Diora Baird Sizzles In Maxim… and Star Trek!?

Diora Baird may be known for being a super busty hottie, but soon she’ll be known as the super busty green alien hottie from J. J. Abrams’ Star Trek. According to Maxim magazine, Diora will be playing one of the infamous green-skinned Orion slave girls in the upcoming Star Trek remake. Here’s the skinny:

Let’s hope you keep things together in the new Star Trek flick. Who are you playing?
I play the green girl. There you have it.

So you’re an alien?
Um, I would assume so—unless I was born with a skin disease. In the original series, there were these infamous green women that Captain Kirk would hit on, and so without giving too much away, I’m one of those green girls.

Now if you have clue as to what I’m talking about, check out this video of an Orion slave girl in action, and if you don’t know who Diora Baird is, check out these sizzling photos from the latest issue of Maxim magazine.

Megan Fox Is Wet in a Dress in Her Next Movie of the Day

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Karolina Kurkova Does DT-magazine

Karolina Kurkova is a model from the Czech Republic and she can come wake me up any day of the week, make me breakfast and give me a good morning BJ. Yes, I am that romantic. Anyhow, she is appearing nude in DT Magazine.

Guitar Hero: The Spectator Version

People not smart enough to learn how to play a real guitar play Guitar Hero. GH enables any store clerk from Winnipeg to become Slash, Kirk Hammett or Angus Young.

Nikki Whelan Does Sweaty Breasts

Nikki Whelan used to play a part in Australian soap Neighbours. And if she is going to borrow a cup of sugar every morning dressed like this she can move in next to me right now.

Janet Jackson Sexually Assault A Fan

Not all that many years ago Janet Jackson caused the world to come to a virtual standstill when she popped out a star covered tit during the Superbowl half-time show. If her new stage show is anything to go by she is planning to make the world self-destruct this time with her sexy new stage show. Man, you’d almost go out and buy a ticket, forget about the crap music and leave the wife at home.

Detect Epidemics Before They Start

Photo: Bruce Gilden

Back in May 1993, as a medical resident at the University of Arizona, Mark Smolinski volunteered for a shift with the state's Department of Health. Right after he started, Arizona and neighboring states were struck by a deadly outbreak of an unidentified respiratory illness. The young doctor found himself face-to-face with an emerging epidemic, part of a team that spent sleepless months struggling to contain the outbreak. "I was going from hospital to hospital trying to determine the patients' exposures," he recalls of his harrowing first assignment. "Almost all the cases were under the age of 30, and it had a very high mortality rate."

The researchers finally identified the culprit — which eventually infected 53 people, 60 percent of whom died — as a new strain of hantavirus. They pinned the outbreak on a confluence of ecological and social factors: Wet weather during an El Niño year spawned heavier-than-normal vegetation. That in turn fueled an unusually large population of deer mice, which harbor the virus. The victims were exposed when they rummaged through closets or gardened, inhaling dust laced with mouse droppings, urine, or saliva. The disease soon receded, but Smolinski was hooked on the rush he got from investigating outbreaks. "It seemed like a career that would never be dull," he says. "That has certainly proven true."

These days, Smolinski's business card at Google.org, the philanthropic arm of the Mountain View behemoth, identifies him simply as "threat detective." He's director of the organization's Predict and Prevent Initiative, a global health program. The 46-year-old's job is to channel money — one insider estimates up to $150 million — into projects and technologies that will help catch outbreaks like hantavirus wherever they crop up. What's even more ambitious is Smolinski's desire to push disease surveillance "two steps to the left of the epidemic curve." The strategy: Draw on Google's search acumen to predict hot spots before the first case of some imminent calamity hits the hospital.

Smolinski faces a daunting landscape. More than 300 new diseases have emerged since 1940, many the result of jumps from wild animal to human. Outbreaks are expected to increase as environmental degradation thrusts humans into ever-closer contact with wildlife and as climate change alters the life cycles of disease vectors — like El Niño did to the deer mouse. Meanwhile, older diseases are rapidly crisscrossing the planet. "West Nile, which has been around in Africa since antiquity, appeared in 1999 in New York, and in three years it spread throughout the country," Smolinski says. "Now it is one of our endemic diseases."

