The world's richest dinner party

Between us, we're worth $1 trillion: The world's richest dinner party

The heads of Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter - oh, and the U.S. President, too. Has there ever been a more powerful power lunch? And who got the bill? 

From left-to-right (clockwise): Eric Schmidt, Arthur D Levinson, John T Chambers, John Doerr, Larry Ellison, Reed Hastings, John L Hennessy, Carol Bartz, Dick Costolo, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, Steve Jobs, Steve Westly, Ann Doerr


Who would you invite to your fantasy dinner party?
It's difficult to imagine a wealthier set of guests than those invited to the home of Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr earlier this year, in the mega-wealthy enclave of Woodside, California.


 Together they represent companies worth nearly $1 trillion.By all accounts, Obama didn't have an easy ride - many of the diners are generous political donors and the President was criticised for slow progress on policy promises.


 The dinner lasted two hours, and is expected to be the first in a series that Obama holds with Silicon Valley's leaders.

So what was on the menu? Chef Yigit Pura would only reveal that Obama said, 'Banana cream pie was solid,' as he kissed his fingers.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the evening was Mark Zuckerberg's decision to ditch his hoodie for more formal attire - normally, the only suits he's acquainted with are of the legal variety...




ERIC SCHMIDT
TITLE-Chairman, Google 
WORTH- $7 billion 
Google market valuation $171.8 billion
In his ten-year tenure, Schmidt oversaw Google's transformation into the global internet giant that it is today. He stepped down as CEO last month and is now a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

ARTHUR D LEVINSON
Title Chairman, Genentech
Worth Earned $850,000 in 2010 
Genentech market valuation $46.8bn 
Founded in 1976, Genentech (now owned by Roche) pioneered using human genetic information to develop medicines, including cancer treatments. Levinson stepped down as CEO in 2009, and now sits on Apple's board of directors.

JOHN T CHAMBERS 
Title CEO, Cisco Systems 
Worth $1 billion 
Cisco market valuation $96 billion Chambers raises his glass extra-high to Obama, showing that there are no hard feelings on the part of this co-chair of John McCain's 2008 presidential bid. He earns his seat as chairman of Cisco, the dotcom boom's most valuable company.

JOHN DOERR
Title Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers 
Worth $2.2 billion 
The host for the evening, Doerr is a tech investor with a knack for backing a winning idea. Back in 1999, KPCB led a $25 million investment in upstart Google. KPCB has participated in over $2.3 billion of investments since May 2010.

LARRY ELLISON
Title CEO, Oracle 
Worth $39.5 billion 
Oracle market valuation $177.6 billion 
Currently the fifth wealthiest human being on the planet, Ellison co-founded Oracle in 1977. In true billionaire fashion, he splashed out over $100 million to ensure that his BMW Oracle sailing team won the America's Cup last year. 

REED HASTINGS 
Title Co-founder and CEO, Netflix
Worth Earned $5.5 million in 2010 
Netflix market valuation $12 billion
In 1997 Hastings co-founded Netflix, an online subscription service for movies and TV which now has over 20 million members across North America. He once taught maths in Swaziland during a two-year stint in the US Peace Corps. 

JOHN L HENNESSY
Title President, Stanford University 
Worth $31.4 million 
Stanford endowment $15.9 billion 
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford has a long association with the area's tech companies, many of whose founders - including those of Google, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and Yahoo! - passed through the university.

CAROL BARTZ 
Title CEO, Yahoo! 
Worth Earned $47.2 million in 2009 
Yahoo! market valuation $23.7 billion 
Bartz, who joined Yahoo! in 2009, holds the honour of having topped a 2010 list of executives paid too much for running underperforming companies. Although Yahoo! remains a global internet brand, it's still considered to be in decline.

DICK COSTOLO 
Title CEO, Twitter 
[/B]Worth[/B] $120 million 
Twitter market valuation $3.7 billion 
A computer science graduate and former improvisational comedian, Costolo sold FeedBurner - a provider of management tools for website owners - to Google in 2007 for a rumoured $100 million. Last year he took over as CEO of Twitter. 

MARK ZUCKERBERG 
Title CEO, Facebook 
Worth $13.5 billion 
Facebook market valuation $50 billion 
The Social Network's complex antihero, Zuckerberg is 'trying to make the world a more open place by helping people connect and share', according to his own Facebook profile. Luckily for him, he's becoming filthy rich in the process. 


STEVE WESTLY
Title Managing partner and founder, The Westly Group 
Worth $500 million 
A Democratic Party supporter, venture capitalist Westly served as a California co-chair for Obama's 2008 presidential election campaign. The Westly Group has participated in over $178 million of investments since April 2010.




