Martina Hingis announced her retirement today and faced the issue of having tested positive for cocaine.

“I find this accusation so horrendous, so monstrous that I’ve decided to confront it head on by talking to the press,” she said. “I am frustrated and angry. I believe that I am absolutely 100 percent innocent.”

Hingis stated that the positive test could lead to a doping suspension of up to two years was the motivating factor in her deciding to retire because she didn’t want to spend years fighting the case.

Though Hingis underwent a privately arranged hair test, which came back negative for cocaine, her official backup “B” sample test also tested positive for the drug.

“I would think that it would be impossible for anyone to maintain the coordination required to play top class tennis while under the influence of drugs. And I know one other thing — I would personally be terrified of taking drugs.”

WTA Tour chief executive Larry Scott said the tour had not received any official information about a positive test and “as a result we are not in a position to comment on the matter.”

[Source: Yahoo News]

In case you didn’t know, Second Life is the most popular online game, in fact a copy of day-to-day activities. In Second Life, the avatars (residents) can build houses, furniture, sell cars, clothes, go to disco, eat in restaurants etc.

The lawsuit I am talking about was started by six Second Life merchants. They sued the British Thomas Simon for stealing their Second Life creations. They were selling exotic clothes that were illegally copied. So, the lawsuit was brought to a federal district court in Brooklyn, New York. The court said that Simon violated the Second Life terms of service and “the amount in controversy exceeds the sum or value of $75,000.”

It is so hilarious because as Simon says “it’s only a game”. However, the lawsuit is real not virtual and the defendant should cover the damages.

Today is the fifth since the fire has started in California. A number of 500,000 persons were evacuated and 1,300 homes have been destroyed. San Diego County has suffered losses in excess of $1 billion. Three of the largest fires still burned out of control there. However the firefighters have announced the wildfires are less dangerous now, because of the weaker wind and cooler temperatures.

President Bush declared California’s wildfires a “major disaster” and asked for federal help. Also, FBI gathered evidences to discover the sources of fire. “Those are crime scenes,” said Jim Amormino, spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

I’ve noticed media cover very well the event. There are many blogs, news sites, photographers that keep updating the information for California wildfires. Even Google, which has its central headquarters in San Francisco, CA, has created a map of the California fires.

Emergency numbers here:

Find more here.

We’re not yet in the phase where a shuttle launch is a common weekly or monthly thing, but from time to time we get to see how the Discovery shuttle comes back on the planet or how it takes off to go back in space.

Tomorrow at 11:38 Eastern time, if the weather is good at the Kennedy Space Center the Discovery is scheduled to take off on the STS-120 mission to the International Space Station but predictions are not great, going from 60% favorable to 60% unfavorable. Other than the weather, no problems are keeping the shuttle on grounds and officials said that they want it back in space as soon as possible, but taking the safest decisions.

The mission is all wrapped around the delivery of the Harmony module, which is an Italian made Aluminum tube, that will connect the European lab Columbus and Japan’s Kibo lab on the International Space Station. This is a very big step before we have the final shape of the space station, and is Commander Pam Melroy, 46, the second woman in command of the Discovery that should have the job done.

If you’ve booked tickets to see the launch live, make sure you have enough cash, a rain coat and an open ticket back home.

Did you know that the Bush Cabinet has some members that like to blog? It all started in August when the Health and Human Services Secretary, Mike Leavitt, said that because of the success of the pandemic flu blog, he considered writing on his own blog about day by day issues, late at night when he gets back home or to the hotel, in airplanes and even airports if there’s a little time. Leavitt is using his BlackBerry to blog about children’s health care program and such.

Another blogger that it worth mentioning here is Michael Chertoff, started one month later, in September and he is trying to “open a dialogue with the American people about our nation’s security.” Different from Leavitt, he comes up with the blog title, someone else writes it and in the end he’s doing the “editing”.

Blogging, with the country’s officials behind the wheel is a great thing for people because they fell like they could discuss their problems with the state. It’s called interaction and it feels great to know someone is answering your comments or addresses your questions.

The State Department also has a blog, which is updated, but Condoleezza Rice is not a writer there.

I would like to give some “virtual” golden medals to the two officials because what they do is a great start and I think more will consider their action in the future. Blogging is a great tool for a better image and I think politicians will understand it sooner or later.

