Asteroid Mining Venture Backed by Google Execs, James Cameron Unveiled

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — has announced plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.

Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system.

"If you look at space resources, the logical next step is to go to the near-Earth asteroids," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Eric Anderson told SPACE.com. "They're just so valuable, and so easy to reach energetically. Near-Earth asteroids really are the low-hanging fruit of the solar system."

Planetary Resources is officially unveiling its asteroid-mining plans at 1:30 p.m. EDT (1730 GMT) Tuesday (April 24) during a news conference at Seattle's Museum of Flight.

Precious metals and water

Two of the resources the company plans to mine are platinum-group metals and water, Anderson said. [Images: Planetary Resources' Asteroid Mining Plans]

Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive. In fact, Anderson said, they don't occur naturally in Earth's crust, having been deposited on our planet over the eons by asteroid impacts.

"We're going to go to the source," Anderson said. "The platinum-group metals are many orders of magnitude easier to access in the high-concentration platinum asteroids than they are in the Earth's crust."

And there are a lot of precious metals up there waiting to be mined. A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

(Planetary Resources, Inc. ) Small, water-rich near-Earth asteroids can be captured by spacecraft, allowing their …

"When the availability of these metals increase[s], the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts," Planetary Resources co-founder and co-chairman Peter Diamandis said in a statement. "And with the abundance of these metals, we'll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells."

Many asteroids are rich in water, too, another characteristic the company plans to exploit. Once extracted, this water would be sold in space, providing significant savings over water launched from the ground.

Asteroid water could help astronauts stay hydrated and grow food, provide radiation shielding for spaceships and be broken into its constituent hydrogen and oxygen, the chief components of rocket fuel, Anderson said.

Planetary Resources hopes its mining efforts lead to the establishment of in-space "gas stations" that could help many spacecraft refuel, from Earth-orbiting satellites to Mars-bound vessels.

"We're really talking about enabling the exploration of deep space," Anderson said. "That's what really gets me excited." [Future Visions of Human Spaceflight]

In addition to Page, Planetary Resources counts among its investors Ross Perot Jr., chairman of The Perot Group and son of the former presidential candidate; Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google; K. Ram Shriram, Google board of directors founding member; and Charles Simonyi, chairman of Intentional Software Corp., who has taken two tourist flights to the International Space Station.

Cameron serves the company as an adviser, as does former NASA space shuttle astronaut Tom Jones.

The plan

The company is not ready to break ground on an asteroid just yet. Before that can happen, it needs to do some in-depth prospecting work.

Of the roughly 8,900 known near-Earth asteroids, perhaps 100 or 150 are water-rich and easier to reach than the surface of the moon, Anderson said. Planetary Resources wants to identify and characterize these top targets before it does anything else.

To that end, it has designed a high-performance, low-cost space telescope that Anderson said should launch to low-Earth orbit within the next 18 to 24 months. This telescope will make observations of its own but also serve as a model for future instruments that will journey near promising asteroids and peer at them in great detail.

The prospecting phase should take a couple of years or so, Anderson added.

"We will then, at that time, determine which of these objects to pursue first for resource extraction, and what mission we'll be facilitating," he said. "Before you decide where to put the gas station, you've got to understand where the trucks are going to be driving by."

Mining activities will be enabled by swarms of unmanned spacecraft, according to company materials. Planetary Resources will focus on near-Earth asteroids, with no immediate plans to extend its reach to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter or to the surface of the moon, Anderson said.

He declined to estimate when Planetary Resources would begin extracting metals or water from space rocks, saying there are too many variables to lay out a firm timeline. But a recent study sponsored by Caltech's Keck Institute for Space Studies estimated that a 500-ton near-Earth asteroid could be snagged and dragged to the moon's orbit by 2025, at a cost of about $2.6 billion.

Whatever Planetary Resources' exact schedule may be, Anderson said the company is already well on its way to making things happen.

"We're out there right now, talking to customers," Anderson said. "We are open for discussions with companies — aerospace companies, mining companies, prospecting companies, resource companies. We're out working in that field, to really open up the solar system for business."

Apple's squeeze hits phone companies, competitors

NEW YORK (AP) — Apple is set to report another record quarterly profit on Tuesday, continuing the relentless string of results that's made it the world's most valuable company. Those profits don't come out of thin air: A range of businesses —from the company's wireless carrier friends to its PC-making foes— are seeing their profits melt away and flow toApple's bottom line.

