Daily Blog of nonsense

BABE OF THE DAY-Beverly D'Angelo

2007-12-21T12:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000350/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beverly_D'Angelo

Beverly Dangelo - Celebrity bloopers here

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-21T12:43:00.001-05:00

Song
Dan Fogelberg
Same Old Lang Syne

Movie
Christmas Vacation

Story of the Day-Vladimir Putin - Person of the Year 2007

2007-12-21T12:35:00.000-05:00

Why TIME chose Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (Russian: Владимир Владимирович Путин (help·info)) (born October 7, 1952) is the current President of the Russian Federation. He became acting President on December 31, 1999, succeeding Boris Yeltsin, and was sworn in as President following the elections on May 7, 2000. In 2004, he was re-elected for a second term, which expires in May 2008. He is Time Magazine's Person of the Year for 2007, given the title for his "extraordinary feat of leadership in taking a country that was in chaos and bringing it stability.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Putin

President of Russia
http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/

Vladimir Putin timeline
http://www.mapreport.com/countries/putin.html

Vladimir Putin Biography
http://www.freeinfosociety.com/site.php?postnum=75
Vladimir Putin was born on October 7, 1952 in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Russia. He was the sole child of a factory foreman, living in a communal apartment along with several other families. As a child, he studied the martial arts with a concentration on sambo, a combination of judo and wrestling. He was chosen to study at Leningrad School 281, which prepared its students for college.

In 1970, Vladimir graduated from preparatory school and enrolled in the Leningrad University. There, he majored in studies of civil law, while also continuing his practice of martial arts. In 1974, he was the city's judo champion and graduated in 1975 with honors.

After he graduated, he was recruited by the KGB, the Soviet Union's intelligence organization. He was sent to Moscow, where he studied espionage and foreign intelligence. There, he learned the German language and was awarded a black belt in judo. After completing his studies, he was given a position in the KGB First Directorate as an agent of foreign intelligence.

In 1985, Putin was sent to Eastern Germany to live in Dresden under a fake name. He was given a false job at a German-Soviet friendship society, which had been set up by the KGB. It is believed that he was spying on NATO's member nations and recruiting new agents during this time. During his time in Germany, he was able to get an idea of Western cultures and ideas that changed his perspective of the world.

In 1990, the Soviet Union collapsed under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. Putin returned to Russia after the KGB withdrew from reunited Germany and was highly decorated for his intelligence efforts. He was also given an administrative position at the Leningrad University, although he continued conducting intelligence gathering operations.

Putin was eventually hired as an assistant to his old professor of law, Anatoly Sobchak, who had become the chairman of the city council. When Sobchak was elected mayor of newly-renamed St. Petersburg in 1991, Vladimir was given the position of deputy mayor. During his time as deputy mayor, he helped direct foreign investors in the expansion of the city's economy and infrastructure.

In 1996, Sobchak lost his reelection campaign and left the mayoral office, along with Putin. Despite allegations and charges of corruption against Sobchak, Putin's career was not tainted. In 1997, he was given a position in the Kremlin as deputy to Pavel Borodin, the man in charge of the government's property department.

Putin put his time in the Kremlin to good use, making powerful friends and impressing his superiors. In 1998, he was appointed head of the Federal Security Service, the replacement for the KGB, by President Boris Yeltsin. In 1999, he was named prime minister by Yeltsin after numerous failures by other individuals appointed to that same office.

On December 31, 1999, Yeltsin resigned from his position before his term would end six months later. He appointed Putin as his acting successor, with the intention of ensuring that Russia entered the 21st century with a new wave of politicians who would continue reforming Russia. In the elections of March 2000, Putin won by a good margin, becoming Russia's youngest leader since Josef Stalin in 1922.

Throughout his tenure in office, Putin has been criticized for his handling of rebellions in Chechnya and Georgia, as well as the botched handling of a hostage situation that resulted in many deaths. More recently, he has been widely protested for his replacement of reimbursement for transportation and healthcare costs by cash, which many say does not fully cover the expenses. In spite of this, he has remained very open with Western countries and has implemented numerous beneficial social reforms in modern Russia, including the prosecution of the head of the Yukos oil corporation.

Time magazine has chosen Putin its "Person of the Year"

FACTBOX: Vladimir Putin - man of the year
http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL1987511820071219
Russian President Vladimir Putin was named Time magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2007 on Wednesday for bringing stability and renewed status to his country.

Putin, 55, whose party recently won a big victory in parliamentary elections, is riding high on an oil-fueled economic boom and soaring popularity from a no-nonsense approach that has restored national pride with a big military build-up and verbal attacks on the West reminiscent of the Cold War.

Here are some key facts about Vladimir Putin:

* Putin was born in October 1952 in St. Petersburg, then called Leningrad. A former KGB spy in East Germany, he rose to head the KGB's successor organization, FSB, before being chosen as prime minister by the late President Boris Yeltsin in August 1999.

* He took over as acting president when Yeltsin stepped down in December 1999. After a huge public relations campaign to build a profile for the relative unknown, he was elected president in March 2000.

* He has overseen a steady concentration of power within the Kremlin walls, sidelining the political opposition and imposing tight control on the media. This has caused his Western critics to question his democratic credentials.

* He has played to his power base in the security forces and military by fostering a tough-guy image. Before the poll, he told Western governments to keep their "snotty noses" out of Russia's affairs.

* Delivering on a vow he made when first elected president in 2000, he has crushed the Chechen rebellion for now, though sporadic attacks continue on Russian forces.

* His years in power have been marked by a significant rise in living standards, helped by soaring oil prices, but large sections of the population still live in poverty.

* He has prided himself on bringing stability and predictability to Russia after the zig-zags of the Yeltsin years. He described the demise of the Soviet Union as "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."

* Two outspoken critics of Putin, journalist Anna Politkovskaya and ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko, were murdered in 2006, raising concerns in Russia about the stability Putin has been credited with enforcing after the chaos of the 1990s.

* Putin, highly popular at home, will not give himself a third consecutive term. But he has made it clear that when he steps down early next year he intends to retain political influence in the country. Dmitry Medvedev was nominated this week as the candidate of Putin's party for the presidential election. Medvedev, a close Putin ally, was a foregone conclusion after the president gave him his personal endorsement.

* Polls have shown that talking tough about Russia standing up to foreigners strikes a chord with millions of Russians who yearn for the Soviet Union's once mighty superpower status. (Writing by David Cutler and Richard Balmforth, London Editorial Reference Unit)

TIME’s Person of the Year is Vladimir Putin
Russia’s president beats out Al Gore, J.K. Rowling, other big names for title
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22323855/
Eighteen years ago, Mikhail Gorbachev was named TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year for leading the political revolution that tore down the Iron Curtain and broke apart the Soviet Union. This year, Vladimir Putin, the man who restored Russia to a leading role on the world stage, has taken that title.

The highly anticipated announcement was made live on Wednesday on TODAY by TIME managing editor Richard Stengel. He said that TIME’s readers had chosen author J.K. Rowling first in an online poll.

But Putin won the title for taking Russia from chaos to a position of importance in the world today. Being TIME’s Person of the Year is not necessarily an honor, in Putin’s case.

Stengel characterized Putin as dynamic but dangerous. “He doesn’t care about civil liberties, he doesn’t care about free speech. He was very bitter about the way Americans look at him and the way Americans’ treat him. He is an angry, angry man,” Stengel said.

Stengel said one thing that makes Putin extraordinary is that he is not interested in making people like him. “He has no charm,” Stengel said. “He is just pure force and pure force of will.”

TIME’s editors chose the controversial Putin over a list of candidates that included former Vice President Al Gore, who won a Nobel Prize for his battle against global warming; Rowling, who published the seventh and final chapter of her Harry Potter series; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the confrontational president of Iran; Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Apple CEO Steve Jobs; Gen. David Petraeus, leader of the Iraq surge; and Chinese leader Hu Jintao.

Putin is the fourth Russian leader to be chosen Person of the Year. Joseph Stalin was named twice, in 1939 for signing the alliance that opened the doors for Hitler’s war on Europe and in 1942 for joining the Allies in World War II. In 1957, Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader at the height of the Cold War, won for leading the effort to put the first satellite in space. And in 1989, Gorbachev was on the cover for ending the Cold War.

Last year, the Person of the Year was “You,” the millions of people who have made the Internet a vital force of communication and culture.

Stengel said that Gore finished second in the opinion of the editors, with Rowling third, Hu Jintao fourth and Petraeus fifth. It was the first time the magazine ranked the runners-up.

Voters online chose Rowling first, Gore second, Ahmadinejad third, Rice fourth, Jobs fifth, Petraeus sixth and Putin a distant seventh.

But the Person of the Year isn’t a popularity contest. “We all grew up with Russia as this great superpower and rival to the U.S.,” said Stengel. “But in the ’90s, Russia was a basket case.”

Putin changed that, restoring political order — at the cost of civil liberties, his critics say — and world influence. With vast oil wealth and a 2,000-mile border with China, Stengel said, “Russia is really critical to the future of the 21st century.”

Russians Agree With Time, Putin is Person of Year
Leaders Who Are Difficult Can't Be Ignored
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=4026708&page=1
Most Russians shrugged as if to say "of course" when told that Time magazine had named Vladimir Putin person of the year.

Slava Zoshchuk, a microbiologist, told ABC News, "I am not surprised. ... It's great, because he has done a lot for the prestige and the stabilization of the country."

Svetlana Nagornavo, a maid, said, "It's good. I voted for Putin. I am for stability."

To many analysts, too, Time's decision comes as no surprise, but for very different reasons. Putin made headlines regularly this year. Whether it was for publicly chastising senior American officials or being snapped shirtless on a fishing trip, Putin was in the news.

Masha Lipman, a political analyst with the Carnegie Institute, told ABC News, "I think he made a lot of headlines and was talked about a great deal … when somebody is difficult there is no way to ignore. He made the West reckon with Russia, for better or for worse."

It's been a tough year for U.S.-Russian relations. Disagreements over Iran's nuclear ambitions and the U.S.' proposed missile defense system have raised tensions between the two countries. For better or for worse, though, Putin's message has remained constant. As Lipman summarizes it, "Russia says no and there is no way to ignore Russia."

Putin rarely talks to Western journalists, and the fact that he sat down for an extensive interview with Time magazine is important in itself. Lipman says, "There's always this combination of caring about the opinion of the West and also ignoring it."

Dmitry Peskov, the deputy press secretary for Putin, told ABC News about Time's choice. "It's quite positive news, this choice for 2007. It's a kind of acknowledgement of the vital role that he has played over the last eight years, helping to pull Russia out of the chaos of the '90s and restoring national pride. Undoubtedly, under the leadership of President Putin during these eight years, Russia has re-emerged as a constructive and active voice in shaping the course of international relations and has expanded influence around the globe."

Certainly in 2008 the world will be hearing more from that voice.

Vladimir Putin keeps Russia guessing on future
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/12/03/wrussia503.xml

Russians are anxiously awaiting word on their leader's future as Vladimir Putin prepares to use his overwhelming victory in a flawed parliamentary election to retain power beyond his official retirement date next year.

Shrugging off international condemnation of the vote, the president kept his nation guessing as he savoured his triumph largely in private.
But after years of waiting, the Russian people could discover within a fortnight what his official job description will be after next March's presidential elections - a contest in which Mr Putin is currently constitutionally forbidden from participating.

On December 17, the ruling United Russia party meets to choose its presidential candidate.

With its crushing victory in Sunday's parliamentary election now confirmed, the party could argue that it has the popular mandate to select Mr Putin - a move that would require either a referendum or the "discovery" of a constitutional loophole to be put into effect.

If it chooses a pliant alternative candidate, Mr Putin is instead likely to emerge as prime minister or leader of the party, positions that could be imbued with new powers now that United Russia has a constitutional majority in a parliament that lacks even a single genuine opposition deputy.

Whatever option is put into place, Mr Putin's international credibility has suffered a serious buffeting, after the small number of foreign observers that were allowed to monitor the parliamentary election condemned it as seriously flawed.

United Russia won over 70 per cent of the seats in the State Duma but observers said the election was characterised by intimidation and numerous violations and the West united to condemn the conduct of the poll.

The Foreign Office called on the Kremlin to investigate electoral regularities while the German government took the unprecedented step of declaring that Russia was "not a democracy".

"These were not free and fair elections, they were not democratic elections," government spokesman Thomas Steg told reporters.

"Russia was no democracy and is no democracy."

Despite the international storm that it is likely to cause, analysts say that there are growing signs Mr Putin could defy the West - who he recently told to keep "its snotty noses" out of Russian affairs - by running for a third term.

As the parliamentary campaign reached its crescendo last month, apparently spontaneous demonstrations erupted across the country calling for Mr Putin to stay on as president.

By mid-November it was revealed that the demonstrations were being spearheaded by a movement that simply called itself Za Putina or For Putin.

Its leaders insisted that the organisation was nothing more than a grassroots initiative created to "express the spontaneous love of the Russian people" for their president.

But analysts said the movement showed all the hallmarks of being a Kremlin concoction and predicted it would be used as a vehicle to allow Mr Putin to remain as president.

They also claimed that Za Putina had been deliberately modelled on Mao Tse Tung's Red Guards movement during the Cultural Revolution and would be used to make denunciations against ruling party deputies considered disloyal to the president.

The organisation has already created an online petition and is planning to deliver "30 lorries with 30 million signatures" to the Kremlin, pleading with the president to stay on.

"Everything is now ready for a referendum," said Yevgeny Kiselyov, a leading political commentator.

"Now this movement is being used to reinforce the notion of Putin the father, Putin the son and Putin the Holy Spirit."

BABE OF THE DAY-Linda Cardellini

2007-12-20T12:47:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004802/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Cardellini

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

Song
The Futureheads
Meantime

Movie
Grandma's Boy

Grandma's Boy - Trailer

Posted Dec 20, 2005

A 36-year-old slacker video game nut has to move in with his grandmother and her roommates, but he tells all his friends he's living with 'hot babes.'

Story of the Day-Fire Burns at Old Executive Office Building

2007-12-20T12:40:00.000-05:00

Fire at Executive Office Building Washington

The Old Executive Office Building (OEOB), now officially known as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Executive Office Building (and formerly as the State, War, and Navy Building) is a federal office building next to the White House, on 17th Street, N.W., between Pennsylvania Avenue and New York Avenue, in Washington, D.C.

According to the National Register of Historic Places, the Old Executive Office Building, a National Historic Landmark, was built between 1871 and 1888. Designed by Alfred B. Mullett, Supervising Architect, in the French Second Empire-style, the building housed the Departments of State, War, and Navy. Much of the interior was designed by Richard von Ezdorf using fireproof cast-iron structural and decorative elements. The building gradually became seen as inefficient and was nearly demolished in 1957. Since 1981, major renovations have been performed, including the development of a comprehensive preservation program and the formulation of a master plan for the building's continued adaptive use. The building continues to house various agencies that compose the President's Executive Office, such as the Office of the Vice President, the Office of Management and Budget, and the National Security Council. However, its predominant purpose is that of the Vice President's Ceremonial Office, used mainly for special meetings and press conferences.[1]

Many celebrated national figures have participated in the historical events that have taken place within the Old Executive Office Building's granite walls. Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, William Howard Taft, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush all had offices in this building before becoming President. It has housed 16 Secretaries of the Navy, 21 Secretaries of War, and 24 Secretaries of State. Winston Churchill once walked its corridors and Japanese emissaries met there with Secretary of State Cordell Hull after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. President Herbert Hoover occupied the Secretary of the Navy's office for a few months following a fire in the Oval Office on Christmas Eve, 1929. In recent history, Richard Nixon had a private office there during his presidency. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson was the first in a succession of Vice Presidents to the present day that have had offices in the building. A small fire on December 19, 2007 damaged the offices of the vice-president.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Executive_Office_Building

Eisenhower Executive Office Building
http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/eeobtour/

Executive Building - Cheney's office fire

Fire Breaks Out at Eisenhower Executive Office Building Near White House
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317438,00.html

WASHINGTON — Thick smoke hovered over the nation's capitol Wednesday after a fire broke out on the White House compound in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

The blaze started at about 9:30 a.m. near the ceremonial office of Vice President Dick Cheney on the second floor of the building. The vice president was across the street in his office in the West Wing of the White House at the time.

The Secret Service is disputing reports that they kept firefighters from entering the building, saying that they allowed access to firefighters but the agency maintained security.

Click here for more from MyFoxDC.com.

Cheney's ceremonial offices suffered massive water and smoke damage, and another staff member's office was damaged by fire. No one was hurt in the blaze.

