Only Days Away: Victoria's Secret Fashion Show 2011

Did you forget?

Well, here's a refresher: "Victoria's Secret Fantasy Bra Retrospective."

RELATED: At London's Daily Mail, "Victoria's Secret model Candice Swanepoel pares down the glitz for topless photoshoot."

Arsenal 1 - Fulham 1

Having expected three points from this game at home to Fulham, Arsenal were disappointed to get just one. Looking tired following their Champions' League match against Borrusia Dortmund in midweek, the Gunners played a lackluster game at the Emirates, lacking pace and ideas. For all of their possession during the first half, they lacked a cutting edge in the final third. Fulham, playing mostly on the counterattack, had as many decent scoring chances as the Gunners.

The second half started just like the first, with Arsenal dominating possession and Fulham looking for opportunities on the counter. A few minutes after a van Persie shot was cleared off the line by a Fulham defender, Fulham turned an innocuous-seeming bit of possession at the other end into an own goal by Arsenal's Thomas Vermaelen. Fulham would have been up 2-0 a couple  moments later but for the linesman's offside flag. With 20 minutes left, Arsenal were trailing a team that had never before beaten them at home.

Looking to light a fire under his team, Wenger brought on Gervinho and Abu Diaby (just back from a long injury layoff), replacing Aaron Ramsey and central defender Per Mertesacker. Diaby made an immediate impression, forcing a great save from Fulham goalie Mark Schwarzer on a header from a corner kick. Schwarzer could not, however, prevent the inevitable game-tying goal after the 80-minute mark. Thomas Vermaelen - making up for his earlier own-goal - authoritatively headed home an excellent cross by Theo Walcott.

From that point on, it was pretty much all Arsenal. Schwarzer saved a hard shot by Gervinho at the near post, and then a tamer effort by Walcott. But Arsenal could not create the game winner. If the Gunners had played the entire match as they did the last 15 minutes, they easily would have won this match. A disappointing result for the Gunners and their fans.

Van Persie did not score today, but his work rate and the intelligence of his movement without the ball were truly impressive. It's no wonder he generates so many scoring chances for others as well as himself; and of course his ability to finish is unparalleled in the Premiership. 38 goals in 42 games during 2011 says it all.

Hot Penélope Cruz Steps Out at 29th Torino Film Festival in Italy

I haven't blogged Ms. Penélope in a while.

At London's Daily Mail, "Bellissimo! Penelope Cruz shows off her stunning curves in a ladylike black dress and reveals new shorter hairdo."

South Carolina Man Arrested After Facebook Threat to Governor Nikki Haley

At Pamela's "OBAMA ENDORSED #OWS OCCUPY ACTIVIST THREATENS TO MURDER REPUBLICAN NIKKI HALEY."

Murder threats by #OWS-ers and the media does not report the story. Instead they will make up, out of whole cloth, Jared Loughner's motives or point to my colleagues and me when jihadists do what they have been commanded to do. Pure fiction. But pure fact repels the media elites and cultural rapists like the silver cross to Dracula.

Again and again the media aids and abets the criminal, subversive anti-American destroyers - so vested are they in the take down of this great nation. The daily reports of violence, sexual attacks, disease in the #OWS movement are rampant and still they promote this pox on humanity.

Exactly.

Which explains why this pox on humanity is endorsed by hate-blogging criminal stalker Walter James Caspser III.

Also a video at Right Scoop, "OWS loon arrested for death threat against Gov. Haley." And KLTV, "Man arrested for Facebook comment threatening Gov. Haley's life."

Islamists Expected to Win Big in Monday's Egypt Elections

At Los Angeles Times, "Political Islam at a crossroads in Egypt":

The call to prayer quiets in the minaret as Mohammad Abbas, a street protester turned candidate for parliament, steps out of a decrepit elevator and hurries to his office. He's still learning the art of politics but he can spin a sound bite better than most of his elders. Ask away:

Facebook activists?

"They sit in air-conditioned rooms but don't touch real Egyptians."

Young Islamists?

"Not yet strong enough to influence change."

The Muslim Brotherhood?

His eyes narrow, the banter hushes.

