The Death Star

The Death Star

The Death Star was a moon-sized Imperial military battlestation armed with a planet-destroying superlaser. The Death Stars were the first in a long series of superweapons developed to execute the Tarkin Doctrine, but whose concept had been explored even before the Clone Wars. The Death Star was designed to allow Emperor Palpatine to more directly control the Galactic Empire through fear. In most instances, a Death Star was to be commanded by a Moff.

The Death Star was the code name of an unspeakably powerful and horrific weapon developed by the Empire. The immense space station carried a weapon capable of destroying entire planets. The Death Star was to be an instrument of terror, meant to cow treasonous worlds with the threat of annihilation. While the massive station is evidence of the evil that was the Galactic Empire, it was also proof of the New Order’s greatest weakness — the belief that technology and terror were superior to the will of oppressed beings fighting for freedom.

The Death Star was a battle station the size of a small moon. It had a formidable array of turbolasers and tractor beam projectors, giving it the firepower of greater than half the Imperial starfleet. Within its cavernous interior were legions of Imperial troops and fightercraft, as well as all manner of detention blocks and interrogation cells. The Death Star was spherical, and dark gray in color. Located on the Death Star’s northern hemisphere was a concave disk housing the station’s main laser weapon.

Melanie Oudin Boyfriend

Melanie Oudin Boyfriend

Austin Smith is one of the hottest searches on the Web today. He's the 15-year-old boyfriend of tennis's new darling Melanie Oudin, 17, who beat Nadia Petrova and former No. 1 Maria Sharapova over the weekend. And Austin's more than, um, an athletic supporter. Melanie Oudin was a U.S. Open dark horse when she qualified to compete in the Open's Grand Slam main draw on a wild card. She's turned out to be a spoiler, with big wins this weekend and reported matches upcoming against Caroline Wozniacki and Svetlana Kuznetsova.

Melanie credits two-years-younger Austin with her champion weekend. Austin traveled with Melanie's family from their home state of Georgia to New York City to support Melanie during the Open. Himself an accomplished tennis player winning state titles in Georgia, Austin helped Melanie prepare for her high-profile matches last week by practicing with her on the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium, surrounded by 24,000 seats.

He also wanted her to wear something magic. To set her apart from the pack of pros who usually don clothes and shoes with their names or nicknames on them, Austin designed an emblem for Melanie to wear on her shoes that reads, "BELIEVE." Melanie planned to have Adidas custom-stitch her name into the back of her shoes until Austin designed the BELIEVE plate for the back of her pink and yellow tennies. Apparently the Open requires players' names to appear on their clothing, but Melanie went ahead with the alteration anyway.

Mike Bongiorno

Mike Bongiorno

Mike Bongiorno, TV presenter was as old as the medium that he came to symbolize. The man who is an integral part of the history of television in Italy has passed away today at the age of 85 in the French city of Montecarlo. I owe Mike my reverential love for quizzes ever since I was a toddler and I would be amazed at the persons locked in the glass cabin wearing the headphones answering question after question shot at them by Mike.

Even as Mike’s presence shifted into the era of the vile kitsch of Berlusconi’s Mediaset he still carried the immense history of the early beginnings of television and the recent versions of Mike that we saw in the advertorials will remain a pleasant reminder of the character who will forever be seen shouting “Allegria!”. The ANSA news agency said Bongiorno died from a heart attack. It quoted Premier Silvio Berlusconi as saying Italy had lost a great TV personality and he had lost a friend.

Nicknamed "The Quiz King," Bongiorno was of American origin but made his name in Italy. He was one of Italy's most enduring and beloved television personalities. In the 1950s and 1960s, he popularized quiz shows through a series of successful programs on state-run RAI. Bongiorno was also the host of countless other shows, including a popular annual song fest in San Remo.