Apple's success is good for the U.S. economy, and some businesses, like software developers and memory-chip makers, have benefited from the disruption Apple is causing. But its enormous gains have resulted in others' pains, sometimes in unexpected places.

—AT&T Inc., for instance, took a chance on Apple's unproven phone in 2007, but the company might be regretting that decision. Since it became the first U.S. phone company to carry the iPhone, its stock is down 25 percent. Apple's is up 415 percent.

—Best Buy has sold Apple products off and on since the late 1990s, but analysts now see Apple as a major threat to the U.S.'s only remaining national big-box electronics chain.

—Worst off, of course, are rival phone makers. Apple has just 8 percent of the global phone market, but makes about 80 percent of the industry's operating profits.

Wall Street analysts expect Apple Inc. to post a profit of $9.2 billion for the January to March quarter when it reports on Tuesday. That's roughly in line with the profit expected from the world's largest oil company, Exxon Mobil Corp.

The majority of the profit will come from iPhone sales, especially now that three of the four national U.S. wireless carriers —AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon— sell the phone.

But, for a phone company, selling an iPhone is a bit of a gamble. The company pays Apple an average of $659 for iPhones and then sells them to consumers for between $50 and $200.

The phone companies count on making their money back, and more, in monthly service fees over the life of a two-year contract. Each iPhone comes with a data plan that adds at least $30 to a consumer's monthly bill. At AT&T, the average iPhone user pays more than $100 per month.

It turns out, however, that some of the added income wireless carriers get from data plans is just compensating for a drop in what they're able to charge for calling minutes. The money is also eaten up by the cost of network upgrades to support all the data traffic — the emails, photos and YouTube videos iPhone users consume.

"The primary beneficiary of the growth in wireless data has been one company — Apple," says William Power, an analyst with R.W. Baird & Co.

Despite the smartphone boom created by Apple's iPhone, "free cash flow," or the cash left over every quarter after expenses and capital spending, hasn't grown at the major U.S. wireless companies since 2007, according to Power's calculations.

In the same period, Apple's free cash flow has grown more than sixfold, to over $40 billion last year.

There are signs that U.S. phone companies are starting to take countermeasures. Apple's stock has fallen 11 percent from its all-time high, in part because investors think the phone companies might start demanding lower prices from Apple or making it harder for consumers to buy iPhones at heavily discounted prices.

Already, the phone companies have tightened their phone upgrade policies, meaning existing subscribers have to wait longer before they're eligible for a new $200 iPhone, and raised or introduced phone upgrade fees, which now range from $18 to $36. They promote cheaper phones running Google Inc.'s Android software and more recently, Windows phones.

However, the phone companies may have limited leverage to change the economics of the iPhone.

AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are in a hotly competitive race. Each one is afraid to tighten policies or raise prices too much, lest subscribers jump to a competitor.

When Verizon started selling the iPhone last year, AT&T's CEO vowed to push Android phones because they're not as expensive to subsidize. But the company ended up selling more iPhones than ever.

Sprint Nextel Corp., the last of the big carriers to get the iPhone, is in a precarious financial position after many years of losses. Sanford Bernstein analyst Craig Moffett thinks there's a risk that the cost of selling the iPhone could push Sprint into bankruptcy.

Another partner struggling to deal with Apple's success is Best Buy Inc., the largest consumer electronics retailer in the U.S.

"While Best Buy has enjoyed strong sales with Apple products, Apple has benefited more," Daniel Binder, an analyst with Jefferies & Co., wrote last month.

Apple's own stores compete with Best Buy, and as Apple products win out over others, consumers become more likely to shop at Apple stores. Binder downgraded Best Buy a year and a half ago, saying the iPad would cut into PC sales. That trend has been even stronger than he expected, he says.

Best Buy stores sell less than $1,000 in merchandise per square foot per year, according to research firm RetailSales. Apple stores sell more than six times as much, a record for the U.S. retail sector.

If Apple does release a TV set this year, as has been rumored, that would be even worse news for Best Buy, Binder says.

Although Apple is only the world's third largest phone maker, behind Nokia and Samsung, it is pummeling rival phone makers, as well. Apple doesn't make inexpensive phones at all, which should leave plenty of room for other phone makers.

