GOLDEN GLOBES: Kate Winslet wins best actress in mini-series

Rapper-producer Pharrell has new CD, big plans

NEW YORK – Take one look at Pharrell Williams' resume — or scroll down his Wikipedia page — and you'll see that he's accomplished a lot.

But Williams, who is one-half of the genre-bending production duo The Neptunes and frontman for rap-rock trio N.E.R.D, said there's still so much more he wants to achieve.

"I'd love to work with Eminem. I'd love to do it," the 37-year-old Grammy winner said in a phone interview Tuesday from Seattle. "It just hasn't happened yet."

Williams, who has created hits for Jay-Z, Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, said he's interested in producing tunes for country artists, too: "I just haven't had a chance yet. But I'm going to, for sure."

He said he and Spears are "going back and forth" about work on her upcoming CD, and after scoring the soundtrack for the animated 3-D movie "Despicable Me" this year with Hans Zimmer and Heitor Pereira, he's planning to do more such projects.

Williams wrapped up a national tour with virtual band Gorillaz on Wednesday. The rapper-producer also is busy promoting the latest N.E.R.D album, "Nothing," out this week.

Williams said before finishing the new CD, the band decided to eliminate the songs from the early recording process.

"We started out doing one thing and we scrapped it all and decided we wanted to do something different. So we stopped everything and we started with nothing — and that's what we titled the album," he said.

Williams said the unused material could make its way to another record.

"That music is great. I just didn't think it made sense for the next N.E.R.D album," he said.

Though past N.E.R.D albums have been produced by its band members, the song "Hypnotize U" from the new CD was produced by electronic duo Daft Punk.

"I remixed `Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger' for them like 10 years ago so that was a great feeling to do that (and) to work with them again," Williams said, adding that he's open to other producers creating music for him and his band.

He said the band plans to create music videos for each of the 10 tracks on "Nothing."

"We were just thinking about the music for the most part," he said of the recording process, "but then like once you, you know, heard the whole body of work, you're like, `Man, we got to do something (more).'"

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Online:

http://n-e-r-d.com

Southwest starts sale for travel between holidays

DALLAS – Southwest Airlines Co. on Tuesday launched a fare sale for travel between peak holiday travel periods.

One-way tickets are $30, $60, $90, or $120 depending on the length of travel. The sale is for travel between Dec. 1 and Dec. 15 or between Jan. 4 and Feb. 16, every day except Sundays.

To get the sale fares, customers must buy the tickets before 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time on Oct. 28.

For travel up to 450 miles, fares are $30 one-way. For travel between 451 and 1,000 miles, fares are $60 one-way. For travel between 1,001 and 1,500 miles, fares are $90 one-way.

For travel more than 1,501 miles, fares are $120 one-way.

Asia pollution circles the globe in stratosphere: study

WASHINGTON — Pollution from Asia's booming economies rises into the stratosphere during the monsoon season then circles the world for years, according to a report out Thursday.

A study by the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) said the strong air circulation patterns linked to Asia's monsoon rainy season serves as a pathway for black carbon, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and other pollutants to rise into the stratosphere.

The stratosphere is the layer of the atmosphere located some 32 to 40 kilometers (20 to 25 miles) above the Earth's surface.

"The monsoon is one of the most powerful atmospheric circulation systems on the planet, and it happens to form right over a heavily polluted region," said NCAR scientist William Randel, the study's lead author.

"As a result, the monsoon provides a pathway for transporting pollutants up to the stratosphere."

Using satellite data and computer models, the scientists found that once the pollutants are in the stratosphere they circulate around the globe for several years.

"Some eventually descend back into the lower atmosphere, while others break apart," read a statement on the study.

Researchers fear that the impact of Asian pollutants on the stratosphere may increase in the next decades due to fierce industrial growth in countries like China and India.

Scientists however do not know the impact of climate change on the Asian monsoon, unsure if it will strengthen or weaken the monsoon's vertical air movements.

The international study, published in the March 26 edition of the journal Science, was funded by the National Science Foundation together with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Canadian Space Agency.

Hamas wants talks with US, Europe: Haniya

GAZA CITY — Hamas is ready for dialogue with the international community, including the United States and European Union, the leader of the Palestinian Islamist movement Ismail Haniya told AFP.

"Hamas is ready to dialogue with the world, international community, the US, the (Middle East) Quartet and the Europeans," Haniya said Wednesday.

