Microsoft is under pressure from the threat of Apple’s fast selling iPad invasion. Microsoft’s Chief Executive, Steve Ballmer confirmed on Thursday that the company is urgently drafting plans with partners to create a product that will be able to compete in the world of tablet computers that utilizes a Windows 7 operating system.

The announcement was made at its meeting with financial analysts on Thursday and the CEO outlined the company’s future strategic plans to compete with Google and Apple in this market. He confessed that Apple is doing very interesting things and that the iPad has been more successful than he had hoped. Thus, in response the company should urgently bring a response in order to create a market and maintain their market share in the tablet computers industry.

He further stated that “No one is sleeping at the switch here,” Ballmer said. “We have got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates. We’re in the process of doing that as we speak. As focused as we are on this, our partners are also focused on this to deliver systems and chips to make this happen.”

An exact timeframe regarding when a Windows based tablet computer will be released, but the only indication was that it would be very soon and it wouldn’t be very far off in the near fugure.

Finally, a record that stood 114 years has finally been broken by a British-led rowing team on Saturday as they crossed the North Atlantic ocean.

The crew of four men, departed on June 17 from New York City, arrived and completed their journey at St Mary’s Harbour, on the Isles of Scilly after non stop rowing for more than 44 days continuously, reported the Ocean Rowing Society International.

The team named as the Artemis Ocean Racing team, was led by Leven Brown, who finished the trip 11 days ahead of the previous world record set by a pair of Norwegians more than a century ago in 1896. The entire journey was completed in 43 days, 21 hours, 26 minutes and 48 seconds to be exact.

There were dozens of onlookers and crowds who lined up on the harbour to witness the record breaking event.

The other members in the team are Don Lennox from Britain, Ray Carroll from Ireland and Livar Nysted from the Faroe Islands.

Brown said the funniest thing was walking again as he had spent more than six weeks not using his legs and felt a little unsteady as he arrived onto the docks.

It’s official, Chelsea Clinton, the former president Bill Clinton’s daughter wedded her longtime boyfriend Marcy Mezvinsky on Saturday in a what her parents describe a “beautiful ceremony at Astor Courts” in New York.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former President Bill Clinton said in a statement that they could not have wanted a more perfect day to celebrate the beginning of their new life together and confirmed that they were very happy to receive Marc into the Clinton family. “On behalf of the newlyweds, we want to give special thanks to the people of Rhinebeck for welcoming us and to everyone for their well-wishes on this special day.”

This wedding and confirmation by the Clintons have finally laid to rest speculations regarding when or whether or not the nuptials would ever occur.

The statement further stated that they watched with extreme pride and emotions that were overwhelming as their daughter and son in law, Marc wed in a beautiful ceremony at the Astor Courts where friends and close family gathered in joint celebration.

This marriage was somewhat controversial due to the interfaith element as the Clintons are Methodist and Mezvinsky is Jewish and the wedding was presided and led by Rabbi James Ponet and Rev. William Shillady in a joint session.

Drew Carey has lost 80 pounds since January. Carey, the well known and popular host of the sitcom “The Drew Carey Show” says that being the size that he was a burden and he just had to lose weight in order to be healthy.

Carey said “It sucks being fat, you know… I was diabetic with Type-2 diabetes”.

So how did Carey lose all that weight without taking medication? Well, he says that he implemented a strict diet that contained zero carbohydrates and going to the gym daily. Now he says he is no longer a diabetic and requires no medication.

“No carbs,” Carey says. “I have cheated a couple times, but basically no carbs, not even a cracker. No bread at all. No pizza, nothing. No corn, no beans, no starches of any kind. Egg whites in the morning or like, Greek yogurt, cut some fruit.”

He was allowed to snack on fruit and have steam vegetables and grilled chicken for dinner with water as the drink. Coffee, tea and soda were all not allowed and he wasn’t allowed to consume any liquids but for water. Carey says his secret is “lots of cardio” with sessions of cardio intensive training for periods of up to 45 minutes.

It’s official, unreleased and forgotten songs left behind on Michael Jackson’s computer hard drives will be converted into records and albums and later available to the public on sale this November.

This is great news for fans of the former world superstar sensation. Jackie Jackson, who is Michael’s older brother has been working in studios in preparation for the launch of the album which will include at least 10 songs that have never previously been heard of by the public.

Sony Music along with Jackson’s estate confirmed in March that his next release of unreleased music will be available this fall.

Rodney Jerkins, music producer who co-produced Jackson’s 2001 album titled “Invincible”, has been at work alongside with Sony in order to put the album together.

It was well known that Jackson rented out his recording studios based in Los Angeles for extended periods of times, sometimes up to a few weeks for “creative sessions”. It was also known that he would be there by himself or at other times with the company of other well known artists.