But that's somewhat of an illusion. Cheap phones have become commodity products, with fierce competition and low margins, so most phone makers are looking to smartphones for profits. But that's exactly where Apple dominates. As the world's largest buyer of chips, the company has a massive advantage in procuring components at the best prices, and consumers seem to favor the iPhone regardless of the features others use to jazz up their handsets.

High-end smartphones cost about $200 to make. Apple sells the iPhone for an average of $659. Other manufacturers sell competing phones for between $300 and $400.

Canaccord Genuity analyst Michael Walkely estimates that if you add up the operating profits made by the world's eight largest phone makers in the last three months of last year, you'll find that the iPhone accounts for 80 percent of the money.

Walkley believes Apple is set to take an even larger share of those earnings this year.

Most of the profits left over are going to Samsung Electronics Co., the Korean company that makes the popular Galaxy S line of smartphones. For now, Samsung looks like the one competitor that's able to thrive in an industry dominated by Apple.

Nokia Corp., the world's largest maker of phones, has taken the drastic step of ditching its whole smartphone family and betting instead on phones that run on Microsoft's new Windows software. Nokia shares have lost nearly 90 percent of their value since the 2007 debut of the iPhone. Its sales fell 23 percent, and it posted a large loss last year.

The consumer electronics industry is suffering at the hands of Apple, too. As consumers use iPhones and iPads to do things that once required camcorders, cameras and GPS devices, sales of these devices are shrinking. Smartphones and tablets are sucking up the consumer dollars, says Steve Bambridge, research director at U.K.-based GfK.

In the U.S., Apple's computers and other devices accounted for 19 percent of all the spending on consumer electronics in the holiday season, according to NPD Group. That's a tripling in two years.

The trend is particularly rough on the Japanese companies that once ruled consumer electronics.

Last month, Japanese financial newspaper Nikkei ranked Apple the top consumer brand in the country, up from 64th place three years ago.

The top Japanese electronics brand, Panasonic, moved down from a No. 3 spot last year to No. 7. Sony and Nintendo didn't even make the top ten in their home country.

Sony has taken a particularly hard beating, since it competes with Apple on many fronts: music players, digital music sales, phones, portable gaming devices and PCs. It doesn't compete with Apple in TVs, but that's a terrible business in its own right, and a big money-loser.

Sony is projecting a massive loss for the fiscal year that ended three weeks ago. It's been in the red the last three years as well. Last week, it said it would cut 10,000 jobs, or 6 percent of its workforce.

U.S. PC makers like Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc. aren't doing as badly as Sony, but Apple's success is coming out of their pockets too.

Sales of Windows PC are holding up well globally, as households and businesses in the developing world are getting their first computers. But they're shrinking in the U.S., as customers turn to Macs and, to a lesser extent, iPads instead.

HP, the world's largest maker of PCs, said last year that it would get rid of its PC division, but later backtracked. In its most recent report, it said sales were down 15 percent from a year ago.

PC makers have been trying to replicate Apple's success with the iPad, but have so far failed. They're now waiting for a new version of Microsoft's Windows to give them another shot. Windows 8, due this fall, is geared toward touch-sensitive screens.

New species of purple crab discovered in the Philippines

Four new species of crab have been discovered in the Philippine island of Palawan. And one of the crabs truly stands out with its unusually bright purple shell.

National Geographic reports that the Insulamon palawanese may use its uniquely colored shell to help identify its own kind.

"It is known that crabs can discriminate colours. Therefore, it seems likely that the colouration has a signal function for the social behaviour, e.g. mating," Hendrik Freitag of the Senckenberg Museum of Zoology in Dresden, Germany told AFP.

"The particular violet coloration might just have evolved by chance, and must not necessarily have a very specific function or reason aside from being a general visual signal for recognition," Freitag told National Geographic. Freitag's report on the new species of crabs was published in the Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.

Despite the big news, the newly discovered crabs are quite small in stature, each from about an inch to two inches wide.

While many species of crab are known by their red rust hues, some differently colored crab species are quite popular around the world, perhaps most notably the Chesapeake blue crab.

Freitag said the purple crabs likely have several natural predators, including some humans in remote areas. But he said the greatest threat to the species is ongoing forest clearing for farming, mining and home building.

Facebook pays Microsoft $550 million for AOL patents

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook will pay Microsoft Corp $550 million in cash for hundreds of patents recently sold by AOL, the social networking company's latest move to bulk up its intellectual property in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Yahoo.