The Islamist movement, which has been in power in the Gaza Strip since June 2007 after a week of vicious street battles with Fatah loyalists, remains a pariah of the international community.

It is considered a terrorist organisation by the United States and the European Union refuses to hold formal talks with the group.

One of the main obstacles to opening a dialogue is the Islamists' refusal to recognise Israel's right to exist, a position inscribed in Hamas's founding charter. The international community demands an explicit recognition.

"They have to recognise us first, the right of the Palestinian people, we are the victims," said the 48-year-old, who merely repeated that Hamas supports "the establishment of a Palestinian state with the 1967 borders."

The Palestinians want their future state based on borders before the Arab-Israeli war of June 1967, with its capital in east Jerusalem, which is predominantly Arab and was annexed by Israel in the conflict.

The Hamas prime minister said his movement had come "closer in political terms" to conditions issued by the Quartet -- the US, EU, Russia and the United Nations -- to open dialogue, including a "long-term ceasefire."

Hamas has stopped rocket attacks against the Jewish state since the end of Israel's devastating offensive against the Palestinian enclave a year ago.

Haniya said he was determined to "establish Palestinian reconciliation and to have fair elections... in all Palestinian homes, including Jerusalem."

Regarding "reconciliation, it is moving. It needs a strong push to reach a signature" with Fatah, the rival movement headed by Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

A senior Fatah official, Nabil Shaath, made a rare visit to the Hamas-run Gaza Strip on Wednesday in a bid to encourage stalled reconciliation efforts.

Shaath, a member of the central committee of the secular Fatah, met with Khalil al-Hayya, a senior official from Hamas.

"We are one people, we have one homeland. Every Palestinian has the right to move in his own land at any time," Haniya said. "If he (Shaath) asks for a meeting, we will do nothing to prevent it."

After talks mediated by Egypt, Hamas has refused to sign a unity deal that was proposed by Cairo in October unless it is amended to reflect what the group says were previous understandings reached with Fatah.

Both Egypt and Fatah have said the deal is final.

In addition, relations between Hamas and Egypt have deteriorated recently after an armed confrontation at the Rafah border crossing that killed one Egyptian and wounded several Palestinians.

"What happened in Rafah did not affect the strategic relationships between Egypt and Hamas," said Haniya, adding the "Egyptian role should continue and we welcome all Arab efforts for reconciliation, and Egypt has to be there."

"It is no secret that the US and Israel do not want reconciliation but we are committed to reach it."

Google apologises to Chinese writers over book flap

BEIJING — Internet giant Google has issued a public apology to Chinese writers and admitted that it scanned books under Chinese copyright for its Google Books digital library project.

A copy of the January 9 statement by the Asia-Pacific head of Google Books, Erik Hartmann, was posted on the website of the Chinese Writers Association, one of the groups leading accusations against Google, on Sunday.

Hartmann also appeared on Chinese state-run television on Sunday acknowledging the practice of scanning books had angered Chinese writers.

"Through the discussions and communications of recent months, it is our understanding that our communications with Chinese writers have not been good enough," Hartmann's written statement said.

"Google is willing to apologise to Chinese authors."

According to the China Written Works Copyright Society, tens of thousands of books by hundreds of Chinese authors have been added to Google Books, the US giant's project to digitise books and post them online.

The project has also raised objections from authors and publishers in the United States, France, Germany and elsewhere.

The China Written Works Copyright Society is in talks with Google to try to resolve outstanding copyright issues and agree terms for compensation, but Chinese writers have so far refused Google's offers.

On December 29, well-known Chinese fiction writer Mian Mian launched the country's first civil lawsuit against Google, seeking 61,000 yuan (8,900 dollars) in damages for scanning one of her novels.

Hartmann's statement promised Google would scan no more books without authorisation from Chinese writers but made no new offers, while expressing a desire to resolve the dispute by March.

Google reached a settlement with US authors and publishers last year over a copyright infringement suit filed in 2005.

Under the deal, Google agreed to pay 125 million dollars to resolve pending claims and establish an independent unit to provide revenue from sales and advertising to authors and publishers who agree to digitise their books.

A US judge has scheduled a hearing for February 18 on the revised settlement.

Last month, a court in France ordered Google to pay 300,000 euros (430,000 dollars) in damages for digitising French books.