Producers informed reporters that they were extremely surprised to accidentally come across large caches of music stashed away in Michael Jackson’s hard drive in his Hollywood studio months after his death in 2009.

Is China officially the world’s second largest economy? A reference stating this by a senior official from Beijing has sparked speculation and excitement that the up and coming powerhouse may have already surpassed Japan and taken the position as the second biggest economic contributor in the world

The increase in growth and rapid expansion of the Chinese economy in terms of gross domestic product will most likely be larger than Japan’s this year.

This is riding on the assumption that international currency fluctuations remain at a minimum without any big disturbances.  Yi Gang, director of the State Administration of Foreign exchange stated this: “China is in fact already the second-biggest economy. With the expansion of the economic base, the growth rate should certainly gradually slow down,” Mr Yi, who is also deputy central bank governor, said in an interview on the Safe website.

However, his comments fell short of officially claiming the title that Japan has held on steadily for over the past 40 years. Also, there should be a distinction regarding whether or not he was talking about China’s GPD in terms of market prices o r simply referring to it in reference to purchasing power parity.

Users in China using Google experienced temporarily outage from using the search engine on Thursday, officials from the company stated, but the site was back up within a few hours later.

Google posted a notice on the main search page informed users that all services other than their popular email service, Gmail, were partially or fully blocked in mainland China. However, a few hours later a spokeswoman from Google confirmed and reported that all the issues have been resolved.

“Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it’s possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened … when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally,” the spokeswoman said.

The search engine giant Google and China had been at disagreement for months prior to this issue with the company stating its intention to leave the country due to over censorship requirements imposed by the Chinese government.

In March Google move all of its servers into Hong Kong and out of mainland China and said it would cease to abide by the censorship guidelines imposed by Chinese officials. Google then redirected all uses from google.cn to google.com hk, its Hong Kong site that offered uncensored search results.

Spain’s unemployment rates are at a record high at the moment. The rates for joblessness rose from 20.05 percent from the previous quarter to 20.09 in the second quarter. The statistics were gathered from Spain’s National Statistics Institute on Friday.

This is the highest level of recorded unemployment in 13 years, this is despite the fact that there should be a rise in seasonal jobs for the summer period.

This effectively means that there are 4.6 million Spanish people who do not have a job and are looking for work.

The nation has the highest unemployment figure out of all the nations in the EU and has been at the 20 percent level for the past few months.

Statistics and data released earlier by the European statistics agency, Eurostate stated that the Baltic countries of Estonia and Latvia had very similar jobless rates. The figures indicated that the unemployment rate for the whole of the 27 nations within the European Union  had an average rate of 9.6 percent.

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileads may be personal responsible for risking the lives of many innocent informants and military serviceman in Afghanistan.

A top U.S. military officer said at a press conference that Mr Assange can state whatever he may like in what he perceives to be doing for the greater good. However, the truth of the matter is he might already have the blood on his hands.

The U.S. army gave a scathing opinion in direct response to Wikileaks founder for releasing more than 90,000 previously classified military documents recording the war in Afghanistan.

The Secretary of Defense Robert Gates also heavily criticized the leak and said that it would jeopardize the security of the U.S and its allies by informing enemies of their internal techniques and procedures.

“The battlefield consequences of the release of these documents are potentially severe and dangerous for our troops, our allies and Afghan partners, and may well damage our relationships and reputation in that key part of the world,” Gates said. “Intelligence sources and methods, as well as military tactics, techniques and procedures will become known to our adversaries.”

Gates further stated that the United States has already been contacted by Pakistan, Afghanistan and other governments who were concerned about the leak. Furthermore, he stated that the lasting impact would be rebuilding the trust that the U.S. military can in fact keep their secrets a secret.

Assange has refused to name the informer who provided him with the classified information and is denying to disclose anything that would reveal the informant.

Authorities in France have confirmed that they have charged a woman with the serial murder of eight of her babies in a period spanning nearly two decades in the north of France.

Dominique Cottrez, stated that she hid the deaths and pregnancies from everyone, including her husband who confessed he had no idea what she had done. Cottrez is severely overweight thus was able to easily conceal the pregnancies, prosecutor Eric Vaillant told reporters.

Cottrez told police that the reason she killed her babies was that she didn’t want to see the doctor for contraceptives and didn’t want to have more children.

The husband has been charged, however he is still free to go but may be further investigated in the future Vaillant said. Investigators suspect the credibility regarding the father’s story with many of them having doubts.

The shocking revelations came when a couple were gardening in their backyard in the town of Villers-u-Tertre and discovered the remains of two babies, who later called police.

Vaillant said there are no other babies’ bodies left to be found.

Police contacted Cottrez and her husband who were the prior owners of the residence and Cottrez confessed that she was the mother of the two deceased babies. She then later informed the police about six more bodies that were concealed and buried in the garage.