Secret Service spokesman Darrin Blackford said the building was evacuated as a precaution. District of Columbia firefighters poured water on the flames and moved furniture from the building onto a balcony.

Secret Service spokesman Darrin Blackford said the Old Executive Office building was evacuated as a precaution. "Everyone has been evacuated safely," White House spokeswoman Emily Lawrimore said. District of Columbia firefighters poured water on the blaze and moved furniture onto a balcony.

The Executive Office Building, a commanding structure with a granite, slate and cast iron exterior at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 17th Street, houses the Office of Management and Budget and staff of the National Security Council and other agencies.

Originally built for the State, War and Navy Departments between 1871 and 1888, the building was renamed in honor of President Dwight Eisenhower during the Clinton administration.

Fire breaks out near the White House

A Short History of White House Fires
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20071220/us_time/ashorthistoryofwhitehousefires;_ylt=Ahow8Ux_Ci8lfgA.hR6xWCGs0NUE
Putting aside the bizarre incidents - like the time an FBI informant set himself on fire in front of the White House in 2004 or the time a small plane crashed into the White House in 1994 - regular, workaday fires like the one that happened this morning in Vice President Dick Cheney's ceremonial suite at the Old Executive Office are not actually all that common on the White House grounds. Given the 27 wood-burning fireplaces, high volume of bureaucratic traffic and constant maintenance and refurbishing, it is not too bad a record.

In modern times, fires break out roughly two times every decade at the White House. The last real bonfire was way back in 1929 on Christmas Eve, when the West Wing was gutted by a massive conflagration. President Herbert Hoover had to leave his Christmas party to oversee the removal of important papers from the Oval Office. (But the Marine Band played on, and the First lady kept the party going.) The doozy, of course, was in 1814, when the invading Brits set the White House on fire. (Dolley Madison had to smuggle out the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington before the British troops got to the mansion.) Only the outside walls remained standing - and that was probably because of a timely thunderstorm that helped contain the fire. Scorch marks from that blaze are still apparent in some walls in the White House.

More recently, a small fire broke out on the exterior of the East Wing in 2000. That one started the way most White House fires start - as workers were painting or removing paint or otherwise refurbishing some corner of the place. In 1995, a tour bus burst into flames on Pennsylvania Avenue, across from the White House. The heat peeled the paint at Blair House, the presidential guesthouse. In the 1980s, there was a string of fire and smoke incidents under President Ronald Reagan, including one in the mess. But none did much damage.

Why haven't there been more fires at the White House? A serious fire detection system was installed in 1965. And it's very sensitive. When a sensor detects smoke, a warning goes off in the Secret Service's control center in the White House. The D.C. Fire Department is quickly called, and at least five engines and two ladder trucks respond from any one of several surrounding stations.(A unit is on hand anytime a helicopter takes off or lands at the White House.)

The response is slowed - slightly - by the Secret Service, which checks the ID of all the firefighters and then escorts them to the smoke. But the two organizations have fairly good relations these days, and the delay is usually only a minute or two. The best fire prevention system, though, is probably the security - and the workaholics. "If you had somebody walking through your house every floor, every day, you wouldn't have any problems either," says Walter Gold, executive director of the DC Fire Department Museum who responded in his volunteer capacity to the fire at the White House today. "It wasn't much of a fire," he says.

Fire out at building next to White House
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/12/19/eob.fire/index.html
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Firefighters quickly doused a two-alarm fire Wednesday in the historic Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which houses the vice president's ceremonial offices and the majority of the White House staff.

Firefighting crews used axes to break windows on the third floor of the ornate building shortly after the two-alarm blaze broke out after 9 a.m.

The fire started near the vice presidential offices, CNN's Kathleen Koch reported.

At its peak, heavy black smoke streamed from the building. Video Watch smoke pouring from building »

Within an hour, smoke had stopped pouring from the building and was replaced by a fine mist of water, which the firefighters used to ventilate the building until they could get fans set up.

Vice President Dick Cheney's working offices are in the West Wing of the White House, where he was at the time of the fire.

The White House is adjacent to the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. See how close building is to the White House »

There were no reports of injuries from the blaze, which appeared to be confined to the third floor, said D.C. Fire Department spokesman Alan Etter. Etter said the blaze appeared to have started in an electrical closet or a telephone bank.

"We have this under control," he said, adding that the building was evacuated.

The Secret Service and a number of other agencies were on scene, as were 15 fire trucks.

The building houses nearly all of the White House staff, including White House speechwriters, White House communications, senior staff from the Office of Management and Budget and the National Security Council.

It was constructed between 1871 and 1888 and has been undergoing renovations. Also called the Old Executive Office Building, the massive structure was originally built for the State, War and Navy Departments and is an example of the French Second Empire style of architecture, according to a government Web site.

The building is the site of a number of events, including ceremonial signings, news conferences and photo opportunities.

It was designed by Alfred Mullett, the supervising architect of the Treasury Department, and its exterior is composed of granite, slate and cast iron.

BABE OF THE DAY-Jordana Brewster

2007-12-19T12:54:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0108287/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jordana_Brewster

Jordana Brewster Hot Girl Fucked - Click here for more home videos

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-19T12:52:00.000-05:00

Song
Paul Oakenfold
Ready Steady Go

Movie
The Fast and the Furious

Story of the Day-Disease Turning Black TV Anchor White

2007-12-19T12:47:00.000-05:00

Vitiligo (pronounced /ˈvɪdlˈaɪgoʊ/) or leukoderma is a chronic skin condition that causes loss of pigment, resulting in irregular pale patches of skin. The precise cause of vitiligo is complex and not fully understood. There is some evidence suggesting it is caused by a combination of auto-immune, genetic, and environmental factors. The population incidence worldwide is considered to be between 1% and 2% (0.74% in the United States).[1]

According to Diseases Database: "A disorder consisting of areas of macular depigmentation, commonly on extensor aspects of extremities, on the face or neck, and in skin folds. Age of onset is often in young adulthood and the condition tends to progress gradually with lesions enlarging and extending until a quiescent state is reached."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitiligo

vitiligo news, vitiligo success stories, vitiligo information ...
http://vitiligocover.com/

Frequently Asked Questions About Vitiligo
http://www.vitiligosupport.org/faq.cfm

`I was still brown on the inside'
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/lifestyle/health_and_beauty/health_and_beauty_feature/s/1024944_i_was_still_brown_on_the_inside
WHAT if you were born into one race and found that because of a medical condition your skin colour changed and identified you with another?

That is one of the questions tackled dramatically by Manchester writer and performer, Rani Moorthy in her new one woman show, Shades of Brown.

The play, at The Library theatre this week, examines issues of skin colour seen through the eyes of three women, one of whom has the skin condition vitiligo.

The story was inspired by the real life experience of Sarojini Ariyanayagam, who began to lose her skin pigmentation due to vitiligo at the age of 12.

Now living in the US, Sarojini, who founded the Vitiligo Society, travelled the world for a cure to no avail. Eventually there was so little of her original colouring left she underwent a de-pigmentation treatment to make her completely white and virtually unrecognisable from the person she once was.

"I was struck by the idea that a Tamil woman, who lived in Britain, who was as brown as I was, could suddenly lose that colour. There came a point where she couldn't camouflage anymore. She realised she couldn't continue being a patch and in order to be whole she had to live as a white person," says Rani.

"It's being brown on the inside and white on the outside. It's very different to other skin disorders. There's no sense of a disease the way we associate with an illness. But what gets eroded is your sense of identity.

"My character is an Asian scientist - but when the science doesn't really help she's just got to deal with what's left. It's very emotional but I don't present her as a victim. She's courageous, she's got to make a decision that perhaps no-one in the audience has had to - what tribe she belongs to?"

Michael Jackson is the most famous sufferer of vitiligo. His extensive plastic surgery has left some sceptical about his condition and he's faced much criticism for rejection of his black identity because of his lightened skin colour. However, Jackson insists the lightening of his skin is due to vitiligo.

Both Jackson's and Sarojini's cases are extreme. However, to much lesser degrees the condition is fairly common, affecting about one in 100 people.

Dr Paul Griffiths, dermatologist at Octopus Health in Manchester city centre, explains: "You can get it on the whole of your skin, but that's not common.

"It's completely unpredictable, but if it's a small area that's been that way for some time then it's probably reasonable to presume that it's not going to develop dramatically."

Vitiligo isn't infectious and doesn't cause symptoms such as an itching or pain associated with other skin conditions. There is no effect on general health, although someone with vitiligo has to take extra care in the sun. Sunscreen of at least factor 20 is needed on the affected areas because the melanocyte cells, which produce melanin (skin pigment), are not active in these patches and don't provide any natural protection from the sun.

It's not clear what causes vitiligo although it is believed to have a genetic link. It is also thought to be an auto-immune condition, because it's sometimes linked to diabetes, thyroid disease and alopecia.

"There are probably many people with vitiligo who never visit their doctor," says Dr Griffiths. "But you should let a professional have a look at it because there are other medical reasons for loss of pigment. Using a special light we can see areas that aren't pigmented to make it easier to show the extent of the problem. The patient might also need to have some blood tests taken, just to make sure they haven't got any of the other auto-immune conditions sometimes associated with vitiligo such as diabetes and thyroid disease."

Treatments to restore pigmentation have variable success. The traditional treatment is steroid cream, which works in about 10-15 per cent of cases.

Tacrolimus, a cream recently licensed for eczema, is showing clinical evidence that it also helps with vitiligo but is not licensed for this yet.

"It's not easy to treat," Dr Griffiths adds. "It's more common on face, hands and feet, so sometimes you don't need to have the treatment all over.

"PUVA - involves taking a tablet that makes your skin sensitive to ultraviolet light. You then go into an ultraviolet light cabinet at the hospital a couple of times a week for the course of the treatment. This will improve maybe 50% of people.

"If the problem doesn't get better then you can either de-pigment the normal skin that's left or use a camouflage service run by the British Red Cross, which has a range of medical preparations to match to a person's skin type and hide the vitiligo."

'Nobody knows what causes it'
http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/lifestyle/health_and_beauty/health_and_beauty_feature/s/1024943_nobody_knows_what_causes_it
VITILIGO, although more noticeable on more highly pigmented skins, affects men and women of all races.

Jane Murphy, 38 from Chorlton, first noticed changes on her knees when she was 11, but it was another 14 years before she received a diagnosis of vitiligo.

"It was just a couple of small patches that didn't go brown when I tanned. I didn't really know what it was - most people with vitiligo don't."

Jane first visited a doctor about the complaint 10 years later when it began to spread to her face and other areas of her body but it was another four years before she finally got a diagnosis.

"It took ages to get a name put to it. Nobody really knows what causes it even now - it's all a bit of a mystery really."

Jane doesn't have any associated auto-immune conditions, although there are genetic links. Her mum developed vitiligo when she was pregnant which later cleared during the menopause. Her granddad also had vitiligo.

"There doesn't seem to be anything that definitely helps," Jane adds. "I was sent to the Red Cross camouflage service and they were really helpful.

"If I don't wear make-up on my face then I'm quite conscious of it, but it doesn't really bother me.

"I suppose I'm fortunate in that I'm quite pale skinned anyway.

"Some people ask me what it is, but you've just got to get things in perspective.

"I avoid getting a tan. I should really wear sun block all year round. If I don't, I regret it because I just look very odd - there is absolutely no protection and I go bright red in patches."

Disease Turning Black TV Anchor White
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/disease-turning-black-tv-anchor-white/20071218140309990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Lee Thomas' skin is betraying him.

His once brown, even complexion is now mottled with pale patches around his eyes and mouth, along his nose and on his ears; his arms, shoulders and chest are speckled and blotched.

"I'm a black man turning white on television and people can see it," says Thomas, an anchor and entertainment reporter for the local Fox Broadcasting Company affiliate. "If you've watched me over the years, you've seen my hands completely change from brown to white."

Thomas has vitiligo, a disorder in which pigment-making cells are destroyed. White patches appear on different parts of the body, tissues in the mouth and nose, and the retina.

"There is no cause. There is no cure, and it's very random," Thomas says. "I could turn all the way white or mostly white."

As many as 65 million people worldwide have the disorder, including up to 2 million in the United States.

Few people, outside medical professionals and those with the disease, had heard the term "vitiligo" until Michael Jackson revealed in the early 1990s that the disorder was behind his skin turning brown to white.

It's not fatal, but experts say vitiligo robs people of self-confidence, evokes ridicule and unpleasant stares, and pushes some into unforced seclusion.

The 40-year-old Thomas says that's not where the disorder needs to be. He openly talks about vitiligo and how it has affected his life and career, and has written a book about his journey titled "Turning White: A Memoir of Change." Along the way, Thomas says he's met others with the disorder and has become a celebrity spokesman for the Columbus, Ohio-based National Vitiligo Foundation.

Vitiligo attacks the soul and psyche, foundation executive director Robert Haas says.

"When was the last time you saw someone with vitiligo handling your food? It is the public's image that it is some leprosy-type of disease," he says. "A lot of folks feel this disease has trapped them and kept them away from their life goals."

That was Thomas' fear.

He uses a combination of creams and makeup to cover the growing patches of skin — which he calls devoid of color — on his face, hands and arms. Viewers, co-workers and, for years, his basketball buddies, were none the wiser.

Only family members and those closest to him knew the secret he had kept since age 25.

Thomas first noticed a change after getting a haircut while working in Louisville, Ky. He looked in a mirror and thought the barber had nicked him. A closer look revealed a pale spot, about the size of a quarter.

"I got two more on the other side of my scalp, on my hand and one in the corner of my mouth," he recalls in an interview from the station's studio. "That's when I went to the doctor and got diagnosed."

He didn't let it slow down his blossoming career. From Louisville, he soon landed at WABC in New York for three years beginning in 1994. After a short freelancing stint in Los Angeles, Thomas found his way to WJBK in Detroit in 1997. He has carved a niche in the Motor City market with his quirky, upbeat and humorous reporting style; his confidence, constant smile and positive air on the set mirrors his demeanor off the set as well.

Even though Thomas uses makeup to conceal his skin discoloration, he realized the vitiligo was becoming more obvious when he couldn't hide it from a preschooler during a story about a playground. His two-toned hands frightened the girl, who began to cry.

"I thought my career was over," says the Emmy award winner who routinely travels to Hollywood for one-on-one interviews with celebrities including Will Smith, Tom Cruise and Halle Berry.

So he gathered himself one day and approached the station's news director, prepared to walk away from television.

"She said, 'Let's just see what happens,'" Thomas recalls. "As it got worse, she kept encouraging me to tell my story."

Dana Hahn, WJBK's vice president of news, says the station was concerned about Thomas possibly leaving because of the condition.

"Lee is also a friend and we wanted to help," she says. "He had covered it up so well, we really didn't realize the impact it was having or how far it had spread."

Thomas finally agreed to tell his story on television in November 2005.

After the first segment on Thomas' vitiligo aired, Hahn says he took a leave of absence and missed the initial response from viewers.

"I received 40 to 50 e-mails a day the entire time he was gone," Hahn says. "So many people found support and encouragement in his story. I've never seen the kind of response to any story in my 12 years at Fox 2."

At the time, Thomas was already writing his book.

"As all those things happened, the tone of the book changed," he says. "I was writing for all those people who were afraid to come outside."

Dr. Sancy Leachman, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Utah, calls vitiligo stigmatizing, driving some to even consider suicide.

"They feel people are looking at them all of the time," she says. "They are very self-conscious about people staring at them in the grocery line. It can be a very demoralizing condition."

Thomas acknowledges he even preferred the security of solitude to the awkward stares of strangers when not wearing his makeup.

"There were times when I would not come out of the house," he says. "I call it a mental war. It was me saying, 'I don't want to deal with it today.' I never stayed in for very long. I know people who stay in now for months at a time."

When he's out socially now, Thomas forgoes the makeup he wears on camera.

He met his girlfriend of seven months, Karen Tate, at a vegetarian restaurant they both enjoy. She said when they're out together, she notices some people staring and making muffled comments about his appearance.

"He doesn't say anything," Tate, 28, says. "It doesn't really bother me. Some people are just rude."

She says she sees past what some people can't. "He just has a very free spirit. He is just a very nice guy. He opens up completely in his book. It is something he really wanted to do."

Surprisingly, Thomas gives vitiligo some credit.

"Having this disease forces me to focus on what I am: kind, caring, honest," he says. "There are people who have diseases that will kill them."

