The time is now 5:20 pm
You last visited
June 7, 2026, 2:27 am
All times shown are
Eastern Time (GMT-5:00)
Midday 7-12-09 Evening
** until 7-15-09 **
012 017 026 035 039 048 057 089 125 129 134 138 147 156 179 237 246 269 278 345 359 368 458 467 489 579 678 003 008 116 224 228 233 336 044 449 255 557 066 566 669 377 188 588 399 899 111 444 777
| FACT OF THE DAY: |  |
Annual chicken consumption per capita in the U.S. was 11.0 pounds in 1910. It had climbed to 61.3 pounds by 2006. - From The World Almanac 2009 -
"Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners."
- 1 Corinthians 15:33 -
‘All about money,’ La Toya tells Britain’s News of the World
Two British Sunday newspapers said LaToya Jackson believes her brother Michael Jackson was murdered by a group of conspirators trying to get hold of his fortune.
LaToya Jackson said she knows who is responsible for her brother's death and is determined to see them brought to justice, the News of the World reported.
According to the published interviews with The News of the World and The Mail on Sunday, she did not name any of the people she believes were involved and did not offer any evidence to support her claim that foul play was involved in the singer's sudden death on June 25.
"I feel it was all about money," she was quoted as saying by the News of the World. "Michael was worth well over a billion in music publishing assets and somebody killed him for that. He was worth more dead than alive."
She reportedly said the conspirators used powerful prescription drugs to keep Michael Jackson submissive and under control and also kept him away from his family.
She also claimed, the newspapers reported, that roughly $2 million (1.23 million pounds) worth of cash and jewelry was taken from Michael Jackson's rented mansion and has not been accounted for.
LaToya Jackson also was quoted as saying her brother did not want to perform the 50 London shows he had agreed to, but was pressured into that agreement.
The shows, to mark Michael Jackson's return to concert performing, had been scheduled to begin Monday at London's 02 Arena.
Officials are waiting for the return of toxicology reports before determining the cause of Michael Jackson's death.
Police investigator Edilson Alves told The Associated Press that the body of the former junior welterweight champ was discovered in his hotel room at the tourist resort, where Gatti had arrived on Friday with his Brazilian wife Amanda and 1-year-old son.
Alves said police were investigating and it was unclear how the 37-year-old Canadian died. Foul play is suspected in the death, the CBC reported.
"It is still too early to say anything concrete, although it is all very strange," Alves said.
A spokeswoman for the state public safety department said Gatti's wife and son were unhurt. The women declined to give a name in keeping with department policy.
"There were no bullet or stab wounds on his body, but police did find blood stains on the floor," she said.
Brazilian boxer and four-time world champion Acelino "Popo" Freitas told the G1 Web site of Brazil's largest television network Globo that he was a close friend of Gatti and his wife, and that he "knew they were having some sort of problem and were about to separate, but I didn't know they were in Brazil."
Francisco Assis, a local police investigator, told G1 that Gatti could have died up to eight hours before his body was found early Saturday.
Gatti (40-9, 31 KOs), nicknamed "Thunder", was best known for his all-action style, which was epitomized in his classic trilogy with Micky Ward in 2002 and 2003.
It's why Gatti was a fixture at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J., where he drew huge crowds and fought many times, including the final nine fights of his career.
"His entire boxing career he fought with us, we've known him since he was 17," Kathy Duva of promoter Main Events told The Associated Press. "It's just an unspeakable tragedy. I can't even find words. It's a horror."
He won two world titles in his 16-year pro career. In 1995, he won his first one, outpointing Tracy Harris Patterson to claim the IBF junior lightweight title.
In his first fight after the Ward trilogy -- which Gatti won 2-1 -- he captured a world title in his second division, outpointing Gianluca Branco for the vacant WBC junior welterweight title in January 2004.
Gatti made two defenses before losing the title to Floyd Mayweather Jr. via sixth-round TKO in June 2005. He returned to defeat Thomas Damgaard but lost his final two bouts, a ninth-round TKO in a challenge to then-welterweight champion Carlos Baldomir in July 2006 followed by a one-sided beating from former "Contender" star Alfonso Gomez in July 2007.
In the dressing room following the seventh-round knockout loss to Gomez, Gatti announced his retirement.
