Sesame Street Anniversary,Big Bird

Sesame Street Anniversary,Big Bird: Sesame Street and Big Bird celebrate their 40th anniversary today.

Sesame Street Anniversary,Big Bird:Sesame Street and Big Bird celebrate their 40th anniversary today. Big Bird and Sesame Street came to television on November 10, 1969 and through the Jim Henson characters have captivated generations of tv audiences.

At 40, Sesame Street is the longest running children’s program on US television.

In the 1960s, the Carnegie Institute following a proposal by Joan Ganz Cooney gave $8 million to establish the Children’s Television Workshop and deliver new programming. Additional funding came from Ford, the US Government, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The show was promoted before its air date with a 30 minute trailer that would air on NBC called This Way to Sesame Street. When the show aired, it would quickly earn a 3.3 Nielsen rating.

Big Bird would appear on screen with First Lady Pat Nixon in 1970. Jim Henson has since explained that the character played by Carroll Spinney in a suit is not a muppet.Big Bird’s breed has also been in dispute, thought to be a canary, but later explained as more of a condor.

source:http://news.lalate.com/

30 Militants Killed In South Waziristan Street Battles

ISLAMABAD: Troops were Wednesday locked in deadly street battles with Taliban fighters, pushing a ground offensive deeper into militant-held territory, the military said. A senior military official told AFP the army had ‘taken’ the strategic town of Sararogha in the third week of fighting, while 30 insurgents were reported killed in the last 24 hours

ISLAMABAD: Troops were Wednesday locked in deadly street battles with Taliban fighters, pushing a ground offensive deeper into militant-held territory, the military said.

A senior military official told AFP the army had ‘taken’ the strategic town of Sararogha in the third week of fighting, while 30 insurgents were reported killed in the last 24 hours.

Pakistan has vowed to quash Tehrik-i-Taliban in South Waziristan, part of the border area with Afghanistan that Washington calls the most dangerous place in the world because of the abundance of Al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Sararogha shot to infamy within the tribal belt as the operational centre of former Tehrik-i-Taliban warlord Baitullah Mehsud, who was killed in a US drone attack in August.

The military provides the only regular information coming from the frontlines. None of the details can be verified because communication lines are down and journalists and aid workers barred from the area.

Pakistan launched its fierce air and ground offensive into the northwest region on October 17, with some 30,000 troops backed by fighters jets and helicopter gunships laying siege to Tehrik-i-Taliban bolt-holes.

‘Today, security forces entered into the important stronghold of terrorists, the town of Ladha. Intense fighting is taking place in (the) streets,’ the military said in its daily update.

It said ‘security forces have cleared a major part’ of Sararogha, but a senior official in northwest Pakistan said the town had been captured.

So far, the military has claimed to have killed more than 390 militants since the operation began, with 45 troops losing their lives.

The long-anticipated assault into South Waziristan came after a spring offensive in and around the northwestern Swat valley, which the government declared a success in July. However, sporadic outbreaks of violence continue.