The deal, shortly before Facebook is expected to have the largest initial public offering in Silicon Valley history, will give the social network 650 patents and patent applications, as well as a license to another 275 patents and applications owned by Microsoft.

Microsoft trumped Amazon, eBay and other tech giants earlier this month with its more than $1 billion purchase of most of AOL Inc. patent trove.

Valuing patents is a complex process, and it was not immediately clear whether Microsoftprofited from the deal with Facebook.

Brad Smith, Microsoft's General Counsel, said in a prepared statement on Monday that the Facebook deal allows it "to recoup over half of our costs while achieving our goals from the AOL auction."

Facebook was also a participant in the AOL auction, a source told Reuters at the time.

Facebook's deal with Microsoft comes as the world's No.1 social networking company is preparing for an initial public offering that could value it at up to $100 billion and as Facebook fights a legal battle with Yahoo Inc.

Yahoo sued Facebook earlier this year, alleging that Facebook infringed 10 Yahoo patents, including several that cover online advertising technology. Facebook countersued Yahoo in April, alleging that Yahoo infringes 10 of Facebook's patents.

In March, Facebook acquired 750 patents from International Business Machines Corp.

Microsoft invested $240 million in Facebook in 2007 and the two companies have forged various business collaborations over the years. Facebook features search results fromMicrosoft's Bing search engine in its social networking service as well as video chat technology provided by Skype, which Microsoft acquired last year.

Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings serves on the board of directors of both Facebook andMicrosoft.

(Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)

Norway killer says hoped to have massacred more

OSLO (Reuters) - The Norwegian who massacred 77 people to protest against Muslim immigration to Europe said on Monday he had hoped to kill as many as 150 and kept on killing because police failed to respond urgently to his phone call.

Breivik has given a detailed account of his car bomb attack at government headquarters in Oslo on July 22, which killed eight people, followed hours later by his shooting of 69 people, mostly teenagers, at a Labour Party island camp.

He said on Monday his "gruesome" actions were to prevent a civil war caused, he said, by a Muslim takeover of Europe.

"This was a minor barbarity to prevent a larger one", he said on the sixth day of a trial that has transfixed Norway.

"I've never ever experienced such a horrendous ... gruesome act as this. But it was necessary," Breivik said in his usual tone, lacking emotion. "It was much more cruel than I expected."

Breivik said he thought that at least another 150 people had drowned in a lake as they fled his gunfire so he called police to surrender, only to find himself forced to leave a message.

"I said 'call me back when you got the right person'," Breivik said. "I told myself 'I will continue until the phone rings'. I thought, I will continue until I die. What would I have done, sat by the pier waiting?"

COLD, MATTER-OF-FACT

Breivik has denied criminal guilt, insisting his victims were "traitors" whose multiculturalist views facilitated what he saw as a de facto Muslim invasion of Europe.

Most Norwegians have reacted with horror to his testimony, delivered in a cold, matter-of-fact manner, while there is wide public acceptance of his right as a defendant to give it.

Breivik has had almost free rein to issue warnings against immigration and explain how he scoured the Internet for bomb-making information while writing a 1,500-page document declaring himself part of a secretive group that is Europe's answer to al Qaeda - a group the police have said likely does not exist.

Breivik said he spared some people, including a 10-year-old boy whose father was his first victim, and a Labour Party activist because he looked right-wing.

"Some people have the type of look that is associated with the leftist movement," Breivik said.

"This person, (Adrian) Pracon appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That's the reason I didn't fire any shots at him," said Breivik, 33, whose sanity or lack of it is a prime issue to be determined in the trial.

The 22-year-old Labour party youth wing activist earlier told Reuters: "I remember him pointing the gun at me for quite a long time before he took it down, turned and walked away."

Breivik told how he used a fake police uniform to trick people into coming out of hiding and then shot them at close range.

"I started with 'have you seen him, do you know where the shots came from?' ... then I said 'there's a rescue boat that's going to take you to safety but you need to come out'," he said.

FIRST APOLOGY

Later in the rampage, which lasted more than an hour, Breivik came upon Pracon again as he played dead, and this time shot the son of Polish immigrants through the shoulder.

He said he spared the boy's life because "I could not understand what such a little boy was doing at a political indoctrination camp."

But he said he had no qualms about killing teenagers. His victims were as young as 14. "They were not children, under the legal definition only under 14 are children ... they were political activists," he said.