The Michael Jackson Syndrome: Vitiligo -1993

BABE OF THE DAY-Shania Twain

2007-12-18T12:47:00.000-05:00

That Don't Impress Me Much

Forever And For Always

Man! I Feel Like a Woman

Gonna Getcha Good

Any Man Of Mine

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-18T12:45:00.000-05:00

Song
Suit of Lights
Lifetime

Movie
I Heart Huckabees

Story of the Day-Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy

2007-12-18T12:42:00.000-05:00

Galaxy blasts neighbor with deadly jet
‘Death star galaxy’ could obliterate the atmospheres of planets
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22299201/
For the first time astronomers have witnessed a supermassive black hole blasting its galactic neighbor with a deadly beam of energy.

The "death star galaxy," as NASA astronomers called it, could obliterate the atmospheres of planets but also trigger the birth of stars in its wake of its destructive beam. Fortunately, the cosmic violence is a safe distance from our own neck of the cosmos.

"We've seen many jets produced by black holes, but this is the first time we've seen one punch into another galaxy like we're seeing here," said Dan Evans, astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass. "This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling."

Evans and his colleagues detail their findings in an upcoming issue of the Astrophysical Journal.

Cosmic death
The deadly galaxy — the largest of two in a system known as 3C321 — is aiming the high-energy jet from its center at a smaller galaxy 20,000 light-years away from it, or roughly the distance from Earth to the Milky Way's core. The entire system is located about 1.4 billion light-years away from Earth.

A bright spot in a NASA composite image reveals that the beam is striking the edge of the smaller galaxy, deflecting the spindle of energy into intergalactic space. While not a direct hit, astronomers said the consequences are frightening.

"This is a fascinating result, and we can be glad that we're seeing it from a safe distance," said Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York who did not contribute to the study. "Knowing how lethal the radiation from the jet could be, I wouldn't want to be anywhere near its line of fire."

Jets from supermassive black holes produce tremendous radiation in the form of X-rays, gamma rays and electrons traveling close to the speed of light. Evans said, however, that the X-ray and gamma-ray photons would ultimately do the most damage to planets.

"The photons can have a really dramatic, profound effect on a planetary atmosphere," he said, including vaporizing ozone and other gases. With the protective layers gone, life at the surface would be subject to the jet's full wrath.

Recent attack
The offending galaxy probably began hosing its companion about 1 million years ago, which is relatively recent on a cosmic time scale. Evans said the unusual event makes 3C321 an important object for learning more about the universe.

"We've seen jets do pretty weird things to their environments, but a head-on collision is really rare and generates a [large] amount of information about physics that we can understand and use," Evans said. "For that galaxy to be looking right down ... the barrel of the gun of that jet is incredibly rare, so this makes it a really exciting discovery."

Turns out that the "death ray" may not be all bad news for the victimized galaxy, at least theoretically, as such a massive influx of energy and radiation could help form new stars and solar systems by ripping apart older ones.

To fully view the galactic violence and rebirth, astronomers used NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory, Hubble and Spitzer space telescopes, and the Very Large Array and MERLIN radio telescopes on Earth.

Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121701266.html?hpid=moreheadlines

A jet of highly charged radiation from a supermassive black hole at the center of a distant galaxy is blasting another galaxy nearby -- an act of galactic violence that astronomers said yesterday they have never seen before.

Using images from the orbiting Chandra X-Ray Observatory and other sources, scientists said the extremely intense jet from the larger galaxy can be seen shooting across 20,000 light-years of space and plowing into the outer gas and dust of the smaller one.

The smaller galaxy is being transformed by the radiation and the jet is being bent before shooting millions of light-years farther in a new direction.

"What we've identified is an act of violence by a black hole, with an unfortunate nearby galaxy in the line of fire," said Dan Evans, the study leader at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge. He said any planets orbiting the stars of the smaller galaxy would be dramatically affected, and any life forms would likely die as the jet's radiation transformed the planets' atmosphere.

Black holes are generally thought of as mysterious cosmic phenomena that swallow matter, but the supermassive ones that occur at the center of many -- possibly all -- galaxies also set loose tremendous bursts of energy as matter swirls around the disk of material that circles the black hole but does not make it in.

That energy, often in the form of highly charged gamma rays and X-rays, shoots out in powerful jets that can be millions of light-years long and 1,000 light-years wide.

Scientists are just beginning to understand these jets, which not only transform matter in their path but also help produce "stellar nurseries," where new stars are formed.

Evans's collaborator, Martin Hardcastle of the University of Hertfordshire in England, said the collision they have identified began no more than 1 million years ago and could continue for 10 million to 100 million more years. Hardcastle called the collision a great opportunity to learn more about the jets.

"We see jets all over the universe, but we're still struggling to understand some of their basic properties," he said. "This system . . . gives us a chance to learn how they're affected when they slam into something -- like a galaxy -- and what they do after that."

The two galaxies are more than 1.4 billion light-years away from the Milky Way galaxy (a light-year equals about 6 trillion miles). But they are close to each other in cosmic terms -- about as far as the distance from Earth to the center of the Milky Way. That the two appear to be moving toward a merger may have played a role in creating such a powerful jet from the larger galaxy's central black hole.

The researchers said that the collision would have no effect on Earth, but the process is one that could play out in our galaxy a billion years into the future.

The galaxy Andromeda is the closest to the Milky Way, and the two are gradually coming closer to each other. In time, astronomers say, the two will merge, and the process may cause the dormant central black holes in either the Milky Way or Andromeda to become active and begin sending out similarly powerful jets.

If a jet were to hit Earth, Evans said, it would destroy the ozone layer and collapse the magnetosphere that blankets the planet and protects it from harmful solar particles. Without the ozone layer and magnetosphere, he said, much of life on Earth would end.

"This jet could be causing all sorts of problems for the smaller galaxy it is pummeling," Evans said.

Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said the discovery illustrates how researchers can now observe astronomical phenomena using many different tools and understand how they behave at many different points along the electromagnetic spectrum. Only when scientists measure a galaxy at all different wavelengths, he said, "can you really understand what's going on."

In making their discovery, the researchers used data from three orbiting instruments -- the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Space Telescope -- as well as ground-based observatories including the Very Large Array telescope in New Mexico and Britain's Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network. The Astrophysical Journal will publish the results next year.

BABE OF THE DAY- Jeanne Tripplehorn

2007-12-17T12:40:00.001-05:00

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Tripplehorn

Basic Instinct - Watch more funny videos here

Song of the day/Tv show of the Day

2007-12-17T12:36:00.000-05:00

Song
311
Love Song

Tv show
Big Love

Story of the Day-Cancer Killed Almost 8 Million Worldwide in 2007

2007-12-17T12:35:00.000-05:00

Cancer Killed Almost 8 Million Worldwide in 2007
12 million new cases -- many preventable -- were diagnosed this year, American Cancer Society reports
http://health.usnews.com/usnews/health/healthday/071217/cancer-killed-almost-8-million-worldwide-in-2007.htm
MONDAY, Dec. 17 (HealthDay News) -- Cancer continues to cut a deadly swath across the globe, with the American Cancer Society reporting 12 million new cases of malignancy diagnosed worldwide in 2007, with 7.6 million people dying from the disease.

The report, Global Cancer Facts & Figures, finds that 5.4 million of those cancers and 2.9 million deaths are in more affluent, developed nations, while 6.7 million new cancer cases and 4.7 million deaths hit people in developing countries.

"The point of the report is to promote cancer control worldwide, and increase awareness worldwide," said report co-author Dr. Ahmedin Jemal, director of the society's Cancer Occurrence Office.

The number of cancers and cancer deaths around the world is on the rise, Jemal said, mostly due to an aging population. "There is increasing life expectancy, and cancer occurs more frequently in older age groups," he noted.

Lifestyle may be another reason for the rise in malignancies in developing countries, Jemal said, as people adopt Western behaviors such as smoking, high-fat diets and less physical activity.

The best way to stem the increasing number of cancer cases and deaths is prevention, especially in poorer countries, the expert said. In many developing nations, the health-care infrastructure simply isn't there to offer cancer screening and treatment for most people, Jemal added.

In developed countries, the most common cancers among men are prostate, lung and colorectal cancer. Among women, the most common cancers are breast, colorectal and lung cancer, according to the report.

However, in developing countries the three most common cancer among men are lung, stomach and liver, and among women, breast, and cervix uteri.

Worldwide, some 15 percent of all cancers are thought to be related to infections, including hepatitis (liver cancer) and human papilloma virus (cervical cancer). But the incidence of infection-related cancers remains three times higher in developing countries compared with developed countries (26 percent vs. 8 percent), according to the report.

In addition, cancer survival rates in many developing countries are far below those in developed countries. This is mostly due to the lack of early detection and treatment services. For example, in North America five-year childhood cancer survival rates are about 75 percent compared with three-year survival rates of 48 percent to 62 percent in Central America, the report notes. The report estimates that 60 percent of the world's children who develop cancer have little or no access to treatment.

The report also includes a section on the toll tobacco use takes around the world. In 2000, some 5 million people worldwide died from tobacco use. Of these, about 30 percent (1.42 million) died from cancer -- 850,000 from lung cancer alone.

Jemal believes smoking is a key culprit.

"Smoking prevalence is decreasing in developed countries. So, as tobacco companies are losing market in developed countries they are trying to expand their market in developing countries," he said.

In China alone, more than 350 million people smoke. "That's more than the entire population of the United States," Jemal said. "If these current patterns continue, there will be 2 billion smokers worldwide by the year 2030, half of whom will die of smoking-related diseases if they do not quit," he added.

In the 20th century, tobacco use caused about 100 million deaths around the world. In this century, that figure is expected to rise to over 1 billion people. Most of these will occur in developing countries.

One expert agreed that many cancer deaths can be avoided through lifestyle changes.

"What is most provocative here is not the total global burden of suffering and death cancer causes, dramatic though that may be, but the variations in cancer occurrence around the world, and the insights provided about how much of the cancer burden need not occur at all," said Dr. David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine.

In developing countries, cancer of the uterine cervix is a leading cause of death in women, Katz noted.

"Yet this infection-related cancer is now preventable by vaccine, and long treatable when detected early using the Pap smear. As a result, death from cervical cancer in developed countries is dramatically lower. Its toll in the developing world is testimony to missed opportunities to apply our resources effectively, and equitably," he said.

Cancer of the liver, often related to hepatitis infection, is a leading cause of death in developing countries, but not so in developed countries. "Again, an infection preventable with vaccine is causing death because of inequities in the distribution and use of existing resources," Katz said.

Prostate and colon cancers are more common in wealthier countries, where they are likely related to poor diet and obesity, Katz said. "Unnecessary suffering and death are occurring in affluent countries due to dietary excesses," he said.

Katz also noted that tobacco-related cancer is largely preventable. "The toll of tobacco-related disease, including lung cancer, is an appalling example of a global willingness to tolerate preventable suffering and death for the sake of profit," he said.

These data show both developed and developing countries how to move toward the lower rates of specific cancers, Katz said.

"It will be a tragic failure for public health if instead of applying these lessons developed countries continue to export tobacco and dietary transgressions so that the developing world adds to its current cancer burden ours as well," he said.

BABE OF THE DAY-Alice Braga

2007-12-14T12:50:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0103797/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Braga

Mr. Skin Minute For December 14th, 2007 - More free videos are here

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-14T12:47:00.000-05:00

Will Smith
Switch

Movie
I Am Legend

Story of the Day-Baseball's Steroid Era

2007-12-14T12:36:00.000-05:00

The question of steroid use in baseball has been an ongoing issue for Major League Baseball since the mid 1990s and into the 21st century. Steroids are performance-enhancing drugs which have been banned from baseball.

While rumors of drug use by players have persisted for decades, the controversy over steroids has grown considerably due to the drastic rise in home runs since 1995. During the decade that followed the 1994 Major League Baseball strike, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds each surpassed Roger Maris' home run record, which had stood largely unchallenged for over 30 years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steroids_in_baseball

Players Linked to Steroids and Human Growth Hormone
http://www.baseballssteroidera.com/bse-list-steroid-hgh-users-baseball.html

Big names in the Mitchell baseball steroids probe
http://rss.msnbc.msn.com/id/22246151/

Mitchell to release drug report Thursday
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071212/ap_on_sp_ba_ne/bbo_mitchell_report
George Mitchell is ready to reveal all. Thursday afternoon, he'll announce the results of his 20-month investigation into drug use in baseball.

But baseball commissioner Bud Selig does not plan to walk the few blocks to witness it. Instead, he'll hold his own news conference at 4:30 p.m., 2 1/2 hours after Mitchell.

Mitchell said Wednesday he will release his report at his news conference, and it will be posted online at MLB.com shortly after that.

He's expected by many in baseball to be critical of the sport for being slow to react to its drug problem in 1990s and beyond. What they will be looking to see in his report is how he parcels blame among Selig, club owners, general managers, other team employees, the players' association and players themselves.

The revelation of players who have not yet been publicly linked to drug use figures to be the most sensational part of the report. Media reports have linked an array of All-Stars and MVPs to performance-enhancers in recent years, among them Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Ken Caminiti, Juan Gonzalez and Mark McGwire.

Bonds, indicted last month for perjury and obstruction of justice over his 2003 testimony in the BALCO drug case, has denied knowingly using performance-enhancers, as have Gonzalez and McGwire.

Baseball reviewed a draft Tuesday at the Manhattan office of DLA Piper, the law firm that Mitchell chairs, a baseball official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because Mitchell hasn't authorized any statements.

Baseball officials have said for several weeks that management would be able to examine the report on performance-enhancing drugs a few days before it is made public to make sure it does not contain confidential information that if released would violate the collective bargaining agreement between players and owners.

The joint drug agreement, which has been part of the labor contract since September 2002, prohibits the commissioner's office, teams and consultants from disclosing player test results, treatment and other information except in very limited, specified circumstances.

Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, is a director of the Boston Red Sox and served on one of Selig's economic study committees. Selig hired him in March 2006 to investigate drug use in the sport.

George John Mitchell, GBE (born August 20, 1933 in Waterville, Maine) is a former Democratic Party politician and United States Senator who currently serves as chairman of the worldwide law firm DLA Piper and also as the Chancellor of the Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was the U.S. Senate Majority Leader from 1989 to 1995 and chairman of The Walt Disney Company from March 2004 until January 2007.

On August 10, 2007, ABC News reported that Senator Mitchell had been diagnosed with prostate cancer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_J._Mitchell

Mitchell talks about his Mitchell report

Who made the Mitchell Report?

Mitchell Report List
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8TGQ8VG0&show_article=1
Here's a list of most of the names Major League Baseball players (AP) - listed in the Mitchell Report.
The following players were connected to steroids, either use or possession, in the report:

Lenny Dykstra

David Segui

Larry Bigbie

Brian Roberts

Jack Cust

Tim Laker

Josias Manzanillo

Todd Hundley

Mark Carreon

Hal Morris

Matt Franco

Rondell White

Andy Pettitte

Roger Clemens

Chuck Knoblauch

Jason Grimsley

Gregg Zaun

David Justice

F.P. Santangelo

Glenallen Hill

Mo Vaughn

Denny Neagle

Ron Villone

Ryan Franklin

Chris Donnels

Todd Williams

Phil Hiatt

Todd Pratt

Kevin Young

Mike Lansing

Cody McKay

Kent Mercker

Adam Piatt

Miguel Tejada

Jason Christiansen

Mike Stanton

Stephen Randolph

Jerry Hairston

Paul Lo Duca

Adam Riggs

Bart Miadich

Fernando Vina

Kevin Brown

Eric Gagne

Mike Bell

Matt Herges

Gary Bennett

Jim Parque

Brendan Donnelly

Chad Allen

Jeff Williams

Exavier "Nook" Logan

Howie Clark

Paxton Crawford

Ken Caminiti

Rafael Palmeiro

Luis Perez

Derrick Turnbow

Ricky Bones

Ricky Stone

The following players were cited under "Alleged Internet Purchases of Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball."

Rick Ankiel

David Bell

Paul Byrd

Jose Canseco

Jay Gibbons

Troy Glaus

Jason Grimsley

Jose Guillen

Darren Holmes

Gary Matthews Jr.

John Rocker

Scott Schoeneweis

Ismael Valdez

Matt Williams

Steve Woodard

The following players were linked through BALCO:

Benito Santiago

Gary Sheffield

Randy Velarde

Jason Giambi

Jeremy Giambi

Bobby Estalella

Barry Bonds

Marvin Benard

TIMELINE: Steroids and Baseball
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316730,00.html

1998: A jar of androstenedione is discovered in the locker of St. Louis slugger Mark McGwire, who is neck and neck with Sammy Sosa in the great chase at Roger Maris' all-time record of 61 homers hit during the 1961 season. McGwire admits he uses the steroids precursor and goes on to hit a then record 70 homers. Using steroids, precursors or performance-enhancing drugs is not illegal at that point in Major League Baseball.

