NEW YORK: A former top New York art dealer pleaded guilty yesterday to a scheme that defrauded clients including former tennis champion John McEnroe and other high-end collectors.

Laurence Salander faces between six and 18 years in prison and he and his gallery must pay back US$120 million (RM400m) in restitution after he pleaded guilty to 29 counts of grand larceny, District Attorney Cyrus Vance said.

WASHINGTON: More US children are becoming extremely obese at a younger age, putting them at risk of dying decades younger than normal-weight children and of suffering old-age illnesses in their 20s, a study warned yesterday.

Extreme childhood obesity, which was defined only last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), affects 7.3 per cent of boys and 5.5 per cent of girls, the study by leading US health care provider Kaiser Permanente showed.

The Black Eyed Peas, John Legend, Shakira and Alicia Keyes will share the stage with local and Af

MEXICO CITY: Four used car salesmen were killed execution style and the dealership set on fire in northeastern Mexico, officials said yesterday as four suspects in the murder of 15 party-goers were arrested.

"A group of gunmen overcame four employees of a used car dealership in Mazatlan; they shut them inside an office and riddled them with bullets," a spokesperson for the northeastern Sinaloa state attorney general's office told media.

"Later, (the gunmen) sprinkled the facility with gasoline and set it on fire. Ten or 12 cars were burned."

WASHINGTON: YouTube said yesterday that 24 hours worth of video are being uploaded to the video-sharing site every minute.

"What's next? 30 hours? 36 hours?" YouTube director of product management Hunter Walk said in a blog post.

"A day's worth of content uploaded to  YouTube every minute is a big achievement for our community and speaks to the role video plays in connecting and changing the world one upload at a time," Walker said.

WASHINGTON: A developing foetus exposed to methamphetamine can c ause far more damaging brain,
cognitive and behavioural problems than prenatal exposure to alcohol, a study said yesterday.

University of California Los Angeles professor Elizabeth Sowell and her colleagues used structural magnetic resonance imaging (sMRI) to evaluate the specific effects of prenatal meth-exposure by comparing the brain scans of 61 children.

LONDON: European investors gave a positive response to a European Union contingency plan to save Greece from default, sending share prices sprinting higher yesterday.

In London the FTSE 100 index added 0.48 per cent to close at 5,620.43 points while in Paris, the CAC 40 rose 1.23 per cent to 3,938.95. The Frankfurt Dax gained 1.14 per cent to 5,970.99 points.

CHICAGO: Mumbai bombing suspect David Coleman Headley is set to change his plea to guilty in a US court on charges of helping to plan the deadly 2008 attacks, court records showed yesterday.

Headley, 49, is accused of being a scout for two different Pakistan-based terrorist groups who used a friend's immigration company as a cover for surveillance activities in India and Denmark.

Headley, who has been cooperating with prosecutors since his October arrest, was to appear in a Chicago federal court tomorrow for a change of plea hearing, court documents showed.

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Haiti unveiled the first draft yesterday of a grand reconstruction plan, saying US$11.5 billion (RM38 billion) would be needed to help the country rebuild after January's devastating earthquake.

Prepared by the government with the help of the international community, the Preliminary Damage and Needs Assessment (PDNA) will be the framework for discussions at a major donors conference in New York on March
31.

BANGKOK: Tens of thousands of red-clad Thai protesters pressed today with their rally calling for snap elections, despite the prime minister's firm rejection of their demands that he step down.

The "Red Shirts", loyal to deposed premier Thaksin Shinawatra, showed no sign of giving up their protests
in the streets of Bangkok, where security was tightened after four grenades hit an army base in the capital yesterday.

BEIJING: China's lawmakers may have scant political powers, but they are not lacking in ideas.

They offered a pile of drafts — some serious, others far-fetched — at this year's session of parliament.

The winner for most original proposal to the National People's Congress, which wrapped up its 10-day meeting on Sunday, came from the elegant Zhang Xiaomei, the editor-in-chief of China Beauty magazine.

An estimated 100,000 followers of the United front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) had gathered early Sunday on Rajdamnoen Avenue in the old part of Bangkok for a demonstration aimed at toppling the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

Protestors were still streaming in to the capital Sunday, some of them on an armada of 200 small boats coming down the Chao Phraya River from Ayutthaya.

COPENHAGEN: Nordic foreign ministers yesterday urged the Myanmar junta to release prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and begin dialogue towards national reconciliation.

In a joint statement, the Danish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish foreign ministers called for Suu Kyi to be allowed to participate in planned elections.

Under laws enacted on Monday, which have  sparked international anger, Suu Kyi faces exclusion from her own National League for Democracy and is prevented from standing in the elections, expected in October or November.

NEW DELHI: Actress Preity Zinta is appointed UNAIDS Goodwill Ambassador and plans to combine Cricket and Bollywood to raise awareness about the deadly disease, according to Press Trust of India (PTI) on
Thursday.

The 35-year-old actress who is the co-owner of Indian Premier League (IPL) team Kings XI Punjab, will donate 25 per cent of the profits made by her team to charities selected by the UN.

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Armed police broke up a protest near one of Haiti's many camps for the homeless yesterday, in a dramatic example of the "dire" situation US President Barack Obama said persists in the  quake-torn nation.

A crowd of around 50 demonstrators was pushed back by baton-wielding Haitian police called to disperse the
protest, which blocked an important intersection in Port-au-Prince for around half an hour.

NEW YORK: Madonna (pic) and her 13-year-old budding fashionista daughter Lourdes are to launch a new line in teen clothing called "Material Girl" in the US this August.

The mother-daughter collection, which will be exclusively available at Macy's stores, will focus on affordable back-toschool clothes but will include footwear, handbags and jewelry and aims to add a fragrance next year.

JAKARTA: Indonesian police today gunned down a man suspected to be a member of a terrorist group and arrested four others in two separate locations in Pemulang, Tengerang, Banten.

The group, believed to have links with a terrorist network in Aceh Besar, was sought after by police for the past few days.

Indonesian Police Headquarters Public Relations Division chief Edward Aritonang told reporters this evening that the man was shot at his house in Jalan Siliwangi, Tengerang, for defying police orders and firing at police
during the raid.

WASHINGTON: NASA yesterday launched the latest in its family of high-tech meteorological satellites, adding to a constellation of spacecraft that watch storm development and weather conditions on Earth.

Th e Geostationary  Operational Environmental Satellite-P (GOES-P) lifted off from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 6.57pm local time on board a Delta IV rocket which will carry the weather-watching satellite to its orbit about 35,406km above the Earth's surface.

BAGHDAD: Feyruz Hatam's face is itself an indication of the change in Iraqi society's view of women that has become apparent in the run up to the country's election on Sunday: it is not covered.

"The mentality of Iraqi voters has changed. I'm happy because my photo conveys the message that times have changed," says Hatam, whose brown trouser suit makes her stand out from fellow Iraqi National Alliance
candidates.