Referee Randy Neumann said it was tough for him to end that fight, simply because of Gatti's incredible ability to come back in fights.
"I couldn't stop that fight, simply because he was Arturo Gatti," Neumann said. "He was much more dignified to go out that way. He had to be counted out. When he fought, you never knew if he could come back. He looked beaten and still came back."
With that loss, Gatti acknowledged the end of all his travails and triumphs.
"I remember walking away from his last fight, and somebody walked up to him in the casino late at night and congratulated him," Duva said. "And he said, 'Why did he congratulate me?' And I said, 'He was excited to meet you.' And he kind of looked very surprised by that.
"He had no idea what an icon he was or how much he meant to people."
More than his titles, Gatti will be remembered for the slugfests. He was half of the Ring magazine fight of the year four times for two the Ward fights as well as his 1997 fifth-round knockout of Gabriel Ruelas to retain the junior lightweight title and a 1998 decision loss to Ivan Robinson.
Gatti had two memorable battles with Robinson as well as dramatic fights with Wilson Rodriguez, Angel Manfredy and Calvin Grove -- all before the trilogy with Ward that defined his career.
Gatti was a staple of HBO's boxing broadcasts, appearing on the network 21 times.
"HBO Sports is tremendously saddened by the passing of Arturo Gatti," HBO Sports president Ross Greenburg said. "He was one of the legendary warriors in boxing, and his three epic battles with Micky Ward will live on in the sport's rich history. All of us at HBO Sports will miss his warm and friendly presence, and our deepest sympathy goes out to his manager Pat Lynch, promoter Main Events, led by Kathy Duva, and the entire Arturo Gatti family. Boxing has lost a great and humble man."
Gatti had been working in real estate in Montreal following his retirement, but still attended fights, as he did in April for the Timothy Bradley-Kendall Holt junior welterweight unification bout at the Bell Centre in Montreal.
Saturday 7-11-09
308, 813, 073, 851, 096, 390, 408, 248, 184
438, 784, 973, 319, 532, 558, 511, 431, 135
226, 928, 745, 825, 230, 321, 721, 111, 666
1221, 1426, 0928, 2020, 0214, 0704, 5022
Mets and Braves swap RFs
July 10, 2009 6:45 PM
Breaking news!
|
|
Like Church in New York, Francoeur was no longer in favor in Atlanta, hitting .250 with five home runs and 35 RBI in 82 games.
Minaya said Francoeur, 25, makes sense as another righthanded bat and, as a former Gold Glove winner, to help with the outfield defense in right.
Defense? According to UZR, there's little difference between them and Church might actually be better.
Handedness? With Fernando Tatis and Gary Sheffield, the Mets already had two righty-hitting corner outfielders; now they've got three.
So, let's review: The Braves got a decent hitter and fielder who bats left-handed, and thus can platoon (or semi-platoon) with Matt Diaz in right field. The Mets got ... what, exactly? If you figure it out, drop a line to Jerry Manuel. He's going to need all the help he can get with this one.
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day.
Efforts to reach Mr. Cheney through relatives and associates were unsuccessful.
The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.
The law requires the president to make sure the intelligence committees “are kept fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity.” But the language of the statute, the amended National Security Act of 1947, leaves some leeway for judgment, saying such briefings should be done “to the extent consistent with due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods or other exceptionally sensitive matters.”
In addition, for covert action programs, a particularly secret category in which the role of the United States is hidden, the law says that briefings can be limited to the so-called Gang of Eight, consisting of the Republican and Democratic leaders of both houses of Congress and of their intelligence committees.
The disclosure about Mr. Cheney’s role in the unidentified C.I.A. program comes a day after an inspector general’s report underscored the central role of the former vice president’s office in restricting to a small circle of officials knowledge of the National Security Agency’s program of eavesdropping without warrants, a degree of secrecy that the report concluded hurt the effectiveness of the counterterrorism surveillance effort.
Democrats in Congress, who contend that the covert action provision was abused to cover up programs under President Bush, are seeking to change the law to permit the full committees to be briefed on more matters. President Obama, however, has threatened to veto the intelligence authorization bill if the changes go too far, and the proposal is now being negotiated by the White House and the intelligence committees.
A spokesman for the intelligence agency, Paul Gimigliano, declined on Saturday to comment on the report of Mr. Cheney’s role.
