The world - Jan. 27, 2011

THURSDAY

Delta IV Heavy, the largest rocket ever launched from the U.S. West Coast, blasted off from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying a top secret satellite into orbit, military officials said. The rocket stood 23 stories tall and produced 2 million pounds of thrust.

FBI agents arrested 121 organized crime suspects in four northeast states. Some of the suspects named were “Tony Bagels,” “Vinny Carwash” and “Junior Lollipops.”

A Pennsylvania appeals court denied prisoner Daniel Goodson’s $75,000 claim that watching the reality TV show Keeping Up With The Kardashians caused him “extreme emotional distress.”

Russian authorities confiscated three metric tons of mammoth tusks from a criminal gang which tried to smuggle them out of the country.

FRIDAY

A Japanese businessman used a home-built computer to calculate pi - the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter - to five trillion digits, almost doubling the previous world record.

Luxury shoemaker Tod’s announced it will pay $34 million to sponsor preservation efforts for Rome’s Colosseum. Branding of the shoe company will be placed on the 80 A.D. amphitheatre.

A stolen painting by French Impressionist Edgar Degas valued at $450,000 was returned to the French ambassador to the United States after it surfaced at an auction in New York.

A 44-year-old New Zealand woman was treated by doctors after she was left paralyzed by a love bite near a major artery on her neck. Doctors said suction from her lover’s mouth dislodged a blood clot that caused a minor stroke.

WEEKEND

Quantum physicists at Britain’s national academy of science said they are nearly complete in creating a universal system of measurements based on stable quantities. The kilogram is the only measurement defined by a physical object, a prototype of platinum-iridium kept in the vaults of the International Bureau of Measurements in France. Over the past century, though, that prototype’s mass has changed by about 50 micrograms, throwing off the kilogram’s stability.

Two people died and two deputies were wounded after a gunman went on a shooting spree Sunday at a Wal-Mart store in Port Orchard.

Jack LaLanne, a one-time sugar-holic who became a television fitness guru preaching exercise and healthy diet to a generation of American housewives, died Sunday at age 96. Among his many feats, LaLanne once pulled a 1,000 pound boat across the San Francisco bay by swimming while handcuffed.

A hotel made completely of garbage opened in Madrid’s Plaza de Callao. German artist Ha Schult created the hotel from debris dragged up by the tide.

MONDAY

An Illinois appeals court ruled Chicago mayoral front-runner and former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel had not lived in the state long enough to qualify for the February ballot.

A suicide bomber killed at least 35 people at Russia’s busiest airport in Moscow. President Dmitry Medvedev vowed to track down and punish those behind the bombing, which also injured more than 150 people.

Oprah Winfrey revealed that she had a half-sister that she only found out about late last year, saying the news left her speechless.

The Tunisian army general who refused to back president Zine al-Abdine Ben Ali’s crackdown on protesters warned a political vacuum could bring back dictatorship and vowed to protect the revolution.

TUESDAY

Less than a week after 25 wild buffalo from the nation’s last purebred herd were driven by government agents to roam free ground in Montana, officials have shot and killed one bison and were debating the fate of 14 others that migrated on private ground on the east side of the Yellowstone River, where they are not tolerated.

After being fired Monday for wearing a Green Bay Packers necktie to work, Chicago car salesman John Stone was hired by a rival dealership. Stone wore the tie the day after the Packers’ victory against their archrival Chicago Bears. He said he wore the tie in honor of his recently deceased grandmother, a lifelong Packer fan.

A rare black rhinoceros baby was born at the world-renowned St. Louis zoo, the first birth of its kind at the zoo in two decades.

Authorities began investigating a New York coin dealer accused of selling phony September 11 commemorative coins supposedly made of metal from Ground Zero. The govrnment said the coins, which feature designs of the Twin Towers and sell for $29.95, are not actually made from silver recovered at Ground Zero, as the company claims.

WEDNESDAY

Russia’s parliament approved the first nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States in nearly a decade, voting to ratify the pact at the center of improved ties between the former Cold War foes. The treaty, approved by the U.S. Senate last month, will commit the countries to ceilings of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads in seven years.

Egypt banned demonstrations and began detaining protesters, seeking to draw a line under unprecedented protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s rule. Some 20,000 demonstrators, complaining of poverty, unemployment, corruption and repression and inspired by this month’s downfall of the president of Tunisia, had turned out in cities across Egypt Tuesday to demand that Mubarak step down.