Joanna Krupa and Derek Hough didn’t make it to the finals, despite strong scores from th

What happened?: The important task Tuesday night was to set the three couples who would compete in next week’s finals. The first two couples to find out they would be there were Donny Osmond and Kym Johnson and Mya and Dmitry Chaplin — the first pleases the crowd most while the latter pleases the judges most. This left Joanna Krupa and Derek Hough and Kelly Osbourne and Louis van Amstel to fight over the last spot. Kelly had lower judges’ scores on Monday night, meaning that only audience voting could keep her in the competition.

And in the end, to the surprise of many — including Kelly — it was Joanna and Derek who didn’t make it to the finals, despite strong scores from the judges. Next week’s finals, therefore, will feature Mya, a powerful and skilled dancer, along with Donny and Kelly, both of whom will have made it there on the shoulders of a lot of devoted fans.

The return of Melissa: Last season’s third-place finisher, Melissa Rycroft (then a fresh reject from “The Bachelor,” now engaged to someone else entirely), returned to dance a hustle with her pro partner, Tony Dovolani. They were accompanied by the surviving members of the Bee Gees singing “You Should Be Dancing.” There’s not much left of the Gibb voices, but everyone obligingly clapped enthusiastically. It should be noted that Melissa showed up barefoot and danced for only a very short time, giving the bizarre impression that she had run in off the street after arriving late.

More music: Tuesday was billed as a show full of “special musical performances,” and while it might not have met that high standard, it came closer than usual, beginning with Alicia Keys. What appeared to be her black rubber shorts over blue knit leggings (or pelvis-high boots) made for an odd spectacle, but unlike some of the folks who have appeared this season, she can sing live, and she even sat at the piano for a bit.

That was followed up with a performance by Leona Lewis, who is also both famous and relevant, making her an unusual grab for this show. A couple of high notes were not as solid as one might wish, but everyone looks better standing on a round platform surrounded by writhing dancers and hundreds of pounds of dry ice.The strange and the ill-advised: As always, not all the filler worked. A dance performance from the upcoming film “Nine” was difficult to understand without whatever context it will have in the movie — here, it looked the dancing girls

Singer Janet Jackson has revealed that she blames her late brother Michael’s personal doctor for his death in June.

In her first TV interview since Jackson’s death, she told ABC News that she believes Dr Conrad Murray should no longer be allowed to practise medicine.

“He was the one that was administering. I think he is responsible,” she said.

A spokeswoman for Dr Murray said he continues to maintain he neither prescribed nor administered anything to Jackson that killed him.

In August, a Los Angeles coroner ruled that the Thriller singer’s death was homicide, primarily caused by the powerful anaesthetic Propofol.

Since Michael’s death, Dr Murray has been named as an official suspect in the police investigation.

He told officers that he had administered the anaesthetic to the singer shortly before he died.

‘Like a dream’

During the interview, Janet told ABC’s Robin Roberts that she was at her home in New York when she received the news that her brother had been taken to hospital.

The star admitted that not a day goes by when she does not think of Michael.

“It just didn’t ring true to me. It felt like a dream,” she said.

“It’s still so difficult for me to believe.”

In August, Dr Murray posted a short clip on YouTube making his first public statement since Michael passed away.

“I told the truth and I have faith the truth will prevail,” he said.

Crew thwarts take-over months after ship’s U.S. captain was taken hostage

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NAIROBI, Kenya - Somali pirates attacked the Maersk Alabama for the second time in seven months on Wednesday, but guards on board the U.S.-flagged cargo ship repelled the takeover attempt, the EU’s naval force said.

Pirates hijacked the Maersk Alabama last April and took ship captain Richard Phillips hostage, holding him at gunpoint in a lifeboat for five days. Navy SEAL sharpshooters freed Phillips while killing three pirates in a daring nighttime attack.

Somali pirates attacked the ship with automatic weapons early Wednesday about 350 nautical miles east of the Somali coast, but guards on board the craft fired back and thwarted the attempted hijacking.

Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the EU Naval Force, called it “pure chance” that the Maersk Alabama had been targeted a second time.

“It’s not the first vessel to have been attacked twice, and it’s a chance that every single ship takes as it passes through the area,” Harbour said. “At least this time they had a vessel protection detachment on board who were able to repel the attack.”

An EU patrol aircraft from the Horn of Africa nation Djibouti was called in to investigate, and the closest EU Naval Force vessel was tasked with searching for the pirate attack group, the EU Naval Force said in a statement.

Phillips’ ordeal last spring galvanized the attention of the U.S. public to the dangers of operating merchant ships in the Horn of Africa, one of the busiest and most precarious sea lanes in the world.

Attacks increase
Pirates have greatly increased their attacks in recent weeks after seasonal rains subsided. On Monday, a self-proclaimed pirate said that Somali  held for more than six weeks — a clear demonstration of how lucrative the trade can be for impoverished Somalis.

