U.N. Suspends Immunization Work in Pakistan

 ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The United Nations suspended all polio-related field activities in Pakistan on Wednesday after more attacks on public health workers attempting to immunize children. Two people were killed and another wounded around the northwestern city of Peshawar.

 The shootings followed a day of violence on Tuesday in the port city of Karachi in which four female health workers were killed. The attacks Wednesday brought the death toll from the three-day polio immunization campaign to eight people, most of them women.

 The World Health Organization and Unicef ordered their staff members off the streets in response to the latest shootings, although some provincial governments continued to immunize children.

 The shootings represent the most direct assault yet on an urgently needed public health program in one of the world’s last remaining reservoirs of the polio virus. Pakistan is one of three countries were polio remains endemic — the others are Nigeria and Afghanistan — and it has made strong progress against the disease following a disastrous rate of infection last year.

 So far in 2012, officials say, Pakistan has recorded 56 new polio cases, compared with 192 at the same point in 2011. The turnaround is due to a series of nationwide immunization drives targeting children under 5, which can involve up to 225,000 public health workers.

 But the unprecedented series of attacks targeting female health workers in recent days threatens to hinder future immunization efforts.

 The attacks Wednesday were concentrated in the districts around Peshawar. North of the city, a gunman riding a motorcycle killed a female health worker and her driver. Another driver was seriously wounded in a second incident close to the city center. And in Nowshera, east of Peshawar, four female health workers reported being shot at but not hit.

 A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban denied responsibility for the attacks, although the insurgents have a history of threatening polio eradication programs, claiming they are a cover for American espionage activities.

But the police in Peshawar said that Taliban fighters based in Mohmand tribal agency, north of Peshawar, were involved in at least two of the attacks in the Peshawar area.

One woman who came under fire described the attack, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. “Two people were riding a motorbike,” she said. “The one wearing a mask pulled out a gun and fired four shots. We shouted. The bullets whizzed past us but luckily we were safe.”

 The Taliban’s suspicions about vaccination workers were aggravated by the case of Shakil Afridi, a doctor from the tribal areas who was paid by the Central Intelligence Agency to run a bogus hepatitis vaccination campaign near Osama bin Laden’s house in Abbottabad in the run-up to the May 2011 American commando raid that killed the Qaeda leader.

 But the Taliban have also used the polio campaign — a rare attempt by the government to extend its authority into the tribal belt — for raw political purposes. In North Waziristan, Hafiz Gul Bahadur, a major Taliban-affiliated warlord, has banned polio vaccination until America halts drone strikes in the area.

 In contrast, the Taliban in Afghanistan have taken a more enlightened approach to polio vaccination, in some cases actively sponsoring the campaign, said Shahnaz Wazir Ali, a senior Pakistani polio official.

 “What’s happening here is much, much more sinister,” she said. “And it’s happening right in the heart of our cities.”

 Vaccination rounds in Pakistan take place many times each year, with teams of health workers visiting homes and public spaces to deliver polio immunization drops to children under 5.

 The three-day vaccination round under way this week, which began on Monday, targeted parts of the country worst hit by the virus — the northwest, the tribal belt, and Karachi — and was due to involve an estimated 135,000 health workers, according to the government.

 The lower house of Parliament adopted a unanimous resolution Wednesday condemning the attacks on polio campaign volunteers.

 “We cannot and would not allow polio to wreak havoc on the lives of our children,” Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf said on Tuesday.

 

Ismail Khan contributed reporting from Peshawar, Pakistan.

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The Voice Crowns a Winner!

TV Watch

By Julia Haskins

12/18/2012 at 11:20 PM EST

Cassadee Pope (Blake Shelton, inset)

Tyler Golden/NBC (2)

Cassadee Pope is the new winner of The Voice!

After several powerful performances the night before, the top three singers – Nicholas David (of Team Cee Lo) and Terry McDermott and Pope (of Blake Shelton's team) – faced the music on Tuesday during the final results show of season 3.

Pope thanked her fans who supported her throughout the competition. She was joined onstage by McDermott, who was the runner-up, and David, who came in third place.

It was a night of music as Rihanna, newly engaged Kelly Clarkson, Bruno Mars and the Killers celebrated with the finalists by displaying their talents.

