Russia kicked off its own Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), a competitor to the U.S. GPS and Europe's Galileo, in October 1982, when the first satellite of the system was launched.

So far, 19 GLONASS satellites have been put into orbit, the Interfax news agency said, citing anonymous source with the Central Research Institute of Machine-Building.

However, only 12 satellites are serving as the mission requires. One is waiting to be put into use, three were shut down for technical maintenance and the other three has been withdrawn from service.

The GLONASS service now covers 66 percent of Russia's territory and requires 18 satellites in orbit to implement full navigational functions, and 24 satellites for a global navigation service.

"We shall maintain such group by 2011 with the launch of the new-generation spacecraft GLONASS-K. The GLONASS system is in active development and is being renewed according to a set timetable," Perminov said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has urged to take advantage ofthe satellite navigation system for the country's economic development, and First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov has claimed that the Russian Federal Space Agency "will fulfill its state-financed obligations" and complete the project.

Similar to Vioxx and Celebrex, Bextra is a Cox-2 inhibitor used to relieve symptoms of osteoarthritis and adult rheumatoid arthritis. Bextra was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on November, 16, 2001, but was voluntarily removed from the market by Pfizer in 2005 in response to concerns of increased risk of cardiovascular events (including heart attack and stroke).

Fohne claims she had been taking Bextra for more than six months prior to her heart attack. The lawsuit alleges that the drug sold to Fohne was defective and potentially harmful. As a result, the lawsuit further alleges, Fohne was subjected to increased risk of heart attack and other cardiovascular events that effectively outweighed the potential benefit of the drug. In addition, she claims Pfizer did not adequately test its product, sending it to market without proper warnings and ignoring existing data suggesting the drug possessed serious, life-threatening side effects.

Fohne is seeking restitution in excess of $250,000.

Powell Goldstein LLP lawyer L. Lin Wood released a statement Monday saying he will represent Howard K. Stern, an attorney who claims to be the father of Anna Nicole Smith's newborn girl.

Wood, a partner with Atlanta-based Powell Goldstein LLP, was the lead civil attorney for Richard Jewell related to reporting about Jewell in connection with the 1996 bombing of Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta; the attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey and their son in matters relating to the 1996 murder of JonBenét Ramsey in Boulder, Colo.; the attorney for former U. S. Congressman Gary Condit over the May 2001 abduction and murder of Chandra Levy in Washington; and co-counsel in the civil action in Colorado against NBA star Kobe Bryant.

Stern claims to be the father of Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern. Celebrity photographer Larry Birkhead, Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt, actor and a former Smith bodyguard Alexander Denk and former Smith boyfriend Mark Hatten all also claim to be the girl's father.

"What we are talking about is a transformation in the way the risks and rewards in a large enterprise are shared -- an arrangement in which the interests of all constituencies are more fully aligned than in today's typical structure," the company said in a statement.

"We acknowledge that such an approach cannot be 'forced' on any of the parties, but rather can only be achieved with all parties feeling as if they are the recipients of a fair deal," the statement said.

Tracinda's offer to purchase Chrysler was announced Thursday. The bid is about one-fifth of what Kerkorian offered for Chrysler in 1995. Last year, Chrysler lost 1.5 billion.

In a letter to the board of Chrysler parent company Daimler Chrysler AG, Tracinda officials also offered to post a 100-million-dollar deposit to ensure exclusive negotiating rights on the sale.

According to The Detroit News, other bidders for the company include Blackstone Group and Cerberus Capital Management and Magna International Inc.

Kerkorian was named by the Los Angeles Business Journal last year as the richest man in Los Angeles, with an estimated worth of 9.3 billion dollars.

Born to Armenian immigrants in Fresno in 1917, Kerkorian, who never attended college, made billions of dollars in investments in Las Vegas casinos, airlines, and MGM studios -- which he later sold.

He was Chrysler Corp.'s largest shareholder in the 1990s. Last year, Kerkorian sold his holdings in General Motors after a failed proposal to merge the company with Renault and Nissan Motor Co.

A new hunger strike is underway at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with more than a dozen detainees subjecting themselves to daily force-feeding to protest their treatment, The Boston Globe reported Monday.

According to the online edition of the newspaper, lawyers for the hunger-strikers were quoted as saying that their clients' actions are driven by harsh conditions in a new maximum-security complex at Guantanamo to which about 160 prisoners have been moved since December 2006.

The 13 detainees now on hunger strike is the highest number to endure the force-feeding regime on an extended basis since early 2006, when the U.S. military broke a long-running strike with a new policy of strapping prisoners into "restraint chairs" while they are fed by plastic tubes inserted through their nostrils.

Yet their persistence underscores how the struggle between detainees and guards at Guantanamo has continued even as the military has tightened its control.

"We don't have any rights here, even after your Supreme Court said we had rights," one hunger-striker, Majid al-Joudi, told a military physician, according to medical records released recently under a federal court order.

"If the policy does not change, you will see a big increase in fasting," he said.

