Women's Champions Challenge through a newly established Mega Events Fund

Hong Kong's highest-profile women's tennis tournament has asked the government for a $700,000 (435,594 pound) bailout after its main sponsor withdrew backing for the early season exhibition event.

Organisers are hoping the Hong Kong government would dole out HK$5.5 million (441,533 pounds) for the Women's Champions Challenge through a newly established Mega Events Fund, the South China Morning Post reported on Wednesday.

"It's unfortunate but like many other companies, the JB Group has also been caught up in the financial tsunami," tournament director Terry Catton was quoted as saying by the paper, referring to the Indian diamond group which pulled out as title sponsors of the January 6-10 event.

Although not part of the WTA Tour, high-ranking players such as Maria Sharapova, Serena Williams and Kim Clijsters have all participated in the Australian Open warm-up event.

Catton added that the tournament would still go ahead "whatever happens."

Read My Pins, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright

In her new book, Read My Pins, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright reveals that she used jewelry as a diplomatic tool during her years with the Clinton administration.

"This all started when I was ambassador at the U.N. and Saddam Hussein called me a serpent," she tells Susan Stamberg. "I had this wonderful antique snake pin. So when we were dealing with Iraq, I wore the snake pin."

After that incident, Albright decided that it might be fun to speak through her pins. She went out and bought different costume jewelry.

"As it turned out, there were just a lot of occasions to either commemorate a particular event or to signal how I felt," she says.

There were balloons, butterflies and flowers to signify optimism and, when diplomatic talks were going slowly, crabs and turtles to indicate frustration.

After the Russians were caught tapping the State Department, Albright protested by wearing a pin with a giant bug on it. On days when Albright felt she had to do "a little stinging and deliver a tough message," she wore a wasp pin.

At one point, Russian leader Vladimir Putin told President Clinton that he knew what the mood of a meeting would be by looking at Albright's left shoulder. (Albright's pin with three monkeys, which she wore when discussing Chechnya, was meant to draw attention to the fact that Russia took a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" stance toward the Chechen atrocities.)

The former secretary of state says that one of her own pins — an antique eagle pin with a complicated clasp — nearly sabotaged her at her swearing-in ceremony.

"I put it on, and there I was all of the sudden with one hand on the Bible and one hand in the air, and the pin was just swinging in the breeze. I had not fastened it properly," says Albright. "I was afraid that it would fall on the Bible."

Accidents aside, Albright says she loved expressing herself with her jewels. And, she adds, making fashion statements — and commenting on each other's attire — is not completely unheard of within a diplomatic setting:

"You think that the heads of state only have serious conversations, [but] they actually often begin really with the weather or, 'I really like your tie.' "

Popular Enganement Ring Diamond Cuts

Engagement ring diamonds come in a wide variety of cuts and shapes. There are two basic types of diamond cuts, which produce two basic kinds of diamond shapes. These are the step diamond cut, which utilizes gradual incisions that create a “step” pattern on the surface of the stone, generally producing a rectangular (or emerald) diamond; and the brilliant cut, which utilizes angled cuts designed to create maximum internal light refraction, producing a round-shaped diamond. When these two basic cuts are combined, they produce a variety of mixed cuts that result in various shapes with varying degrees of sharpness and brilliance. The type of diamond cut you choose for your engagement ring depends entirely on personal taste. For your consideration however, here are 5 of the most popular engagement ring diamond cuts today.
1. The Round Diamond
2. The Radiant Cut Diamond
3. The Marquise Diamond
4. The Oval Diamond
5. The Princess Cut Diamond

Diamond covered platinum skull

Artwork Title: For the Love of God, 2007
Diamond covered platinum skull
Damien Hirst
Famous British artists - Skull and Bone Art

About the For the Love of God Skull
The Diamond covered skull by Damien Hirst is a continuation of the artist's exploration of death and the way we react to it.

