Toronto, Canada (AHN) – A Chinese student of a Toronto, Canada university was murdered in her dorm room while she was chatting with her boyfriend in Beijing, China.

The boyfriend, who was not identified by reports, saw on the webcam Qian Liu, 23, attacked by a male visitor believed to be her spurned lover. The attacker then switched off the laptop, which is now missing.

The boyfriend tried to alert Liu’s friends from the York University Village through social networking sites during the attack in the early morning of Friday. But 10 hours passed before one concerned person checked the student in her dorm. When the landlord discovered Liu lying on the floor dead, the police was notified.

Toronto police found Liu half-naked from the waist down. An autopsy and toxicology exam is being conducted to establish the cause of her death.

he laptop used by the victim to chat with her boyfriend in Beijing and her personal mobile phone were missing.

The police are now tracking down the suspected killer described by Liu’s dorm mates as in his 20s, 6 feet tall and weighing 200 pounds.

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Ventura, CA, United States (AHN) – Thousands of sardines and anchovies died in Ventura Harbor on Monday apparently due to depleted oxygen in the waters after the fish over-concentrated there.

The Harbor Patrol used boats and a dozen volunteers to scoop up about six tons of dead fish. More than 20 50-gallon barrels were filled with dead fish in the daylong cleanup. The dead fish were then dumped offshore.

The die-off was discovered in the harbor’s southwest corner on Monday morning. Seagulls, sea lions and porpoises were also seen feasting on live fish.

Harbor officials don’t know what drove the fish to the harbor as there was no red tide that usually causes such die-off.

Last month, millions of sardines also died off in similar fashion in Redondo Beach’s King Harbor. The massive cleanup netted 175 tons of dead fish.

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Las Vegas, NV, United States (AHN Entertainment) – On Sunday, April 17, Rehab at Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, Las Vegas opened for its eighth season. The anticipated opening opened with a “bang” as the “Hard Rock Ball Drop” dropped thousands of balls from a helicopter over the pool party for the chance for guests to win more than $100,000 in cash and prizes.

Prizes included a stay in The Real World Suite, VIP Skybox for Tiësto in Concert and a Spa Villa in HRH Beach Club. Computer from 3-6-Mafia was on hand to celebrate the festivities with more than 4,000 Rehab party-goers.

Later at Vanity nightclub, Stanford Routt, Isaiah Ekejiuba and Michael Huff of the Oakland Raiders partied with Jacksonville Jaguars’ Jerry Porter. The NFL players mingled with party-goers and DJ Five while enjoying bottle service in the VIP area.

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Umm Al-Fahm, Israel Arieh O’Sullivan – High up on the hillside, occupying the three top floors of a nondescript building, is the Umm Al-Fahm Art Gallery. Run by artist Said Abu Shakra, the gallery opened 15 years ago to bring culture to the town of mostly farmers and construction workers.

“It’s been a revolution here,” Abu Shakra says, adding it is the only art museum in any Arab town in Israel. “We have turned Umm Al-Fahm into the cultural center for all Israeli Arabs, and Palestinian artists, too.”

The gallery has drawn international acclaim and over 40,000 visitors last year, about half of them Israeli Jews. But Abu Shakra’s main goal is to boost art among Israel’s Arab minority, a difficult challenge when most people are mainly concerned with feeding and clothing their families.

A former police officer, Said Abu Shakra comes from a family of artists. He knows an art gallery in this working class town would have to transform the mentality of his fellow residents who shunned art.

“When we started this, people asked me ‘why do we need an art gallery here?’ They would have preferred an industrial zone with jobs than an art gallery. But I said we had to thrive not just physically, but also spiritually,” Abu Shakra says.

About 20 percent of Israeli citizens are Arabs. Umm Al-Fahm is the economic, social and religious center of the area known as the “triangle” of Arab towns around the Wadi Ara valley. Its past includes violent clashes with Israeli security forces.

Israelis and the international community have embraced the gallery and the concept of Palestinian art. His gallery has hosted a Yoko Ono show and annual symposiums, and has helped put Palestinian artists on the map. But that really isn’t the idea driving the museum.

“One of our biggest enemies is the boorishness — you don’t know about something so you become against it,” says Abu Shakra, who recalls the time a neighbor came to the opening with Yoko Ono, but was too embarrassed at the way he was dressed to enter.

“If they can’t look us in the eye, then we have to stoop even lower to be at their level,” Abu Shakra says. “We’ll get down on our knees, if we must, because we need to reach these people. Because without them, we don’t have any right to exist.”

Abu Shakra says the gallery has offered courses and art classes, even ballet lessons, that have succeeded in bringing in locals. “It’s hard work, you tell someone ‘Here, it’s honey, eat it.’ They didn’t believe its honey.”