US vows to hunt extremists, Al-Qaeda claims jet attack

KANEOHE, Hawaii — President Barack Obama vowed to hunt down extremists wherever they plot attacks against the United States as Al-Qaeda claimed it hatched the attempt to blow up a US-bound airliner on Christmas Day.

Obama pledged to "disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us -- whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the US homeland."

The president said he had ordered a probe to find out how 23-year-old suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab of Nigeria managed to board a Detroit-bound plane from Amsterdam with an explosive device.

"A full investigation has been launched into this attempted act of terrorism and we will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable," Obama said in his first public comments since the botched attack.

As millions of edgy air travelers endured stringent new security measures for flights around the globe, Obama was under massive pressure to ease frayed nerves and counter accusations his administration is soft on terror.

"This was a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland," Obama said, three days after catastrophe was narrowly averted on Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

In an Internet posting the group said a "technical fault" caused the plot's failure, SITE Intelligence said.

The statement was accompanied by a picture of Abdulmutallab, who was described as the "Nigerian brother," and boasted he "was able to breach all the modern and sophisticated technologies and checkpoints at the airports around the world," according to IntelCenter, another US monitoring group.

"His act has dealt a huge blow to the myth of American and global intelligence services and showed how fragile its structure is."

The explosive material was allegedly sewn into his underwear and officials believe tragedy was averted only because the makeshift detonator failed to work properly before fellow passengers jumped on the would-be bomber.

Obama has ordered a review of US no-fly lists after it emerged that Abdulmutallab was on a broad terrorist watch-list of 500,000 names but still had a valid US visa.

He was added to the watch-list last month after his father told US embassy officials in Abuja that he was concerned by his son's increasing radicalism, but he was not on a no-fly list of roughly 4,000 names.

Obama's security chief demanded to know how Abdulmutallab retained his visa, while Britain confirmed the 23-year-old had been placed on its security blacklist in May this year.

"Clearly this individual should not have been able to board this plane carrying that material," said US Homeland Security Janet Napolitano.

The suspect was moved from a hospital to a federal prison west of Detroit on Sunday. A hearing on Monday to address a request for a DNA sample was postponed and he is not due to appear in court until he is arraigned on January 8.

With renewed questions being asked about air security, travellers in the United States were told to check in four hours ahead of scheduled departure times, while bomb-sniffing dogs were visible at airports across the country.

But experts including Richard Aboulafia, an analyst with Teal Group Corp., said air traffic was not likely to be seriously affected.

"Smaller incidents like these seldom have an impact, although a security overreaction could lead to even greater dissatisfaction among travelers, which helps weaken long-term traffic growth," he told AFP.

In Nigeria, Abdulmutallab's family promised their full cooperation with security agencies and said his recent behavior had been "completely out of character."

According to The New York Times, Abdulmutallab told FBI agents he was connected to an Al-Qaeda affiliate that operates largely in Yemen and Saudi Arabia by a radical Yemeni cleric whom he contacted online.

American law enforcement officials, quoted anonymously by US media, have said the suspect confessed to receiving specific training for the attack from an Al-Qaeda bombmaker in Yemen.

Border lockdown as police hunt for Auschwitz sign

WARSAW — Polish police Saturday stepped up border checks as they intensified the hunt for thieves who stole the infamous Nazi German "Arbeit macht frei" sign from the Auschwitz death camp.

Road blocks were in place across the southern Polish region, while around 40 officers and forensic experts were mobilised to gather evidence at the camp itself, said regional police spokesman Dariusz Nowak.

Poland has sought the help of the international policing bodies Interpol and Europol to try to track down the criminals, he said.

"This is an absolute priority for the Polish police," added national police spokeswoman, Grazyna Puchalska.

The sign, which means "Work Will Set You Free", came to symbolise the horror of the camp where 1.1 million mainly Jewish prisoners died during World War II, from overwork and starvation but mostly in the gas chambers.

Its theft Friday at dawn from the camp entrance sparked a chorus of outrage from world leaders, Jewish groups and Holocaust survivors.

Nowak said police had received dozen of telephone calls from residents around Oswiecim -- which was annexed and renamed Auschwitz by Germany during the war -- although none so far had enabled a breakthrough.

The Auschwitz museum has offered a reward of 100,000 zlotys (about 25,000 euros), and police 5,000-zlotys (1,200 euros/1,700-dollars), for any information leading to the recovery of the sign or arrests.

