Discovery leaving space station for the last time

Actor William Shatner, who played Capt. Kirk on the original "Star Trek" TV series, paid tribute to space shuttle Discovery's voyages over the decades. He said the shuttle has boldly gone and done what no spacecraft has done before.

This is the final flight for Discovery, the most traveled spaceship ever. It will be retired after this mission and sent to a museum. It's due to land Wednesday.

Shatner introduced Monday's wake-up music for the six shuttle astronauts. The song was "Theme from Star Trek." It was the runner-up in a pick-the-wake-up-music contest sponsored by NASA. The No. 1 vote-getter will be beamed up Tuesday.

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Saudi Arabia: Demonstrations won't be tolerated

The warning was another attempt by Saudi Arabia to get ahead of the unrest that has swept the Arab world in recent months. Last week, the government announced an unprecedented economic package worth an estimated $36 billion that will give Saudis interest-free home loans, unemployment assistance and debt forgiveness.

The Interior Ministry statement said the kingdom bans all demonstrations because they contradict Islamic laws and society's values, adding that some people have tried to go around the law to "achieve illegitimate aims."

Security forces were authorized to act against anyone violating the ban, the statement said.

The demonstration followed Friday prayers in the eastern town of Hofuf when the Shiites demanded the release of detainees, including Tawfiq al-Amer, a Shiite cleric who was arrested last week after he called for a constitutional monarchy.

On Feb. 24, a group of influential intellectuals urged King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia's 86-year-old monarch, to adopt far-reaching political and social reforms. They said Arab rulers should learn from the uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, and listen to the voice of disenchanted young people. The group includes renowned Islamic scholars, a female academic, a poet and a former diplomat.

While oil-rich Saudi Arabia has been mostly spared the unrest in the Middle East, a robust protest movement has risen up in its tiny neighbor, Bahrain, which like others around the region is centered on calls for representative government and relief from poverty and unemployment.

A Facebook page calling for a "March 11 Revolution of Longing" in Saudi Arabia has begun attracting hundreds of viewers. A message posted on the page calls for "the ousting of the regime" and lists demands including the election of a ruler and members of the advisory assembly known as the Shura Council.

There are no government figures in Saudi Arabia that provide a national income breakdown, but analysts estimate there are more than 450,000 jobless. About two-thirds of the population is under 29 — and many of them chafe under the harsh religious rules that keep the sexes largely segregated.

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Giffords shows more progress in recovery

The Democratic congresswoman has been undergoing extensive therapy in the nearly two months since she was shot at a political event in Tucson, and has been receiving frequent visits from her astronaut husband Mark Kelly as he trains to be the commander of the next shuttle mission.

Giffords spokesman C.J. Karamargin said Thursday that the congresswoman also gets regular, detailed updates about the work being done at her offices in Tucson and in Washington. She gets the updates from her chief of staff, Pia Carusone, who is splitting her time between Houston, Washington and Tucson.

Among Giffords' other visitors has been Stephanie Aaron, her rabbi and good friend. Aaron described Giffords' progress to The Associated Press on Thursday after a visit to the hospital over the weekend.

She said Giffords sang Don McLean's "American Pie" with husband Mark Kelly and his two daughters, and that she knew the words better than the three of them. Musical therapy is an important part of her recovery as doctors use song in attempt to improve her brain function, along with physical, occupational and speech rehabilitation.

Aaron said Giffords also chanted a Hebrew healing prayer with her, although the congresswoman didn't know the words beforehand.

Aaron said she would tell Giffords the words, and the two would chant, with Giffords getting frustrated at times.

"I would just stop, hold her hand and say, 'Gabby, it's OK. Just breathe.' And we would sit together and just breathe," Aaron said. "And what very much uplifted me was when I was leaving ... she got tears in her eyes and she hugged me. I said, 'Gabby, what do you need to remember?' And she said, 'Breathe.'"

She said when she first arrived at Giffords' hospital room, she brought the congresswoman a giant card made by students at the middle school she attended. Inside it was a T-shirt attached to the card, and printed on the shirt was a photo of the students with Giffords and Kelly when they visited Washington, D.C.

"She reached out and pulled the shirt off and held it to her heart and had a big smile, and she touched the picture of Mark," Aaron said. "It was very moving."