Phillips told The Associated Press last month from his farmhouse in Vermont that he was contemplating retiring from sea life after his ordeal. He’s been given a book deal and a movie could be in the works.

Phillips was hailed as a hero for helping his crew thwart April’s hijacking before he was taken hostage, but he says he never volunteered, as crew members and his family reported at the time.

Obama’s trip stands in stark contrast to visits by his predecessors

BEIJING - President Obama has emerged from his first trip to China with no big breakthroughs on important issues, such as Iran’s nuclear program or China’s currency. Yet after two days of talks with the United States’ biggest creditor, the administration asserted that relations between the two countries are at “at an all-time high.”

Although one concrete advance emerged — that the United States may offer a target for carbon-emission cuts to boost climate negotiations in Copenhagen next month if China offers its own proposal — it was a relatively small step for a new president who had campaigned on a promise to enact far-reaching change in U.S. diplomatic interactions.

If there was any significant change during this trip, in fact, it was in the United States’ newly conciliatory and sometimes laudatory tone. In a joint appearance with President Hu Jintao on Tuesday, Obama hailed China as an economic partner that has “proved critical in our effort to pull ourselves out of the worst recession in generations.” The day before, speaking to students in Shanghai, he described China’s rising prosperity as “an accompObama’s trip stood in stark contrast to visits by his predecessors. But this reflected not so much a policy shift by a new administration in Washington as a dramatic and much bigger change in the power dynamic, particularly in economics, over the past decade — a change that has been the central undercurrent of Obama’s swing through China this week.

lishment unparalleled in human history.”

Bill Clinton traded jibes
In 1998, when President Bill Clinton stood before television cameras in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, the United States owed more money to Spain than to China and did more than twice as much trade with Mexico. At a freewheeling news conference, Clinton criticized China’s military crackdown a decade earlier in Tiananmen Square and traded spirited jibes with President Jiang Zemin.

On Tuesday, Obama stood in the same building alongside another Chinese leader. This time, with the United States in hock to China for more than $1 trillion dollars and flooded with Chinese-made goods, it was a Chinese-style news conference. Each leader read a prepared statement and eyed the other in silence. There were no questions.

Since leaving Washington last Thursday for an eight-day tour of Asia, Obama has occasionally nudged China on issues such as Tibet and Internet censorship. But he has more often trumpeted China’s achievements and pleaded with Beijing for increased help on the world stage.

China returned the effusiveness in its music selection at a state dinner for Obama on Tuesday night. The People’s Liberation Army serenaded him and other U.S. officials with “I Just Called to Say I Love You,” “In the Mood” and “We Are the World,” as Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sat on either side of the Chinese president over a steak dinner.

In many ways, the United States and China have never been closer, as reflected in a raft of joint projects outlined Tuesday, the second day of Obama’s visit here. In addition to cooperation to curb global warming, these included previously announced and now reinvigorated efforts on stem-cell research, crime prevention and military contacts. But with the rituals and even the substance of the two countries’ interactions increasingly on Chinese terms, Obama advisers insisted that their overtures and polite tone are in pursuit of long-term results, a reflection of China’s growing importance.

‘Get traction’
The U.S. ambassador to Beijing, Jon Huntsman Jr., a former Republican governor of Utah who speaks fluent Chinese, said the goal is to “make sure that we are able to connect with the Chinese bureaucracy in ways that actually allow us to get traction.”

Secretary of State Will Attend Karzai’s Inauguration, Says This Is a “Critical Moment”

• Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, center, is welcomed by top U.S. commander in Afghanistan Gen. Stanley McChystal, left, at the military airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009. 

Hillary Rodham Clinton, on her first trip to Afghanistan as U.S. secretary of state, said Wednesday that President Hamid Karzai’s inauguration provides an opportunity for him to improve government accountability and make a difference in the lives of Afghans.

Karzai is under stiff pressure from the U.S. and other nations to fight pervasive corruption in his government and many hope he will make a concrete commitment to reform in his inauguration speech Thursday, helping the country move past a fraud-tainted election that undermined trust in the government.

Clinton - one of more than 40 dignitaries from the U.S., Europe and other countries scheduled to attend the event - has said the U.S. will not provide civilian aid to Afghanistan unless it can be sure the government can be accountable for the funds.

“We stand at a critical moment on the eve of the inauguration of President Karzai’s second term,” Clinton said. “There is now a clear window of opportunity for President Karzai and his government to make a new compact with the people of Afghanistan to demonstrate clearly that they’re going to have accountability and improve the lives of the people who live throughout this magnificent country.”

For his part, Karzai has complained that foreign aid is being wasted before it ever gets to the Afghan people, noting that corruption is also pervasive in the international contracting process that doles out money.

This is Clinton’s fourth trip to the country. She arrived a few hours late in Kabul from Beijing where she was accompanying President Barack Obama. Her first stop was an atrium at the heavily secured U.S. Embassy compound in the capital where she was greeted by a few hundred embassy staff.