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Spike's Latest Tweet: "The passing of Elizabeth Taylor brought back a Childhood memory of My late Mother lecturing me that the real Cleopatra didn't look like her."

NEW YORK – Oil prices continued to set new post-recession highs Monday as forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi pounded rebels near a key oil port in Libya. It's unclear how long the country's oil exports will be cut off, and traders prepared for a worst-case scenario in which world supplies would be under pressure for months. Benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude for April delivery gained $1.02 to settle at $105.44 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The price almost hit $107 per barrel earlier in electronic trading, the highest level since Sept. 26, 2008. In London, Brent crude...

Seoul to deploy Israeli guided missiles on Yeonpyeong in Feb Attack copters to be stationed on the island By Jung Sung-ki South Korea’s military plans to deploy Israeli-built precision-guided anti-tank missiles to Yeonpyeong Island next month near the western sea border with North Korea, a government source said Tuesday. The deployment of the GPS-guided “Spike” missile is part of efforts to help achieve an early fortification of Yeonpyeong and four other islands near the border ― Northern Limit Line (NLL) ― vulnerable to North Korean provocations, the source told The Korea Times. In its year-end report to President Lee Myung-bak...

Paramount Pictures and sister company Spike TV are joining forces to turn the cable channel's series Deadliest Warrior into a feature film. Shawn Levy and Dan Levine will produce through his 21 Laps banner.

WASHINGTON – Layoffs are back, and that's bad news for the fragile economic recovery. New applications for unemployment benefits hit a nine-month high last week — a spike that suggests private employers may shed jobs this month for the first time this year. Workers are losing construction jobs in Georgia and manufacturing jobs in Indiana. Some of the layoffs are coming as stimulus money dries up and public works projects come to a halt. Government employees are being let go, too, as states and cities grapple with budget crises. Without more jobs, consumers will not feel secure enough to spend...

Spike Lee screens oil spill film in San DiegoAssociated Press 07/31/10 11:00 PM EDT SAN DIEGO — Spike Lee has screened his new four-hour documentary on the massive BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and says no one from the oil giant is speaking to him. The director showed "If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise" at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in San Diego on Saturday. It airs in August on HBO. When he was asked if BP cooperated he said, "Nobody was speaking to me from BP." A call to the BP...

HANOI, Vietnam – North Korea inflamed tensions over the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship by threatening the United States and South Korea on Friday with a "physical response" if they carry out naval maneuvers this weekend. The U.S. refused to back down. The latest threat came four months after the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors. The North has been blamed, but vehemently denies any involvement. In Vietnam for a Southeast Asian regional security forum, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and a North Korean official traded barbs over the sinking, the four-day...

NEW YORK (CBS) ― A 21-year-old musician is lucky to be alive after his head was impaled on a spiked metal fence during a fall from a balcony. The incident happened at around 4 a.m. Saturday at a party in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood. Police said Nicholas Blossom was intoxicated when he fell from a third-floor balcony onto the second-floor balcony of an adjoining building, landing head-first on the fence. Rescuers used an electric saw to detach Blossom from the fence. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in stable condition. Blossom plays drums in a rock band called...

File under: Very Curious Event A London-based official at ICE said that the exchange is cancelling trades on dollar index futures above 76.50, after a spike in the contact that saw it jump to 82.18. The official said they are still investigating the cause for the move. Recent trades showed the contract up 0.7% to 75.89.

Jobless spike compounds foreclosure crisis Economists estimate 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year Aug 17, 2009 WASHINGTON - The country's growing unemployment is overtaking subprime mortgages as the main driver of foreclosures, according to bankers and economists, threatening to send even higher the number of borrowers who will lose their homes and making the foreclosure crisis far more complicated to unwind. Economists estimate that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year, up from 1.4 million last year, according to Moody's Economy.com. And the government, which has already committed billions of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has...

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The remains of Navy pilot Michael Scott Speicher returned to his Florida home on Thursday, 18 years after his FA-18 Hornet was shot down on the first night of the 1991 Gulf War. Speicher's remains arrived at the Jacksonville Naval Air Station around 3 p.m. About ten minutes later his coffin was rolled off the plane draped with the U.S. flag. It was to remain at the All Saints Chapel on the base overnight.