Aaron said that she left the hospital for a while to bring Giffords some of her favorite foods — matzo ball soup and cheese blintzes. She said Giffords happily ate the meal.

"I'm very encouraged and hopeful for the future," Aaron said.

Kelly will be the commander of Endeavour when it launches in April, and his identical twin brother Scott is the current leader of the International Space Station crew.

President Barack Obama called the astronauts on Thursday to wish them his best. Before signing off, he told Scott Kelly that he spoke to his brother a couple days ago.

"It sounds like Gabby's making incredible progress," the president said, "and we're just thrilled for that."

Giffords was shot on Jan. 8 in a rampage outside a Tucson grocery store that injured 12 others and killed six people, including a federal judge and a 9-year-old girl who was born on Sept. 11, 2001.

Jared Loughner is charged in federal court in the assassination attempt against Giffords that killed six people. Authorities described him as a mentally unstable college dropout who became obsessed with carrying out violence against Giffords for reasons that are unclear.

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Associated Press Writers Ramit Masti-Plushnick and Marcia Dunn contributed to this report.

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The IPhone 3g Sold Out in Many Places - Learn the Secrets to Finding Your IPhone 3G Today

The iPhone 3g is a brilliant phone, but so difficult to track down. Everyone seems to want one straight away and there just simply isn't the supply to cope with the demand.

So why do you want an iPhone 3g? Here are some of the new specs to get your mouth drooling. If you're losing motivation trying to find the phone just think of.....

3G internet, this is the major one!

GPS built in

Third party app allowed

Whatever you do don't try to buy one off ebay at the moment because the prices will be incredibly high and overpriced. If you can't find anywhere else to buy, even the sold out iPhone 3G isn't worth the extra money and you are better off waiting. This happens with all major products releases where there is a chance of it being sold out, don't encourage the people who are trying to make money out of peoples disappointment.

So where can you buy them? Surprisingly if you go into some of the smaller shops in your neighbourhood you will be more likely to find them. These shops get loss of a stock to start with but far fewer people think of looking there.

Another option is the iPhone tracking websites which allow you to look for the nearest shop to you that has them in stock. As the iPhone 3G sold out so quickly these sites can be extremely useful, but make sure you use one which has its list updated regularly.

The New IPOD Touch - A Marble in Mobile Entertainment

This amazing new innovation from apple redefines the standard of "cool" and Apple has done it again. With the new IPOD Touch Apple has truly transported multimedia entertainment into a mobile platform and changed the way people experienced music, video and the Internet forever.

Multimedia systems, like Blackberries and other phone based mobile computing devices have been around for a few years, but these multimedia systems have always been focused more on voice and text capabilities than any other functionality. Until along came Apple with the IPOD Touch.

With the new iPod Touch you can play MP3 music, surf the Internet, watch a video and more with just a touch of a finger. And because the IPOD Touch comes with built-in wi-fi capability, you can access the internet from just about anywhere you go and browse your favorite places as if you were sitting in front of a computer. You can buy songs directly from the Itunes store and download them directly into the IPOD, so you won't miss a beat. Not to mention the sound quality on the Touch has been improved over the previous IPOD models.

The IPOD Touch is visually appealing and intuitive with a very sleek 3.5-inch wide touchscreen that allows you to operate its array of functionality by simply touching any of the colorful menu icons directly on the screen. The large icons make screen navigation almost too user friendly that anyone can find their way through the maze of handy features by simply touching one of them on the main screen and following the subsequent icons underneath.

Need more space for your movies, photos or MP3s? No problem. The IPOD touch comes in 8GB, 16GB and 32GB of storage space, which offers great flexibility to accommodate your needs for additional storage. This system is also compatible with the Mac and PC platforms.

These are some specs for the IPOD Touch directly from Apple:

• Includes the ability to use the following with a WiFi connection
o Mail
o Google Maps
o Weather
o Stocks
• Capacity for an 8GB model:
o 8gb flash drive
o Holds up to 1,750 songs in 128-Kbps ACC format
o Holds up to 10,000 iPod-viewable Photos
o Holds up to 10 hours of video
o Stores Data via USB flash drive
• Size and Weight:
o Height: 4.3 inches (110 mm)
o Width: 2.4 inches (61.8 mm)
o Depth: 0.31 inch (8 mm)
o Weight: Weight: 4.2 ounces (120 grams)