Filed under: Motorsports, BMW, Racing

Continue reading Video: Sebring 2010: BMW's Dirk MÏ‹ller talks about hour 1

Video: Sebring 2010: BMW's Dirk MÏ‹ller talks about hour 1 originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

According to reports, a senior commander for the Somali Islamist group al-Shabaab, Sheikh Daud Ali Hasan, was shot dead on Friday night in Kismayo.

Filed under: Motorsports, Acura, Audi, BMW, Porsche, Racing

Gallery: 2010 Sebring Qualifying

Continue reading Intercontinental Le Mans Cup expanded to LMP2 and GT classes

Intercontinental Le Mans Cup expanded to LMP2 and GT classes originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 20 Mar 2010 14:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

A 16-year-old boy has been arrested after he hijacked the Washington Township, New Jersey Wal-Mart's public announcement system to make racial comments. The boy was arrested Friday night and then released into his parents custody. He was charged with He faces up to a year in a Youth detention center if convicted, police say.

The boy, who's name was not released, was charged with harassment as a bias crime. Police say that they are not sure if the incident was planned or improvised, although they say it does not effect the case against the boy.

Justin Bieber remains an immutable force of Twitter trend power, taking the top slot again for the third week in a row. Tweeters also showed their love (and/or disdain) for a number of other pop singers, and celebrated a few holidays this past week.

Thanks to our friends at What The Trend, we have yet another interesting stats-eye-view of the Twitterverse. Because this is a topical list, hashtag memes and games have been omitted from the chart below.

Beyond Justin Bieber, Follow Friday, and Music Monday — the reigning trend champs — St. Patrick’s Day made an appearance as people tweeted their revelry, and Lady Gaga crept up on the list with the premiere of her new video on Vevo and a tour in New Zealand.

The Jonas Brothers hung tight near the middle, while circle enthusiasts everywhere tweeted vigorously about Pi Day on March 14th, spurred on no doubt by the charming Google doodle that commemorated the occasion.

If you own a TV or computer, you probably know that March Madness is upon us, and bracket-related tweets have been flying around the web all week, landing the term at number seven.

Rounding out the chart are two more singers who made some news this week. Demi Lovato, the 17 year old actress/singer, stirred some buzz with her admission that she’s dating a Jonas Brother, and Chris Brown, the career-stunted R&B singer, reached out to his fans on the web for some help on making a comeback.

Strangely, tweets about the ongoing South By Southwest (SXSW) conference — one of the most talked about topics in tech and a favorite of the Twitter community — did not reach critical mass to make this week’s list. This is likely due to the lack of big announcements or product launches from the conference this year.

You can check past Twitter trends in our Top Twitter Topics section as well as read more about this past week’s trends on What The Trend.

Tags: justin bieber, Top Twitter Topics, trends, twitter, twitter trends, What The Trend

New York-based hedge fund Elliott Associates L.P. in a letter to Novell’s board of directors dated March 2 offered to purchase the infrastructure software company for a cash price of $5.75 per share, or $1 billion net of the cash on the company’s books.

Elliott Associates at the time said it already owned 8.5 percent of Novell and wanted to take the company private for $2 billion.

This morning, Novell’s board publicly responded to the letter, deeming the “unsolicited, conditional proposal” from the hedge fund “inadequate”. It’s not hard to see why Novell feels that way: immediately after the initial purchase offer was made, its shares surged as investors hoped for a better bid, and stock value hasn’t decreased much since.

Shares were valued at 5.64 at market’s close on Friday – it was priced 4.20 at the beginning of this year and 4.75 when Elliott made its purchase offer public on March 2.

It’s thus unsurprising to learn that Novell’s board of directors will start looking for alternatives for the company to enhance stockholder value, including a sale to another entity, joint ventures, partnerships or a return of capital to stockholders through a stock repurchase or cash dividend program.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Itawamba School District filed a brief containing several new revelations on Friday. The brief says prom was called off to settle the "very explosive and disruptive" issue of the district's ban on same-sex dating, the Clarion Ledger reports.

So the school actually has an official ban on same-sex dating?

The paper continues: 

"The filing by school board attorney Benjamin Griffith states that Itawamba Agricultural High School senior Constance McMillen 'wishes to make the defendant district the site for a national constitutional argument over gay and lesbian rights.' ... Griffith said the student's rights were not violated. 'This is not an issue where anyone has been denied an education or suffered a constitutional deprivation,' he wrote in the filing. 'Rather, this is a social event that, in light of rapidly escalating circumstances, was disruptive to the school environment because people are on all sides of the issue.' An affidavit filed Friday by attorney James Keith says school board members have been been under 'tremendous pressure' as a result of the controversy."

According to information in the newly filed briefs, parents have organized a private prom — and Constance isn't invited to that prom either:

"The school board's response states that parents have organized a private prom at a furniture mart in nearby Tupleo (sic). Now that the school district has withdrawn from the event, any constitutional claims are irrelevant, Griffith wrote.  [ACLU attorney Christine] Sun said she had only heard rumors of the private dance until she read it in the brief. 'Constance has not been invited, so it is clear to me that what is happening is that the school has encouraged a private prom that is not open to all the students,' she said. 'That's what Constance is fighting for — a prom where everyone can go.'"

Blake Ellis / CNNMoney.com:
Palm's new price target: $0  —  NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Palm's future already looked bleak.  But after reporting worse than expected results for the third quarter Thursday, some analysts think the company's stock is now essentially worthless.  —  Shares of Palm (PALM) plunged 19% to $4.59 a share early Friday, a new 52-week low.

Lisa M. Krieger / Mercury News:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs joins Schwarzenegger to push organ donor registry  —  Saying a liver transplant saved his life, Apple CEO Steve Jobs convinced California lawmakers to draft organ donation legislation, unveiled at Stanford's Lucile Packard Children's hospital Friday morning.

The über-private and über-reclusive Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare non-keynote public appearance on Friday, joining California governor and action-film hero Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote organ-donation legislation....

What is your recession sales strategy?

The Large Hadron Collider , the so-called big bang machine outside Geneva, has eclipsed its own world record as the highest-energy particle accelerator in history. The collider, commonly known as the LHC, accelerated its twin proton beams to 3.5 trillion electron-volts, or TeV, Friday morning, according to a prepared statement from CERN , the European lab for particle physics that operates the LHC. [More]