2001: MLB unilaterally implements its first random drug-testing program in the Minor Leagues. All players outside the 40-man roster of each Major League club are subject to random testing for steroid-based, performance enhancing drugs, plus drugs of abuse (marijuana, cocaine). The penalties are 15 games for a first positive test, 30 games for a second, 60 games for a third, and one year for a fourth. A fifth offense earns a ban from professional baseball for life.

June 18, 2002: At a Senate Commerce Committee hearing in Washington, D.C., Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John McCain (R-Ariz) tell Commissioner Bud Selig and MLB Players Association executive director Don Fehr that a strict drug testing program at the Major League level must be negotiated during collective bargaining for a new Basic Agreement, which is about to expire. Up to this point, no MLB player can be tested for drug use without probable cause. Fehr tells the committee that the Congress should enact laws to ban over-the-counter sales of performance-enhancing substances.
July 8, 2002: The Players Association meets in Chicago the day before the All-Star Game at Milwaukee. Fehr gives a lengthy dissertation to the media after the meeting about where the union stands on a number of issues, including privacy concerns regarding random drug testing.

August 30, 2002: MLB and the union unveil Major League Baseball's Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program as an addendum to the new Basic Agreement, which is bargained at the 11th hour just as the players are about to go out on strike. The new policy calls for "Survey Testing" in 2003 to gauge the use of steroids among players on the 40-man rosters of each club. The tests will be anonymous and no one will be punished.

Feb. 17, 2003: Steve Bechler, a Baltimore Orioles pitcher, collapses on the field in Florida during a Spring Training workout and dies from heat exhaustion. He is 23 years old. An autopsy showed that the over-the-counter, performance-enhancing drug, Ephedra, was found in his system and was considered by the medical examiner as the primary cause of Bechler's death. Subsequently, MLB places Ephedra on the list of banned drugs at the Minor League level and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bans it from over-the-counter sales.

March 1, 2003: Drug testing begins in Major League Spring Training camps. Some teams, including the Chicago White Sox, consider balking at taking the tests to skew the results. A refusal to participate in the "Survey" phase is considered a positive test. That first year, all MLB players on the 40-man rosters are subject to be randomly tested once. In addition, MLB had the right to retest up to 240 players a second time by the end of the season. All players ultimately complied and took the tests.

Oct. 29, 2003: The FDA bans THG. The next day MLB places the designer drug on its testing list for the 2004 season, but is barred by its own agreement from retroactively re-testing the 2003 urine samples for THG traces.

Nov. 13, 2003: MLB announced that 5-to-7 percent of 1,438 tests were positive during the 2003 season, well above the threshold, setting in motion mandatory testing for performance-enhancing drugs with punishments for the first time in Major League history. The first positive test put a player on a medical track that includes treatment and further testing. Otherwise, there's no punitive for a first positive test.

December, 2003: Ten Major League players, including Barry Bonds of the Giants, and Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield of the Yankees, are called to testify in front of a San Francisco grand jury investigating the machinations of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), owned and operated by Victor Conte. None of the players are charged with using performance-enhancing drugs, although four men, including Conte and Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer and childhood friend, are indicted for tax evasion and selling steroids without prescriptions.

March 10, 2004: The Senate Commerce Committee holds another hearing. Selig and Fehr again appear to testify. They are told in no uncertain terms that MLB's current drug policy is not strong enough. McCain says: "Your failure to commit to addressing this issue straight on and immediately will motivate this committee to search for legislative remedies," thus setting the legislative process in motion.

April 8, 2004: The grand jury presiding over the BALCO case issues a subpoena to obtain the results of all the drug tests collected from Major League players during the 2003 season. After negotiations by the union, which argues that the subpoena is violating privacy rights afforded to the players in the Joint Drug Agreement, the drug tests are turned over.

May 11, 2004: MLB and the Players Association agree to move all of the collection of urine samples and drug testing for both the Major Leagues and Minor Leagues to World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) facilities in Montreal and Los Angeles.

June, 2004: MLB begins drug testing Major League players under the punitive phase of the Joint Drug Agreement.

Oct. 22, 2004: President Bush signs into law the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004 that the U.S. Congress passed earlier in the month. The bill added hundreds of steroid-based drugs and precursors such as androstenedione to the list of anabolic steroids that are classified as Schedule III controlled substances, which are banned from over-the-counter sales without a prescription. By virtue of MLB's own agreement with the union, all of the drugs banned by Congress are now on baseball's own banned list.

November 2004: The San Francisco Chronicle prints portions of leaked grand jury testimony given the previous year by Bonds and Giambi. Giambi reportedly admits injecting himself with steroids and Bonds reportedly says he unwittingly may have allowed his former trainer, Anderson, to rub cream that had a steroid base on his legs.

Dec. 3, 2004: Commissioner Selig again publicly presses the union to accept stronger terms in MLB's current drug policy. Negotiations have been on going for since May, but have born no fruit. Citing the recent grand jury testimony revelations, Selig says for the first time he would welcome government intervention into the situation if the sides can't reach accord through collective bargaining.

Dec. 7, 2004: The Executive Board of the Players Association, meeting in Phoenix, authorizes its representatives to move forward "to attempt to conclude" a more stringent drug policy with the Commissioner's office, Fehr said.

Jan. 13, 2005: During a quarterly owners' meeting in Scottsdale, Ariz., the owners vote unanimously to accept recently concluded negotiations between MLB and the union strengthening the drug program. The new punitive measures for Major Leaguers are a 10-day suspension for the first positive test, 30 days for the second, 60 days for the third, and one year for the fourth. All without pay. On the first positive, the players name is released to the public. The program is separated from the Basic Agreement, which expires on Dec. 19, 2006, and is extended until 2008.

Feb. 14, 2005: Jose Canseco's new "tell all" book about his life in baseball using steroids and sharing them with some of his former teammates, hits the stores. The revelations are widely played in the media and carried by CBS in two segments of "60 Minutes" during which the former Oakland A's slugger claims he helped inject teammates McGwire, Giambi Rafael Palmeiro and Juan Gonzalez, among others. During the latter segment, Mike Wallace asks Sandy Alderson, then MLB's executive vice president, baseball operations, if baseball intended to investigate the allegations. After Alderson rejects that notion, members of Congress say they will investigate the matter for baseball.

March 2, 2005: Rob Manfred, MLB's vice president of labor relations and human resources, says that drug testing will begin at Spring Training camps under the auspices of the revised program even though it has yet to be ratified by the union.

March 5, 2005: Selig announces the results of the 2004 drug tests in Mesa, Ariz. Selig says he's "startled" by the drop in positive test results from 5-to-7 percent in 2003 to between 1-to-2 percent in 2004. The actual numbers were 12 positive tests in 1,183. No player tested positively twice, so under the rules of the old program, they were neither suspended nor had their names released.

March 8, 2005: The House Government Reform Committee calls a hearing in Washington to hear testimony from MLB executives, plus current and former players about steroid use in MLB. At first, the government sends out invitations, which are turned down by the various parties. The Committee then issues subpoenas, which are fought by MLB. In the end, all agree to attend, including Canseco, McGwire, Curt Schilling, Palmeiro, Frank Thomas, and Sosa, plus Selig, Fehr, Alderson and Padres general manager Kevin Towers.

March 17, 2005: At the 11-hour hearing that is sometimes contentious, Congressmen again tell MLB and union officials to beef up their drug program "or we we'll do it for you," said Henry Waxman, the committee's top Democrat. "And you don't want that." McGwire, almost in tears at times, tells the Committee that he has been advised by his attorneys not to discuss the issue. "My lawyers have advised me that I cannot answer these questions without jeopardizing my friends, my family or myself. I intend to follow their advice," McGwire said, declining to delve into the past.

March 18, 2005: Various bills controlling the use and testing of drug use in professional sports begin to be formulated in several committees.

April 3, 2005: Tampa Bay's Alex Sanchez becomes the first big league player to test positively under the new Joint Drug Program. He is suspended for 10 days. By early May, five players on the 40-man rosters of various clubs have been suspended the requisite 10 days for testing positive.

April 4, 2005: MLB announces that 38 Minor Leaguers all tested positive for steroid use. Most of them were suspended for 15 games. By the end of the month, more than 50 Minor Leaguers have been suspended.

April 25, 2005: Selig sends a letter to Fehr stating that the recently strengthened drug policy needs to be strengthened some more with tougher penalties and more incidence of testing. Selig is now calling for a "three strikes and your out approach," to disciplining players who repetitively test positive for steroid use: 50-game suspensions for the first offense, 100 games for the second and third-time offenders to be banned permanently. Selig also says he will unilaterally institute these rules in the Minor Leagues next season.

May 2, 2005: Fehr responds to Selig by letter, saying the matter is open to discussion. After various meetings with MLB officials, Fehr says he must begin the long process of going club-to-club to gauge the sentiment of all the Major League players.

May 11, 2005: During a quarterly meeting in New York, the 30 owners vote unanimously to support Selig's drug proposal put forth in his April 25 letter.

May 13, 2005: A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee calls the Commissioners and union leaders from all five professional sports leagues to testify at two days of hearings to discuss a proposed bill that would regulate the testing of players for steroid and amphetamine use. Among the proposals under consideration are penalties that match international and Olympic rules: a two-year suspension for the first positive test and a lifetime ban for the second.

May 16, 2005: Selig says in an open letter to baseball fans that he would support government intervention and the Olympic rules if MLB can't collectively bargain an enhanced drug policy with the union.

May 18, 2005: Selig, the NHL's Gary Bettman, the NBA's David Stern and the MLS's Don Garber appear before the subcommittee, which again tells them that the government is ready to intervene and set standards for drug testing in all professional sports. "In a perfect world I'd rather this just be done in collective bargaining or voluntary acceptance by the players in respective sports," said Congressman Joe Barton (R-Tex.)."But obviously we don't live in a perfect world. And in this case we need federal intervention. I think we've gone too long."

May 24, 2005: The House Government Reform Committee floats a bill also supported in the Senate by McCain. The new bill also calls for Olympic-type penalties of a two-year suspension for a first positive drug test and a lifetime ban for a second.

May 25, 2005: The House Energy and Commerce Committee passes its bill out of the subcommittee.

Aug. 1, 2005: Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro is suspended for 10 days by Major League Baseball for violating its Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program. He denies any intentional use of steroids.

Aug. 2, 2005: Mariners pitcher Ryan Franklin receives a 10-day suspension for violation of the Major League Baseball Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

Nov. 2, 2005: Yankees outfielder Matt Lawton receives a 10-day suspension for violation of the Major League Baseball Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program.

Nov. 10, 2005: A Congressional subcommittee decided to not seek perjury charges against Rafael Palmeiro following its investigation of the player's Capitol Hill statement that he had not used steroids.

Nov. 15, 2005: Major League Baseball and the players association reached agreement on Tuesday on a plan that significantly strengthens penalties for steroid and other illegal drug use. Penalties for steroid use will be 50 games for a first offense, 100 games for a second and a lifetime ban for a third. The plan also includes testing and suspensions for amphetamine use.

Dec. 8, 2005: The players union formally approves by a unanimous vote the drug policy it agreed to with Major League Baseball in November.

March 7, 2006: A book written by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters and excerpted in Sports Illustrated alleged Barry Bonds began using steroids after the 1998 baseball season and came to rely on a wide variety of performance-enhancing drugs over the next several years.

March 30, 2006: Commissioner Bud Selig announced that former Senate majority leader George Mitchell would head an independent investigation into alleged steroid use by players associated with the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO). Selig emphasized that Mitchell has the authority to expand the scope of the probe if necessary.

April 28, 2006: Patrick Arnold, noted scientist in the sports nutritional supplement world, pleaded guilty to supplying the Bay Area Laboratory-Cooperative with the performance-enhancing drug known as "the clear."

June 6, 2006: Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Jason Grimsley told federal investigators he used illegal performance-enhancing drugs, according to court documents unsealed.

June 12, 2006: Pitcher Jason Grimsley was suspended 50 games by Major League Baseball, less than a week after federal agents raided his home during an investigation into performance-enhancing drugs. Grimsley's suspension was never served because he asked for and received his release from the Diamondbacks and then retired.

June 19, 2006: David Segui, a 15-year major league baseball player who last was on an MLB roster in 2004, said he was one of the players whose names were redacted in the IRS affidavit that said Jason Grimsley received two kits of human growth hormone on April 19.

July 20, 2006: A federal grand jury seated in San Francisco expired without indicting Barry Bonds on perjury charges. A new one was immediately empanelled to review the case.
Sept. 21, 2006: San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, who published excerpts from the BALCO transcripts in 2004, were sentenced to 18 months in prison for refusing to reveal their source to the grand jury.

Oct. 1, 2006: Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Miguel Tejada were among the players that a former major league pitcher accused of using performance-enhancing drugs, according to a federal agent's affidavit, the Los Angeles Times reported. Baltimore teammates Brian Roberts, Jay Gibbons and Tejada also were implicated in the sworn statement, the Times said.

Nov. 1, 2006: Mets reliever Guillermo Mota was suspended for 50 games, becoming the third player penalized in 2006 for violating Major League Baseball's toughened drug policy.

Jan. 18, 2007: Former Senator George Mitchell, who had been heading up a nearly year-long investigation into steroid use in Major League Baseball, told the owners that he needed more cooperation from them to complete his much-anticipated report.

Feb. 21, 2007: Troy Ellerman, former lawyer for BALCO president Victor Conte, admitted to being the source of the BALCO grand jury documents leaked to San Francisco Chronicle reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada.

Feb. 22, 2007: Former Senator George Mitchell announced that investigators for his committee reviewing the use of performance-enhancing drugs in Major League Baseball planned to visit Spring Training camps to conduct interviews.

Feb. 26, 2007: Barry Bonds and other players under suspicion of using performance enhancing drugs were asked by Major League Baseball's lead steroids investigator to turn over medical records and submit to interviews.

Feb. 26, 2007: The players' association would offer advice but said it's the choice of each individual whether to cooperate with former Senator George Mitchell's investigation into steroids use.

Feb. 27, 2007: An Orlando pharmacy was raided by a law enforcement task force, the climax of a large New York state grand jury investigation into Internet drug sales. Among the athletes reportedly on the customer list were Angels outfield Gary Mathews Jr. and boxer Evander Holyfield.

March 2, 2007: Texas Rangers utility player Jerry Hairston Jr. was named by a Sports Illustrated story as the recipient of a shipment of HGH from a New York pharmacy.

April 27, 2007: A former New York Mets clubhouse employee pleaded guilty to distributing steroids to Major League players and was cooperating with baseball's steroids investigation. Kirk Radomski, 37, pleaded guilty to felony charges of distributing steroids and laundering money, charges that carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

May 18, 2007: New York Yankees slugger Jason Giambi said Major League Baseball should apologize to the public for its widespread performance-enhancing drug problem.

May 23, 2007: Jason Giambi met with Major League Baseball officials over remarks he made in an interview that implied former use of performance-enhancing drugs.

June 6, 2007: Commissioner Bud Selig said that he wanted Jason Giambi to meet with former Senator George Mitchell during the next two weeks before determining whether to discipline the Yankees first baseman regarding statements about his alleged steroid use, which Giambi made to a newspaper last month.

July 6, 2007: Tigers infielder Neifi Perez became the first player disciplined under Major League Baseball's testing program for banned stimulants, receiving a 25-game suspension for a second positive test.

July 14, 2007: Yankees 1B/DH Jason Giambi became the first active player to meet with former Senator George Mitchell in baseball's ongoing investigation into steroid use by major league players.

Aug. 3, 2007: The only player suspended under Major League Baseball's new drug testing program for stimulants was suspended again. Tigers infielder Neifi Perez received his second such sentence in a month, this one an 80-game suspension for another positive test.

Sept. 7, 2007: Blue Jays third baseman Troy Glaus was the second Major League Player implicated for the purchasing of performance-enhancing drugs via the Internet during the 2004 season, SI.com reported. The news came only hours after the New York Daily News reported that Cardinals outfielder Rick Ankiel received a 12-month supply of human growth hormone in 2004 from a Florida pharmacy that was part of a national illegal prescription drug-distribution operation, citing records its reporters saw.

Sept. 9, 2007: SI.com reported that Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons had purchased performance-enhancing drugs through Orlando-based Signature Pharmacy from October 2003 to July 2005.