Breivik issued his first seeming apology, to innocent bystanders hurt or killed when his 950-kg fertilizer bomb went off in Oslo. More than 200 were injured.

"To all of those ... I want to say I am deeply sorry for what happened," he said. "But what happened, happened."

Ahead of the trial, which is expected to last 10 weeks, one court-appointed team of psychiatrists concluded that Breivik was psychotic while a second found him mentally capable.

If Breivik is deemed sane, as he hopes to be, he could face a 21-year prison sentence with indefinite extensions for as long as he is considered dangerous.

Sudan market bombing a "declaration of war": South

OUTSIDE BENTIU, South Sudan (Reuters) - Sudanese war planes bombed a market in the capital of South Sudan's oil-producing Unity State on Monday, residents and officials said, an attack the southern army called a declaration of war.

Sudan denied carrying out any air raids but its President Omar Hassan al-Bashir ramped up the political tension by ruling out a return to negotiations with the South, saying its government only understood "the language of the gun".

A Reuters journalist saw aircraft dropping two bombs near a bridge linking two areas of Unity's capital Bentiu, although it was not possible to verify the planes' affiliation. He saw market stalls ablaze and the body of one child.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's press office issued a statement saying he "condemns the aerial bombardment on South Sudan by Sudanese Armed Forces and calls on the Government of Sudan to cease all hostilities immediately."

Weeks of border fighting have brought the neighbors closer to a full-blown war than at any time since South Sudan split from Sudan as an independent country in July.

The two territories went their separate ways last year without settling a list of bitter disputes over the position of their shared border, the ownership of key territories and how much the landlocked South should pay to transport its oil through Sudan.

The disputes have already halted nearly all the oil production that underpins both struggling economies.

"Bashir is declaring war on South Sudan. It's something obvious," southern army (SPLA) spokesman Philip Aguer said after the Bentiu bombing.

Aguer and the United Nations Mission in South Sudan said two people were killed in the air strike in Unity state where the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC) operates blocks. China's CNPC leads this consortium, along with Malaysia's Petronas and India's ONGC Videsh.

"Early reports indicate the bombings started at 8.30 hours and that Rubkona market has been struck," the U.N. mission said in a statement, without spelling out who carried out the attack.

"These indiscriminate bombings resulting in the loss of civilian lives must stop," said Hilde F. Johnson, Special Representative of the Secretary-General for South Sudan.

The mission said its officers had seen one bomb land on the market and three near a bridge. "A young boy burned to death as the hut he was in caught fire from the blast in Rubkona market area," it quoted one of its officers as saying.

Bentiu is about 80 km (50 miles) from the contested and poorly marked border with Sudan.

Sudan denied carrying out any air attacks in the area. "We have no relation to what happened in Unity state, and we absolutely did not bomb anywhere in South Sudan," the country's military spokesman, Al-Sawarmi Khalid, said.

"LANGUAGE OF THE GUN"

In the worst fighting since the split, South Sudan earlier this month seized the disputed oil-producing territory of Heglig - then announced it had started withdrawing on Friday, following sharp criticism from the U.N. Secretary-General.

Bashir, dressed in military uniform, visited the Heglig region on Monday, descending from his plane to shouts of "Allahu akbar" - "God is greatest" - from soldiers and officials gathered on the tarmac.

Speaking to Sudanese army troops, he vowed not to negotiate with South Sudan after it had occupied the region.

"We will not negotiate with the South's government, because they don't understand anything but the language of the gun and ammunition," he said at a barracks near the oilfield along the contested border.

A Reuters journalist on an official tour of the region filmed bombed-out pipelines dripping oil in the widely damaged Heglig oilfield, as well as heavy damage to the central processing facility, power station and other infrastructure.

Abdelazeem Hassan Abdallah, an oil worker in Heglig, accused South Sudan's forces of attacking the oilfield.

"They know how to do the job completely. They destroyed our main power plant, and they destroyed our processing facilities," he told Reuters.

"MILITARY BUILD-UP"

General Kamal Abdul Maarouf, a Sudanese army commander who led the Heglig battles, said his troops had killed 1,200 South Sudanese soldiers in fighting in the area, an account South Sudan denied.

Journalists on the official trip said they saw bodies strewn on the road to the barracks. Some clearly had South Sudanese flags on their uniforms, but it was not always possible to verify their nationalities.