Abbas joined the Brotherhood, the Arab world's largest Islamic movement, when he was in college. But the group that brought the 27-year-old closer to God and honed his social conscience booted Abbas out in July when he made clear that his ambitions for a new Egypt were much different from those of his mentors.

The Brotherhood's moderate Freedom and Justice Party and its more conservative Islamic allies are likely to win big in parliamentary elections Monday; no other organizations are as disciplined or as connected to the masses. But the Brotherhood's unity, which buttressed it for decades against bans and repression by Hosni Mubarak's police state, is splintering as both young and established voices break away.

With about 6,000 candidates running for 498 seats, the elections are a crucial test for the Arab world's most populous nation. The outcome, along with a presidential election scheduled for next year, will reveal whether Egypt emerges as a democratic inspiration in a region clamoring for change or slips back into a military-dominated autocracy where only the faces and illicit bank accounts have changed.

Continue reading.

Added: At Legal Insurrection, "Egyptian Imam The NY Times called “moderate” holds “kill all the Jews” mass rally."

British Press Inquiry Turns the Tables on Tabloids

At New York Times, "Inquiry Into Press Tactics Turns the Tables on Tabloids."

LONDON — It is a story made to order for the sensation-hungry tabloid newspapers that have millions of avid readers in Britain: a roll call of A-list celebrities and crime victims pouring out — day by day, live on the Internet — the personal miseries they say they have endured in seeking to protect the everyday normality of their private lives.

But this time, for the tabloids, it is a story with a bitter twist. For what is happening in a courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice has amounted to a turning of the tables, through the medium of a government-appointed inquiry into the “culture, ethics and practices” of British newspapers, that has turned into a legal soap opera in which the villains have emerged as the tabloids themselves.

The high court judge leading the inquiry, Sir Brian Leveson, has called the sessions that began this week, relayed live on the inquiry’s Web site, a “right of reply” for victims of tabloid excesses. He has refused requests by the newspapers’ lawyers for the right to cross-examine the witnesses, and issued a formal warning to the mass-circulation papers not to strike back against those testifying with new articles that invade their privacy or damage their reputations.

One of those taking advantage of the platform was Sienna Miller, 29, a New York-born actress who lives much of the year in London and found herself a target of intense tabloid scrutiny when she was dating the actor Jude Law. One of the inquiry’s most arresting moments came on Thursday when she described her experiences with London’s “relentless” paparazzi, and described being spat at, verbally abused and subjected to dangerous car chases while trying to elude them.

“I felt like I was living in some sort of video game,” Ms. Miller said. “For a number of years, I was relentlessly pursued by 10 to 15 men, almost daily.”

“I would often find myself — I was 21 — at midnight running down a dark street, alone, with 10 big men chasing me, and the fact that they had cameras in their hands meant that was legal,” she added. “But if you take away the cameras, what have you got? You’ve got a pack of men chasing a woman, and obviously that’s very intimidating.”

Reports: 'Twilight: Breaking Dawn' Causing Seizures Among Moviegoers

At New York Times, "Did You Need Us to Tell You That ‘Twilight’ Could Cause Seizures?":

Setting foot into a screening of “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 1,” the latest installment in the hit film series about the romance between a mortal girl and a sparkly vampire boy, may induced an unexpected kind of overstimulation: a few viewers say they have experienced epileptic seizures that, The Guardian reports, could be a result of rapidly changing colors in the film’s climactic childbirth scene.

Brandon Gephart of Roseville, Calif., who attended a showing of “Breaking Dawn” with his girlfriend, Kelly Bauman, was taken to a hospital following the scene in which the newlywed Bella (played by Kristen Stewart) delivers the daughter of her vampire husband, Edward (Robert Pattinson), as red, white and black strobes flash on the screen. “He was convulsing, snorting, trying to breathe,” Ms. Bauman told the Sacramento affiliate of CBS News.

Dr. Michael G. Chez, a pediatric neurologist, said the incident might have been a result of a genetic predisposition to photosensitive epilepsy. “It’s like a light switch going off, because it hits your brain all at once,” he told CBS. “The trouble with theaters, it’s dark, the lights flashing in there is more like a strobe light.”