Sept. 13, 2007: Members of the committee headed by former Senator George Mitchell met with representatives of the Albany, N.Y., prosecutor's office as a two-year-old probe into the Internet sale of performance-enhancing drugs continued.

Sept. 19, 2007: Baltimore Orioles outfielder Jay Gibbons became the second of the four players who have reportedly been linked to the procurement of performance-enhancing drugs through pharmacies doing business on the Internet to meet with officials from Major League Baseball.

Oct. 2, 2007: Pitcher Scott Schoeneweis was reported to have purchased six shipments of steroids from Orlando-based Signature Pharmacy while playing for the Chicago White Sox in 2003 and 2004.

Oct. 21, 2007: Prior to Game 7 of the ALCS between the Indians and Red Sox, Cleveland pitcher Paul Byrd was cited in a San Francisco Chronicle report as having purchased human growth hormone in large quantities between August 2002 and January 2005.

Oct. 31, 2007: Padres outfielder Mike Cameron is suspended 25 games, effective the beginning of the 2008 season, for testing positive for a banned stimulant. Cameron became the second player to be suspended for a banned stimulant, following Neifi Perez.

Nov. 6, 2007: Former Mariners outfielder Jose Guillen and two former Major League players -- Matt Williams and Ismael Valdez -- bought performance-enhancing drugs from a Florida clinic, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Nov. 7, 2007: Gary Matthews Jr., the Angels outfielder whose name was the first to surface earlier this year in the probe by an Albany, N.Y., district attorney into the illegal sales of performance-enhancing drugs, met with attorneys for the Commissioner's Office, an MLB official confirmed.

Nov. 15, 2007: Barry Bonds was charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for allegedly lying when he said he did not use performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds' trainer, Greg Anderson, was ordered released from prison by a federal judge after being held in contempt for refusing to testify to a grand jury.

Nov. 27, 2007: Left-handed free-agent pitcher Dan Serafini received a 50-game suspension for testing positive for a performance-enhancing substance. He split '07 between Triple-A and the Rockies.

Dec. 6, 2007: Outfielders Jose Guillen, newly of the Kansas City Royals, and Jay Gibbons of the Baltimore Orioles were suspended 15 days each for violations of Major League Baseball's substance abuse policy.

Dec. 7, 2007: Barry Lamar Bonds, Major League Baseball's all-time home run leader, pleaded not guilty in federal court to four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for allegedly lying about his use of performance-enhancing drugs in testimony given to a grand jury four years ago.

Mitchell Report hits Clemens, other stars hard
Bush says players, owners must take findings seriously
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22189702/
NEW YORK - A day after the Mitchell Report was released, the condemnations kept pouring in.

President Bush said in a press conference Friday that steroids have "sullied" baseball. He also said baseball players and owners must take the Mitchell Report on steroid use seriously, but it's important not to jump to conclusions about the individuals named.

And one of the greatest stars was taking the biggest hit.

Seven-time Cy Young Award winner, eighth on the all-time list with 354 victories, an MVP and All-Star himself and once a lock for the Hall of Fame, Roger Clemens now has another distinction: the biggest name linked by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell to illegal use of steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.

In all, Thursday’s 409-page report identified 85 names to differing degrees, but, while he vehemently denied it through his lawyer, Clemens was the symbol.

Barry Bonds, already under indictment on charges of lying to a federal grand jury about steroids, Miguel Tejada and Andy Pettitte also showed up in the game’s most infamous lineup since the Black Sox scandal.

“If there are problems, I wanted them revealed,” commissioner Bud Selig said. “His report is a call to action, and I will act.”

Doping was widespread by stars as well as scrubs, the report said, putting a question mark if not an asterisk next to baseball records and threatening the integrity of the game itself.

Eric Gagne, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, Troy Glaus, Gary Matthews Jr., Paul Byrd, Jose Guillen, Brian Roberts, Paul Lo Duca and Rick Ankiel were among other current players in the report. Some were linked to Human Growth Hormone, others to steroids. Mitchell did not delve into stimulants.

“Those who have illegally used these substances range from players whose major league careers were brief to potential members of the Baseball of Hall of Fame,” Mitchell wrote. “They include both pitchers and position players, and their backgrounds are as diverse as those of all major league players.”

No one was hit harder than Clemens, singled out in nearly nine pages, 82 references by name. Much of the information on him came from former New York Yankees major league strength and conditioning coach Brian McNamee.

At 45, Clemens has not said whether he wants to pitch next season.

The report was unlikely to trigger a wave of discipline. Although a few players, such as Bonds, are subjects of ongoing legal proceedings, many of the instances cited by Mitchell were before drug testing began in 2003.

Mitchell said punishment was inappropriate in all but the most egregious cases, and Selig said decisions on any action would come “swiftly” on a case-by-case basis.

“We have approached these cases by looking at the period of time during which the conduct occurred and what our policy looked like for that point in time,” said Rob Manfred, baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations.

Although the records will surely stand, several stars could pay the price in Cooperstown, much the way Mark McGwire was kept out of the Hall of Fame this year merely because of steroids suspicion.

Mitchell said the problems didn’t develop overnight and there was plenty of blame to go around.

“Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades — commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players — shares to some extent the responsibility for the Steroids Era,” Mitchell said. “There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on.”

Mitchell recommended that the drug-testing program be made independent, that a list of the substances players test positive for be listed periodically and that the timing of testing be more unpredictable.

“The illegal use of performance-enhancing substances poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game,” the report said. “Widespread use by players of such substances unfairly disadvantages the honest athletes who refuse to use them and raises questions about the validity of baseball records.”

Jose Canseco, whose book “Juice” was cited throughout, was mentioned the most often — 105 times. Bonds was next at 103.

A total of 20 Yankees, past and present, were identified. Players were linked to doping in various ways — some were identified as users, some as buyers and some by media reports and other investigations.

“According to McNamee, from the time that McNamee injected Clemens with Winstrol through the end of the 1998 season, Clemens’ performance showed remarkable improvement,” the report said. “During this period of improved performance, Clemens told McNamee that the steroids ’had a pretty good effect’ on him.”

McNamee also told investigators that “during the middle of the 2000 season, Clemens made it clear that he was ready to use steroids again. During the latter part of the regular season, McNamee injected Clemens in the buttocks four to six times with testosterone from a bottle labeled either Sustanon 250 or Deca-Durabolin.”

“It is very unfair to include Roger’s name in this report,” said Clemens’ lawyer, Rusty Hardin. “He is left with no meaningful way to combat what he strongly contends are totally false allegations. He has not been charged with anything, he will not be charged with anything and yet he is being tried in the court of public opinion with no recourse. That is totally wrong.”

“There has never been one shred of tangible evidence that he ever used these substances and yet he is being slandered today,” said Hardin, who called McNamee a “troubled man.”

Former Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski also provided information as part of his plea agreement in a federal steroids case.

“Former commissioner Fay Vincent told me that the problem of performance-enhancing substances may be the most serious challenge that baseball has faced since the 1919 Black Sox scandal,” Mitchell said.

Rafael Palmeiro, who tested positive for steroids, was among the former players named. So were Kevin Brown, Benito Santiago, Lenny Dykstra, Chuck Knoblauch, David Justice, Mo Vaughn, Wally Joyner and Todd Hundley.

Mike Stanton, Scott Schoeneweis, Ron Villone and Jerry Hairston Jr. were among the other current players identified.

“We identify some of the players who were caught up in this drive to gain a competitive advantage,” the report said. “Other investigations will no doubt turn up more names and fill in more details, but that is unlikely to significantly alter the description of baseball’s ‘steroids era’ as set forth in this report.”

One player mentioned but not expressly accused was McGwire. His use of Androstenedione during his 1998 home run race with Sammy Sosa set off baseball’s first concerns about steroids.

Testifying before Congress in 2005, McGwire refused to talk about his past, and refused as well to cooperate with Mitchell. The report recounts all that without making any accusations.

Sosa, who testified with McGwire and denied knowingly using steroids, also was spared by Mitchell.

The report took issue with assertions that steroids were not banned before the 2002 collective bargaining agreement.

They had been covered, it said, since management’s 1971 drug policy prohibited using any prescription medication without a valid prescription, and were expressly included in Vincent’s 1991 drug policy.

“Steroids have been listed as a prohibited substance under the Major League Baseball drug policy since then,” the report said, although no player was disciplined for them until the 2002 labor agreement provided for testing.

Mitchell questioned whether players were tipped off about testing. He said a former player, whom he didn’t identify, claimed he had been given two weeks’ notice of a drug test by Gene Orza, the union’s No. 2 official, in September 2004. Orza did not respond to a message seeking comment.

Mitchell is a director of the Boston Red Sox, and some questioned whether that created a conflict, especially because none of their prime players were in the report.

“Judge me by my work,” Mitchell said. “You will not find any evidence of bias, special treatment, for the Red Sox or anyone else. That had no effect on this investigation or this report, none whatsoever.”

Giambi, under threat of discipline from Selig, and Frank Thomas were the only current players known to have cooperated with the Mitchell investigation.

“The players’ union was largely uncooperative for reasons that I thought were largely understandable,” Mitchell said.

Union head Donald Fehr made “no apologies” for the way they represented players.

“Many players are named. Their reputations have been adversely affected, probably forever,” he said. “Even if it turns out down the road that they should not have been.”

Certainly a lot of people read the names. The report was downloaded 1.8 million times off MLB.com in the first three hours after it was posted.

About two hours after the report was released, two congressmen at the forefront of Capitol Hill’s involvement in the steroids issue asked Mitchell, Selig and Fehr to testify at a House committee hearing next Tuesday.

California Democrat Henry Waxman and Virginia Republican Tom Davis — the leaders of the panel that held the March 17, 2005, hearing at which McGwire, Palmeiro and Sosa testified — want to know “whether the Mitchell Report’s recommendations will be adopted and whether additional measures are needed,” they said.

Also, a Congressional subcommittee will hold a hearing on Jan. 23 relating to steroid use in professional sports.

Baseball stars shamed by steroid abuse report
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/12/14/2118639.htm
Some of United States baseball's most prominent stars, including legendary pitcher Roger Clemens, have been labelled drug users in a long-awaited report that reveals rampant steroids use in the sport.

Probe chief George Mitchell said there has been widespread anabolic steroid use for more than a decade and that all 30 Major League Baseball teams have one or more players using performance enhancing drugs.

"The evidence we uncovered indicates this is not an isolated problem involving a few players and clubs. Many players were involved," Mr Mitchell said.

The release of the findings of former US senator Mitchell ends 20 months of speculation about some of the players who used drugs to boost their performance on the field.

MLB commissioner Bud Selig has scheduled a news conference for later in the day. The player's union is expected to also hold a news conference.

"For more than a decade there has been widespread use of illegal substances in pro baseball," Mr Mitchell said. "I was asked to conduct this investigation and report as fairly as I could I have done so."

Mr Mitchell called for baseball's drug testing to be stepped up and made recommendations for change to prevent future abuse. He also called for an outside agency to administer the testing programme and more transparency.

Baseball officials had a chance to review the more than 400-page report before it became public. They said their biggest concern was making sure that releasing the contents of the report would not violate their contract with the union.

Mr Mitchell's report did not make any recommendations on what type of punishment those named should face, saying that is up to the commissioner.

But it did shed some light on why baseball ignored performance-enhancing drugs for years and the players' union's attempts to scuttle the probe.

Mr Mitchell's probe met fiery resistance from the player's union.

Because of the difficulties in interviewing current players who were refused to talk, Mr Mitchell said much of his report is based on information gathered from managers, general managers, former players, strength coaches and especially ex-New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski.

Players that have been previously linked to performance-enhancing drugs include Jose Canseco, Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Gary Sheffield, and the late Ken Caminiti.

The release of the Mitchell Report comes less than a month after Bonds, the sport's all-time home run king, was indicted on four counts of perjury and one for obstruction of justice.

Bonds pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Mr Selig Mr hired Mitchell, a former US Senate majority leader, for the job in March 2006.

Steroid Report Cites ‘Collective Failure’
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/14/sports/baseball/14mitchell.html?ex=1355288400&en=e41c3c5c4faac076&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Former Senator George J. Mitchell released a blistering report Thursday that tied 89 Major League Baseball players, including Roger Clemens, to the use of illegal, performance-enhancing drugs. The report used informant testimony and supporting documents to provide a richly detailed portrait of what Mr. Mitchell described as “baseball’s steroids era.”

Mr. Clemens, a seven-time Cy Young Award winner, was the most prominent name on a list that included seven other former most valuable players as well as players from all 30 teams. The list included more than a dozen players who have had significant roles with the Yankees, and more than a dozen Mets, too. It also included 11 players alone from the 2000 Los Angeles Dodgers.

Of all the active players tied to the use of steroids and human growth hormone, which are illegal without a prescription and banned by baseball, only Jason Giambi of the Yankees cooperated with Mitchell’s 20-month investigation. The Toronto Blue Jays’ Frank Thomas, widely known for his antisteroids stance, was the only other active player who agreed to talk with Mr. Mitchell’s investigators.

Mr. Mitchell’s report of about 400 pages was based on interviews with more than 700 people, including 60 former players, and 115,000 pages of documents, including receipts, canceled checks, telephone records and e-mail messages. The key evidence was provided by Kirk Radomski, a former Mets clubhouse attendant, and Brian McNamee, a former trainer for Mr. Clemens and Yankees pitcher Andy Pettitte, who was also named in the report.

In the report, Mr. McNamee is quoted describing how he injected Mr. Clemens with illegal drugs at least 16 times from 1998 through 2001. Mr. Clemens, 45, adamantly denied the report’s accusations of his use of steroids and human growth hormone, his Houston lawyer, Rusty Hardin, said in a telephone interview Thursday night. Mr. Hardin said he had been told Mr. McNamee was pressured to give up names or face prosecution by the I.R.S. Special Agent Jeff Novitzky, who has led the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative and Radomski investigations.

Mr. Hardin criticized Mr. Mitchell for naming players based on uncorroborated allegations. “He has thrown a skunk into the jury box, and we will never be able to remove that smell,” Mr. Hardin said. Mr. Pettitte’s agent declined to comment.

In his comments at a Midtown Manhattan hotel Thursday, Mr. Mitchell acknowledged that his report was inhibited by limited cooperation and the absence of subpoena power, and that there was still much about drug use in baseball he did not know. The report was critical of the commissioner’s office and the players’ union for knowingly tolerating performance-enhancing drugs. It cited many instances where club officials knew about particular steroid use among players and did not report it.

“There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on,” Mr. Mitchell said. He recommended that the players on the list not be disciplined, but instead said that baseball needed to “look ahead to the future” and establish stronger testing.

Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, praised Mr. Mitchell’s 20 recommendations, which included the adoption of a more independent drug-testing program with more public reporting of results, and the establishment of a unit in the commissioner’s office to investigate reports of steroid use by players who have not tested positive.

Despite Mr. Mitchell’s general recommendation that the players in the report not be punished, Mr. Selig said he would review each player’s case individually and was inclined to discipline them.

“His report is a call to action,” Mr. Selig said. “And I will act.”

Donald M. Fehr, the executive director of the Major League Players’ Association, said he did not think the investigation was fair.

“Many players are named,” Mr. Fehr said. “Their reputations have been adversely affected, probably forever, even if it turns out down the road that they should not have been.”

Mr. Mitchell said “baseball’s steroids era” started roughly in 1988. It took 15 more years for baseball to start random testing, Mr. Mitchell said. He noted that testing has reduced steroid usage, but players have switched to human growth hormone, which cannot be detected in urine tests, which baseball’s program administers. “Everybody in baseball — commissioners, club officials, the players’ association, players — shares responsibility,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The report revealed that baseball secretly suspended drug testing for part of the 2004 season, for fear of criminal prosecution, after federal authorities seized the 2003 drug results as part of the Balco case. The suspension, of unclear length, was kept secret by agreement of the commissioner’s office and the players’ association.

Mr. McNamee, who has also been employed as a trainer with the Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays, spoke to Mr. Mitchell’s investigators under pressure from federal prosecutors investigating the use of steroids in baseball. Mr. McNamee, who was linked with Mr. Radomski, provided evidence against Mr. Clemens, Mr. Pettitte and first baseman David Segui. Mr. McNamee agreed to cooperate with the United States Attorney’s Office under the terms that he would not be charged with a crime if he told Mr. Mitchell and investigators the truth.

The report was littered with vivid details, including Mr. Radomski telling investigators that he once found on his porch a wet delivery package filled with $8,000 in cash from Kevin Brown, the former Dodgers and Yankees pitcher.