GENEVA (AFP) – Ballooning US demand and the handgun's surge in popularity drove up the global trade in small arms by more than a quarter between 2000 and 2006, a UN-backed study showed Thursday. Those weapons in the hands of civilians, security forces or armed groups were behind the deaths of 450,000 people, said the authors of the Small Arms Survey 2009. Pistols, revolvers, rifles and heavy machine guns accounted for 60 percent of deaths through intentional violence of any kind, including the use of bombs, knives or bare hands, whether in conflicts or crime, the experts said. By 2006,...

NEW YORK (AP) — Barely a day after the daring rescue of an American sea captain, cable TV's Spike announced a deal Monday to produce a show about U.S. Navy pirate hunters. Two crews for 44 Blue Productions hope to be on board Navy vessels patrolling in the pirate-infested waters off the coast of Africa within two weeks. The company is aiming to have a series ready to put on the air by September, said Rasha Drachkovitch, 44 Blue's president and founder. He'd been talking to the Navy about the idea for three months, but it was finished late last...

The Obama campaign has decided to heave out three newspapers from its plane for the final days of its blitz across battleground states -- and all three endorsed Sen. John McCain for president! The NY POST, WASHINGTON TIMES and DALLAS MORNING NEWS have all been told to move out by Sunday to make room for network bigwigs -- and possibly for the inclusion of reporters from two black magazines, ESSENCE and JET, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. Despite pleas from top editors of the three newspapers that have covered the campaign for months at extraordinary cost, the Obama campaign says...

Worried about gas prices hitting $4 a gallon and beyond? Imagine if they were $6, $7 or even $8 a gallon. Those levels are a certain possibility should Congress pass cap-and-trade legislation, which could face a vote in early June. Oil is trading at record levels, in excess of $120 a barrel. Leading Republican Sens. James Inhofe (Okla.) and Jeff Sessions (Ala.) both told the Business & Media Institute (BMI) energy prices would drastically increase if the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act (S. 2191) is signed into law. “The studies show it would be directly affected, would be a $1.50 a...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 7, 2007 – An “artificial spike” in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq has led to the largest number of American servicemembers in the country ever, Pentagon officials said today. About 162,000 American troops are in Iraq, predominantly Army soldiers and Marines. Officials said the current number of U.S. troops in the country is an “artificial spike” because it resulted from normal rotation policies and is not a matter of the United States assigning more troops to the conflict. The last time there were more than 160,000 U.S. servicemembers in Iraq was during stepped-up security operations for...

HOUSTON - Evacuees from Hurricane Katrina have contributed to an increase in Houston's annual murder rate, which could climb this year to its highest level in more than a decade, police said. Houston had 316 homicides as of Oct. 16. That's an increase of 25 percent from the 252 slayings tallied at this time last year, putting the city on pace to record nearly 400 killings before the end of 2006. "We recognize that the homicide rate is up as far as raw numbers and as well as percentages relative to the population," Capt. Dwayne Ready said. "We also recognize...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - No evidence of market manipulation was found by the California Energy Commission in an investigation of an April-May spike in retail gasoline prices, the state's undersecretary for energy affairs said on Tuesday. Unplanned refinery shutdowns, declining inventories, lower fuel shipments to the region and clogged ports combined to send California gasoline prices 47 cents above the national average by early May, said Joseph Desmond, undersecretary of energy affairs. "The commission did not find a smoking gun," Desmond said. "The market operated in a fashion you would expect a market to operate." California Attorney General Bill Lockyer's investigation...

Israel fields armed UAVs in Lebanon By Peter La Franchi in London Operations in Lebanon and the Gaza strip are providing the first clear evidence that Israel has armed a number of unmanned air vehicles to reduce engagement times for time-sensitive targets. The USA is the only other nation known to operate armed UAVs. The air vehicles involved are believed to be Israel Aircraft Industries Herons, which have only recently entered operational service with the Israeli air force. The missiles carried are possibly Rafael Spikes, although this has not been independently confirmed. The Israeli defence ministry has not responded to...

Israeli Spike snares Tiger By Arie Egozi in Tel Aviv The Spanish army is to equip its Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopters with Rafael’s Spike-ER anti-armour missile, with the French army also evaluating the weapon for its production aircraft. Eurocopter has already partially integrated the Spike weapon system on the Tiger using initial funds from Spain, with this work culminating with four test launches of the 8km (5 mile)-range weapon. A full contract is now expected to be placed by year-end to arm Spain’s future fleet of 24 Tigers. Spain has already decided to purchase the ground-launched LR version of the...