Hard ice and heavy snow slid off Cowboys Stadium's domed roof Friday, injuring at least six private contractors hired to prepare the venue for the Super Bowl, authorities said.

One man was struck in the head and another was hit in the shoulder, said Arlington Fire Department spokesman Pete Arevalo. They were in stable condition Friday afternoon. The other four injuries were considered minor.

Emergency personnel responded about 1 p.m. to reports of snow and ice sliding off the southern end of the sprawling stadium where the group was working, Arevalo said.

Food service worker Doug McCracken said he and a friend pulled up to the area just in time to see what looked like snow flurries blowing off the building. Wonder turned to shock when he realized someone had been hit.

"What we saw was hard ice. It shattered, it was everywhere," McCracken said. "We thought maybe it was snow at first but it was ice. Hard ice."

The United States National Weather Service had issued a winter storm warning Friday for Arlington, home of the US$1.3 billion stadium where the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers will play this weekend for the NFL title.

Italy's PM says he hopes there can be a transition to democracy in Egypt without a "break" from the president.

Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, has described Egypt's president as a "wise man" and called for continuity in the country's government.

"I hope that in Egypt there can be a transition toward a more democratic system without a break from president [Hosni] Mubarak, who in the West, above all in the United States, is considered the wisest of men and a precise reference point," he said.

"I hope there can be continuity in government," he told reporters on Friday.

His comments came as hundreds of thousands of pro-democracy protesters continued to rally in Tahrir Square, central Cairo, and in Alexandria, Egypt's second city, calling for Mubarak to stand down.

However, the Italian leader's aides said Berlusconi did not mean Mubarak should remain in office, rather that he "would like to see someone like Mubarak at the head of the country".

Nantes, France - A French father-of-two is to take GlaxoSmithKline to court on Tuesday, alleging the British firm's drug to treat Parkinson's disease turned him into a gay sex and gambling addict.

The 51-year-old's lawyers say their client's behaviour changed radically after he was first administered the drug in 2003 for the illness, which causes tremors, slows movement and disrupts speech.

Didier Jambart, a married father-of-two who says he has attempted suicide three times, claims he became addicted to Internet gambling, losing the family's savings and stealing to feed his habit.

He also became a compulsive gay sex addict and began exposing himself on the Internet and cross-dressing. His risky sexual encounters led to him being raped, his lawyers said.

Billings, Montana - Five years after a cow dubbed the "Unsinkable Molly B" leapt a slaughterhouse gate and swam across the Missouri River in an escape that drew international attention, the heifer has again eluded fate, surviving the collapse of the animal sanctuary where she was meant to retire.

Molly B was among an estimated 1,200 animals removed from the Montana Large Animal Sanctuary and Rescue in recent weeks as part of a massive effort to bail out its overwhelmed owners.

Animal welfare groups said they were forced to euthanize dozens of starving and ill cattle, horses and llamas found on the 400-acre sanctuary in rural Sanders County.

Imagine the East Coast's largest cities mixing a brew of salt, motor oil, trash and grocery carts and dumping it into rivers and harbors.

It's allowed in emergency situations, and some officials staring at massive snow mountains in densely populated areas of the winter-walloped Northeast say that time is now, even as others warn dumping snow in water comes with big problems.

"There's a lot of stuff in this snow that if I isolated it and threw it in the river, you'd have me arrested," said John Lipscomb of the New York-based environmental group Riverkeeper.

Snow from the East Coast's insistent winter is being plowed into banks that are narrowing up roads and highway ramps like hardening arteries, blocking drivers' sight lines, and forcing schoolchildren to break paths like cattle down buried sidewalks. In a normal winter, the snow melts on a good day or is carted off to designated dumps where it eventually filters its pollutants through the earth or is treated before ending up in sewers.

This is not a normal winter. Many East Coast cities, including Boston, Hartford, Conn., and New York are on their way to setting seasonal snowfall records, and the extra snow means extra road salt and human refuse that gets swept up by plows.

The powerfully inspirational uprising of impassioned, freedom-seeking masses in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Port Said and other Egyptian locales has captured the world's imagination, and hearts, to a historically unprecedented degree.

