Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas vowed Friday to lodge a bid for U.N. membership before the Security Council in one week, despite mounting Israeli and U.S. opposition.

"We are going to the Security Council," he said in a televised address to the Palestinian people from his Ramallah headquarters.

It slowly began to dawn on Esther and Bruce Huffman that perhaps they were being filmed.

"Warning," the gray-haired, bespectacled grandmother reads off the screen. "You must stop recording before trying to close cyber link."

Talk about a tough professor.

Trinity College in Dublin was spoofed Thursday when an unknown prankster posted an academic profile of its newest English lecturer: a certain Conan T. Barbarian, complete with Hollywood mug shot of a shirtless, sword-clad Arnold Schwarzenegger in his maiden film role.

In science fiction, amber preserved the DNA that allowed rebirth of dinosaurs in Jurassic Park. In real life, amber preserved feathers that provide a new image of what dinosaurs looked like.

"Now, instead of scaly animals portrayed as usually drab creatures, we have solid evidence for a fluffy colored past," reports Mark A. Norell of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

Pakistan's prime minister canceled his attendance at next week's U.N. General Assembly session in New York, saying Friday he needed to coordinate flood relief efforts at home.

Monsoon rains have flooded large parts of the southern Sindh province over the last six weeks, leaving more than 200,000 people homeless. Pakistan's leaders came under criticism last year for failing to deal with floods that affected more than a quarter of the country's territory.

The Eisenhower era was a repressive time in America. Women could legally be harassed by police just for wearing pants, and homosexuality was considered a shameful crime as well as a mental illness, for which the police could toss a man or woman into a psychiatric hospital.

Illustrating this lack of civil liberties with smooth and entertaining song is "Play It Cool", a noirish jazz musical about a secret gay nightclub off Sunset Boulevard in 1953 Los Angeles, a town where the police were notoriously hostile toward gay people.

"Girls Gone Wild" founder Joe Francis beat the house Wednesday in a criminal case over a $2.5 million Las Vegas casino debt.

A state judge threw out a criminal theft and bad check indictment against the soft-porn mogul that involved the Wynn Las Vegas resort. Because the casino waited 16 months to redeem a casino marker, or IOU, the judge ruled that Wynn and prosecutors lost their chance to prove Francis committed a crime.

Jane Lynch didn't trip over the red carpet while rolling it out Wednesday morning in anticipation of Sunday's Emmy ceremony. Despite not seeing "daylight in a couple of days" and dreaming she might experience a "face plant" as the show's host, Lynch pulled it off without a hitch.

"I don't even know where I am anymore," she joked to dozens of photographers and reporters who gathered for the unveiling with the show's executive producer Mark Burnett and TV academy chairman John Shaffner.

The blockbuster colors and florals, geometrics and ethnic prints on the runways at New York Fashion Week may feel like game-changers in the moment. Then there's the rest of your life.

Once the looks move from the catwalk to the closet after this round of previews, women may need a little guidance on incorporating the prints, shots of neon and other new colors — purple, yellow, aqua and orange — into existing wardrobes, said Cindy Weber Cleary, fashion director of InStyle magazine.

EBay's name is synonymous with auctions, but that's created an image problem for the online marketplace.

These days, most of the things people purchase on the site aren't sold through auctions; they have fixed prices. And, the majority of items for sale are new —not musty antiques or old collectibles.