Yet even though the next West Nile or HIV is just a plane flight away, the global public health system remains focused on responding to diseases after they've spread. That needs to change, Smolinski says. And he's hardly alone in his thinking. "The government and organizations that care about the health of the country and world need to think very carefully about whether our current approaches to controlling disease are sufficient," says Nathan Wolfe, a UCLA epidemiologist who specializes in identifying and studying new diseases. "If they do, they'll find that we are like the cardiologists of the 1950s, waiting for heart attacks to occur." A major study in Nature this year found that, despite the SARS and H5N1 avian flu scares, the areas most likely to harbor some new outbreak — like Malaysia, hit by the Nipah virus, or Kenya, which recently had a Rift Valley Fever outbreak — were least likely to have the kind of disease surveillance systems that let health pros monitor clusters of symptoms or animal die-offs.

Number of emerging infectious diseases reported worldwide.

To change that, Smolinski plans to lend Google's in-house technology expertise to companies and nongovernmental organizations already at work in the developing world. One effort involves extending traditional surveillance closer to the source of epidemics, beginning in outbreak-prone regions of Southeast Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. With the right network in place, Smolinski says, a farmer in Vietnam might send an SMS when chickens start dying or a kid has an unexplained fever. That information alone, of course, means little — "chickens die all the time from Newcastle disease," Smolinski says. "It doesn't have to be avian flu." That's where the search company comes in. Google.org partnered with HealthMap, a Web crawler that Smolinski says can reveal outbreak patterns hidden in vast amounts of public data. (The Global Public Health Intelligence Network, a Canadian project, used similar Web-scanning software to help detect the first signs of the SARS outbreak.)

Google.org is also looking at for-profit companies inventing and manufacturing low-cost medical diagnostic tools. "Molecular sequencing methods have gotten less expensive in the developed world," Smolinski says — cheap enough to be used to identify viruses in the field. Combine that genetic knowledge with open source information — farmers' SMSes, hospital reports, climate data, and satellite imagery — and Smolinski thinks researchers can begin not only to find early outbreak patterns but also understand the conditions most likely to create the next interspecies leap.

Despite Predict and Prevent's numerous resources — several multimillion-dollar, multiyear grants, plus 1 percent of Google equity — turning emerging disease research into a predictive science in some of the poorest health care systems in the world remains a long shot at best. But the man who once served as an epidemic intelligence officer at the Centers for Disease Control and was director of a landmark National Academy of Science study on future microbial threats has a record of achieving the unthinkable in public health. As vice president of biological programs for the nonprofit Nuclear Threat Initiative, Smolinski led the formation of a disease surveillance program in the Middle East, somehow coaxing Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and the Palestinian Authority into sharing outbreak data and lab results. This collaboration has already succeeded in containing cross-border flare-ups of mumps and other infections. "One thing that became clear is that health was a great tool to get people to work together, because they are in the same boat when it comes to infectious diseases," Smolinski says. "And if you can do it there, you can do it anywhere."

Teaching Robots New Tricks

Watch and learn: Researchers at Stanford University taught autonomous helicopters, such as the one shown above, how to perform tricks using an approach called ‘apprenticeship learning’. An ideal flight path was created for each trick using software that automatically analyzed video clips of the maneuver. Credit: Ben Tse

Multimedia Watch an autonomous helicopter perform several complicated stunts.

Programming instructions for robots can be a time-consuming, labor-intensive task. Many roboticists believe that training robots by demonstrating new skills could speed up the process and enable the machines to perform more difficult tasks. Now researchers have created such a system for robotic helicopters. With their approach, the team can train a robotic helicopter to perform a complicated aerial maneuver in less than 30 minutes simply by analyzing video footage of the trick. The work could one day be applied to a wide variety of robots on land and sea, as well as in the air.

