LOS ANGELES - A strong earthquake shook Southern California on Tuesday, causing buildings to sway and triggering some precautionary evacuations. No immediate damage was reported.

The jolt was felt from Los Angeles to San Diego, and slightly in Las Vegas.

Preliminary information from the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake at magnitude 5.8, centered 29 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles near Chino Hills in San Bernardino County. Ten aftershocks occurred in the next dozen minutes, including three estimated at 3.8, and the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the quake was about 8 miles below the earth’s surface.

Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said there were no immediate reports of damage or injury in Los Angeles. San Bernardino County fire dispatch also had no immediate reports of damage.

The quake struck at 11:42 a.m. PDT. Buildings swayed in downtown Los Angeles for several seconds.

Workers quickly evacuated some office buildings.

“It was dramatic. The whole building moved and it lasted for a while,” said Los Angeles County sheriff’s spokesman Steve Whitmore, who was in the sheriff’s suburban Monterey Park headquarters east of Los Angeles.

In Orange County, about 2000 detectives were attending gang conference at a Marriott hotel in Anaheim when a violent jolt shook the main conference room.

Mike Willever, who was at the hotel, said, “First we heard the ceiling shaking, then the chandelier started to shake, then there was a sudden movement of the floor.”

Chris Watkins, from San Diego, said he previously felt several earthquakes, but “that was one of the worst ones.”

Delegates and guests at a cluster of hotels near the Disneyland resort spilled into the streets immediately after the quake.

The 1994 Northridge earthquake under Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley was magnitude 6.7. It killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage in the metropolitan area.

The damage created by an earthquake depends greatly on where it hits. A 7.1 quake — much stronger than Northridge — hit the Mojave Desert in 1999 but caused only a few injuries and no deaths.

California is one of the world’s most seismically active regions. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, which sits atop two of Earth’s major tectonic plates, the Pacific and North American plates. About 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.

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Associated Press Writer Thomas Watkins in Anaheim contributed to this report.

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080729/ap_on_re_us/california_earthquake

Facebook has sued a German social networking site, saying the site stole its look and feel by creating a clone site and merely replacing a blue background with a red one, according to a report in the Financial Times.

The site, studiVZ, is available in French, Italian, Polish, and German. Its membership comes mainly from Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. In 2006, a publishing company, Hotzbrink Group, bought the site for more than $110 million.

The company has denied Facebook’s intellectual property claims, which were filed in federal court in California. It said the American social networking site is suing because it has failed to gain popularity in Germany. It has requested a declaratory judgment in a Stuttgart court.

Facebook called the site a “counterfeit product” in the complaint and said its “uncontrolled quality standards for service, features, and privacy negatively impact the genuine article.”

Facebook is seeking compensatory damages from StudiVZ but has not specified an amount. It filed suit right before unveiling a redesign.

A news article on Mashables last year listed StudiVZ as one of the 10 most profitable “copycat” Facebook sites. Several German sites were listed, as well as similar sites in China, Russia, India, Turkey, and Australia. The Australian site is called StudentFace and it features feeds that informs users when their friends have updated profiles or added friends.

Several of the similar sites share Facebook’s blue background. It’s unclear whether the social networking site will go after more companies, but it seems likely.

Facebook founders were accused by fellow students of stealing the idea for the site. The company admitted no wrongdoing and settled the case out of court.[IW]

Two surviving rhesus macaque monkeys have been genetically modified to have Huntington’s disease, a devastating human degenerative brain disease, in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of the fatal ailment and uncover clues to possible new treatments.

Huntington’s is caused by a single abnormal gene in which certain nerve cells in the brain waste away. People are born with the gene but symptoms typically do not appear until middle age.

The researchers said one of two surviving rhesus macaque monkeys is showing tell-tale symptoms at age 10 months.

This experiment has been criticised by the PETA and RSPCA.

PETA saying it is “there is no justification for it”. Continue reading →

Kentucky Derby winner Big Brown, who is favored to take today’s Preakness Stakes at Pimlico in Baltimore, is perfect. The colt’s trainer, Rick Dutrow Jr., admittedly is not.

Dutrow once was a drug-addled horseman who was ruled off New York racetracks for several years. Since returning, he has earned a rogue reputation after being suspended for everything from medication violations to making up a workout for one of his better horses.

Dutrow has endured his share of heartbreak, too.

In 1997, his former girlfriend was murdered in a drug-related break-in as the couple’s daughter, Molly, now 13, slept in an adjacent room. In 1999, his father, Dick Dutrow, who won 3,665 career races and passed on to his son his horsemanship skills, succumbed to cancer. Worse, Dutrow was estranged from his father, who had wearied of Rick Jr.’s lost-boy antics.

Although he saddled the Kentucky Derby winner two weeks ago, Dutrow’s redemptive tale has its share of rough edges. He retains the hipster habit of calling most people “babe,” and talks freely about his love for a big score at the betting windows.

Dutrow has declared his 4-for-4 colt an “even-money” choice to win the Preakness and the June 7 Belmont Stakes as well to become the 12th Triple Crown champion — and the first since Affirmed swept the series for 3-year-olds in 1978. Continue reading →

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Fifteen years Miley Cyrus stars in a popular Disney television series, sings fills concert halls and this week announced a billion dollars of publication of his “memoirs”.

It is an idol for many young girls of America, but experts warn Cyrus, star of “Hannah Montana” could be headed for a daughter of poor ventilation in the direction of fallen pop singer Britney Spears and the child-star-substance abuser was Lindsay Lohan.

Disney Book Group made waves with the revelation that Cyrus “memoirs will be published in spring 2009, People magazine setting windfall for the increase in teenage sensation the first book about one billion dollars.

The book is to tell the story of how the teenager shot to fame and still managed to keep his feet on the ground with the support of his family, which Cyrus said she hopes to “encourage young people to around the world to live their dreams. ”

At the root of Miley-mania is Disney Channel “Hannah Montana”, the story of an American teenager, Miley Stewart, who leads a normal life and day is a pop star by night. He became one of Disney’s most successful marketing campaigns ever.

Millions of viewers age six to 14 watch the show each week, in which the screen father of Miley Stewart and her alter ego Hannah Montana is his real life father, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus previously best known for singing “Achy Breaky Heart.”

“This really plays in the” anyone can be a star ‘(idea). Hannah Montana gives the illusion of a reality show. She is a daughter all day, and saw this fantastic life. C’ is really a way of marketing to this fantasy, “said Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California.

Continue reading →