The five-metre (16-foot) long sign was forged by prisoners on the orders of the Nazis, who set up the camp after invading Poland in 1939.

Auschwitz was one of a network of camps set up by Nazi Germany for the extermination of six million Jews and others considered undesirable by Adolf Hitler's regime during the World War II Holocaust.

It was later expanded into a vast death camp, after the Nazis razed the nearby village of Brzezinka -- Birkenau in German. The site has been a Polish state-run museum and memorial since the war ended in 1945.

Museum director Piotr Cywinski, contacted by AFP, admitted the museum has had to make do with a rudimentary surveillance system, since much of its limited budget has been channelled into urgent renovation work.

"The surveillance was concentrated on the archives and exhibited objects, because no sane person could have imagined such an act," he said.

"The camp entrance, from where the sign was stolen, was being monitored by just one camera, an old model. Moreover the snow meant the image was blurred," he added.

Last year the Auschwitz museum had a budget of 6.8 million euros, most of it provided by the Polish government to maintain the camp's 155 buildings and 300 ruins, and cater to more than a million annual visitors.

The museum launched an international appeal this year for 120 million euros for vital preservation work.

Two days before the sign was stolen, Germany announced it would donate half the total requested and the Czech Republic, Norway and Sweden also said they would contribute.

Spain: Catalan villages vote for independence

VILAFRANCA DEL PENEDES, Spain — A smattering of villages and towns in rich, independence-minded Catalonia gave a lukewarm embrace to the idea of breaking away from Spain in a rare vote Sunday at the grassroots level.

Skeptics called the nonbinding vote an exercise in futility for the proud region centered around Barcelona, which boasts a distinct cultural identity and accounts for about one-fifth of Spain's economy but says it get does not get enough in return.

But an umbrella group of civic organizations behind the referendum saw it as a way to assert the distinct identity of what they regard as a country within a country and to pressure politicians in Madrid and Barcelona to pay more attention to them.

The vote was held in 167 pro-autonomy hamlets, villages and towns in Catalonia, home to about 7 million people.

In the end, with more than 90 percent of the votes counted — people as young as 16 and immigrants were also allowed to take part -- 94 percent favored independence, and turnout was about 25 percent, according to Ana Arque, a spokeswoman for the referendum organizers.

A massive 'yes' vote had been widely expected because the referendum was staged in pro-independence towns. The turnout figure was about half that of a vote in 2006 on a statute that gave Catalonia broad new powers of self rule.

Organizers of Sunday's vote had set a goal of 40 percent turnout. Still, they played up the result as a success.

"The people of Catalonia have chosen to form an independent state," said Carles Mora, mayor of a small town that held a similar refendum back in September.

Catalonia, along with the Basque country, is a prime example of a region oppressed under the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, which made it a crime to speak in their regional languages in the interest of promoting Spain as a unified country run from Madrid.

Since Franco's death in 1975 and the restoration of democracy, Spain has gradually granted a large degree of self-rule to regions such as Catalonia.

Catalonia won even more self-rule in 2006 with the new autonomy charter, gaining control over judicial, infrastructure and other issues and an indirect proclamation of Catalonia being a nation.

But conservatives immediately challenged the charter, and Spain's highest court is now believed to be close to issuing a verdict that might strike down parts of it. Critically, it is said to oppose the idea of Catalonia being a nation.

Angst over this pending decision was a major reason for Sunday's vote. Organizers say they plan a similar one in Barcelona and other big cities early next year.

Anti-Spanish sentiment in Catalonia can run very high. Next week the regional parliament will debate a bill to ban bullfighting. That probably has as much to do with concern over cruelty to animals as it does with a pastime associated with traditional Spain.

Sunday's paper ballots were counted by the organizers themselves, with monitors from places such as Corsica, Quebec and Northern Ireland, which have their own independence movements.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Friday "in all honesty, initiatives like this lead nowhere."

School coach Maria Teresa Montserrat, 54, said Sunday she voted for independence as a way to assert the distinct identity that many Catalans feel. "We are not better or worse than anybody else, we're just different," she said.

Beside her, townsfolk grilled "butifarra" sausages, a regional specialty, and drank white wine out of miniature wooden barrels.

Metal worker Enric Flores, 49, sheltered from the cold and rain under the stone arcade of a street market in the town of L'Arboc, population 5,000. Loudspeakers blared Motown songs in Catalan.