Season 4 of The Voice premieres March 25, 2013, with Shakira and Usher stepping in to take over for Christina Aguilera and Cee Lo Green.

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California's marine reserve network now complete

Surviving budget cuts, mobs of angry fishermen and death threats, California officials today completed the largest network of undersea parks in the continental United States — 848 square miles of protected waters that reach from the Oregon state line to the Mexican border.

The final segment of marine reserves, along the state's north coast, becomes official today. Its 137 square miles of protected waters reflect an unusual agreement reached among Native American tribes, conservation groups and fishermen to preserve tribal traditions while protecting marine life from exploitation.

All told, the dozen-year effort has set aside 16% of state waters as marine reserves, including 9% that are off-limits to fishing or gathering of any kind.

State officials got to work shortly after the Legislature passed the Marine Life Protection Act in 1999. It directed them to consider a statewide network of protected waters, modeled after a familiar strategy on land — setting up parks and refuges to conserve wildlife, said Michael Sutton, a California Fish and Game commissioner.

"It's not rocket science," Sutton said. "If you protect wildlife habitat and you don't kill too many, wildlife tends to do well. We've done that on land with the waterfowl population. Now, we've done it in the ocean for fish."

Marine reserves have proliferated in the last decade, particularly in remote areas such as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the Phoenix Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands.

But California's network of reserves is the only one established near a heavily populated coastline. The state issues 2 million fishing licenses a year.

The network got its start from the late Jim Donlon, an avid sport fisherman from Oxnard who lamented the disappearance of the big fish he used to catch around the Channel Islands off Santa Barbara. He set in motion a first round of public meetings that resulted in protecting certain rocky reefs, sandy bottoms and other areas around the islands to allow fish populations to recover.

Initially, these reserves were seen as "an insurance policy" against inadequate fisheries management that had allowed rockfish and other marine life populations to plunge to record lows, said Steve Gaines, dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management at UC Santa Barbara.

The idea: Protected waters would allow some fish to reach full size, and when they swam out of the reserve they would benefit local fishermen by getting caught.

Now, he said, scientists realize that marine reserves, if in the right places, can become a source of providing larvae to reseed larger regions and benefit entire fisheries.

"That's what's exciting about California's network," Gaines said. "It's big enough that it's going to benefit the species that occur all along the coast."

The size of the network is exactly what filled auditoriums with red-shirted, shouting fishermen, angry at impending closures of favored fishing spots. The fight has continued in the courts. So far, none of the lawsuits has prevailed.

The American Sportfishing Assn., the Virginia-based trade group of the tackle and sport fishing industry, hired Sacramento lobbyists and public relations firms, and organized anglers by the busload to try to derail the process.

The organization was delighted when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger announced in 2004 that budget shortfalls required an indefinite postponement of the plan, said the association's vice president, Gordon Robertson. But what happened next, he said, outflanked the sportfishing industry.

Michael Mantell, a Sacramento lawyer who coordinates philanthropy and conservation, organized the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Marisla Foundation and two others to pick up the state's costs, including paying for panels of local leaders to take testimony and make recommendations. So far, the foundations have spent more than $23 million.

"The environmental community poured far more resources than the recreational fishing did," Robertson said. He vowed not to let that happen in other states.

Richard B. Rogers, a lifelong recreational fisherman and scuba diver, said the science won him over on the issue. After Schwarzenegger appointed him to the Fish and Game Commission, his work to help establish the reserves was, as he put it, "the single most important thing I've done in life, other than marrying my wife and raising my five kids."

Yet it also put him in an awkward position: vilified as an enemy of his fellow fishermen.

"We got death threats," Rogers said. "There were threats of physical violence."

He remains annoyed that some question his allegiance to the sport, ignoring that he owns a boat, as well as many rods and reels. He supported the reserves for one reason, he said: "I want to make sure my grandchildren have some fish to catch."

ken.weiss@latimes.com

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Report Cites Bias by Police In Killings In Canada

OTTAWA — Robert W. Pickton, a pig farmer, managed to murder 49 women before his arrest in 2002 largely because of “systemic bias by the police” against the victims, the commissioner who investigated the actions of the police said Monday.