For very basic aerial maneuvers, researchers can program specific commands based on the way a human operator would use the controls. But aerial acrobatics, such as flying upside down, require a more robust and adaptive approach. A gust of wind or a small variation in the helicopter's starting position can send the vehicle completely off course if adjustments aren't made immediately to the flight plan. "It's not sufficient to just replay the same sequence of controls as a human pilot," says Pieter Abbeel, who worked as a researcher on the project while completing his PhD at Stanford University. With the apprenticeship approach, the robot can make changes mid-flight because it's not tied to a specific series of commands. This could help autonomous helicopters deal with real-world challenges, such as landing on slanted terrain or coping with sudden changes in weather conditions, ultimately resulting in more stable flight.

Training begins with a human expert demonstrating a new trick on a remote-controlled helicopter. As the expert repeats the maneuver, one of the researchers presses a button to indicate the start and end time of each attempt. The expert needs to perform each trick approximately 10 times, so that subtle deviations can be eliminated and the software can calculate the ideal path. The software carefully warps the timing of each video clip so that it can compare the attempts. Small blips in the data, known as noise, are also eliminated. Ultimately, the software creates a highly accurate aerodynamic model of the trick that the autonomous helicopter uses as a flight guide.

Once in the air, the robotic helicopter wirelessly relays information from its onboard sensors to a computer on the ground. "We place a number of instruments on the helicopters--gyroscopes, accelerometers, and a magnetic compass--to figure out the position and orientation," says Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, who also worked on the project. "We wirelessly send the instrument readings down to a desktop computer on the ground, which computes the appropriate control commands." These commands are sent back to the helicopter 20 times per second. Video cameras on the ground also help to keep track of the helicopter.

With each attempt, the robot learns how to perfect the trick. "The first time, it might take a turn a bit too wide. It will then use its knowledge of its own dynamics to learn to adjust the way it takes a turn," Ng says.

Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Eric Feron, a professor of aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, was not involved in the Stanford project but is impressed by the performance of the autonomous helicopters trained using the approach. He also appreciates the underlying methodology. "When I was involved in similar research back in early 2000," he says, "there was definitely what I would call human intervention in figuring out what the online control systems should be doing in order to repeat the maneuvers. We had to program the computers ourselves." Feron says the Stanford work represents a significant gain in efficiency, by cutting down the learning time to half an hour. "At the end of our research, we were able to maybe do a new maneuver in one day," he says.

Abbeel notes that while the autonomous helicopters have achieved a new level of reliability, there is room for improvement, and safety will be a key concern if such robots are ever flown over populated areas. The machines have to be able to fly at least as well as an expert human pilot, even while doing complicated maneuvers, he says, and simple back-and-forth flight won't be good enough for search-and-rescue missions. "I like to imagine a future in which someday, if there is an accident out on the ocean, a fleet of a dozen autonomous helicopters can be instantaneously deployed to search for survivors," he says. This could help offset the lack of human pilots qualified to perform such a task and increase the chance of locating survivors.

The learning system could be used on other kinds of robots as well, Ng says, such as those that do housework or work in factories. "It could also allow for the very precise control of cars, motorcycles, fixed-wing aircraft, and even sea-based vehicles," he says.

In the future, the team hopes to make their system more flexible. "When we as humans learn, there are many things that speed up the process besides demonstrations. An expert pilot might give advice in other forms," says Abbeel, such as verbal or written tips. Ideally, the team hopes to design a system that can incorporate such advice.

Psst, behind you...some good FAILS....

click below for more...

Lots of Good FAILS here

Stocks down 300 on Euro Bailout, Wachovia Buyout

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Stocks skidded Monday morning - with the Dow industrials down more than 300 points - as investors eyed a series of bank failures in Europe and worried that the government's $700 billion bank bailout plan won't be sufficient to loosen up nearly frozen credit markets.