Ahmad Canaan, one of a growing number of Israeli Arabs who has been able to make a living as an artist, appreciates the impact the Umm Al-Fahm gallery has played.

“Things are changing. Twenty years ago we didn’t have any galleries. We show our art sometimes in community centers, but in the last 15 years we have a lot of changes like the gallery in Umm al-Fahm,” says Canaan.

Palestinian art has been making inroads thanks also to the Jaffa Salon for Palestinian Art in Tel Aviv where Arab artists from the Galilee, West Bank and Gaza can sell their work.

Palestinian art tends to be melancholic and often rooted in symbolism, like the olive tree. Some are explosive while others have political subtext, not always overtly expressed.

“If you see this woman in the field, an Arab woman with an embroidered dress, it could also be political, yes. But if you see the paintings of Karim Abu Shakra, you see these purple rockets. It looks nice, but he has something to say about the war on Gaza,” Canaan says. “We know our situation here inside Israel and it’s not easy. But we have a lot to say in our way. So we use art to tell our stories and our history and our also difficulties.”

Yair Rothman, co-owner of Jaffa Salon, opened the gallery as a temporary endeavor last year but kept it open due to demand. He says it was helping change the way Israelis saw Palestinians.

“Most of the people are kind of shocked, because in their imagination Palestinian people, or Arab people, are throwing stones, throwing bottles and making trouble. They didn’t realize how sensitive these people can be and how their artwork can represent their families, olive trees and things they love,” Rothman says.

Rothman says the rising interest in Palestinian art was also due to its relatively low price, which made it a good investment. But he dismissed the idea that it was a passing fad.

“It is kind of a fashion now to have any Arab artist in your house or maybe in your collection but after all this fades away you still have the art and the art is good. I don’t see it as a fad,” Rothman says.

Back in Umm Al-Fahm, Abu Shakra’s shares his dream to build a huge museum to house Palestinian contemporary art, anchored in the photo collection and the town archives.

“We knew the cultural situation in Umm Al-Fahm and most of the Arab sector was close to zero. There’s been no investment, not by the state of Israel or by us. But I’m not blaming anyone. I’m here to build,” Abu Shakra says.

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New Orleans, LA, United States (AHN) – Police in New Orleans have arrested National Treasure actor Nick Cage.

According to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, the 47 year old actor was arrested for one count of domestic abuse and one count of disturbing the peace.

He was booked into the Orleans County Jail just after 6:30 on tuesday morning.

According to official records Cage is still in custody pending a bail hearing with a local judge.

According to TMZ, Cage was extremely intoxicated and was arguing loudly with his wife. Police were called by a cab driver who allegedly saw Cage push his wife. New Orleans police arrested the actor after a defiant and argumentative Cage yelled “”Why don’t you just arrest me?” So they did!

In March, Cage was involved in anoither drunken altercation at Stella restaurant that resulted in some property damage. Although not arrested or charged NOPD officers removed the actor from the premises and escorted him back to his hotel.

These alleged charges aren’t Cage’s only legal troubles. The IRS claims that Cage owes almost $650K in back taxes.

Cage is in New Orleans filing for his latest movie, ‘Medallion’ started filming on April 11.

AHN wlil post additional details as they become available.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – President Barack Obama is scheduled to undertake domestic travel in the coming week according to a White House communique.

Obama is planning to hold town hall meetings in “Northern Virginia, Palo Alto, California and Reno, Nevada to speak directly to the American people about his vision for reducing our debt and bringing down our deficit, based on the values of shared responsibility and shared prosperity,” the White House said.

On the return flight from Chicago on Friday, Jay Carney, presidential spokesman called Obama’s two urgent tasks as one to pursue Congress to immediately raise the ceiling on U.S. debt and the other to move with urgency towards deficit reduction.

On the first task, Carney said, “That shouldn’t be linked or held hostage to any other action because the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling — those consequences would be catastrophic to the American economy, to the global economy and to America’s creditworthiness internationally.”

About efforts towards deficit reduction, Carney said the president, “asked the Vice President to oversee and leaders of Congress to appoint members to participate in where they can come together and begin to negotiate areas where we can agree to bring about further deficit reduction in a balanced way that can achieve the kind of results that we think are what America needs economically and for our future.”

Citing both as “urgent … but … not linked,” Carney reiterated, “With regards to the debt ceiling, it cannot be linked or held hostage to something that wouldn’t pass — couldn’t reach consensus. It has to be done. All the leaders of Congress of both parties have said that, and we obviously share that sentiment.”

Carney hinted that the president was ready for compromise on his targets while negotiating with Republicans, saying, “He recognizes he’s not going to get 100 percent of what he wants or that it’s not going to be his way only, and Republicans need to recognize that, which is how we ended up with an agreement last week on the funding for the 2011 budget.”