“It’s not agency practice to discuss what may or may not have been said in a classified briefing,” Mr. Gimigliano said. “When a C.I.A. unit brought this matter to Director Panetta’s attention, it was with the recommendation that it be shared appropriately with Congress. That was also his view, and he took swift, decisive action to put it into effect.”
Bill Harlow, a spokesman for George J. Tenet, who was the C.I.A. director when the unidentified program began, declined to comment on Saturday, noting that the program remains classified.
Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.
“Because this program never went fully operational and hadn’t been briefed as Panetta thought it should have been, his decision to kill it was neither difficult nor controversial,” one intelligence official, who would speak about the classified program only on condition of anonymity. “That’s worth remembering amid all the drama.”
Members of Congress have differed on the significance of the program, whose details remain secret. Most of those interviewed, however, have said that it was an important activity that they felt should have been disclosed.
In the eight years of his vice presidency, Mr. Cheney was the Bush administration’s most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy, and won.
A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program makes clear that Mr. Cheney’s legal adviser, David S. Addington, had to personally approve every government official who was told about the program. The report said “the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program” frustrated F.B.I. agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it turned up.
High-level N.S.A. officials who were responsible for ensuring that the surveillance program was legal, including the agency’s inspector general and general counsel, were not permitted by Mr. Cheney’s office to read the Justice Department opinion that found the eavesdropping legal, several officials said.
Mr. Addington could not be reached for comment on Saturday.
Questions over the adequacy and the truthfulness of the C.I.A.’s briefings for Congress date back to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing Al Qaeda.
The use of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, for instance, was first described to a handful of lawmakers for the first time in September 2002. Ms. Pelosi and the C.I.A. have disagreed about what she was told, but in any case, the briefing occurred only after a terrorism suspect, Abu Zubaydah, had been waterboarded 83 times.
Representative Jan Schakowsky, a Democrat of Illinois on the House committee, wrote on Friday to the chairman, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, to demand an investigation of the unidentified program and why Congress was not told of it. Aides said Mr. Reyes was reviewing the matter.
“There’s been a history of difficulty in getting the C.I.A. to tell us what they should,” said Representative Adam Smith, Democrat of Washington. “We will absolutely be held accountable for anything the agency does.”
Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the committee’s top Republican, said he would not judge the agency harshly in the case of the unidentified program, because it was not fully operational. But he said that in general, the agency has not been as forthcoming as the law requires.
“We have to pull the information out of them to get what we need,” Mr. Hoekstra said.
TGIF 7-10-09
635, 345, 408, 184, 482, 226, 928, 069, 680
060, 170, 073, 469, 740, 193, 580, 851, 493
319, 621, 215, 127, 124, 308, 813, 382, 362
1221, 1426, 0928, 2882, 8811, 6611, 8011, 2913
5577, 1100, 1916, 1164, 1964, 1967, 1986, 1991
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Men's final was most-watched since '99
Associated Press
NEW YORK -- Roger Federer and Andy Roddick's epic Wimbledon final last Sunday was the most-viewed men's final at the All England Club in 10 years.
NBC said Thursday that an average of 5.71 million people tuned in to watch Federer win his record-setting 15th Grand Slam title. The number was the highest since Pete Sampras beat Andre Agassi in the 1999 final, attracting 5.85 million viewers.
The 3.8 rating and 10 share was the best for a men's final since Sampras defeated Patrick Rafter in 2000 and surpassed last year's classic between Federer and Rafael Nadal by 9 percent.
Federer beat Roddick 5-7, 7-6 (6), 7-6 (5), 3-6, 16-14 in a match that lasted 4 hours, 16 minutes. The fifth set was the longest in major final history.
Bristol's ex talks about Palin's resignation
ANCHORAGE, Alaska - The former fiance of Gov. Sarah Palin's 18-year-old daughter says he thinks he knows why the Alaska governor is resigning — concerns over money.
Levi Johnston, 19, whose wedding to Bristol Palin was called off earlier this year, says he believes the governor is resigning over personal finances.
Johnston says he lived with the Palin family from early December to the second week in January. He claims he heard the governor several times say how nice it would be to take advantage of the lucrative deals that were being offered, including a reality show and a book.