Janet Dudley-Eshbach, Salisbury University’s President removed inappropriate pictures from her FaceBook profile that had her comments saying that she had to “beat off Mexicans because they were constantly flirting with my daughter” just hours after she was questioned by reporters on Monday.

The pictures were taken during a family vacation in Mexico and Janet Dudley apologized and said “I never thought there was any problems with them nor did I know they were in the public domain. I do apologize.”

William Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland addressed this situation and had a discussion with Mrs. Janet Dudley-Eshbach which is aware of what happened. No measures will be taken against her, as she’s been President of the University since 2000.

Though the situation won’t escalate I am sure the students don’t have a very good idea of what happened. Even if you’re a Mexican or not I think you’d be troubled to hear something like that from a person that should be similar to morality.

Source

Today, October 15th, is Blog Action Day and BalkansMedia is ready to support it. If you are not a blogger or you don’t know what Blog Action Day is, it’s all about the environment and how bloggers can give ideas to protect it. It’s the bloggers that try to make everyone think about the environment for ONE day, so that we become aware of our future because unless we do something no one will save the glaciers, the ozone levels, or our lungs.

For some time, now I’ve been thinking about ways to make our lives greener and I’ve come up with three that would help.

GREENER ENERGY. There are already companies that designed hybrid street or home illumination using the solar energy, wind-mills or any other methods that will not do harm to the environment. We should also think of consuming less energy, by using CFD bulbs, turning the light on only when needed, and so on. This way the race for energy wouldn’t be so hasted.

TRANSPORTATION AND FUELS. In the world of big corporations no one will stop extracting oil, even if they know that it’s one of the biggest pollution sources in the world, because oil is turned into fuel, be it for cars, jets or ships. Cars and airplanes will make the air harder to breathe and ships will make the seas and oceans a dirtier place.

A solution for that would be hybrid engines that alternate electric power and fuel power. I remember when I visited the National Park of Plitvice, in Croatia, that the transportation was 100% on electric batteries and those buses were pretty big, like 60 people. I am also talking about public transportation as a substitute for your personal car, because one bus with 60 people would pollute less than 30 cars, and cities would be less crowded.

ENFORCE THE LAWS. This is highly needed because I’ve read about it too many times in the newspapers. Old plants without any environment measures taken that unloads the bad stuff into waters killing the fish or into the ground compromising any future agriculture. The laws should be very strict to make them fear their actions.

I know the Governments won’t do much about the environment problem right now, because the interests are just bigger than morals, but I had to say it. Balkans Media supports the Blog Action Day. We want to be a small piece in a puzzle that tries to save the world. You should do it, too. Tell all your people that October 15th is Blog Action Day and write your own opinion about it on your own blog or comment this article, below.

People on the stock market have been expecting this for more than a year to see the acquisition of BEA Systems (NASDAQ:BEA), which Cramer founder of TheStreet.com already pinpointed on Monday. He said it loud and clear “Buy BEA Systems before it gets a bid” and it looks like today was the day.

Oracle (NASDAQ:ORCL) had made an (uninvited) offer to buy BEA Systems that went up to $6.7B, cash, which translates in about $17 a share and was 25% higher than what the company was selling on the stock market, $14. They also mentioned that this is not going to be a hostile bid though it happened before with companies like PeoplSoft, for example. Carl Icahn, the activist shareholder with 13.2% of the company declared that he will try to push management to a sale, so I guess he could use the money.

However, Oracle is not the only company interested in taking over BEA Systems. The Germans at SAP (NYSE: SAP) may also be interested and rumors say their offer - seems like some private offers have been made - could go up to $21 a share because they need to fill some gaps in their products line.

The expected happened and BEA Systems denied the $6.7B offer from Oracle, by saying that the 25% premium could be set higher because the company is “worth substantially more”. It looks like they’re trying to get the most out of the bidders and decided to start a bidding war. With all these BEA Systems’ price on the stock market rose by 38.18% up to $18.82 so that puts Oracle behind.

The stock market is a very smart system. It dictates the right price set by those that bring along with their cash, the trust in a company. BEA acted wisely by rejecting the first offer, even if analysts consider it would do good in Oracle’s yard, because I think they can increase to more than $21 if they play ball the right way. BEA Systems is involved in transaction processing, billing, customer service, provisioning an securities trading so it’s obvious why people are so interested.

Let the bidding war begin!