass the second McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen.

An “Afghan idol” in Taliban land

An Afghan woman who sang her way to the top three of Afghanistan's version of "American Idol" has been voted out. Lima Sahar was the first Afghan woman to make it to the top three of the country's popular "Afghan Star" television show, which is now in its third year. Conservative critics had taken aim at the 20-year-old woman for singing in public in the conservative Muslim country.

Let’s hope that after the “Afghan idol” the woman made her way out of Afghanistan as well. Sahar, who comes from Afghanistan's most conservative tribe — the Pashtuns, thanked everyone who had voted for her. She also reminded the audience that there had been very little music in Afghanistan in the last two decades, which have been mostly consumed with war.

Remember under the Taliban regime that was overthrown in 2001, women were not even allowed out of their homes unaccompanied, while music and television were banned and the Taliban are not far out, daily reports are coming from assassins and murders organized by the Taliban.

Iran, freedom and fair in prison

Hard-liners? Reformists? Somebody is making a joke to the people of Iran; whatever they voted the puppet dictator of the ayatollahs will be the president!

The international media report that the early results suggest that the caricature president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has the ‘parliament’ – they don’t call it temple – has won a strong victory! I’m speechless; do they mean that there was an opposition? Alive? Reformists also hailed successes, despite the barring of large numbers of their candidates from the race.

The EU has criticized the conduct of the vote as "neither fair nor free". What Iran’s dictators have to do with fair and freedom? You just need to read a couple of the puppet dictator’s speeches to understand that freedom in Iran is prison or shot dead!

Today's Ovi magazine

Today's Ovi magazine just like every day full of rich material

Paul Allen investment bloom - Night crane over Boomtown Seattle by Linda Lane. The rest of the United States may be entering a depression phase due to wartime over-spending but the truth is Seattle and Bellevue are booming. There are actually too many construction cranes to count. No kidding.

Faces of Burma's Refugee: Children Behind the Prison Bars by Rohingya Human Rights. Saw Yan Naing of the Irrawaddy News ran a report along with an AFP picture of some children of Burma standing behind bars with other detainees in a crowded detention cell in Mae Sot, Thailand.

Photoville by Thanos Kalamidas. It is in the news, you just have to find it and manipulate it!!!

Czech Report by Euro Reporter. The Czech Republic may be a landlocked country, but Euro Reporter is still prepared to get his feet wet.

More dead in Tibet

This is not breaking news, this terrifying news, the country that is hosting the Olympic Games, the international institution of peace and friendship has killed more than 80 people while protesting for Tibet’s

independence.

The Dalai Lama has already warned the Chinese government that the protests are not going to stop and in extent the international community that more deaths are coming. And that while heavy Chinese forces are in Lhasa, Tibet’s main city everywhere in the street exercising their dictatorial force.

Margarita Zavala's battle against breast cancer

It must be one of these very rare times when the name Bush will be mentioned in a positive way and naturally is not George W. Bush but his wife Laura. So US first lady Laura Bush and Mexico’s first lady Margarita Zavala launched a joined effort to try reducing deaths from breast cancer.

With breast cancer the worst enemy is not the cancer itself but the lack of information and it involves millions of women internationally. In Mexico especially one out of 258 women of ages between 30 and 40 will discover having breast cancer in the next ten years and the key word is discovered. Needs a huge effect of information to lead these women in testing their breasts or make sure that they can read the signs.

The move from the Mexican first lady is especially referable because you would never call Mexico the paradise of this kind of information and her work is definitely difficult. But it seems that Mexico’s first lady feels strongly that she can make the difference and the only thing we can do is offer our support and wish her luck.

Turkey's real rulers

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has criticised a proposal to ban his ruling AK Party as being against the "national will".

He was speaking after Turkey's chief prosecutor asked the country's Constitutional Court to ban the party, accusing it of anti-secular activities. Turkey's secularist constitution does not allow any religious influence on the operation of the state. The AK Party, which has Islamic roots, won last year's general elections.

You must admit that it took him a bit to understand something the rest of the world knows, that Turkey is far from democracy; is just that it is Turkish style dictatorship with the generals controlling everything from the dark back rooms. Just look what happened when the puppet tried to break the strings; prosecutor Abdurrahman Yalcinkaya said he believed there was enough evidence to show the party had contravened Turkey's secular constitution.

About time for Tayyip to see who are his real allies and perhaps for the Turkish people to see who's telling them the truth!