Guantanamo spokesman Robert Durand played down the significance of the current hunger strike, describing the prisoners' complaints as "propaganda."

The United States opened the detention facility at its naval base in Guantanamo in January 2002 to hold terror suspects and Taliban members mainly captured during the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

More than 390 detainees have been transferred abroad from Guantanamo, and currently about 385 prisoners are still being held there.

Some of the key reasons that E-Commerce raises tax issues are as follows:

1. Location. Existing tax systems tend to determine tax consequences based on where the taxpayer is physically located. Hence, existing laws relating to Direct and Indirect taxes have developed definitions of what constitutes the location of suppliers and consumers of goods and services. There are small differences between the definitions for the two types of taxes. Generally the location is determined by reference to whether there exists a "permanent" or "fixed" place of business or, where there is no business, the usual residence. The presence of a network server might constitute a place of business, but probably only where it is part of a range of human and technical resources used to deliver a complete business transaction i.e. it is used to advertise, take orders, process payments and make deliveries.

2. Types of Products. E-commerce allows for some types of products, such as newspapers and music CDs, to be delivered in digitized form, rather than in tangible form. The digitized products raise issues at the state level as to whether sales tax applies and in which state income is generated for state income tax purposes. It also raise federal issues regarding the type of revenue generated and how it is to be reported. See Overview to Federal Domestic Tax Considerations for an Internet Company, by Professor Annette Nellen, San Jose State University.

3. Latest Marketing Techniques. The Internet has introduced new ways of selling and buying goods and services. For instance, anyone no matter where they located can offer their unwanted items to a worldwide group of potential buyers via auction sites, such as E-Bay. Also, the Internet can be used to link business buyers and sellers through exchange web sites where sellers post what they have to sell and buyers post what they need to buy. Almost, all of these sites can operate without human intervention . Additionally, the Internet has increased the use of bartering, with respect to exchange of web banners that serve as advertisements. These new marketing techniques raise various tax issues at all levels. At the federal domestic level, issues include whether an exchange intermediary or broker should be accounting for inventory, and what amount of information reporting should be required for low-value bartering transactions? See Overview to Federal Domestic Tax Considerations for an Internet Company, by Professor Annette Nellen, San José State University.

4. Types of Transactions. Because, the Internet allows paperless transactions and use of electronic cash, thus it raises administrative concerns for the Internal Revenue Service as to whether transactions were properly reported, whether an audit trail exists, and whether new reporting rules are needed. The U.S. Treasury is aware of the looming tax compliance problems. In its 1996 report, the U.S. Treasury expressed its fears of this as follows:

"The major compliance issue posed by electronic commerce is the extent to which electronic money is analogous to cash and thus creates the potential for anonymous and untraceable transactions."

These anonymous transactions, and the use of anonymous money, create a huge problem for tax compliance. The U.S. Treasury rightly sees this as one of the most important issues in the taxation of e-commerce. Another significant category of issues involves identifying parties to communications and transactions utilizing thesenew technologies and verifying records when transactions are conducted electronically. In a speech entitled, "Tax Administration in a Global Era," Treasury Secretary Summers stated:

"The Internet provides new ways for tax administrations, such as the IRS, to improve the ease and transparency of tax collection. But new technology also raises certain problems. In a world where cyber-transactions are growing at a rapid pace, tax administrations face the challenge of adapting existing tax systems to an economy that increasingly ignores physical borders. In such a world, it will be easier for companies to avoid tax collectors by operating worldwide through web-sites based in jurisdictions that are unwilling to share taxpayer information."

He will also make calls to "resolve without amnesty and without animosity the status of the millions of illegal immigrants that are here right now," according to White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

On the immigration issue Bush is facing a new congressional leadership that is friendlier to his views but is also facing the same dynamics that scuttled his last attempt: a cooperative Senate but bipartisan opposition in the House.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, has told the White House she cannot pass a bill with Democratic votes alone, nor will she seek to enforce party discipline on the issue.

Bush will have to produce at least 70 Republican votes before Pelosi considers a vote on comprehensive immigration legislation, a task that might be difficult for a president with low approval ratings.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Party's conservatives, particularly freshmen who seized their seats from Republicans, had to weather a barrage of attacks on the issue before their victories in November last year, and are not eager to relive the experience.

A recently leaked White House presentation devised after weeks of closed meetings with Republican senators suggests some hardening of Bush's positions.

The new proposals will suggest that illegal alien workers apply for three-year work visas, renewable indefinitely at a cost of 3,500 U.S. dollars each time.

In order to obtain a green card that would make them legal permanent residents, they would have to return to their home countries, apply for re-entry at a U.S. embassy or consulate, and pay a fine of 10,000 dollars.

More green cards would be made available to skilled workers by limiting visas for parents, children and siblings of U.S. citizens.

Temporary workers would not be able to bring their families into the country.

Key Democrats have said the plan would unacceptably split families while creating a permanent underclass of temporary workers with no prospects of fully participating in U.S. society.