Up until Mr. Pickton’s arrest, at least 67 women had disappeared in British Columbia, mainly from Vancouver’s downtown East Side. The victims were mainly members of Canadian aboriginal groups, and most were prostitutes and drug addicts. All were killed or are presumed dead. After a 10-month trial in 2007, Mr. Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. During his interrogation, he confessed to killing 49 women.

The inquiry’s 1,448-page report shows that although some people were alarmed at the rising number of missing women in the area during the 1990s, the police were indifferent largely because of the women’s social status and race. It was an indifference, said the man who led the inquiry, Wally T. Oppal, that extended to much of the city’s population.

“There was an institutional, systemic bias against the women,” Mr. Oppal said at a news conference Monday. “They were poor, they were aboriginal, they were drug addicted and they were not taken seriously.”

He added, “What if you were made to feel invisible, unworthy?”

Despite Mr. Oppal’s condemnation of the police as well as his passionate plea for eliminating the poverty in the aboriginal communities where many of the victims were born, it was not clear whether his findings would satisfy the families of the victims or native groups. Several aboriginal leaders were critical of the two-year inquiry’s focus on the actions of the police rather than on broad issues of poverty.

Mr. Oppal’s news conference was repeatedly interrupted by hecklers identified by Canadian news outlets as relatives of the victims. At one point, Mr. Oppal was silenced as a native drummer played and family members sang, some raising clenched fists.

In addition to indifference, the Vancouver Police Department and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, which patrols the suburb of Port Coquitlam, where Mr. Pickton killed his victims on his farm, were faulted for poor communication, lack of cooperation and a failure to accept that a sharp rise in disappearances in 1997 could have been the work of a serial killer.

Mr. Oppal particularly faulted the police and prosecutors for their actions after Mr. Pickton was arrested and charged with stabbing a prostitute in 1997 during the height of the disappearances.

The prostitute, whose name is protected under a court order, reluctantly agreed to let Mr. Pickton drive her out to his ramshackle farm for a sex act. Once there, she saw evidence that other women had been at the farm. Mr. Pickton handcuffed the woman and then repeatedly stabbed her before she escaped.

The police and prosecutors eventually suspended charges against Mr. Pickton, apparently because of doubts over the prostitute’s reliability as a witness. Moreover, the inquiry also found that they ignored her suggestions that Mr. Pickton had taken other prostitutes to the farm. Mr. Oppal said that if the police had followed up, it was “conceivable” that Mr. Pickton could have been stopped at that point.

Instead, the two police forces, the report found, felt little urgency to act on the disappearances of prostitutes or to even warn people in the downtown East Side of the rapid rise in disappearances.

“The Vancouver Police Department deeply regrets anything we did that may have delayed the eventual solving of these murders,” the force said in a statement. “It may also come as small consolation to those who still grieve that we are committed to learning from our mistakes.”

In the end, Mr. Pickton was caught by a police officer who had been on the job for just 18 months and was serving a search warrant for weapons. The officer initiated a wider search of the farm after finding items of women’s clothing and accessories.

“Pickton was not even attempting to hide the fruits of his violent acts,” Mr. Oppal said. “It was there for everyone to see.”

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The Voice's Top Three Give Final Performances in the Competition

TV Watch

The Voice

By Julia Haskins

12/17/2012 at 10:25 PM EST

From left: Judges Adam Levine, Cee Lo Green, Christina Aguilera and Blake Shelton

Trae Patton/NBC

Monday night's The Voice gave the final three contestants three chances to earn fans' votes, as every singer revisited a "breakout" song, sang a new song and performed a duet with his or her coach.

First, however, came a touching tribute to the victims of the Sandy Hook tragedy. While singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," coaches and singers held up the names of those whose lives were lost on Friday morning.

Team Cee Lo's Nicholas David then kicked off the competition with Jerry Lee Lewis's "Great Balls of Fire." Not able to resist a pun, his coach chimed in on his performance: "Your fire tonight burned this house down," Green said. David later revisited his performance of Bill Withers's "Lean On Me" and joined Green for a duet of Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music."

Team Blake's two contestants also had the crowd cheering. Terry McDermott sang his best song, Foreigner's "I Want to Know What Love Is," and took a stab at Mr. Mister's "Take These Broken Wings." But the crowning moment of the night for McDermott was his duet with Blake Shelton as they delivered Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady)." Adam Levine, decked out in a long rocker wig, played guitar alongside them.

