NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Online social networking site MySpace has been talking with major record labels in an effort to allow users to listen to copyrighted music for free on the Web site, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The Internet site has called the potential joint-venture MySpace Music. According to the Journal, MySpace has approached Vivendi (VIVEF) SA’s Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG), EMI Group Ltd. (EMIP.Y) and Sony BMG Music Entertainment, a joint venture of Sony Corp. (SNE) and Bertelsmann AG.

The proposed MySpace Music reportedly will include free, streaming music supported by advertisement sales, and it will also offer paid MP3 downloads.

MySpace, recently purchased by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. (NWS, Fortune 500), has attempted to expand its position as a social networking site into an online media company.

This is evidenced by reports that Murdoch was talking about buying Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500) and combining it with other properties that make up Fox Interactive Media, News Corp.’s online arm. MySpace has already launched online video service Hulu, a joint venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.

MySpace’s new ventures are perhaps part of a larger plan to distinguish itself from faster-growing competitors like Facebook and Linked-In.

WICHITA, Kan. - Authorities are considering charges in the bizarre case of a woman who sat on her boyfriend’s toilet for two years — so long that her body was stuck to the seat by the time the boyfriend finally called police.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman’s skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

“We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital,” Whipple said. “The hospital removed it.”

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman’s 36-year-old boyfriend.

“She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body,” Whipple said. “It is hard to imagine. … I still have a hard time imagining it myself.”

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

“And her reply would be, `Maybe tomorrow,’” Whipple said. “According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom.”

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that “there was something wrong with his girlfriend,” Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.

Police found the clothed woman sitting on the toilet, her sweat pants down to her mid-thigh. She was “somewhat disoriented,” and her legs looked like they had atrophied, Whipple said.

“She said that she didn’t need any help, that she was OK and did not want to leave,” he said.

She was reported in fair condition at a hospital in Wichita, about 150 miles southeast of Ness City. Whipple said she has refused to cooperate with medical providers or law enforcement investigators.

Authorities said they did not know if she was mentally or physically disabled.

Police have declined to release the couple’s names, but the house where authorities say the incident happened is listed in public records as the residence of Kory McFarren. No one answered his home phone number.

The case has been the buzz of Ness City, said James Ellis, a neighbor.

“I don’t think anybody can make any sense out of it,” he said.

Ellis said he had known the woman since she was a child but that he had not seen her for at least six years.

He said she had a tough childhood after her mother died at a young age and apparently was usually kept inside the house as she grew up. At one time the woman worked for a long-term care facility, he said, but he did not know what kind of work she did there.

“It really doesn’t surprise me,” Ellis said. “What surprises me is somebody wasn’t called in a bit earlier.”

My name is Jarrid. a.k.a SliM. I will be posting as often as I can, when i can. I use to do many websites. Now I hardly have time for xihost.net. But it is still up and running. My old internet username was XvoiD. Some may know me. some may not. But if you want to chat add me to A.I.M: xvoiddotorg.

Ill post again soon!!

The tutorials section is now up again.  Wallpapers section will be next.  

Updates have been pretty slow.  I may have a good amount of time to devote to getting all of the content back up in the near future.  Keep checking back for updates.  

BEIJING (AFP) - Used condoms are being recycled into hair bands in southern China, threatening to spread sexually-transmittable diseases they were originally meant to prevent, state media reported Tuesday.

In the latest example of potentially harmful Chinese-made products, rubber hair bands have been found in local markets and beauty salons in Dongguan and Guangzhou cities in southern Guangdong province, China Daily newspaper said.

“These cheap and colourful rubber bands and hair ties sell well … threatening the health of local people,” it said.

Despite being recycled, the hair bands could still contain bacteria and viruses, it said.

“People could be infected with AIDS, (genital) warts or other diseases if they hold the rubber bands or strings in their mouths while waving their hair into plaits or buns,” the paper quoted a local dermatologist who gave only his surname, Dong, as saying.

A bag of ten of the recycled bands sells for just 25 fen (three cents), much cheaper than others on the market, accounting for their popularity, the paper said.

A government official was quoted as saying recycling condoms was illegal.

China’s manufacturing industry has been repeatedly tarnished this year by a string of scandals involving shoddy or dangerous goods made for both domestic and foreign markets.

In response, it launched a public relations blitz this summer aimed at playing up efforts to strengthen monitoring systems.

Source

Like many middle-class, suburban American parents, Shannan and Joey Troiano worried about their son’s behaviour and his bad grades at high school. And like many wayward teenagers, Cory Ryder was grounded for weeks at a time, had a PlayStation confiscated and was banned from watching TV.