Mitchell’s report described how David Justice denied using steroids to investigators while providing names of players that he suspected of using them. Justice, a former Yankees and Atlanta Braves outfielder, is among the players named in the report.

A Congressional committee that held a televised hearing on steroids in baseball in 2005 called another hearing for next Tuesday and summoned Mr. Mitchell, Mr. Selig and Mr. Fehr.

Mr. Radomski, who has pleaded guilty to federal charges for selling steroids from 1995 through 2005, cooperated with Mr. Mitchell as part of his plea bargain. He is to be sentenced next year on federal charges of steroid distribution.

Other evidence came from Mr. McNamee, and from an investigation led by the Albany County district attorney into Signature Pharmacy. “The players’ union was largely uncooperative for reasons which I think were understandable,” Mr. Mitchell said.

The report described case after case where players were caught with steroids but not pursued by club officials or the commissioner’s security office.

The report listed key members of the Yankees’ World Series teams in the Joe Torre era, including starting pitchers Clemens and the 35-year-old Pettitte, the left-handed and right-handed set-up men Mike Stanton and Jason Grimsley, right fielder Justice and second baseman Chuck Knoblauch.

Mr. Selig said baseball would immediately cease giving teams advance notice of when drug testers would be showing up. The testers had been calling clubs the day before testing to get parking passes at ballparks. That practice was revealed recently by The New York Times.

“For more than a decade, there has been widespread anabolic steroid use,” Mr. Mitchell said. He said the use of performance-enhancing substances “poses a serious threat to the integrity of the game.”

The other prominent names in the report were the Most Valuable Player award-winners Barry Bonds, Ken Caminiti, José Canseco, Giambi, Juan González, Mo Vaughn and Miguel Tejada.

Other players named included Gary Sheffield, Lenny Dykstra, Denny Neagle, Todd Hundley, Mike Stanton, Paul Lo Duca and Eric Gagné.

Don Hooton, who became an outspoken critic of steroid use after his son Taylor committed suicide after using the drugs, attended the news conference Thursday and said of the report, “This is more than about asterisks and cheating; it’s about the lives and health of our kids.”

Mr. Selig noted that he had the authority to implement several of the recommendations, but that the majority — including any changes to the sport’s drug-testing policies — would first have to be agreed to by the players’ association under the terms of the collective-bargaining agreement. Mr. Fehr said the union would be willing to take a look at the possibility of adjusting the testing procedures before the agreement expires in 2011. Mr. Mitchell’s report did not address the use of amphetamines in sports, nor did it call for blood testing, the only way to detect human growth hormone.

“Former commissioner Fay Vincent told me that the problem of performance-enhancing substances may be the most serious challenge that baseball has faced since the 1919 Black Sox scandal,” Mr. Mitchell said in the report, referring to the Chicago White Sox’ throwing of the World Series.

Mr. Mitchell has conducted the reported $20 million investigation with the help of his law firm DLA Piper, where he is a partner. Mr. Mitchell has made few public statements throughout the investigation and many of the details have been guarded.

He serves as a director of the Red Sox, a post he refused to vacate despite accusations that his investigation might be biased toward the team.

Mr. Mitchell had a difficult time with the players’ union.

“The Players’ Association was largely uncooperative,” Mr. Mitchell wrote, discouraging every active baseball player from talking with him, rejecting all requests for documents, and permitting only one interview with Mr. Fehr.

BABE OF THE DAY-Tina Fey

2007-12-13T13:09:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0275486/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Fey

Song of the day/Tv show of the Day

2007-12-13T13:04:00.000-05:00

Song
The Verve
Bitter Sweet Symphony

Tv show
30 Rock

Story of the Day-Golden Globe nominations

2007-12-13T12:59:00.000-05:00

FILM

Motion Picture, Drama
'American Gangster'
'Atonement'
'The Great Debaters'
'Michael Clayton'
'No Country for Old Men'
'There Will Be Blood'

Motion Picture, Musical Or Comedy
'Across the Universe'
'Charlie Wilson's War'
'Hairspray'
'Juno'
'Sweeney Todd'

Actor, Drama
George Clooney, 'Michael Clayton'
Daniel Day-Lewis, 'There Will Be Blood'
James McAvoy, 'Atonement'
Viggo Mortensen, 'Eastern Promises'
Denzel Washington, 'American Gangster'

Actress, Drama
Cate Blanchett, 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age'
Julie Christie, 'Away From Her'
Jodie Foster, 'The Brave One'
Angelina Jolie, 'A Mighty Heart'
Keira Knightley, 'Atonement'

Actor, Musical or Comedy
Johnny Depp, 'Sweeney Todd'
Ryan Gosling, 'Lars and the Real Girl'
Tom Hanks, 'Charlie Wilson's War'
Philip Seymour Hoffman, 'The Savages'
John C. Reilly, 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story'

Actress, Musical or Comedy
Amy Adams, 'Enchanted'
Nikki Blonsky, 'Hairspray'
Helena Bonham Carter, 'Sweeney Todd'
Marion Cotillard, 'La Vie En Rose'
Ellen Page, 'Juno'

Supporting Actor
Casey Affleck, 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'
Javier Bardem, 'No Country for Old Men'
Philip Seymour Hoffman, 'Charlie Wilson's War'
John Travolta, 'Hairspray'
Tom Wilkinson, 'Michael Clayton'

Supporting Actress
Cate Blanchett, 'I'm Not There'
Julia Roberts, 'Charlie Wilson's War'
Saoirse Ronan, 'Atonement'
Amy Ryan, 'Gone Baby Gone'
Tilda Swinton, 'Michael Clayton'

Director
Tim Burton, 'Sweeney Todd'
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 'No Country for Old Men'
Julian Schnabel, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'
Ridley Scott, 'American Gangster'
Joe Wright, 'Atonement'

Screenplay
Diablo Cody, 'Juno'
Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, 'No Country for Old Men'
Christopher Hampton, 'Atonement'
Ronald Harwood, 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly'
Aaron Sorkin, 'Charlie Wilson's War'

Foreign Language
'4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,' Romania'
'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,' France and U.S.
'The Kite Runner,' U.S.
'Lust, Caution,' Taiwan
'Persepolis,' France

Animated Film
'Bee Movie'
'Ratatouille'
'The Simpsons Movie'

Original Score
Michael Brook, Kaki King, Eddie Edder, 'Into the Wild'
Clint Eastwood, 'Grace Is Gone'
Alberto Iglesias,' The Kite Runner'
Dario Marianelli, 'Atonement'
Howard Shore, 'Eastern Promises'

Original Song
'Despedida' from 'Love in the Time of Cholera'
'Grace Is Gone' from 'Grace Is Gone'
'Guaranteed' from 'Into the Wild'
'That's How You Know' from 'Enchanted'
'Walk Hard' from 'Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story'

--

TELEVISION

Series, Drama
'Big Love,' HBO
'Damages,' FX Networks
'Grey's Anatomy,' ABC
'House,' Fox
'Mad Men,' AMC
'The Tudors,' Showtime

Actress, Drama
Patricia Arquette, 'Medium'
Glenn Close, 'Damages'
Minnie Driver, 'The Riches'
Edie Falco, 'The Sopranos'
Sally Field, 'Brothers & Sisters'
Holly Hunter, 'Saving Grace'
Kyra Sedgwick, 'The Closer'

Actor, Drama
Michael C. Hall, 'Dexter'
Jon Hamm, 'Mad Men'
Hugh Laurie, 'House'
Jonathan Rhys Meyers, 'The Tudors'
Bill Paxton, 'Big Love'

Series, Musical or Comedy
'30 Rock,' NBC
'Californication,' Showtime
'Entourage,' HBO
'Extras,' HBO
'Pushing Daisies,' ABC

Actress, Musical or Comedy
Christina Applegate, 'Samantha Who?'
America Ferrera, 'Ugly Betty'
Tina Fey, '30 Rock'
Anna Friel, 'Pushing Daisies'
Mary-Louise Parker, 'Weeds'

Actor, Musical or Comedy
Alec Baldwin, '30 Rock'
Steve Carell, 'The Office'
David Duchovny, 'Californication'
Ricky Gervais, 'Extras'
Lee Pace, 'Pushing Daisies'

Miniseries or Movie
'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee,' HBO
'The Company,' TNT
'Five Days,' HBO
'Longford,' HBO
'The State Within,' BBC America

Actress, Miniseries or Movie
Bryce Dallas Howard, 'As You Like It'
Debra Messing, 'The Starter Wife'
Queen Latifah, 'Life Support'
Sissy Spacek, 'Pictures of Hollis Woods'
Ruth Wilson, 'Jane Eyre' (Masterpiece Theatre)

Actor, Miniseries or Movie
Adam Beach, 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'
Ernest Borgnine, 'A Grandpa for Christmas'
Jim Broadbent, 'Longford'
Jason Isaacs, 'The State Within'
James Nesbitt, 'Jekyll'

Supporting Actress, Series, Miniseries or Movie
Rose Byrne, 'Damages'
Rachel Griffiths, 'Brothers & Sisters'
Katherine Heigl, 'Grey's Anatomy'
Samantha Morton, 'Longford'
Anna Paquin, 'Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee'
Jaime Pressly, 'My Name Is Earl'

Supporting Actor, Series, Miniseries or Movie
Ted Danson, 'Damages'
Kevin Dillon, 'Entourage'
Jeremy Piven, 'Entourage'
Andy Serkis, 'Longford'
William Shatner, 'Boston Legal'
Donald Sutherland, 'Dirty Sexy Money'

Cecil B. DeMille Award
Steven Spielberg

The Golden Globe Awards are American awards for motion pictures and television programs, given out each year during a formal dinner. Run as a fundraiser since 1944 by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the awards are a major part of the film industry's "awards season" which culminates each year with the Oscars and Screen Actors Guild Awards. This is particularly true since 1996, when the HFPA signed a new television broadcast contract with NBC (prior to that, they were aired on TBS, but before the existence of TBS, one of the "big three" commercial networks, i.e. CBS, NBC, or ABC, always broadcast the show). The broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards generally ranks as the third most-watched awards show each year, behind only the Oscars and Grammys, and film studios actively solicit support from HFPA members and mention nominations and awards in their advertisements. The Golden Globes has grown to one of the highest honors for actors and actresses. The Golden Globe's similar British equivalent, considered equal in prestige, is the BAFTA.

The Golden Globes are awarded early in the year, based on votes from (as of 2005) 86 mostly part-time journalists living in Hollywood and affiliated with media outside of the United States.

Unlike the Academy Awards, for which the eligibility period begins January 1, the eligibility period for the Golden Globe Awards begins October 1.

Unlike the Oscars, the Grammys, and the Emmys, the Golden Globe Awards is one of two major Hollywood awards ceremony (the other being the Screen Actors Guild Awards) that does not have a regular host, although there is a presenter every year who introduces the ceremony at the beginning of the broadcast.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Globe

OFFICIAL WEBSITE of the HFPA and the GOLDEN GLOBE AWARDS
http://www.goldenglobes.org/

Golden Globes by Year
http://www.thegoldenglobes.com/

'Atonement' Leads Globe Nominees
http://movies.aol.com/golden-globes/news/story/_a/golden-globes-nominations/20071213072909990001
Seven Films Vie for Best Picture Drama, But 'Into the Wild' Is Shut Out

The British historical romance "Atonement" led the competition for the Golden Globes with seven nominations Thursday, including best drama and acting honors for Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

The foreign-policy romp "Charlie Wilson's War" ran second to "Atonement" with five nominations. And among double nominees were Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Clint Eastwood and Eddie Vedder, who received bids for song and score - as did Eastwood.

Besides "Atonement," the best drama nominees for the 65th Golden Globes were the crime sagas "American Gangster," "Eastern Promises" and "No Country for Old Men," the inspirational college drama "The Great Debaters," the legal drama "Michael Clayton" and the California oil-boom epic "There Will Be Blood." Because of a tie in voting, seven dramatic nominees were picked, rather than the usual five.

Nominated for best comedy or musical along with "Charlie Wilson's War" were the Beatles musical "Across the Universe," the Broadway adaptation "Hairspray," the teen-pregnancy comedy "Juno" and the bloody musical "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."

Adapted from the novel by Ian McEwan, "Atonement" earned dramatic actress and actor nominations for Knightley and McAvoy, who play lovers whose newfound romance is shattered after Knightley's jealous younger sister (Saoirse Ronan) falsely accuses McAvoy of a crime.

"Atonement" also had nominations for Ronan as supporting actress, director for Joe Wright, screenplay for Christopher Hampton and musical score for Dario Marianelli.

"We're all jumping around at the moment. It's just fantastic. I'm working today, so I don't know whether I'll be able to celebrate, but we'll probably have a nice dinner when we get home from work," the 13-year-old Ronan said after learning she was a nominee.

No clear front-runners have yet emerged in the buildup to the Academy Awards race, so the big nominations haul could make an early favorite out of "Atonement," which just opened theatrically last week. Oscar nominations come out nine days after the Golden Globes ceremony Jan. 13. (The Oscars will be presented Feb. 24.)

Joining Knightley in the dramatic actress category was Blanchett for her title role as the British monarch in "Elizabeth: The Golden Age." Blanchett also had a supporting-actress nomination for her gender-bending role as an incarnation of Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There." (A cross-dressing role earned John Travolta a supporting-actor nomination for "Hairspray," in which he plays an overweight, homebody housewife.)

Also earning two nominations was Hoffman, for lead actor in a comedy or musical in the sibling tale "The Savages" and supporting actor for "Charlie Wilson's War."

"Charlie Wilson's War" is a comic look at a congressman (Tom Hanks), a Texas socialite (Julia Roberts) and a slovenly CIA man (Hoffman) who engineered the covert U.S. response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Hanks was cited for best actor in a comedy or musical, while Roberts was nominated as supporting actress.

Surprising omissions in the musical or comedy category were Judd Apatow's "Knocked Up" and "Superbad," both huge critical and box-office hits, as well as his upcoming parody "Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story." "Walk Hard" star John C. Reilly was nominated in the best musical or comedy actor category, however.

Also overlooked were Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin, who had acclaimed performances in "No Country for Old Men." Their co-star Javier Bardem, who has a chilling role as a relentless killer trailing a man who made off with a fortune in drug money, was nominated for supporting actor.

A critics favorite, "No Country for Old Men" also had nominations for Joel and Ethan Coen for both directing and their screenplay, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel.

Vedder also received two nominations, for best score for the road drama "Into the Wild" and for an original song he wrote for the film, "Guaranteed." Besides his best-actor nomination, Reilly also is up for original song for the theme from "Walk Hard," which he co-wrote with Marshall Crenshaw, Apatow and director Jake Kasdan.

Perpetual awards favorite Eastwood did not even have a movie of his own out this year but scored two Globe nominations, for his score and the title song for the Iraq War drama "Grace Is Gone."

Sean Penn, the Oscar-winning star of Eastwood's "Mystic River," was shut out in the directing category for "Into the Wild," while Penn's lead actor Emile Hirsch also missed out on a nomination.

Denzel Washington, director of "The Great Debaters," had a best dramatic actor nomination for "American Gangster," in which he plays a 1970s Harlem heroin baron. Russell Crowe, who plays the cop who brings him down, was snubbed by Globe voters, though.

Along with Washington and McAvoy, dramatic-actor nominees were George Clooney as a conscience-torn attorney in "Michael Clayton," Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil tycoon in early 20th century California in "There Will Be Blood" and Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mobster in "Eastern Promises."

Joining Knightley and Blanchett in the dramatic-actress category were Julie Christie as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer's in "Away From Her," Jodie Foster as a Manhattan vigilante in "The Brave One" and Angelina Jolie as journalist Mariane Pearl in "A Mighty Heart."

Actresses who became instant box-office stars in 2007 earned nominations for best actress in a musical or comedy: Nikki Blonsky as a vivacious Baltimore teen in "Hairspray," Amy Adams as an exiled fairy-tale princess in "Enchanted" and Ellen Page as a sardonic pregnant teen in "Juno."

Tim Burton and his romantic partner and frequent co-star Helena Bonham Carter scored nominations, he for directing "Sweeney Todd" and she for actress in a musical or comedy. The film's star, Johnny Depp, was nominated for musical or comedy actor for his bloodthirsty role as a vengeful barber.

Nominated for animated feature were the insect comedy "Bee Movie," the rodent tale "Ratatouille" and the TV adaptation "The Simpsons Movie."

Complicating this latest season of Hollywood backslapping is a strike by the Writers Guild of America, whose members walked off the job in November over their share of potential profits from programming distributed over the Internet.

Many awards shows are written under guild contract, so it remains unclear how the strike might affect the ceremonies.

Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a relatively small group of about 85 people who cover show business for overseas media, the Golden Globes nevertheless exert considerable influence on awards season.

Three of the four acting winners for the 2006 Oscars - Helen Mirren for "The Queen," Forest Whitaker for "The Last King of Scotland" and Jennifer Hudson for "Dreamgirls" - won at the Globes beforehand. The only miss was Eddie Murphy, who won the supporting-actor Globe for "Dreamgirls" but lost at the Oscars to Alan Arkin for "Little Miss Sunshine."

Director Martin Scorsese also preceded his best-director Oscar win for "The Departed" with the same prize at the Globes.

While either the best drama or musical-comedy winner at the Globes often goes on to win the best-picture Oscar, the two awards shows have picked different films for their top honors in the last three years. "Babel" was the dramatic winner and "Dreamgirls" was the musical or comedy champ a year ago at the Globes, but come Oscar night, Scorsese's "The Departed" triumphed.

‘Atonement’ leads Globes nominations
Keira Knightley among film's 7 nods, ‘Charlie Wilson's War’ gets 5 nods
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22240036/
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - The British historical romance “Atonement” led the competition for the Golden Globes with seven nominations Thursday, including best drama and acting honors for Keira Knightley and James McAvoy.

The foreign-policy romp “Charlie Wilson’s War” ran second to “Atonement” with five nominations. And among double nominees were Cate Blanchett, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Clint Eastwood and Eddie Vedder, who received bids for song and score — as did Eastwood.

Besides “Atonement,” the best drama nominees for the 65th Golden Globes were the crime sagas “American Gangster,” “Eastern Promises” and “No Country for Old Men,” the inspirational college drama “The Great Debaters,” the legal drama “Michael Clayton” and the California oil-boom epic “There Will Be Blood.” Because of a tie in voting, seven dramatic nominees were picked, rather than the usual five.
Nominated for best comedy or musical along with “Charlie Wilson’s War” were the Beatles musical “Across the Universe,” the Broadway adaptation “Hairspray,” the teen-pregnancy comedy “Juno” and the bloody musical “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.”

Adapted from the novel by Ian McEwan, “Atonement” earned dramatic actress and actor nominations for Knightley and McAvoy, who play lovers whose newfound romance is shattered after Knightley’s jealous younger sister (Saoirse Ronan) falsely accuses McAvoy of a crime.

“Atonement” also had nominations for Ronan as supporting actress, director for Joe Wright, screenplay for Christopher Hampton and musical score for Dario Marianelli.

“We’re all jumping around at the moment. It’s just fantastic. I’m working today, so I don’t know whether I’ll be able to celebrate, but we’ll probably have a nice dinner when we get home from work,” the 13-year-old Ronan said after learning she was a nominee.

No clear front-runners have yet emerged in the buildup to the Academy Awards race, so the big nominations haul could make an early favorite out of “Atonement,” which just opened theatrically last week. Oscar nominations come out nine days after the Golden Globes ceremony Jan. 13. (The Oscars will be presented Feb. 24.)

Joining Knightley in the dramatic actress category was Blanchett for her title role as the British monarch in “Elizabeth: The Golden Age.” Blanchett also had a supporting-actress nomination for her gender-bending role as an incarnation of Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There.” (A cross-dressing role earned John Travolta a supporting-actor nomination for “Hairspray,” in which he plays an overweight, homebody housewife.)

Also earning two nominations was Hoffman, for lead actor in a comedy or musical in the sibling tale “The Savages” and supporting actor for “Charlie Wilson’s War.”

“Charlie Wilson’s War” is a comic look at a congressman (Tom Hanks), a Texas socialite (Julia Roberts) and a slovenly CIA man (Hoffman) who engineered the covert U.S. response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Hanks was cited for best actor in a comedy or musical, while Roberts was nominated as supporting actress.
Surprising omissions in the musical or comedy category were Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up” and “Superbad,” both huge critical and box-office hits, as well as his upcoming parody “Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story.” “Walk Hard” star John C. Reilly was nominated in the best musical or comedy actor category, however.

Also overlooked were Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin, who had acclaimed performances in “No Country for Old Men.” Their co-star Javier Bardem, who has a chilling role as a relentless killer trailing a man who made off with a fortune in drug money, was nominated for supporting actor.

A critics favorite, “No Country for Old Men” also had nominations for Joel and Ethan Coen for both directing and their screenplay, adapted from Cormac McCarthy’s novel.

Vedder also received two nominations, for best score for the road drama “Into the Wild” and for an original song he wrote for the film, “Guaranteed.” Besides his best-actor nomination, Reilly also is up for original song for the theme from “Walk Hard,” which he co-wrote with Marshall Crenshaw, Apatow and director Jake Kasdan.

Perpetual awards favorite Eastwood did not even have a movie of his own out this year but scored two Globe nominations, for his score and the title song for the Iraq War drama “Grace Is Gone.”

Sean Penn, the Oscar-winning star of Eastwood’s “Mystic River,” was shut out in the directing category for “Into the Wild,” while Penn’s lead actor Emile Hirsch also missed out on a nomination.

Denzel Washington, director of “The Great Debaters,” had a best dramatic actor nomination for “American Gangster,” in which he plays a 1970s Harlem heroin baron. Russell Crowe, who plays the cop who brings him down, was snubbed by Globe voters, though.

Along with Washington and McAvoy, dramatic-actor nominees were George Clooney as a conscience-torn attorney in “Michael Clayton,” Daniel Day-Lewis as an oil tycoon in early 20th century California in “There Will Be Blood” and Viggo Mortensen as a Russian mobster in “Eastern Promises.”

Joining Knightley and Blanchett in the dramatic-actress category were Julie Christie as a woman succumbing to Alzheimer’s in “Away From Her,” Jodie Foster as a Manhattan vigilante in “The Brave One” and Angelina Jolie as journalist Mariane Pearl in “A Mighty Heart.”

Actresses who became instant box-office stars in 2007 earned nominations for best actress in a musical or comedy: Nikki Blonsky as a vivacious Baltimore teen in “Hairspray,” Amy Adams as an exiled fairy-tale princess in “Enchanted” and Ellen Page as a sardonic pregnant teen in “Juno.”
Tim Burton and his romantic partner and frequent co-star Helena Bonham Carter scored nominations, he for directing “Sweeney Todd” and she for actress in a musical or comedy. The film’s star, Johnny Depp, was nominated for musical or comedy actor for his bloodthirsty role as a vengeful barber.

Nominated for animated feature were the insect comedy “Bee Movie,” the rodent tale “Ratatouille” and the TV adaptation “The Simpsons Movie.”

Complicating this latest season of Hollywood backslapping is a strike by the Writers Guild of America, whose members walked off the job in November over their share of potential profits from programming distributed over the Internet.

Many awards shows are written under guild contract, so it remains unclear how the strike might affect the ceremonies.

Presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a relatively small group of about 85 people who cover show business for overseas media, the Golden Globes nevertheless exert considerable influence on awards season.
Three of the four acting winners for the 2006 Oscars — Helen Mirren for “The Queen,” Forest Whitaker for “The Last King of Scotland” and Jennifer Hudson for “Dreamgirls” — won at the Globes beforehand. The only miss was Eddie Murphy, who won the supporting-actor Globe for “Dreamgirls” but lost at the Oscars to Alan Arkin for “Little Miss Sunshine.”

Director Martin Scorsese also preceded his best-director Oscar win for “The Departed” with the same prize at the Globes.

While either the best drama or musical-comedy winner at the Globes often goes on to win the best-picture Oscar, the two awards shows have picked different films for their top honors in the last three years. “Babel” was the dramatic winner and “Dreamgirls” was the musical or comedy champ a year ago at the Globes, but come Oscar night, Scorsese’s “The Departed” triumphed.

BABE OF THE DAY-Jordan Ladd

2007-12-12T12:51:00.002-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0480465/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0480465/

Jordan Ladd In "Club Dread" - Click here for funny video clips

BABE OF THE DAY-Jordan Ladd

2007-12-12T12:51:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0480465/

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0480465/

Jordan Ladd In "Club Dread" - Click here for funny video clips

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-12T12:50:00.001-05:00

Song
Eagles of Death Metal
Move in The Night

Movie
Broken Lizard's Club Dread

Story of the Day - CIA torture techniques "waterboarding"

2007-12-12T12:46:00.000-05:00

CIA did use Waterboarding

Waterboarding is a torture technique that simulates drowning in a controlled environment. It consists of immobilizing an individual on his or her back, with the head inclined downward, and pouring water over the face[1] to force the inhalation of water into the lungs.[2] Waterboarding has been used to obtain information, coerce confessions, punish, and intimidate. In contrast to merely submerging the head, waterboarding elicits the gag reflex,[3] and can make the subject believe death is imminent. Waterboarding's use as a method of torture or means to support interrogation is based on its ability to cause extreme mental distress while possibly creating no lasting physical damage to the subject. The psychological effects on victims of waterboarding can last long after the procedure.[4] Although waterboarding in cases can leave no lasting physical damage, it carries the real risks of extreme pain, damage to the lungs, brain damage caused by oxygen deprivation, injuries as a result of struggling against restraints (including broken bones), and even death.[5]

Numerous experts have described this technique as torture.[6][7][8][9][10][11][12] Some nations have also criminally prosecuted individuals for performing waterboarding, including the United States.[13]

The practice garnered renewed attention and notoriety in September 2006, when further reports claim that the Bush administration had authorized the use of waterboarding on extrajudicial prisoners of the United States. ABC News reported that current and former CIA officers stated that "there is a presidential finding, signed in 2002, by President Bush, Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft approving the 'enhanced' interrogation techniques, including water boarding."[14] According to Republican United States Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, waterboarding is "torture", "no different than holding a pistol to his head and firing a blank" and can damage the subject's psyche "in ways that may never heal."[15] Waterboarding has become an issue in the nomination of Michael B. Mukasey to be the next U.S. Attorney General. In his Senate confirmation hearing, Mukasey refused to say if he considered waterboarding a form of torture, claiming he did not know the details of how waterboarding was conducted. Several Senators have indicated they will not vote for him without an affirmative answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding

What is water boarding?
http://people.howstuffworks.com/water-boarding.htm

CIA waterboarding 'broke suspect after 35 seconds'
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3244719.ece

CIA erased waterboarding videos
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/07/cia_torture_interrogation_vids_wiped/

Abrams: CIA Destroys Evidence

TPM's Timeline of the CIA's Torture Tapes
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004872.php
For years, the CIA denied recording any interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees. For years, the Bush administration denied issuing any legal authorization for torture. And for years, members of Congress claimed ignorance of what the CIA and the Bush administration had in store for detained members of al-Qaeda. All of these denials have proven false.

There's a tremendous amount that remains unknown about CIA interrogations of al-Qaeda, the recording of those interrogations, and the destruction of those recordings. Determining just what is known is confusing, as is sorting out when crucial developments occurred. To provide a measure of clarity, TPMmuckraker has compiled a timeline of relevant events over the past five years. Since the core of the current controversy isn't about the destruction of the tapes but the interrogation methods those tapes captured -- which is of course unknown -- we included milestones on the administration's road to developing interrogation policy.

Invaluable research assistance was provided by Adrianne Jeffries, Peter Sheehy, and Andrew Berger. Mistakes in compiling this information are entirely our own, and we hope you'll alert us in comments to any errors we've made.

February 7, 2002: President Bush signs an executive order that says Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions does not apply to al-Qaeda detainees.

2002: Al-Qaeda members Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri are captured and interrogated in secret CIA prisons. At least some of the interrogations are videotaped.

The precise date of the interrogations that were taped is not known. However, there are some clues. As early as the spring of 2002, the CIA began using "harsh interrogation methods" on Zubaydah, including waterboarding. As for Nashiri, the alleged mastermind of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, he was not captured until the fall, as late as November. He told a military tribunal in March of this year that "from the time I was arrested... they have been torturing me," and that he'd made up stories in order to get interrogators to stop.

August 1, 2002: Jay Bybee, the chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, issues a memo that restricts the definition of torture to physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." A still-classified memo from roughly the same time period, known as the Second Bybee Memo, reportedly gets specific about the legality of certain prospective CIA interrogation techniques.

September, 2002: The leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees receive a CIA briefing on interrogation techniques considered for al-Qaeda detainees. The content of that briefing is highly disputed. Both Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and ex-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) say they were not briefed on actual interrogation techniques in use by the CIA. Ex-Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) says otherwise. The briefing or briefings do not mention any interrogations being recorded. There is no known protest from any member of Congress present.

February - December 2002: The Senate and House intelligence committees conduct a joint review into the intelligence preceding the 9/11 attacks. Jointly chaired by Sens. Graham and Richard Shelby (R-AL) and Reps. Goss and Pelosi, it is not told by the CIA of any recorded interrogations.

November 27, 2002: President Bush signs into law a bill creating the 9/11 Commission.
February, 2003: CIA General Counsel Scott Muller briefs the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence about interrogation techniques now in use by CIA. According to then-ranking member Jane Harman (D-CA), the briefing raised "serious concerns." Muller also gave some indication that there were videotapes of some al-Qaeda detainees and reason to believe that the tapes might be in danger of destruction. Harman writes a classified letter to the CIA general counsel's office, warning "against destruction of any videotapes." Reportedly, Porter Goss (R-FL), the committee chairman and future CIA director, warns against destroying the tapes as well.

May 7, 2003: Judge Leonie Brinkema, presiding over the trial of admitted al-Qaeda member Zacharias Moussaoui, requests that the government turn over any recordings of al-Qaeda captives potentially relevant to the case.

May 9, 2003: The Justice Department and CIA reply to Brinkema by asserting that no such recordings exist.

2003-2004: CIA General Counsel Muller solicits opinions about potential destruction of videotaped interrogations from White House and Justice Department lawyers. Harriet Miers is the only lawyer whom the press has so far identified as discussing the potential destruction with Muller. It is not known who from the Justice Department participated. Reportedly, all advise against destruction, though it is unclear how strongly they express those views, or what opinions they commit to paper. Senior CIA leadership concurs.

July 22, 2004: The 9/11 Commission issues its final report. Despite "formally request[ing] material of this kind from all relevant agencies," in the words of staff director Philip Zelikow, the 9/11 Commission does not learn of the existence of the tapes. The commission did not specifically request taped interviews, however.

September 22, 2004: Porter Goss becomes Director of Central Intelligence. It is believed that Goss again objected to the destruction of the tapes. Goss begins a purge of the CIA, which the Bush administration suspects of undermining its agenda. In the fall, Jose Rodriguez Jr. becomes head of the Directorate of Operations, subsequently renamed the National Clandestine Service. Rodriguez is no fan of Goss's, but reportedly takes the position to preempt the appointment of a Goss loyalist.

December 30, 2004: The Office of Legal Counsel formally repudiates the August 1, 2002 torture memo. However, the new memo's eighth footnote reassures the CIA that interrogators would not face prosecution, saying that "we have reviewed this Office's prior opinions addressing issues involving treatment of detainees and do not believe that any of their conclusions would be different under the standards set forth in this memorandum."

February 2005: The New York Times reports "growing unease" within the CIA that interrogators may someday face prosecution for carrying out interrogations in accordance with guidelines approved by the Bush administration.

Spring 2005: Steve Bradbury, the new head of the OLC, reportedly issues secret legal opinions amounting to "an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency," including "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." The document remains classified.

2005: Though the exact date is unknown -- ABC News places it in November -- Jose Rodriguez orders videotapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri destroyed. He reportedly has the backing of an attorney from the agency's Directorate of Operations, though he does not inform CIA General Counsel John Rizzo of the decision. His motivations, according to former colleagues, are to protect his interrogators from potential prosecution. Goss is reportedly not advised before the destruction either. It is unclear whether all videotapes of CIA interrogations are destroyed, or even all of the videos of Abu Zubaydah's and al-Nashiri's interrogations.

May 2005: Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, apparently writes to CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, asking for "over a hundred documents" about CIA detentions and interrogations. Among them is a CIA General Counsel assessment of whether the interrogations shown on the tapes were "were in compliance with the August 2002 Department of Justice legal opinion concerning interrogation." He gets no reply.

September, 2005: Rockefeller, having received no reply from Helgerson, redirects his request to Goss. He again receives no reply.

November 3, 2005: For the sentencing phase of Moussaoui's trial, Judge Brinkema again requests the government to disclose whether it had recorded any interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees relevant to Moussaoui's trial.

November 14, 2005: The government again tells Brinkema it has no such recordings.

May 5, 2006: Moussaoui is sentenced to life in prison.
May 30, 2006: General Michael Hayden becomes CIA Director, replacing Goss.

