AP - McDonald's is taking its beef with a US documentary film to Australia's TV screens in an ad campaign biting back at suggestions that its food is unhealthy.

In the film Super Size Me, American filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats only McDonald's fare for 30 days, and in the end piles on 12 kilograms and gets sick.

The film grossed Australia's highest-ever opening weekend takings for a documentary, raking in $353,700 in four days.

McDonald's Australian arm hit back quickly.

"We did some research with our customers, and because of the fact that we were silent in regards to the film, they took it that our silence basically meant guilt," Guy Russo, McDonald's chief executive in Australia, told Sky News television.

"I think he's providing false claims to Australians," Russo said of Spurlock. "I won't take that sitting down."

McDonald's campaign attacks the film as being "about someone who decides to overeat".

In the TV ads, Russo derides Spurlock's claim that eating nothing but McDonald's for 30 days can make you sick.

"Surprise, surprise," he said. "He finds out it was an error. I could have told him that."

McDonald's has been trying to revamp its worldwide junk food image, launching healthy alternatives to its long-famous burger meals.

It's added low fat milk and fresh apples to its menus in the United States. It has also brought in options like Fish McDippers in Japan and sliced fruit in Britain.

In Australia it introduced salads and yoghurt 18 months ago. It lists the nutritional contents of each meal on food wrappers and posters.

Russo said he eats at McDonald's about three times a week but wouldn't overdo it, like he insists Spurlock did.

"I'm of Italian descent," Russo says, "and I couldn't eat Spaghetti Bolognese every day."

SOURCE: NineMSN

CARLISLE, Pa., May 24 ? President Bush on Monday night sought to reassure Americans, Iraqis and other nations that he has a plan to set Iraq on a track to stable self-rule, saying his goal was to make Iraq's people "free, not to make them American."

The United States, Mr. Bush said, will use a "five-point plan" to hand over authority in Iraq to an interim government on June 30, help establish security, continue rebuilding the country's infrastructure, encourage more international support and then move toward a national Iraqi election as early as next January. He did not announce the names of a new prime minister or other top Iraqi government officials, but promised that they would be released later this week by Lakhdar Brahimi, the United Nations special envoy to Iraq.

In a 33-minute address at the United States Army War College in the farmland of south-central Pennsylvania, the president said: "I sent American troops to Iraq to defend our security, not to stay as an occupying power. I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history, and find their own way."

Mr. Bush said an essential part of rebuilding Iraq would be the creation of a modern prison system. He pledged, if the new Iraqi government agrees, to destroy the Abu Ghraib prison, a longtime symbol of the cruelty of Saddam Hussein's rule and now notorious as the site of abuses of Iraqi prisoners by members of the American military.

In making the case for persevering in Iraq, the president reminded Americans that, in his view, Iraq remained "the central front in the war on terror."

Mr. Bush also held out little hope for a quick withdrawal of American soldiers, and said he would maintain troop levels of 138,000 "as long as necessary." If American commanders on the ground needed more troops, Mr. Bush said, "I will send them."

Mr. Bush's speech, the first in a series of major addresses meant to shore up support for his Iraq policy before the June 30 deadline, was as much a political event as a policy address. It came in the wake of a poll by CBS News that showed Mr. Bush's approval ratings at a new low, with 41 percent approving of the job he is doing and 52 percent disapproving.

The president, who was apparently wearing makeup to cover abrasions on his chin from a fall from his mountain bike last weekend, seemed confident and calm throughout his remarks, which were interrupted periodically by applause. The biggest applause came when Mr. Bush said the United States would raze the Abu Ghraib prison.

SOURCE: The New York Times

BOB Geldof's daughter Peaches yesterday warned that Gwyneth Paltrow's one-week-old girl Apple faces years of taunting at school.

Peaches, 14, whose middle name is Honeyblossom, said: "At primary school I got teased a lot, just as little Apple will."

Fellow pupils used to shout: "Oi, Peaches, are your parents bananas?" Other taunts which still annoy her include "I'd like to take a bite out of that peach" and "Look at those peaches".

Gwyneth and Coldplay singer husband Chris Martin have joined celebrities such as Geldoff and his late wife Paula Yates who opt for the unusual. Peaches said: "Why do the rich and famous give their children such ridiculous names?

"Mine has haunted me all my life, and will continue to do so.

"I am named after a fruit. This doesn't make sense at all."

In her Sunday Telegraph column, she added: "When I tell people my name, most laugh incredulously. I'm always asked to repeat it twice." But her name is normal compared to rocker Frank Zappa's daughter Moon-Unit and David Bowie's son Zowie.

And it does help her stand out from the crowd.

She said: "It's exotic, it's not boring. It also gives me (or so I like to think) an air of mystery."

SOURCE: http://www.mirror.co.uk/

This is from Reuters...

SINGAPORE - Neurosurgeons trying to separate Iranian twins joined at the head teased apart tightly packed brain tissue and blood vessels on Tuesday as the life-threatening operation moved into its third day.

Soothing classical music played in the operating theater as the team of 28 doctors and about 100 assistants at a Singapore hospital battled unstable blood circulation amid an array of lines that feed Laleh and Ladan Bijani intravenously and monitored their vital signs.

After cutting open the 29-year-old pair's joint skull in the hours after the surgery began on Sunday, five neurosurgeons were prying apart the brains millimeter by millimeter, said Dr Prem Kumar Nair, a spokesman for Singapore's Raffles Hospital.

One of the girls died. Just hours ago.

An update from Sky News...

An Iranian twin has died after two days of unprecedented, high-risk surgery to separate her skull and brain from those of her conjoined sister.

The second twin was in a critical condition and fighting for her life as doctors attempted to stabilise her.

The operation on 29-year-old Laleh and Ladan Bijani entered a "critical stage" after a team of 28 specialists and 100 assistants pryed apart their tightly-packed brain tissue and blood vessels at Singapore's Raffles hospital.

"Despite the best efforts of the medical team, Ladan Bijani passed away," hospital spokesman Dr Prem Kumar Nair said to cries of grief from hundreds of supporters and friends gathered at the hospital.