Cassadee Pope sang "Over You," co-written by her coach and his wife, Miranda Lambert. Pope received huge praise the first time she sang it, but the song about Shelton's late brother held special meaning in the wake of the shootings in Newtown.

"America's heart is heavy, and that's about healing," Shelton said. She also moved the coaches with her take on Faith Hill's "Cry."

"I don't care that you weren't on my team," Levine said. "I am so proud of you and so happy that you're here at this moment." Pope finished the night with Shelton for a duet of Sheryl Crow's "Steve McQueen."

The Voice returns Tuesday, when the season's winner will be named. Who will it be? Tell us in the comments below.

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Experts: No link between Asperger's, violence

NEW YORK (AP) — While an official has said that the 20-year-old gunman in the Connecticut school shooting had Asperger's syndrome, experts say there is no connection between the disorder and violence.

Asperger's is a mild form of autism often characterized by social awkwardness.

"There really is no clear association between Asperger's and violent behavior," said psychologist Elizabeth Laugeson, an assistant clinical professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Little is known about Adam Lanza, identified by police as the shooter in the Friday massacre at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school. He fatally shot his mother before going to the school and killing 20 young children, six adults and himself, authorities said.

A law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss the unfolding investigation, said Lanza had been diagnosed with Asperger's.

High school classmates and others have described him as bright but painfully shy, anxious and a loner. Those kinds of symptoms are consistent with Asperger's, said psychologist Eric Butter of Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, who treats autism, including Asperger's, but has no knowledge of Lanza's case.

Research suggests people with autism do have a higher rate of aggressive behavior — outbursts, shoving or pushing or angry shouting — than the general population, he said.

"But we are not talking about the kind of planned and intentional type of violence we have seen at Newtown," he said in an email.

"These types of tragedies have occurred at the hands of individuals with many different types of personalities and psychological profiles," he added.

Autism is a developmental disorder that can range from mild to severe. Asperger's generally is thought of as a mild form. Both autism and Asperger's can be characterized by poor social skills, repetitive behavior or interests and problems communicating. Unlike classic autism, Asperger's does not typically involve delays in mental development or speech.

Experts say those with autism and related disorders are sometimes diagnosed with other mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"I think it's far more likely that what happened may have more to do with some other kind of mental health condition like depression or anxiety rather than Asperger's," Laugeson said.

She said those with Asperger's tend to focus on rules and be very law-abiding.

"There's something more to this," she said. "We just don't know what that is yet."

After much debate, the term Asperger's is being dropped from the diagnostic manual used by the nation's psychiatrists. In changes approved earlier this month, Asperger's will be incorporated under the umbrella term "autism spectrum disorder" for all the ranges of autism.

__

AP Writer Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report.

___

Online:

Asperger's information: http://1.usa.gov/3tGSp5

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Newport Beach dock renters may withhold holiday love

Marcy Cook embraces the holiday season. The tell? Start with the teddy bears dressed as Santa. More than 1,500 stand sentry around and inside her Newport Beach waterfronthome. Garland and strings of lights threaten to strangle the place like kudzu.

"We decorate a little bit, if you haven't noticed," said Cook, 69. "It's the highlight of the year for us."

Each Christmas, Newport Harbor is ablaze in lights as homeowners go to extraordinary lengths to complement the city's annual Christmas Boat Parade — an indelible tradition that renews itself Wednesday night and continues through Sunday.

But this has been a stressful season here along the tranquil waterfront lined with multimillion-dollar homes.

An increase in city rental fees for residential docks that protrude over public tidelands created a furor when it was approved last week by the City Council.

It also prompted a call to boycott the boat parade and festival of lights by a group calling itself "Stop the Dock Tax."

"It costs us thousands of dollars to voluntarily decorate our homes and boats to bring holiday smiles to nearly 1 million people," organization Chairman Bob McCaffrey wrote to the city. "This year, we are turning off our lights and withdrawing our boats in protest of the massive new dock tax we expect the City Council to levy."

Pete Pallette, a fellow boycott proponent and harbor homeowner, told city leaders the group would call off the boycott only if the council delayed voting on the rent hike. "Otherwise," he vowed, "game on."