Is there a decent, fair-minded person on this planet who doesn't extend immense solidarity toward those brave souls standing their ground in Tahrir Square and elsewhere, in the face of the most cruelly brutal violence that dictator Hosni Mubarak's mercenary thugs can sadistically muster?

As of this writing, Egypt's titanic battle between the forces of rectitude and evil, light and darkness, liberty and despotism - between a wretched past and bright possibilities tomorrow - is still very much in doubt.

We would like to believe, of course, that the good guys (plus women and children) will soon win.

But humanity's annals are stained with the blood of countless causes, plainly righteous and so seemingly certain of quick victory, that were cut to shreds by monarchs, tyrants, imperialists, pious believers in this religion or that, etc., who unleashed decimating barbarism to crush challenges to their diabolical rule.

World food prices surged to an all time high last month on the back of extreme weather conditions and unrest in the Middle East.

The United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Food Price index rose for the seventh month in a row. It now stands at 231, well above the last record high of 224.1 in June 2008 and the highest since records began in 1990.

And there was a stark warning from the FAO that these high prices will remain high for some time.

Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the organisation, said: 'The new figures clearly show that the upward pressure on world food prices is not abating. These high prices are likely to persist in the months to come.'

Meanwhile, in an interview with Reuters, World Bank President Robert Zoellick said: 'We are going to be facing a broader trend of increasing commodity prices, including food commodity prices.'

Experts believe the growing variety of antipsychotic drugs prescribed for the US combat forces impair the troops' ability to make correct judgments.

The United States Central Command allows troops struggling with sleep deprivation to receive a 6-month supply of Seroquel - a drug first developed to treat schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, mania and depression, according to a report published by AllGov on Sunday.

At least two US troops have died while asleep after having taken large amounts of the medication.

A June 2010 report released by the Defense Department's Pharmacoeconomic Center at Fort Sam Houston revealed that some 20% of the troops on active-duty are taking psychotropic drugs, ranging from antidepressants to antipsychotics to sedative hypnotics.

The consumption of these drugs by active troops can cause "loss of judgment and self-control and lead to increased violence and suicidal impulses" while on the field, experts say.

What it is aint exactly clear...

But let's try and get some perspective anyway.

The peaceful mass demonstrations in Egypt over the past ten days against dictator Hosni Mubarak turned into a pitched battle on February 2 when coordinated groups of "pro-government supporters" armed with knives, spears and machetes attacked the streets leading to Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo and began throwing rocks at the protesters and systematically attacking journalists. They were supported by a cavalry charge of sorts as maniacs on horses and camels plowed into the crowds, lashing out wildly with their horsewhips. The coordinated nature of the assault was unmistakable as these "pro-government supporters" next sought vantage points on rooftops overlooking the masses of protesters and hurled Molotov cocktails and rocks in every direction. Their fury and stark raving psychopathology stands in total contrast to the millions of peaceful protesters we've seen on the streets of Egypt's cities over the past week; organising neighbourhood watches, street-cleaning operations and security checkpoints to screen for the "pro-Mubarak supporters" and to detain the undercover policemen disguised as looters.

I'll clarify something here that mainstream pundits seem a little hazy on: there are no "pro-Mubarak supporters". Their numbers are predominantly made up of the police and security services that had disappeared from the city center on the third day of the revolution when the protesters chased them back across the October 6th bridge spanning the Nile river. They're joined by desperate youths enticed by promises of thirty pieces of silver and thousands of prisoners released from jails during the initial chaos on January 25. Mubarak's intention is for these neanderthals to create mayhem that will necessitate directing the enormous Egyptian army to finally do something about the "fighting between both sides." It's the old story of 'divide and conquer'.

A "Black Widow" suicide bomber planned a terrorist attack in central Moscow on New Year's Eve but was killed when an unexpected text message set off her bomb too early, according to Russian security sources.

The unnamed woman, who is thought to be part of the same group that struck Moscow's Domodedovo airport on Monday, intended to detonate a suicide belt near Red Square on New Year's Eve in an attack that could have killed hundreds.

Security sources believe a message from her mobile phone operator wishing her a happy new year received just hours before the planned attack triggered her suicide belt, killing her at a safe house.