Aguer dismissed Maarouf's report. "The number of casualties the SPLA has suffered since the 26th or March doesn't exceed 50," he said.

South Sudan won its independence in a referendum that was promised in a 2005 peace accord that ended decades of civil war between Khartoum and the south.

South Sudan's armed forces have 10 helicopters but no fixed-wing aircraft, except for one Beech 1900 light transport aircraft, according to an International Institute for Strategic Studies report.

Sudan has 61 combat capable aircraft, including 23 fighter aircraft.

The Satellite Sentinel Project, founded by Sudan activists, said recent satellite imagery showed Khartoum had "dramatically increased the number of military strike aircraft at two airbases and that many are in range to fly deep into South Sudan."

The monitoring group said satellite imagery was consistent with reports that Sudanese forces bombed "an apparent civilian area" near a bridge in Bentiu. It also said it appeared the SPLA had looted a Sudanese military base in Heglig, which could be a violation of international law.

(Additional reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz and Alexander Dziadosz in Khartoum, El-Tayeb Siddig in Heglig, Yara Bayoumy in Juba; Writing by Ulf Laessing, Alexander Dziadosz and Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Andrew Heavens and David Brunnstrom)

Susu Kedelai Cocok Dikonsumsi Saat Cuaca Panas

susu kedelai

MENGONSUMSI susu kedelai dipercaya mampu mengurangi rasa panas pada wajah yang menyebabkan muka memerah. Demikianlah hasil studi yang dilakukan oleh para peneliti di Universitas Delaware, seperti yang dilansir oleh situs Zee News pada 6 April lalu.

Dalam studinya, para peneliti menemukan bahwa konsumsi susu kedelai mampu menekan frekuensi sebesar 26 persen pada wajah yang memerah akibat cuaca panas.

Dari 19 penelitian yang melibatkan 1.200 perempuan, para peneliti berpendapat, kandungan isoflavon dalam kedelai diyakini memiliki efek yang menguntungkan bagi kesehatan.

Para peneliti mengatakan, ketika perempuan mengonsumsi susu kedelai selama 12 minggu atau lebih, akan terjadi penurunan frekuensi wajah yang memerah sekitar tiga kali lipat lebih besar. Nah, tunggu apa lagi, bagi Anda yang beraktivitas di daerah dengan suhu yang panas, segera konsumsi susu kacang kedelai secara rutin.

Gading Martin Tak Sabar Ingin Segera Nikahi Gisel

Gading Marten dan Gisel Anastasia

Tanggal 10 April 2012 lalu mungkin menjadi momen yang tak terlupakan bagi Gisella Anastasia. Di tanggal tersebut, wanita yang dikenal dengan nama Gisel Idol itu resmi menjadi kekasih presenter Gading Marten. Meski usia pacaran mereka masih seumur jagung, tampaknya, Gading tak mau lama-lama menikmati masa pacaran. Ia tak tahan, ingin segera mengakhiri masa lajangnya.

Mengenai keinginannya untuk segera menikah, Gading juga sudah mengungkapkannya secara langsung pada sang kekasih.

"Gue emang udah bilang sama dia, nggak usah lama-lama ya pacaran. Dan emang langsung gue bawa ke rumah, ketemu bokap nyokap, justru mereka yang tanya pertama, kapan nikah," ujar Gading saat ditemui di studio Hanggar, Pancoran, Jakarta, Kamis malam, 19 April 2012.

Menurut pemain film 'Sampai Ujung Dunia' itu, keluarganya sangat setuju dengan hubungannya bersama Gisel. Gading pun mempunyai keinginan untuk menikah di Bali.

"Ya gue punya impian gitu, nggak terlalu banyak orang, intim sama keluarga, nggak mau jadi pajangan. Nikah yang seru lah," ujar anak dari Roy Marten ini.

Gading sadar, keinginnya untuk segera menikah dengan Gisel memang terlalu cepat. Apalagi, melihat usia hubungan mereka yang baru beberapa minggu. Namun, jika dilihat dari segi perbedaan usia, keduanya tidak terlalu mempermasalahkan. Kini usia Gading sudah menginjak 30 tahun, untuk itu, ia berharap, Gisel mau menerima ajakan Gading untuk segera menikah.

"Niatnya sih Gisel jadi yang terakhir. Sebagai laki-laki saya nggak takut jadi tua. Tapi takut tidur sama orang tua. Kalau bangun tidur nengok ada orang tua nggak enak, tapi kalau nengok ada yang cantik kan enak, itu kata bapak saya loh," candanya.