"For the Love of God" is covered with 8,601 real diamonds and has been valued as the most expensive contemporary work of art. Hirst spent about $20 million USD to create the diamond covered work and put a price tag of $100 million USD on it.

Damien Hirst was quoted as saying "It works much better than I imagined. I was slightly worried that we'd end up with an Ali G ring." He also said "I wouldn't mind if it happened to my skull after my death".

Update: In August 2007, it was widely reported that Damien Hirst sold "For the Love of God" to an investment group for $100 million USD or about 50 million pounds. Hirst is said to own a percentage of the diamond skull, but it was not reported how much he still owns. The buyers will be expected to exhibit the work for the next two to three years at museums around the world. The BBC reported that the investors planned to resell the work at a later date.

This would make "For the Love of God" the most expensive work of art ever to sell by a living artist.

Nokia N95 & diamonds make a merry pair

The Nokia N95 is already a multi-functional smartphone by itself, and what better way to increase its desirability than to throw a whole bunch of diamonds on it? What you see above is the result of such an extravagant imagination, done up by Alexander Amosu. This exclusive limited edition diamond Nokia N95 8GB will be limited to just 10 in the whole wide world, and each handset is adorned with 18 carat solid white gold with 325 diamonds, boasting a total diamond weight of 3.30 carats. Be prepared to fork out *cough cough* slightly less than a quarter of a hundred thousand dollars for this ultra-luxurious smartphone - $24,482 to be exact.

White Dwarf Stars: Like a Diamond in the Sky

Just in time for Valentine's Day, astronomers have discovered a white dwarf star with a very special center. This star would truly be the gift for the person who has everything: a celestial diamond in the sky!

"You would need a jeweler's loupe the size of the Sun to grade this diamond!" says astronomer Travis Metcalfe (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who leads a team of researchers that discovered the giant gem. "Bill Gates and Donald Trump together couldn't begin to afford it."
The reason this star, with the obscure designation of BPM 37093 is so special to astronomers is that it has aided them in proving a theory held for decades: that white dwarf stars cool and crystallize into carbon, a giant diamond.

Astronomers say the star has a diameter of 2,500 miles and weighs in at an astonishing five million, trillion, trillion pounds. That would make the diamond core ten billion, trillion, trillion carats! The largest gem-quality diamond yet found on Earth was the 3,106-carat "Cullinan" discovered in 1905. The 530-carat "Star of Africa" in the British crown jewels was cut from it.

The star is located in the constellation Centaurus and is about fifty light years distant (A light-year is the distance light travels in a year, or about 6 trillion miles.)

There are many kinds of stars in the cosmos. The Sun is part of a group of stars called main sequence stars, and most of these end their lives as white dwarves.

The stars burn up all their hydrogen and then begin to expand into red giant stars. Red giants are extremely large. If our Sun was a red giant, it would extend well beyond the orbit of Mars, swallowing the Earth in it's atmosphere!

The stars continue fusing elements until it loses its shell of gases, leaving behind a hot core of about 180,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Then the star begins to cool. The star pulsates as it burns helium in fusion reactions creating heavier and heavier elements until at the very end there is carbon and a very small amount of oxygen. A star will spend billions of years in this phase.

The problem with proving the theory about the crystallization is that by the time the star has crystallized, it is no longer pulsating and is so cool that they are impossible to detect. But BPM 37093 is the most massive known dwarf star. Because it is so massive, the star is crystallizing on the inside while light and sound continue to pulsate from the surface.

"By measuring those pulsations, we were able to study the hidden interior of the white dwarf, just like seismograph measurements of earthquakes allow geologists to study the interior of the Earth. We figured out that the carbon interior of this white dwarf has solidified to form the galaxy's largest diamond," says Metcalfe.

The same fate awaits our own Sun. In about five billion years, our Sun will use up it's hydrogen, expand into a red giant and at last become a white dwarf star. A few billion years after that, our Sun will have cooled and the core crystallized into a diamond that is truly forever.