Less typically, this 16-year-old was plotting to murder his parents by hiring a hitman, while his mother was organising a sting operation involving a police officer posing as a contract killer.

Cory’s trial is scheduled to begin today at the circuit court in St Mary’s County, Maryland. His mother is expected to testify as a witness for the prosecution.

At an earlier court hearing Mrs Troiano, 35, explained how her emotions were torn between being an agonised mother and a murder victim. “I miss him being at home,” she said, “and I miss us joking around and kidding around. And then in the very same breath – I don’t know what this kid will do, because it’s not my son. That can’t be my little boy sitting there.”

Mrs Troiano remembers the night on June 2 when she discovered that the vague threats her son had made were serious. A woman Cory trusted, the mother of one of his friends, took him to a hotel room where he met an undercover police officer pretending to be a hitman.

At home in southern Maryland, Mrs Troiano told her husband that Cory would never go through with it and began frantically tidying the house, according to an account in The Washington Post yesterday.

After a few hours’ waiting, the policeman called: Cory was in custody and would be charged with attempted murder. Mrs Troiano fell to her knees in the bathroom she was cleaning and burst into tears.

Police say that Cory offered the undercover officer his stepfather’s new pickup truck as payment for killing his parents. “Two bullets is all it takes,” he is alleged to have said.

His mother, a financial manager at Patuxent River naval station, and stepfather, a computer specialist, had lived an ordinary life with Cory and his two stepsisters. Mrs Troiano had left his father when Cory was little more than a year old but, by the time she remarried, her son’s behaviour was getting steadily worse.

He walked out of lessons at Spring Ridge Middle School in Lexington Park, smashed a fire extinguisher case and then broke into the county fairgrounds, where he vandalised property. A judge sentenced him to supervised probation and his parents attended no less than 36 meetings with the authorities about him.

But Cory dropped out of school and then, after stealing $45 (£22) from his sister’s piggy bank, had a fight with his mother, which led to him being kicked out of home. He has since told officials that he was upset about being thrown out of the house and that he felt pressured to talk to the man in the hotel.

Cory insists that he never intended to have his parents killed and that he wanted to call the police that night in the hotel room. A judge has ruled that he should be tried in the juvenile system, which means that he cannot be held beyond his 21st birthday.

He has also been writing to his mother, saying: “You know I love you with all my heart mom!” Mrs Troiano fears that he is being manipulative. She wanted him tried in an adult court where he would have faced a much longer sentence. “He needs to understand what he did was wrong,” she told the court in September. “I’m scared to death that if this kid is serious, and they put him in a three-month programme, they’re going to release him to the street.”

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it.

The team from Bangor University in Wales was dredging the waters north of Iceland as part of routine research when the unfortunate specimen, belonging to the clam species Arctica islandica, commonly known as the ocean quahog, was hauled up from waters 250 feet deep.

Only after researchers cut through its shell, which made it more of an ex-clam, and counted its growth rings did they realize how old it had been — between 405 and 410 years old.

Another clam of the same species had been verified at 220 years old, and a third may have lived 374 years. But this most recent clam was the oldest yet.

“Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it,” postdoctoral scientist Al Wanamaker told London’s Guardian newspaper. “For our work, it’s a bonus, but it wasn’t good for this particular animal.”

SINGAPORE: She doesn’t have to worry about laundry, because she never washes her clothes.There’s an old woman in the Lion City who never washes her clothes. She wears them for a whole month, then throws them away and wears a new set.She also hasn’t taken a bath for 30 years!The woman looks normal enough, except for the foul odour emanating from her body The smell causes other residents to avoid her.Zhang, the 67-year-old woman, not only refuses to take a bath, but also does not wash her face, brush her teeth or wash her clothes. Her actions are baffling.On Sunday, she suddenly began camping on the ground floor of the apartment block with her wardrobe, bed and other necessities.When interviewed, the old lady said she used to stay with her younger brother and his children in one of the units upstairs, but someone moved her things to the ground floor on Saturday. When she found out her bed had been moved outside, she didn’t feel like sleeping on the bare floor of her bedroom, so she went to the ground floor of the apartment block to sleep on her bed there.From what is known, the woman is still single. She used to be an artisan, but has since been unemployed for over 20 years now.Her nephew Mr. Zhang, 30, who works as an accountant, told reporters, “I’ve lived with my aunt since I was little, and have never seen her take a bath or wash her clothes. She wears her clothes for a whole month straight and throws them away, then puts on new ones.”Mr. Zhang said his wife would give birth in two weeks’ time, and he is worried an unhygienic environment would affect the baby’s health. He had pleaded with his aunt, asking her to start bathing. It was only when she continued to refuse that he felt he had no other choice but to move her things out.Source Link

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