'Lucrative' deals
"I think the big deal was the book. That was millions of dollars," said Johnston, who has had a strained relationship with the family but now says things have improved.
Palin has a book deal, but compensation details haven't been disclosed. The governor has said she is facing more than $500,000 in legal fees.
"It is interesting to learn Levi is working on a piece of fiction while honing his acting skills," Palin family spokeswoman Meghan Stapleton said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
Johnston made his comments at a news conference Thursday at the office of his attorney, Rex Butler.
Johnston came forward, Butler said, because Alaskans want to know why Palin has decided to resign. She made the announcement last Friday.
Johnston also is pursuing his own book deal. He is working as a carpenter while also pursuing a movie deal.
Parents of 16 kids shot to death
BEULAH, Fla. - Investigators were seeking three suspects in the home-invasion slayings of a couple with 16 children — 12 of them adopted, the Escambia County Sheriff's Office said.
Byrd and Melanie Billings were found shot to death Thursday night in their bedroom of their home in Beulah, just west of Pensacola near the Alabama border.
Deputies found eight children in the home, ranging in age from 8 to 14, Sheriff David Morgan said Friday at a news conference. None were injured, and the couple's other children were safe and accounted for, he said.
Twelve of the couple's 16 children were adopted. The Billings married 18 years ago and each had two children from previous marriages. The couple then began adopting children with developmental disabilities and other problems.
The couple owned several local businesses, including a fiance company and a used car dealership, and had been featured in the Pensacola News Journal for their generosity taking in children with disabilities and from troubled backgrounds.
Authorities were searching for three men in a large red van seen leaving the home. No motive has been established.
"It would be pure speculation. We see many random acts of violence now. We just don't know," Morgan said.
Investigators went to the home after a 911 call from a woman who lives in an outlying building and who helps care for the children, Morgan said. The woman said she believed there were two people dead inside the house.
Morgan said one of the children inside the house called the woman, and she called 911.
The sheriff said the suspects had forced their way into the sprawling home through multiple entrances.
In a 2005 story in the News Journal, the couple said they wanted to share their wealth with children in need, but didn't imagine their family would grow so large.
"It just happened," Melanie Byrd told the newspaper. "I just wanted to give them a better life."
"Women prefer to talk in two's, while men prefer to talk in three's."
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton -
Amtrak train hits car in Mich.; 5 dead
CANTON TOWNSHIP, Mich. - An Amtrak passenger train carrying about 150 people struck a car at a road crossing near Detroit on Thursday, killing all five people in the sedan, authorities said.
The crossing has a gate and flashing lights that were believed to be working when the car approached, said Sgt. Mark Gajeski, a police spokesman.
Police did not know the ages of the victims. The bodies remained trapped in the sedan two hours after the crash, Gajeski said. He said the train typically travels about 67 miles per hour at the site.
The only reported medical problem among the people on the train was a case of a passenger with asthma, Gajeski said.
The crash occurred around 12:30 p.m. in the Wayne County community of Canton Township, about 20 miles west of Detroit, said police Sgt. Craig Wilsher.
Wilsher said the vehicle was heading north when it crossed the train tracks and was hit, pushing the car about 150 feet from one road crossing to another.
No malfunction
The train was on its way from Detroit to Chicago, said Marc Magliari, a Chicago-based Amtrak spokesman.
"There is every indication the train crew was doing exactly what it should have been doing and that there was no malfunction of the train," he said. "They can't make vehicles, or pedestrians for that matter, heed signals."
"This is tragic for both the family of those who died and the train crew," he said.
The Amtrak train will remain at the scene as police investigate, and passengers will be transferred to buses that will take them to another Chicago-bound train, Magliari said.
There is a warning device with a flashing light and gates at the crossing where the crash occurred, said Rudy Husband, a spokesman for Norfolk Southern Corp., which owns the track. Husband said he couldn't say if the device was working at the time of the crash. That will be part of the investigation, he said.
The National Transportation Safety Board didn't immediately have any information about the crash.
Midday 7-9-09 Evening
** until 7-11-09 **
012 017 026 035 039 048 057 089 125 129 134 138 147 156 179 237 246 269 278 345 359 368 458 467 489 579 678 003 008 116 224 228 233 336 044 449 255 557 066 566 669 377 188 588 399 899 111 444 777