Carney noted that the president Obama believed Congressman Paul Ryan of the budget committee “is absolutely sincere and that he believes that this is the right — that that’s the right path, the one he put forward is the right path for America.”

On the disagreement part, Carney said, “He (Obama) doesn’t think that it’s (Ryan’s budget proposal) balanced.”

Explaining the disparities, Carney said, “He doesn’t think that we need to — that the price of deficit reduction needs to be ending the guarantee, the health benefits that Medicare has provided our seniors, cutting energy — clean energy investment by 70 percent, cutting education by 25 percent, cutting infrastructure by 30 percent — and all so that we can not just reduce the deficit but so that we can extend tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans and give new tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.”

With the count-down to 2012 presidential election ticking and Obama already an official candidate, the incumbent needs to sell his policies to voters who are not diehard rock star Obama fans.

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Trollhattan, Sweden (AHN) – Beleaguered automaker Saab has requested changes to guarantees from Swedish authorities, the latest effort by the beleaguered automaker to resolve financial issues.

Saab has asked Sweden’s National Debt Office to approve an agreement reducing state credit guarantees for loans from the European Investment Bank, according to Swedish media. The company, which Dutch automaker Spyker Cars bought from General Motors last year, is seeking a foreign investor to help it with an infusion of cash.

Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg told SVT on Thursday that Saab is seeking to resolve its liquidity issues with difficult solutions. He added that the company had to show the government taxpayers would not in end bear the brunt of the problem.

Production at Saab’s facilty in Trollhattan remains suspended. Suppliers stopped delivering parts early thie month, forcing the company to halt production. A few days of resumption ended in another production stoppage despite assurances from the Victor Muller, chief executive of Spyker and chairman of Saab, that the situaiton was a “small glitch.”

Russian banker Vladimir Antonov, a former Spyker chairman who acquired the automaker’s luxury brand unit in February, is said to have asked Swedish authorities approval to buy Saab real eastate in Trollhattan.

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Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – As the one-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon / BP oil spill approaches, the Obama administration is pushing hard to highlight the changes they have made to offshore drilling in the wake of the disaster.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement (BOEMRE) Director Michael Bromwich paid a visit to the site of the first deepwater drilling facility approved by the White House since the accident. The Noble Energy facility, 70 miles southeast of Venice, Louisiana, will drill a 6,500 feet deep well in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The deepwater operations that are resuming in the Gulf of Mexico are meeting the stronger safety and environmental protection requirements we have set, including the requirement that companies show they are prepared to respond to subsea blowouts and spills,” Salazar said. “Director Bromwich and I believe that the United States can and should set the gold standard for safe offshore energy development.”

The Deepwater Horizon accident claimed 11 lives and spilled an estimated 4,900,000 barrels of crude oil across as much as 68,000 square miles of ocean and coastline.

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Wellington, New Zealand (AHN) – The tiny south Pacific island country of Niue has issued a stamp of the British royal wedding couple that can be torn in two eliciting reactions that the bride and groom will separate in the future.

But Niue premier Toke Talagi denied that the stamp’s design intended the separation of U.K.’s Prince William and Kate Middleton, who are set to marry in London on April 29.

The stamp showing the image of the two together has a perforation between them with the Prince’s side marked by his name and the price of 3.40 New Zealand dollar while Middleton’s side cost 2.40 New Zealand dollar.

Talagi told AFP that the stamp expresses his country’s happiness over the wedding and wondered why people interpret it differently.

Meanwhile, Ivor Masters, the postmaster of the New Zealand Post, which designed and printed the unusual stamp, said it is unlikely that the stamp will be separated for postage because it is a collector’s item.

Niue citizens, who number only 1,400 in the 100-square-mile coral island, are also New Zealand citizens with Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state.

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Murray, KY, United States (AHN Sports) – The University of Florida captured its second national title courtesy of the Jake Gipson and Matt Wercinski in the 2011 National Guard FLW College Fishing National Championship on Kentucky Lake Saturday.

The Gipson-Wercinski duo, one of two UF bass fishing team competing in the tournament, caught 15 fish weighing a total of 41 pounds and 8 ounces.

Gipson and Wercinski’s three-day catch outweighed the haul of runner-up Louisiana State University at Shreveport, 37-2.

Dennis Croyle and Travis Gates, the other team from, landed ninth in the championship.

It marked the second straight National Championship fishing title for Gipson and Wercinski.

The tandem of Gipson and Wercinski earned a total prize package valued at $100,000 for their first place effort. Of the package, $25,000 will go to the university, while $50,000 will go to the school’s bass club along with fully rigged Ranger 177TR.

With the triumph, Gipson and Wercinski also earned a spot in the Forrest L. Wood Cup Championship in August.

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