Investors also considered the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.'s announcement that Citigroup will be Wachovia's banking assets. Meanwhile, credit markets remained jammed up with banks refusing to lend to each other. Treasury bond prices rallied, sending yields lower, as investors sought safety in government debt.

The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU), fell 300 points. The Standard & Poor's 500 (SPX) index and the Nasdaq composite (COMP) also both tumbled in the early going.

The FDIC announced that Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) was taking over Wachovia's (WB, Fortune 500) deposit network and debt, as well as more than $300 billion worth of the company's loan portfolio. The government brokered the deal, and the FDIC noted that Wachovia did not fail as a bank.

Wachovia's stock plunged 90% in pre-market trading to penny stock status and has of yet not opened for regular-hours trading. Citigroup gained 2% in the morning.

The House of Representatives was meeting to vote on the bailout Monday morning. The Senate is expected to vote on the plan on Wednesday.

Congress unveiled its long-awaited $700 billion bailout plan Sunday. The core of the bill is based on Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's request to purchase troubled, and mortgage-related, assets from banks so they can resume lending, in order to free up the frozen credit market.

On Monday at the White House, President Bush once again announced his support for the bill "to help keep the crisis in our financial system from spreading throughout the economy" and he urged House members to support it as well.

Meanwhile, international markets were in turmoil after three major banking bailouts were announced in Europe.

The Dutch-Belgian bank and insurance giant Fortis failed and was provided with a $16.4 billion lifeline by the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The British government nationalized the battered $91 billion mortgage lender Bradford & Bingley. Germany's regulators and banks bailed out Hypo Real Estate Holding AG, in a deal worth billions of dollars.

In the last session, on Friday, the Dow jumped more than 1%, but the Nasdaq slipped.

Economy: The Commerce Department said that personal income was up 0.5% in August but spending was unchanged. In July, income fell 0.7% and spending rose 0.2%.

Markets: The U.S. isn't the only nation to suffer from market malaise over the ongoing bailout plan. European markets were down in Monday trading, and the Asian markets closed lower. The dollar slipped versus the yen, but rose against the euro and the British pound. Oil prices fell $5.74 a barrel in electronic trading to $101.15, on concerns over the international market slowdown.

McCain camp is savvy owning Voteforthemilf.com

Shame on Blasster for not realizing owning the domain means you can preempt the partisan hacks

Purifying Water with Nanoparticles

Under pressure: The membrane developed by NanoH2O allows more water to filter through under for the same amount of pressure. This reduces energy requirements by around 20 percent, says CEO Jeff Green. Credit: NanoH2O

Adding nanoparticles to a water purifying membrane can double its efficiency, according to a startup company based in Los Angeles. With global water usage on the increase and fresh water in limited supply, the company, NanoH2O, says its novel approach could make such purification technology a viable solution to a growing problem.

Reverse osmosis--feeding water through a semipermeable membrane to filter out impurities--is widely considered to be the most effective way to desalinate water. But it is very energy-intensive, and therefore expensive, because water has to be forced through the membrane under pressure. A key way to reduce the costs involved is to increase the water throughput for the same pressure. But for many years, improvements in membrane technology have been incremental at best, says Jeff Green, NanoH2O founder and CEO.

NanoH2O has found that adding porous nanoparticles to membranes can dramatically increase the efficiency with which water can be filtered. "Under similar pressure, twice as much water goes through," says Green. In a desalination plant, this increased permeability would reduce energy requirements by 20 percent, or increase water productivity by 70 percent for the same cost, he adds.

"The concept is good," says Benito Mariñas, an environmental engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Membrane-based desalination is usually considered only when freshwater supplies fail to meet demand. But with demand on the increase and only 1 percent of global freshwater available for human use, Mariñas says such technologies will become more important. "Right now we are not using membranes for sea water desalination as much as we could," he says, largely due to the amount of energy required.