Kurang Ganteng, Bikin Kangen Band Ngak PD

personil kangen band

Meskipun sudah terkenal, Kangen Band mengaku tetap tidak percaya diri, karena mereka merasa ada kekurangan yakni, kurang ganteng.

Band yang terdiri dari Andika (vokal), Dodhy (gitar), Tama (gitar), Lim (drum), Izzy (keyboard) dan Bebe (bass) mengatakan sejak awal kemunculan mereka di industri musik, Kangen Band sudah merasa tidak percaya diri karena berbeda dari band lainnya.

"Dari awal sebenarnya kita emang enggak percaya diri. Soalnya anak band itu kan terkenal ganteng-ganteng, keren-keren sedangkan kita enggak. Di sini kita enggak jual tampang, kita benar-benar jual karya. Hal itu yang bikin kita enggak percaya diri," ungkap Andika ditemui di Kantor Warner Music Indonesia, Jakarta, Kamis (19/4/2012).

Yang bikin para personel semangat bermusik adalah karena faktor orangtua. "Kita enggak mau lihat orangtua kita dihina karena mereka kan tukang cuci. Mungkin sekarang ada tambahan sedikit dari kita. Di dunia ini yang dipikirin orangtua aja," terangnya.

Saat ini, band asal Lampung itu tengah gencar promo album baru, Jangan Bertengkar, dengan menjagokan single kedua, "Yang Aku Tahu"

43 Orang Tewas Akibat Truk Tabrak Bus

truk kargo menabrak bus wisata

Sedikitnya 43 orang tewas dan 20 orang lainnya cedera setelah sebuah truk menabrak sebuah bus yang membawa pekerja pertanian di negara bagian Veracruz di Meksiko timur, Jumat (20/4/2012).

"Secara total, 43 orang meninggal dalam kecelakaan" di dekat kota Alamo, Veracruz, di Teluk Meksiko, kata juru bicara pemerintah, Gina Dominguez, kepada televisi Milenio.

Bus tersebut dalam perjalanan dari pelabuhan Coatzacoalcos ke perbatasan utara negara bagian Coahuila ketika kecelakaan tersebut terjadi pada sekitar pukul 04.30 pagi waktu setempat (16.30 WIB) di wilayah utara negara bagian Veracruz.

Dominguez tidak merinci berapa banyak orang yang berada di dalam bus, tetapi dia mengatakan operasi penyelamatan telah berakhir. Tim forensik terlihat mengeluarkan mayat-mayat yang berlumuran darah di kamar mayat Alamo pada Jumat malam.

"Laporan pertama yang kami miliki, yang kami perlu konfirmasi dengan penyidik, adalah bahwa truk trailer itu kehilangan kendali dan menghantam bus," kata Dominguez. Sopir truk berusaha menghindar dan trailer itu juga menabrak kendaraan kargo lain, kata Maria Elena, seorang pegawai pemerintah di kota Alamo.

Korban luka telah dibawa ke sejumlah rumah sakit terdekat di kota pelabuhan Tuxpan.

Presiden Felipe Calderon menyampaikan ucapan belasungkawa dalam pesannya yang di-posting di akun Twitter-nya. "Saya menguncapkan belasungkawa yang terdalam bagi keluarga mereka yang meninggal dalam kecelakaan yang mengerikan di Veracruz pagi ini," tulis Calderon.

Kecelakaan jalan merupakan salah satu penyebab utama kematian di Meksiko. Sebuah tabrakan lain yang melibatkan sebuah bus penumpang dan sebuah truk di sebuah jalan di negara bagian Jalisco, Meksiko barat, pada Jumat, juga menyebabkan 36 orang luka dan seorang tewas, kata seorang pejabat perlindungan sipil negara bagian itu kepada AFP. Pada 5 April lalu, 14 pekerja perkebunan tebu tewas dan sembilan orang cedera ketika sebuah bus yang mereka tumpangi menabrak pohon dan terbalik, juga di Jalisco.

Sekitar 24.000 orang meninggal akibat kecelakaan di jalanan Meksiko setiap tahun, demikian menurut perusahaan asuransi. Angka itu hampir dua kali lipat dari total kematian akibat kekerasan terkait perdagangan obat bius per tahun.