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Former President Bill Clinton’s mission to North Korea was a success, and U.S. journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling have been pardoned by North Korean officials.Euna Lee and Laura Ling will be coming home.

According to the BBC News, the official North Korean News Agency (KCNA) issued a statement saying, “Kim Jong-il issued an order… granting a special pardon to the two American journalists who had been sentenced to hard labour.” ABC News is reporting the journalists may board a plane for home as early as tonight.

*Source, Care2

Canada will be sending its first “space tourist” on September 30 as part of a three-man supply crew headed for the International Space Station.

The tourist, Guy Laliberté, founder and creative mind behind Crique du Soleil, will be joining NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and Russian pilot Maxim Suraev, and are scheduled to launch on a Russian spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.

“I think this is a great, great opportunity of inspiration and I intend to inspire myself as much as possible,” said Laliberté, who is paying the grand sum of approximately $35 million to embark on an inspiration-seeking endeavor.

“I’m not a scientist, I’m not a doctor, I’m not an engineer,” Laliberté said. “I’m an artist, I’m a creator and I’ll try to accomplish this mission with my creativity and what life has given me as a tool.” His fellow astronauts are thrilled to be traveling with a creative mind, because they have a “tendency to look at space in a sterile way,”  and they “hope Laliberté can better articulate what it is to be in space.”

iPhone applications are very innovative in terms of the use of their technology, wherein you have apps that can find your friends, allow you to play video games, or even get you a job; but now it can be used to find you marijuana.

Apple has recently given permission for the distribution of a new app entitled “Cannabis.” The application’s function is to locate and direct you to the nearest legal marijuana distributor. It may also give you options to protest for the legalization of medicinal marijuana in states where it is not.

Many people are arguing the distribution of the $2.99 app, but the ajnag.com, the application’s producer, is retorting that the aim for the app isn’t only to lead the populous to sources of cannabis, but to promote reform on the laws preventing the use of medicinal marijuana, as they see it to be a viable cause.

Here is a video that explains how the app will work:

More and more teenagers have been checking into hospitals complaining about acute pain in their fingertips, back and forearms, and doctors are calling this new combination of ailments “teen texting tendonitis”.

As a CNN video portrays (for video click HERE) one young girl, averaging 200 texts a day, is suffering from said symptoms and both the girl’s mother and doctor recognize a problem.

Seeing this new medical development you cannot help but think that there have been some sad new-comings in this generation, to the point where arthritic ailments are now affecting young people due to over-zealous texting.

*Subjective

Yes, I am being facetious.

Pope Benedict, 82, recently fractured his right arm while away on vacation in Les Combes, an Alpine resort near the French Border.

Benedict had surgery at the hospital of nearby town of Aosta on Friday to set his fractured wrist, but despite this sudden surgery, the pope will not be canceling any of his appearances.

However, God’s seer is most depressed that he didn’t get to write as much as he would have enjoyed while on vacation, such as his memoirs.

*When did something like this become news? HE FRACTURED his wrist, not broke; he’s doing FINE, and he is NOT canceling any plans. This is not news… more like religious gossip, bleh.

It would seem that a pair of Massachusetts zoos are facing forced closure, pressured by the state government, and will have to lay off 165 employees and over 1,000 animals will need to be relocated, some even euthanized.

It is estimated that nearly 20 percent of the animals will not find placement resulting in either having to destroy them, or the care of the animals in perpetuity.

In its 2009 fiscal year budget, Massachusetts alloted $6.5 million; but due to the recession it has been cut down to $2.5 million, which is not enough for certain zoos to remain open.

“These are extremely difficult times across the state, and there have been tough cuts in every area,” said spokeswoman Cyndi Roy. “This is an example of an unfortunate cut that had to be made in order to preserve core services for families struggling during the economic downturn.”

Employees, owners, and supporters of these zoos facing closure are in a frantic attempt to veto the budget reduction, but it is not yet clear how they will prevail.