The material used for reverse osmosis is usually an organic thin-film membrane, typically a polymide material perforated with tiny holes. These holes are small enough to let water pass through, but they block salt and other contaminants. NanoH2O's approach, based on research carried out by Eric Hoek, an environmental engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles, is to embed cage-like nanoparticles made out of aluminosilicate minerals, called zeolites, into the membrane. These particles have a diameter of no more than 200 nanometres--roughly equivalent to the thickness of the membrane.

Embedding the nanoparticles changes the properties of the membrane, making it hydrophilic, or water-attracting, so that water passes through more easily. Crucially, however, the membrane retains its ability to filter out contaminants, Green says.

NanoH2O has been in a research phase since the company was set up in 2005. But earlier this month, it secured $15 million in funding to commercialize its technology. According to Green, the company will now scale up production with the aim of bringing its technology to market by 2010.

Mariñas says there's been plenty of interest in using inorganic hydrophilic materials for reverse osmosis, but no other design has been commercialized. One reason for this, he says, is that most hydrophilic materials tend to be bad at filtering out impurities. "The fact that this company is producing a hybrid that's not made exclusively out of hydrophilic material is very interesting," he says.

Another key advantage, says Green, is that the nanoparticles developed by NanoH2O have a three-dimensional porous structure. This means that unlike some other porous hydrophilic materials being investigated, there is no need to worry about how they are oriented within the membrane in order to pass water.

NanoH2O's embedded approach is also compatible with existing manufacturing processes, Green says, adding just 5 percent to production costs.

John McCain Owns VoteForTheMILF.com

Owned through GoDaddy. Talk about sexist... what is the Campaign thinking?

read more | digg story

The world's biggest cruise ship squeezes out of dock and sets sail

By Eddie Wrenn

It might be time for the phrase: 'We're gonna need a bigger boat' to enter retirement.

For this mighty vessel, the largest ever passenger ship, dwarfs all that stands next to it, making the thousands of spectators which came to see it's launch look little more than ants as they waved the graceful ship out of the port.

The 315m-long ship is so wide it barely squeezed out of the Papenberg watergates, but ably helped by two tug-boats it escaped on it's to the North sea, where it will head to Denmark.

People watch the cruiser 'Celebrity Solstice' dragged through the watergate of the Meyer Dockyard in Papenburg

She is one of five Solstice ships launching between now and 2012, and can carry nearly 3,000 passengers.

And, after thousands of years, landlubbers might be able to escape their phobia of the sea... This cruiser is the first one to boast an authentic grass lawn on its top deck.

Celebrity Solstice is the most widely heralded ship to enter the cruise industry this year

The ship is 'virtually complete' - 98 per cent, to be exact - and is on track for it's November debut, when it will begin life as a U.S. cruise ship.

Giant: The ship dwarfs the dock as it is tugged out to sea

ECO NIGHTLIGHT: Moon Jar Solar Powered Lamp

by Jill Fehrenbacher

As the proud mama of a nightowl newborn, I’ve suddenly found myself spending more time awake during the night than the day. Nightlights weren’t on my baby gear list, but they should have been. Not only do new moms need a guiding light for all those late-night feedings, but older toddlers and older children like to sleep with nightlights as well to keep the boogeyman at bay.

So what’s an eco-minded mom to do? Seek out solar power and energy-efficient LED lamps of course! Fortunately the two green technologies go hand-in-hand in one cute little package in this Moon Jar solar powered LED lamp.

If you’ve ever wished you could bottle moonlight to illuminate your room at night, the Moon Jar is your answer. A spin-off of the extremely popular ‘Sun Jar’ lamp by Tobias Wong, the Moon Jar is a frosted mason jar with a solar panel and an LED light inside. Put it on your windowsill to soak up the sun rays during the day, and at night the Moon Jar will illuminate your room with a soft cool glow — no cords or electricity required! If you aren’t a fan of blue light, try out the Sun Jar, which is exactly the same design, except with a warm yellow LED light instead of blue.

I just ordered a Moon Jar for my new baby’s room and I can’t wait to check it out!

$39.99 from PerpetualKid and Target

Now THAT’S what I call multitasking!