"Seen from the outside, life here looks very good, but we feel discriminated against," Flores said. Although the vote is nonbinding, "the government in Madrid must take this referendum into account," he added.

Antonio Duran, 53, a traveling salesman, dismissed the whole thing as nonsense.

"Catalonia is an important region of Spain, but that's all," he said.

Virgin Galactic to unveil commercial spaceship

LOS ANGELES — After five years of secret construction, the cloak is coming off a privately funded spacecraft designed to fly well-heeled tourists into space.

The long-awaited glimpse of SpaceShipTwo, slated for rollout Monday in the Mojave Desert, could not come sooner for the scores of wannabe astronauts who have forked over part of their disposable income for the chance to float in zero gravity.

"We've all been patiently waiting to see exactly what the vehicle is going to look like," said Peter Cheney, a 63-year-old potential space tourist from Seattle who was among the first to sign up for suborbital space rides marketed by Virgin Galactic. "It would be nice to see it in the flesh."

Virgin Galactic spokeswoman Jackie McQuillan promised a "theatrical unveil" followed by a cocktail party for paying passengers and other VIPs.

SpaceShipTwo's debut marks the first public appearance of a commercial passenger spacecraft. The project is bankrolled by Virgin Galactic founder, British billionaire Sir Richard Branson, who partnered with famed aviation designer Burt Rutan, the brains behind the venture.

SpaceShipTwo is based on Rutan's design of a stubby white prototype called SpaceShipOne. In 2004, SpaceShipOne captured the $10 million Ansari X Prize by becoming the first privately manned craft to reach space.

Since the historic feat, engineers from Rutan's Scaled Composites LLC have been laboring in a Mojave hangar to commercialize the prototype in heavy secrecy.

The last time there was this level of hoopla in the high desert was a little more than a year ago when Branson and Rutan trotted out to great fanfare the twin-fuselage mothership, White Knight Two, that will ferry SpaceShipTwo to launch altitude.

Despite the hype, hard work lies ahead before space journeys could become as routine as air travel.

Flight testing of White Knight Two has been ongoing for the past year. The first SpaceShipTwo test flights are expected to start next year, with full-fledged space launches to its maximum altitude by or in 2011.

It remains unclear when Virgin Galactic customers will receive their astronaut wings, but it will largely depend on how the test program fares. Some 300 clients have paid the $200,000 ticket or placed a deposit, according to the company.

SpaceShipTwo, built from lightweight composite materials and powered by a hybrid rocket motor, is similar to its prototype cousin with three exceptions. It's twice as large, measuring 60 feet long with a roomy cabin about the size of a Falcon 900 executive jet. It also has more windows including overhead portholes. While SpaceShipOne was designed for three people, SpaceShipTwo can carry six passengers and two pilots.

"It's a big and beautiful vehicle," said X Prize founder Peter Diamandis, who has seen SpaceShipTwo during various stages of development.

The ability to view Earth's curvature from space has been limited so far to government astronauts and a handful of wealthy people who have shelled out millions to board Russian rockets to the orbiting international space station.

After SpaceShipOne's history-making flights, many space advocates believed private companies would offer suborbital space joyrides before the end of this decade.

George Washington University space policy scholar John Logsdon called the milestones to date "measured progress."

"They've been appropriately cautious and making sure that every step is done correctly," he said.

Tragedy struck in 2007 when an explosion killed three of Rutan's engineers during a routine test of SpaceShipTwo's propellant system. The accident delayed the engine's development.

Virgin Galactic plans to operate commercial spaceflights out of a taxpayer-funded spaceport in New Mexico that is under construction. The 2 1/2 hour trips — up and down flights without circling the Earth — include about five minutes of weightlessness.

SpaceShipTwo will be carried aloft by White Knight Two and released at 50,000 feet. The craft's rocket engine then burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel to climb more than 65 miles above the Earth's surface.

After reaching the top of its trajectory, it will fall back into the atmosphere and glide to a landing like a normal airplane. Its descent is controlled by "feathering" its wings to maximize aerodynamic drag.

Virgin Galactic expects to spend more than $400 million for a fleet of five commercial spaceships and launch vehicles.

It's not the only player in the ultra-secretive commercial space race. A handful of entrepreneurs including Amazon.com Inc. Chief Executive Jeff Bezos, computer game programmer John Carmack and rocketeer Jeff Greason are building their own suborbital rockets with dreams of flying people out of the atmosphere.