BARACK OBAMA 
Title President, USA 
Worth $10.5 million 
USA $14.7 trillion (GDP) 
Obama is noted for his love of technology: he embraced social media in his election campaign, and was reportedly gifted an iPad 2 a month before they went on sale. His aide Valerie Jarrett also attended the dinner (seated to Zuckerberg's right). 

ANN DOERR 
Title Philanthropist 
The hostess, as the wife of John Doerr, is no stranger to technology herself, holding bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering. An environmental activist and trustee of the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund, she works alongside her husband in his philanthropic endeavours. 


STEVE JOBS 
Title Co-founder and CEO, Apple 
Worth $8.3 billion
Apple market valuation $323.3 billion 
Jobs has transformed the tech industry several times. After his pioneering early years at Apple, he left the firm to set up NeXT (which created the machine on which the Web was developed), before returning to spearhead the 'iRevolution'

Egyptian General Admits "Virginity Checks" Conducted on Protesters

 A senior Egyptian general admits that "virginity checks" were performed on women arrested at a demonstration this spring, the first such admission after previous denials by military authorities.


The allegations arose in an Amnesty International report, published weeks after the March 9 protest. It claimed female demonstrators were beaten, given electric shocks, strip-searched, threatened with prostitution charges and forced to submit to virginity checks.


At that time, Maj. Amr Imam said 17 women had been arrested but denied allegations of torture or "virginity tests."


But now a senior general who asked not to be identified said the virginity tests were conducted and defended the practice.


"The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine," the general said. "These were girls 




who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and (drugs)."


The general said the virginity checks were done so that the women wouldn't later claim they had been raped by Egyptian authorities.


"We didn't want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren't virgins in the first place," the general said. "None of them were (virgins)."


This demonstration occurred nearly a month after Egypt's longtime President Hosni Mubarak stepped down amid a wave of popular and mostly peaceful unrest aimed at his ouster and the institution of democratic reforms.


Afterward, Egypt's military -- which had largely stayed on the sidelines of the revolution -- officially took control of the nation's political apparatus as well, until an agreed-upon constitution and elections.

Water found In moon

An analysis of sediments brought back by the Apollo 17 mission has shown that the Moon's interior holds far more water than previously thought.

The analysis, reported in Science, has looked at pockets of volcanic material locked within tiny glass beads.

It found 100 times more water in the beads than has been measured before, and suggests that the Moon once held a Caribbean Sea-sized volume of water.

The find also casts doubt on aspects of theories of how the Moon first formed.

A series of studies in recent years has only served to increase the amount of water thought to be on the Moon.

The predominant theory holds that much of the water seen on the lunar surface arrived via impacts by icy comets or watery meteorites.

But this recent find is shedding light on how much water is contained in the Moon's interior, which in turn gives hints as to how - and from what - it formed.

In 2008, a team of researchers from the Carnegie Institution and Brown and Case Western Reserve universities analysed the water content found in samples of lunar magma returned by Apollo missions.

They wrote in a Nature paper that the samples contained about 10 times more water than they expected.

However, the magma they studied had formed in "fire fountain" volcanic events, much like those seen in locations on Earth such as Hawaii, which would have boiled off much of the water that they contained.

Now the same team has found a number of geological "time capsules" among the beads.

"What we've done now is find samples of magma that are present as 'inclusions' that are trapped inside solid crystals called olivine," explained Erik Hauri, a geochemist from the Carnegie Institution and lead author of the new research.

"Because this magma is trapped inside a crystal, during an eruption it can't lose its water, so these melt inclusions preserve the original water content of the magma," he told BBC News.

The team found that those lockets of lunar magma contained some 100 times as much water as the previous samples - meaning that the lunar interior once held as much water as the layer of the Earth lying just below the crust.

Not consistent'

As with the 2008 study, the find adds even more confusion to theories of how the Moon formed.

It is widely thought that a Mars-sized object slammed into the Earth just as it was forming, throwing out a disc of fragmented, molten material that eventually coalesced into the Moon.

But in that scenario, the extreme temperatures generated by the impact would have simply boiled off the water, and the moon should have started out relatively dry.

While there is a great deal of evidence to support the theory, both in terms of computer models of planetary formation and of the comparable amounts of various elements found both here and on the Moon, Dr Hauri said something just doesn't add up.

"These things are not consistent with the amount of water that we find," he said.

"I think in its very basic form, the [impact theory] idea is probably still correct, but there's something fundamental about the physics of the process that we don't understand."