Posted by Dr. Macenstein

This lady is a triple threat. She can talk on the phone, surf the web on her PowerBook, AND double-pump breast milk at the same time! (Or are her breasts actually powering the laptop?).

Behold “PowerBoobs Pro“. Click to enlarge (You know you want to make this your desktop wallpaper)

For the record, I’ve never been able to make a woman that happy.

Thanks to faithful German Macenstein reader Martin for the photo. (And don’t worry Martin, we won’t ask why you were searching for nursing bras).

Hands on with some surprising $80 night vision goggles

By Ben Kuchera |

There are some things that every citizen should have a right to: quality health care, a job that contributes to society, and night vision goggles. Before now, the ability to see in the dark was kept only for survivalists, hunters, and, of course, the armed forces. Luckily, Jakks Pacific has finally given the country what it needs: affordable night vision for the entire family.

It seems there are two types of people on the planet: those that wonder why children would want a toy that lets them see in the dark and those that buy night vision goggles from toy stores because they're under a hundred dollars. I will admit to drooling over the Eye Clops Night Vision goggles every time I've been in a toy store for the past few months, but I couldn't bring myself to spend the $79.99 on a product that was most likely a gimmick. However, when the company offered to send Ars a review sample...

The goggles are technically a toy and aimed for children, but I found it easy to adjust the straps to fit my larger noggin. The battery pack sits behind your head, and the goggles take five AA batteries to operate. Since I received my unit in the middle of the day, I went to the only place that's pitch black in a suburban home: the bathroom. Putting in the batteries, sliding the goggles over my eyes, and then turning them on, I was excited to finally see what sub-$100 night vision looked like. I turned the power switch to "on" ...

You may look like a dork, but you can see in the dark. Fair trade
Unfortunately, we weren't able to get good pictures of the display while in use

... and I was right; it was a gimmick. A little LCD screen turns on inside the goggles, and in the ghostly green glow of the mirror, I saw a bright light on the goggles. That's it? An LCD screen and a flashlight? Lame. Then I took the goggles off, and saw that I was standing in complete darkness, a perfect black. The light I saw was from the array of infrared lights on the goggles, and it was invisible to the naked eye. I put them on again and looked around. I could see everything!

The look and feel of the goggles are surprisingly high-quality

You can flip a switch on the side of the goggles to turn on a barely-noticeable red glow on the top of the unit, and this looks like a floodlight when viewed through the goggles. That night, I grabbed a friend and explored the back yard in the middle of the night. Since there is only one screen, you lose depth perception, and the image is slightly magnified so it's hard to judge distances, but the unit does what's advertised. It provides real, working night vision. It was time for Nerf-gun wars in my jet-black basement.

With the goggles, you'd see three ninjas in this picture

If you become disoriented when walking around with the goggles—and with the smallish screen and lack of depth perception, it takes practice to move around effectively—you can flip up the plastic piece above your left eye to see things normally, though I did have problems with that flap falling off now and again. My other minor complaint is that while you can switch the view to a green mode from the standard black-and-white display, it doesn't do anything except mimic what you're used to seeing in movies when people wear night vision goggles. Unlike more expensive sets, this doesn't amplify light as much as it simply picks up on infrared light, which gives the goggles some neat properties: on the highest setting, everyone's eyes look like hollow pools of light, and your television's remote control lights up the room like a strobe light. In normal light, you see everything in full color, at regular brightness.

Despite the issues with the eye cover and the heavy strain on normal batteries, this is a very high-quality toy that can satisfy some serious geek lust. Who doesn't want to see in the dark? Testing the goggles, we turned all the lights in the room, and had my friend's wife stand ten feet away holding up differing numbers of fingers. She stood out in the goggles like a flare, and it was fun to tell her what she was doing when she couldn't see us at all. The possibilities for shenanigans are nearly infinite.

Only Pic of Ocean Boiling from Oozing Lava You'll See Today

Citigroup buys Wachovia Assets for $2.2Billion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Citigroup will acquire the banking operations of Wachovia for $2.2 billion in an all-stock deal, following much speculation over the weekend about the fate of the nation's fourth-largest bank.