In a place where homes come with names and mega-yachts bob in the harbor, it might appear the wealthy are wielding a weapon most often reserved for the masses. A holiday blackout, proponents say, will underscore their displeasure.

Newport's dock fee, which has stood at $100 a year for the last two decades, will now be based on a dock's size. The city says rents will increase to about $250 for a small slip to $3,200 annually for a large dock shared by two homeowners.

"People have been paying $8 a month all these years to access what is public waters," said Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff. "That's a pretty good deal. The City Council didn't think the increase it approved was too extreme."

Many did.

They packed council meetings when the hike was discussed, accusing the city of an excessive money grab.

They brushed aside the city's rationale: Statelawmandates cities charge fair market rents for the private use of public lands, and Newport Beach was only now catching up.

And they were unmoved by arguments that the extra revenue will go exclusively to badly needed repairs to a harbor that, despite outward appearances, needs a lot of work.

The city's five-year plan for the harbor calls for $29 million in long-overdue maintenance. Its silt-filled channels haven't been fully dredged since the Great Depression. Ancient, leaky sea walls protecting neighborhoods need to be repaired or replaced.

"We have the makings of a perfect storm like they did on the East Coast" during Superstorm Sandy, said Chris Miller, the city's harbor resources manager. "The sea walls are nearing the end of their useful life."

Even with the rent increases, Newport's dock owners will contribute a tiny fraction of that cost — the rest coming from the federal government and the city's general operating fund.

As dock owners fumed over having to pay more, others recoiled at the proposed boycott of the boat parade, which dates to 1908 when a single gondola led eight canoes illuminated by Japanese lanterns around the harbor. It has now swelled to a decent-sized armada of dozens of boats — some carrying paying customers — that circle past the decorated harbor-front homes.

"The boycott is ridiculous," said Shirley Pepys, whose frontyard on Balboa Island has been taken over by a family of penguins dressed for a Hawaiian luau.

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Darjeeling Journal: Darjeeling Tea Growers Get Protection From E.U.

Enrico Fabian for The New York Times

A woman on the Sungma Tea Estate in Darjeeling, India, where growers have followed the example of Scottish whisky distillers and French wineries in limiting the use of certain geographic names to products from those places. More Photos »

DARJEELING, India — Among connoisseurs, few teas surpass a good Darjeeling. The smooth and mellow taste commands a premium price, and the name itself evokes a bygone era when the British first introduced Chinese tea plants here in the Indian foothills of the Himalayas.

To Anil K. Jha, the superintendent of the Sungma Tea Estate, all this would be extremely good for business, except that much of the tea sold globally as Darjeeling is not actually grown here. Foreign wholesalers often put the name on a blend of the real stuff and lesser teas. And in some cases, growers elsewhere simply slap a Darjeeling label on their tea.

So Mr. Jha and other Darjeeling growers have followed the example of Scottish whisky distillers and French wineries, winning legal protection for the Darjeeling label under laws that limit the use of certain geographic names to products that come from those places.

In a decision this year, the European Union agreed to phase out the use of “Darjeeling” on blended teas. Now, just as a bottle of Cognac must come from the region around the French town of Cognac, a cup of Darjeeling tea will have to be made only from tea grown around Darjeeling.

“That flavor, that uniqueness that comes from here — it is nowhere else,” Mr. Jha said as he stood among manicured tea bushes on a hillside about 5,000 feet above sea level, near the border with Nepal. “People have tried to replicate it, but have failed,” he said.

The uniqueness of Darjeeling as a place certainly seems beyond dispute. On clear days, the white peaks of Kanchenjunga, the world’s third-highest mountain after Everest and K2, floats over the hilltop city like an ethereal fortress. Beyond the clamor of the city, many of the steep surrounding foothills are carpeted with tea estates, some planted more than 160 years ago when a British surgeon found that tea bushes thrived in the region’s alpine setting.

The mountainous terrain also limits production. India produces almost two billion pounds of tea annually, more than any other country, but Darjeeling accounts for only about 1 percent of that output. The Darjeeling district has 87 certified tea gardens, as they are locally known, producing about 20 million pounds of tea every year, and the potential for expansion is almost nil.

That is why local tea growers grew annoyed that as much as 88 million pounds of tea were being sold as Darjeeling on the global market each year.