A New York social worker is accused, and facing two misdemeanor charges, for posting a sexually suggestive ad on Craigslist displaying both the name and phone number of a  young nine-year-old girl.

The woman, Margery Tennenbaum, supposedly posted the ad in an act of revenge after an altercation between Tennenbaum’s daughter and the victim.

The ad was said to have read, “I need a little affection… I’m blond, I’m cute and I’ll be waiting.” Browsers who were interested were prompted to call the supplied phone number, and were told the name of the nine-year-old to ask for. However, Craigslisters were not told the age of girl who “posted” the ad.

Authorities were eventually able to trace the ad back to Tennenbaum’s home computer.

The mother of the targeted young girl said she intercepted a total of 40 calls from various men.

The child’s mother went on to describe one of the intercepted calls.

She said, “This is her mother, Can I help you?” to which the man replied, “Oh, hot lady lives with foxy momma?” The man hung up when the mother told him that the “hot girl” he was looking for was a nine-year-old girl.

To conclude her interview with authorities, the mother said, “It’s scary to think that someone would take any issue and attack your child.”

*source: CNN news – rewritten

In recent news, Megan Fox, co-star in Transformers 2, during an interview effectively put-down the film as well as the film’s director, Michael Bay.

“I mean, I can’t s**t on this movie because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s a**. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting.”

Bay retorted by saying that in her naivety, Fox has no real understanding of the business, and that she “needs to grow-up.” He continued to say that many of his previous movies have put a handful of actors including Ben Affleck, Nicholas Cage, and even Shia Lebouf well into stardom, and that she should not be criticizing his own ability to direct.

*disclaimer- subjectiveness*

REALLY MEGAN FOX? REALLY? How can you be so full of yourself to criticize the man who PUT YOU INTO HIS FILM and GOT YOUR NAME INTO THE WORLD. Who the hell was Megan Fox before this movie? I had no clue. Idiot.

The continuing political strike occurring in Iran has reached far new levels of violence, and the government is finally taking a stand against these efforts. Usually only treated to one or two Hollywood movies a week, the people of Tehran and everyone in the country have not seen any movies at all, recently. So the Iranian government decided to put on a Lord of the Rings marathon, so that protestors may choose to stay in their homes for nine hours, rather than protest out in the street.

It may almost seem droll to many that this plan of action is the best the government could come up with. But the question that many are asking is, “Why the Lord of the Rings?” If anything was to be learned from that trilogy was that you can always make a difference in the world, no matter how small you are. And many of the current situations Iranians have been placed in can easily be represented by the situations and characters from the film. Many are questioning the capability of their political leaders now (for new reasons) and as to why they would choose a trio of films so specific to their protest, and that would encourage it.

It would seem that perhaps someone had been working on the inside of this new government and is trying to rally up protestors and encourage them not to give up.

TIME Magazine even goes on to state that someone may have tampered with the translation of the movie. ”[...] listen to the Farsi word they use for hobbit and dwarf: kootoole, little person. Kootoole, of course, was and is the term used in many of the chants out on the street against the diminutive President.”

Whether or not the propaganda is all correct in facts, there are definite insinuations that something is amuck.

It’s a sad day for the entertainment business as both TV legend Farrah Fawcett and music legend Michael Jackson died earlier today.

The 62-year-old television star , Fawcett, died this morning after enduring a long battle against anal cancer, since it had been diagnosed in 2006.

The iconic feather-haired Charlie’s Angel was accompanied in the hospital by her long-term lover Ryan O’Neil, who had recently promised Fawcett that he’d marry her. But due to her weakened state, the wedding had been cancelled only days prior to her passing.

Jackson, 50, was reported mid-afternoon being seen let onto an ambulance, at which it was said the pop-star had no pulse, and wasn’t breathing. Forced into administering CPR during the ambulance trip to the hospital, it would seem the paramedics were unable to resuscitate Jackson from a cardiac arrest.