Bipasha’s new love…

The sexy bombshell, Bipasha Basu has been journeying and shooting around the world for her upcoming film Players and Russia being one of the shoot locations.

Interestingly, Bipasha is thoroughly in love with the place! She shared her feelings and love with the fans via her tweets. Bipasha wrote: “Walking around and getting to know the place! Amazing weather!”

Likewise, Bips also tweeted about her last day of the shoot – “Last day in St.Petersburg! Russia is a wonderful n beautiful place! Schedule fr Players wraps today.”

Nevertheless, Bips learnt a new art in Russia! And that art is – sign language! Since she does not speak and understand Russian, she communicated with the Russian locals through sign language! She tweeted: “Ppl in Russia r sweet! My skills in sign language have improved after this trip! Russia will surely add great visual appeal to PLAYERS!”

Kim Kardashian Is Engaged!

Sorry, fellas. Kim Kardashian is officially off the market! After a relatively short (but long in Kardashian terms—hiya, Khlomar!) six months of dating, New Jersey Nets forward Kris Humphries popped the question to Kim, E! News confirms. As one would expect, it was a proposal—and ohdeargodareyouforreal—a ring befitting the reality princess. "Words can't describe how happy we are!" Kim told E! News exclusively. "Omggggggg!!!!!!!!" she wrote on her blog earlier today. "It's true! I couldn't be happier! Thank you guys for all of the sweet messages!!! I finally found my missing puzzle piece, I'm complete! The proposal took place one week »

PZ IPL career start

PZ joined her Kings XI Punjab boys on the field for a friendly match against the Deccan Chargers

Egyptian pyramids found by infra-red satellite images

Seventeen lost pyramids are among the buildings identified in a new satellite survey of Egypt.

More than 1,000 tombs and 3,000 ancient settlements were also revealed by looking at infra-red images which show up underground buildings.

Initial excavations have already confirmed some of the findings including of two suspected pyramids.

"To excavate a pyramid is the dream of every archaeologist," says Dr Sarah Parcak.

She has pioneered the work in space archaeology from a Nasa-sponsored laboratory in Birmingham, Alabama and says she was amazed at how much she and her team have found.

"We were very intensely doing this research for over a year. I could see the data as it was emerging, but for me the "A-Ha" moment was when I could step back and look at everything that we'd found and I couldn't believe we could locate so many sites all over Egypt."

The team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth's surface.

Infra-red imaging was used to highlight different materials under the surface.

Spears, Rihanna shock with onstage kiss at Billboard Awards

eight years after shocking the world by kissing Madonna onstage, Britney Spears repeated a tamer version of the act with Rihanna at the Billboard music awards.

The 29-year-old pop princess received a hug and a wet one on the cheek from the R&B star as they performed onstage at the awards in Las Vegas on Sunday.

The 23-year old Barbados born singer kissed Britney after they performed her hit single 'S&M'. Both women were clad in identical bondage style body suit as they took to the stage. While Britney slipped into the black style of suit, Rihanna opted for white.

Keeping within the bondage theme, Rihanna crawled on her knees while Britney commanded and dominated her with a long chain. Britney also donned a bondage-style mask complete with bunny ears as she wrapped her wrists up in chains.

Watching the show in the audience was teen pop star Justin Bieber, who scooped up six awards including the Best New Artist, Digital Artist of the Year, Fan Favourite of the Year, Top Social Artist, Top Streaming Artist, Top Pop Album and Top Pop Album last night at the glitz ceremony.

Dominating the event alongside Bieber was rapper Eminem, who also picked up six awards - Top Artist, Top Male Artist, Top Billboard 200 Albums, Top Rap Artist, Top Rap Song and Top Rap Album.

Meanwhile, 'Bootylicious' hitmaker Beyonce Knowles was named the Artist of the Millennium at the Billboard Awards here and she received the trophy from none other than her mother.

The 29-year-old who began her career as a teenager with the group 'Destiny's Child', went on to win 16 Grammy awards and sold millions of albums over the years. Before accepting the award from Tina Knowles, with whom she runs the fashion label 'House Of Dereon', the singer put on an energetic performance of her latest single 'Run The World'.

Dressed in a silver mesh creation, which showed off all her curves, Knowles had the crowd up and dancing with her vigorous routine.

The star had her family and friends, including husband Jay-Z, cheering her on as she performed the single from her fourth solo album, titled '4'. She is also set to film her role as Esther Hoffman in a remake of 'A Star Is Born' later this year, with Clint Eastwood directing