“Darjeeling tea has always been more expensive,” said Ranen Datta, a longtime adviser to local tea growers, noting that the wholesale price is about five times that of ordinary teas. “And we found that sellers all over the world were selling tea under the name Darjeeling.”

And not only tea: A French company that makes lingerie has fought legal battles with the Tea Board of India to keep using the name.

“This brand name, Darjeeling, was being misused,” Mr. Jha said. “The basic interest of Darjeeling was being killed.”

Local tea growers had already fought to save their product from the vagaries of cold war politics. During the era of British rule, Darjeeling tea was shipped mainly to Europe, which remained the primary market after Indian independence in 1947, when Darjeeling’s tea gardens shifted from British to Indian ownership.

But as India drew politically closer to the Soviet Union, a deal to sell tea to Moscow ushered in a dark period for Darjeeling. The Soviets ordered in bulk and mixed Darjeeling with pedestrian teas from Soviet satellite countries so it could be marketed more widely.

“Russians were not particular about the quality of Darjeeling,” Mr. Datta said. “They took it if it was clear and black.”

Growers saturated their tea gardens with chemicals and pesticides to maximize output, and annual production rose to about 29 million pounds. But when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, so did the export deal, leaving Darjeeling with a crop it had trouble selling in Europe, where many customers, especially in Germany, were aghast at the chemical use.

“There were no buyers,” Mr. Jha recalled. “It took a long time to revive the image of Darjeeling.”

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Google could emerge unscathed from federal web search probe – WSJ

(Reuters) – Google may not face any major repercussions from the Federal Trade Commission‘s (FTC) two-year-old anti-trust investigation into its web search business, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The FTC might drop the investigation sometime this week based on voluntary changes Google will make to its search practices, rather than making the company sign a formal settlement called a consent decree, the Journal said.

The web search investigation examined whether Google tweaks its search results to disadvantage rivals in travel, shopping and other specialized searches.

Google will probably still be required to sign a consent decree for a separate federal investigation into the licensing of mobile-technology patents it acquired when it took over phone maker Motorola Mobility, the Journal said.

An end to the federal probe into Google’s search business would allow the company to avoid getting mired in anti-trust investigations like rival Microsoft Corp endured in the early 2000s.

The European Commission, which is also probing Google, is expected to announce a decision next month.

The FTC declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal and could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular business hours. Google could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular business hours.

(Reporting by Tej Sapru in Bangalore; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Drew Barrymore's Baby & Miley Cyrus's Outfit Get Readers' Top Reactions

By Julia Haskins

12/16/2012 at 09:30 PM EST

Drew Barrymore and Olive. Miley Cyrus

Michael Tran/Filmmagic

We love knowing what's on your mind when you read articles on PEOPLE.com, and as always, you gave us plenty of great feedback this week.

Your emotions ranged from "aww" at the photos of Drew Barrymore's daughter Olive, to "ugh" when it came to Miley Cyrus's questionable outfit choice. You also mourned the loss of a legend, singer Jenni Rivera.

Keep letting us know what's making you smile, frown, or LOL each week by clicking on the buttons at the bottom of every article.

You were nearly as thrilled to welcome Drew Barrymore's baby as the proud mom herself! The actress is over the moon about her new daughter Olive, and describes her feelings for her little as "like the biggest crush I've ever had in my life!"

You were highly impressed by professional builder Johan Huibers's latest creation: A full-scale replica of Noah's Ark. The wooden vessel – which is 427 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet high – is a feat of, well, biblical proportions!

You were heartbroken over the news that Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera was killed in a plane crash shortly after takeoff early Sunday. Rivera, who was known as the Diva of Banda and sold over 20 million albums worldwide, was 43. Her family is also mourning the tragic loss.

Miley Cyrus didn't leave much to the imagination with a revealing outfit worn on stage at a concert in Hollywood. Readers were angry about the young starlet's ensemble, which consisted of tight pants, knee-high snakeskin boots and a peekaboo top that showed more than just a little cleavage.

Well, this is awkward. You weren't too upset about Track Palin filing for divorce from wife Britta Hanson after a year and a half. Their parting made readers LOL. Palin, the oldest son of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and Hanson were former high school sweethearts.

Check back next week for another must-read roundup, and see what readers are reacting to every day here.

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