Citigroup, the nation's largest bank based on assets, also announced it would raise $10 billion through a sale of common stock and that it would slash its quarterly dividend yet again, cutting it in half to 16 cents a share to preserve capital.

As part of the deal, Citigroup will acquire Wachovia's massive deposit network, about $53 billion in the company's debt, as well as more than $300 billion of Wachovia's loan portfolio.

Following completion of the acquisition, Citigroup will have more than $600 billion in deposits in the U.S., about a 9.8% market share. Total deposits worldwide will be $1.3 trillion.

Citigroup said it will absorb up to $42 billion of losses on those loans, while the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation will be on the hook for anything beyond that.

The FDIC noted that Wachovia did not qualify as a failed bank, unlike Washington Mutual, which collapsed last Thursday, only to be subsequently purchased by JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500).

Regulators also stressed that consumers who bank with Wachovia would not experience any interruption in service and that their deposits remained protected.

"Today's action will ensure seamless continuity of service from their bank and full protection for all of their deposits," said FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair.

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit called the transaction "extremely attractive" from a strategic perspective, saying it would augment the company's access to funding and liquidity.

Banking regulators, who helped broker the deal following consultations with President Bush, the Federal Reserve and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, viewed the deal as necessary to avoid what could have been a painful fallout for both the economy and the already fragile financial system.

"A failure of Wachovia would have posed a systemic risk," Paulson said in a statement.

Wachovia plunges but company isn't completely disappearing

Shares of Wachovia (WB, Fortune 500) were halted when the stock market opened Monday. The stock plunged more than 90% in pre-market trading, to 94 cents a share. Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) shares edged higher in morning trading.

However, Wachovia will remain a publicly traded company -- albeit in much smaller form.

The Charlotte, N.C.-based firm will hold onto its massive brokerage business, which grew substantially following its $6.7 billion acquisition of A.G. Edwards last year. Wachovia also owns the Evergreen investment management division, which had more than $245 billion in assets as of June 30.

Heading into the weekend there was rampant speculation that the Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia would be sold to either Citigroup or Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500). Even Spain's Banco Santander (STD) had been mentioned as a possible bidder. By Sunday evening, a bidding war between the two banking giants was underway, The New York Times reported.

There had also been talk in recent weeks that Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500), which recently converted itself into a commercial bank from a stand-alone investment bank, was discussing a possible merger with Wachovia.

Following a string of high-profile collapses of banks in recent weeks including WaMu and the demise of Lehman Brothers, there has been increasing speculation that Wachovia could be the next one to go.

Like many of its peers, Wachovia bet big on the U.S. mortgage market, which prompted it to suffer losses over the past two quarters.

Some analysts have blamed the company's ill-timed 2006 acquisition of the California mortgage lender Golden West Financial Corp. for the company's woes.

Risky move for Citi

At the same time, Citigroup has been no picture of health. The New York City-based financial services giant has posted close to $18 billion in losses over the past three quarters, while taking nearly $50 billion in writedowns on its diverse loan portfolio.

The deal for Wachovia also comes as somewhat of a surprise given recent efforts by Citi's leadership to shrink the company.

Citigroup's Pandit, who was installed as the company's chief executive last December, unveiled plans in May to unload more than $400 billion in assets over the next few years in the hopes of turning the company around.

The deal, which comes ahead of a Congressional vote on a proposed $700 billion bailout for the financial system, marks yet another big shake-up of the nation's banking industry.

In the past two weeks, the sector has undergone a dramatic transformation, including Lehman's bankruptcy, the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) and the government takeover of insurer AIG (AIG, Fortune 500)

60 Inspiring Concert Posters From 10 Amazing Artists

So many shining examples of this exist in the art community, and in this episode of Monday Inspiration we present 60 inspiring concert poster designs from 10 amazing artists.

clcik here for the pics | digg story