March 14, 2007: In response to a question at a briefing to the House intelligence committee, Hayden makes what lawmakers later describe as an "offhand comment" about destruction of videotaped interrogations.

April 19, 2007: Hayden again "briefly mentions" the destruction of the tapes in a letter to a member of the House intelligence committee.

October 25, 2007: U.S. Attorneys Chuck Rosenberg, David Novak and David Raskin file court papers informing Brinkema and Fourth Circuit Court Judge Karen Williams that they have discovered and personally viewed two videotapes and one audiotape of interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees. It is unclear which detainees the tapes show, when they were made, and how they survived Rodriguez's destruction order. The lawyers state that the tapes do not change the outcome of the Moussaoui trial. Explanations for why the government told the court that no such recordings existed are redacted from the public filing.

December 6, 2007: Preempting a New York Times story, Hayden tells CIA employees that the CIA recorded interrogations of two detainees in 2002 and destroyed those tapes in 2005. Hayden says that the CIA's general counsel reviewed the tapes and found the interrogations shown to have been legal and that the tapes were destroyed in order to protect interrogators shown on the tapes from al-Qaeda reprisal should the tapes ever be released. Both intelligence committees, he says, have been told that the tapes were destroyed. He adds that "videotaping stopped in 2002."

December 7, 2007: Chairman Rockefeller says that the Senate intelligence committee will look into the destruction of the tapes as part of "its thorough examination of the CIA’s detention, interrogation and rendition program." He adds that his committee was not told that the tapes had been destroyed.
House intelligence committee leaders Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) and Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) complain that Hayden's earlier mentions of the tapes' destruction were not "sufficient notification." And they say that Hayden's claim that they were told about the tapes' destruction "simply is not true."

December 8, 2007: The Justice Department and CIA Inspector General announce a joint inquiry into the destruction of the tapes.

December 10, 2007: Reyes and Hoekstra announce an inquiry into the destruction of the tapes.

CIA Agent on waterboarding

CIA man Admits Waterboarding 'Torture'
http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22906305-5006003,00.html

A RETIRED CIA agent has confirmed interrogators used a simulated drowning technique on an al-Qaeda suspect and admitted that the disputed method is a form torture.

In an ABC News interview aired yesterday, retired agent John Kiriakou, who led a CIA team that captured and interrogated al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah, said using the "waterboarding'' technique was necessary and yielded crucial information.

Mr Kiriakou said the method broke Zubaydah - one of the first top al-Qaeda suspects captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks - in less than 35 seconds, according to ABC.

"The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to co-operate,'' Mr Kiriakou said.

"From that day on, he answered every question,'' he said.

"The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.''

The technique involves pouring water on the covered face of a restrained prisoner.

Although Mr Kiriakou admitted waterboarding was used, he did not entirely approve of it.

"We're Americans, and we're better than this. And we shouldn't be doing this kind of thing.''

But he also said that in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there was a sense of urgency in getting information on terrorist groups.

"What happens if we don't waterboard a person, and we don't get that nugget of information, and there's an attack,'' Mr Kiriakou said.

"I would have trouble forgiving myself.''

Mr Kiriakou's comments come amid a growing scandal over the CIA's destruction in 2005 of videotapes made in 2002 of interrogations of Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another top al-Qaeda operative, as first reported by The New York Times.

The videotapes reportedly showed harsh interrogation techniques used on the suspects.

Mr Kiriakou said he was unaware that the Zubaydah interrogation was being secretly recorded by the CIA and that the tapes were subsequently destroyed.

CIA director Michael Hayden, who was not leading the agency when the tapes were destroyed, has said that getting rid of the tapes was necessary to protect the identity of CIA agents.

The White House has stopped short of denying any involvement in the affair.

The Justice Department and the CIA's internal watchdog said they had opened a preliminary inquiry.

CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described
Sources Say Agency's Tactics Lead to Questionable Confessions, Sometimes to Death
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866
Harsh interrogation techniques authorized by top officials of the CIA have led to questionable confessions and the death of a detainee since the techniques were first authorized in mid-March 2002, ABC News has been told by former and current intelligence officers and supervisors.

They say they are revealing specific details of the techniques, and their impact on confessions, because the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen. All gave their accounts on the condition that their names and identities not be revealed. Portions of their accounts are corrobrated by public statements of former CIA officers and by reports recently published that cite a classified CIA Inspector General's report.
Other portions of their accounts echo the accounts of escaped prisoners from one CIA prison in Afghanistan.

"They would not let you rest, day or night. Stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down. Don't sleep. Don't lie on the floor," one prisoner said through a translator. The detainees were also forced to listen to rap artist Eminem's "Slim Shady" album. The music was so foreign to them it made them frantic, sources said.

Contacted after the completion of the ABC News investigation, CIA officials would neither confirm nor deny the accounts. They simply declined to comment.

The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

The techniques are controversial among experienced intelligence agency and military interrogators. Many feel that a confession obtained this way is an unreliable tool. Two experienced officers have told ABC that there is little to be gained by these techniques that could not be more effectively gained by a methodical, careful, psychologically based interrogation. According to a classified report prepared by the CIA Inspector General John Helgerwon and issued in 2004, the techniques "appeared to constitute cruel, and degrading treatment under the (Geneva) convention," the New York Times reported on Nov. 9, 2005.

It is "bad interrogation. I mean you can get anyone to confess to anything if the torture's bad enough," said former CIA officer Bob Baer.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and a deputy director of the State Department's office of counterterrorism, recently wrote in the Los Angeles Times, "What real CIA field officers know firsthand is that it is better to build a relationship of trust … than to extract quick confessions through tactics such as those used by the Nazis and the Soviets."

One argument in favor of their use: time. In the early days of al Qaeda captures, it was hoped that speeding confessions would result in the development of important operational knowledge in a timely fashion.

However, ABC News was told that at least three CIA officers declined to be trained in the techniques before a cadre of 14 were selected to use them on a dozen top al Qaeda suspects in order to obtain critical information. In at least one instance, ABC News was told that the techniques led to questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators and that this information had a significant impact on U.S. actions in Iraq.

According to CIA sources, Ibn al Shaykh al Libbi, after two weeks of enhanced interrogation, made statements that were designed to tell the interrogators what they wanted to hear. Sources say Al Libbi had been subjected to each of the progressively harsher techniques in turn and finally broke after being water boarded and then left to stand naked in his cold cell overnight where he was doused with cold water at regular intervals.

His statements became part of the basis for the Bush administration claims that Iraq trained al Qaeda members to use biochemical weapons. Sources tell ABC that it was later established that al Libbi had no knowledge of such training or weapons and fabricated the statements because he was terrified of further harsh treatment.

"This is the problem with using the waterboard. They get so desperate that they begin telling you what they think you want to hear," one source said.

However, sources said, al Libbi does not appear to have sought to intentionally misinform investigators, as at least one account has stated. The distinction in this murky world is nonetheless an important one. Al Libbi sought to please his investigators, not lead them down a false path, two sources with firsthand knowledge of the statements said.

When properly used, the techniques appear to be closely monitored and are signed off on in writing on a case-by-case, technique-by-technique basis, according to highly placed current and former intelligence officers involved in the program. In this way, they say, enhanced interrogations have been authorized for about a dozen high value al Qaeda targets -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed among them. According to the sources, all of these have confessed, none of them has died, and all of them remain incarcerated.

While some media accounts have described the locations where these detainees are located as a string of secret CIA prisons -- a gulag, as it were -- in fact, sources say, there are a very limited number of these locations in use at any time, and most often they consist of a secure building on an existing or former military base. In addition, they say, the prisoners usually are not scattered but travel together to these locations, so that information can be extracted from one and compared with others. Currently, it is believed that one or more former Soviet bloc air bases and military installations are the Eastern European location of the top suspects. Khalid Sheik Mohammed is among the suspects detained there, sources said.

The sources told ABC that the techniques, while progressively aggressive, are not deemed torture, and the debate among intelligence officers as to whether they are effective should not be underestimated. There are many who feel these techniques, properly supervised, are both valid and necessary, the sources said. While harsh, they say, they are not torture and are reserved only for the most important and most difficult prisoners.

According to the sources, when an interrogator wishes to use a particular technique on a prisoner, the policy at the CIA is that each step of the interrogation process must be signed off at the highest level -- by the deputy director for operations for the CIA. A cable must be sent and a reply received each time a progressively harsher technique is used. The described oversight appears tough but critics say it could be tougher. In reality, sources said, there are few known instances when an approval has not been granted. Still, even the toughest critics of the techniques say they are relatively well monitored and limited in use.

Two sources also told ABC that the techniques -- authorized for use by only a handful of trained CIA officers -- have been misapplied in at least one instance.

The sources said that in that case a young, untrained junior officer caused the death of one detainee at a mud fort dubbed the "salt pit" that is used as a prison. They say the death occurred when the prisoner was left to stand naked throughout the harsh Afghanistan night after being doused with cold water. He died, they say, of hypothermia.

According to the sources, a second CIA detainee died in Iraq and a third detainee died following harsh interrogation by Department of Defense personnel and contractors in Iraq. CIA sources said that in the DOD case, the interrogation was harsh, but did not involve the CIA.

The Kabul fort has also been the subject of confusion. Several intelligence sources involved in both the enhanced interrogation program and the program to ship detainees back to their own country for interrogation -- a process described as rendition, say that the number of detainees in each program has been added together to suggest as many as 100 detainees are moved around the world from one secret CIA facility to another. In the rendition program, foreign nationals captured in the conflict zones are shipped back to their own countries on occasion for interrogation and prosecution.

There have been several dozen instances of rendition. There have been a little over a dozen authorized enhanced interrogations. As a result, the enhanced interrogation program has been described as one encompassing 100 or more prisoners. Multiple CIA sources told ABC that it is not. The renditions have also been described as illegal. They are not, our sources said, although they acknowledge the procedures are in an ethical gray area and are at times used for the convenience of extracting information under harsher conditions that the U.S. would allow.

ABC was told that several dozen renditions of this kind have occurred. Jordan is one country recently cited as an "emerging" center for renditions, according to published reports. The ABC sources said that rendition of this sort are legal and should not be confused with illegal "snatches" of targets off the streets of a home country by officers of yet another country. The United States is currently charged with such an illegal rendition in Italy. Israel and at least one European nation have also been accused of such renditions.

CIA Tapes Furor: A Legacy of Mistrust
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1692571,00.html
This week's uproar over the destruction of interrogation tapes by the CIA offers a rare public glimpse into a perennial battle within the agency's clandestine service. Since Watergate, the CIA's case officers have been restrained by the expectation that taking risks in pursuit of actionable intelligence would bring career-ending, or even life-threatening, exposure if things went badly and details came to light. CIA leaders, especially after 9/11, have sought to unshackle their operatives by reassuring case officers they would be protected if they took risks. Current CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said Thursday that the tapes of the questioning of al-Qaeda suspects were destroyed to protect the identities of the interrogators.
Indeed, the man who ordered the tapes destroyed is certainly familiar with the case that agency employees view as one of the worst political betrayals of an operative. Jose Rodriguez headed the National Clandestine Service when he ordered the interrogation tapes destroyed. But during the 1980s and 1990s he was a case officer in Latin America and in the CIA headquarters office that oversees operations there. He served under Terry Ward, the onetime director of Latin American operations who was fired in 1995 by then-CIA director John Deutch. President Bill Clinton's foreign intelligence advisory board had found Ward "derelict" in his duties for failing to inform Congress of human rights violations by agents of the CIA in Guatemala, including complicity in the death of an American citizen.

Ward's firing created a legacy of distrust at the agency. "There's the perception there that the politicians want you to be risk-takers, but as soon as you do and something turns out badly, they moonwalk away from you faster than a speeding bullet," says a former senior intelligence official who knows Rodriguez. CIA officers erupted in bitter laughter during a speech after the Ward firing in which Deutch urged them to take risks. Deutch's successor, George Tenet, attempted to mollify case officers by awarding Ward the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal in March 2000.

But the fear of betrayal persists, and even after 9/11, CIA officers remain skittish. Case officers typically buy liability insurance to pay for lawyers in case their activities come to light. And concern about crossing a legal line on interrogation has been heightened with recent exposure given to cases of alleged torture. "Enhanced interrogation techniques are an example where people within the Administration, senior people, were fully briefed and oversight committees were briefed," the former senior intelligence official says. "At the time they were briefed, people on the Hill said things like, 'Are you sure you're doing enough?' And then information leaks to the media and suddenly the same people are saying, 'You're doing what?!' "

Now, Rodriguez's eagerness to protect his case officers has landed him, and others at the CIA, in serious trouble. Democratic Senator Dick Durbin called Friday for Attorney General Michael Mukasey to initiate an investigation into whether actions by Rodriguez or others criminally obstructed justice. Durbin argues, in his letter to Mukasey, that by refusing to turn the interrogation tapes over to the 9/11 Commission, CIA officials may have violated the law against criminal obstruction. Durbin has given Mukasey until Dec. 12 to respond.

The CIA, meanwhile, is scrambling to defend itself against the accusation of obstruction. "The agency went to great lengths to meet the requests of the 9/11 Commission," says CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "The Commission had access to material from detainees... [and] even though the Commission obviously had a good sense of what was learned from detainees, the tapes were not destroyed while the Commission was active because it was thought the staff could ask about tapes at some point. As Director Hayden noted in his message to the CIA workforce, the tapes were destroyed only when it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative, or judicial inquiries."

The irony may be that Rodriguez could have made matters worse, rather than better, for the clandestine service by destroying the tapes. A former senior Administration official says that the enhanced interrogation techniques used by the case officers had been approved by top lawyers and officials at the Justice Department and the White House, including then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft. Even if the techniques were in violation of the domestic and international prohibitions on torture, it would have been very hard for the powers at the White House, CIA and Justice to "moonwalk" away from the techniques if and when they were exposed.

The CIA insists that the destruction of the tapes was designed only to protect the interrogators from personal danger if their faces were made public with the leaking of the tapes. But there, too, the destruction may have made matters worse. If Mukasey decides to pursue a criminal obstruction of justice investigation, that could raise the risk of precisely the sort of exposure the CIA interrogators would prefer to avoid.

HUNK OF THE DAY -Julian "Dr. Christian Troy" McMahon

2007-12-11T12:44:00.000-05:00

BABE OF THE DAY-Kelly Carlson

2007-12-11T12:42:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1023018/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelly_Carlson

http://www.mrskin.com/Stars/06896/Kelly_Carlson.htm

Kelly Carlson Nude Scene - Watch a funny movie here

Kelly Carlson Scene - Free videos are just a click away

Kely Carlson Boob Grabbed And Fucked - The most popular videos are here

Song of the day/Tv show of the Day

2007-12-11T12:40:00.000-05:00

Song

The Engine Room

A Perfect Lie (Make me Beautiful)

Tv Show
Nip/Tuck

Story of the Day-Human evolution speeding up

2007-12-11T12:35:00.000-05:00

Researchers: Human evolution speeding up
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/discoveries/2007-12-10-evolution-speeding-up_N.htm
By tracking the footprints of evolution along the human genome, a team of researchers on Monday reported for the first time that the pace of evolution is quickening with the passing generations.
The findings represent the latest in a series of landmark efforts to use the human genome, which was decoded in 2003, to understand human biology and unravel the mysteries of evolution.

The findings support the notion that the planet's exploding population is a living laboratory for genetic trial and error, researchers say. By tracking the changes over time, the researchers found clear evidence that we're not who we used to be.

Many of these changes were forced on early humans by changing conditions, including waves of infectious diseases, the shift to an agricultural diet and migrations to colder climates. Some are still unexplained.

For instance, just 10,000 years ago — the blink of an eye in evolutionary time — fewer people carried the gene for an enzyme called lactase, which allows humans to digest cow's milk. A bigger proportion of people had the dark skin of our African ancestors, and no one had blue eyes.

"Blue eyes are new," says lead author John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin.

Hawks says the findings, in today's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, are merely "breaking the ice" in a rapidly expanding effort to use genetics to explain how people have changed since the first humanlike creatures appeared 7 million years ago.

"It's a very important paper," says Clark Larsen, chairman of anthropology at Ohio State University. He says his own study of physical evidence supports the researchers' notion that there was "a ton" of biological change in the past 10,000 years. "Ten thousand years is a tiny part of the picture of human evolution," he says. "It's still going on. Right before our eyes."

Some evolving traits are simple to track. Blue eyes today are common, and millions of people in northern climates now carry the lactase gene, along with about half of those living along the Mediterranean. Why did the lactase gene spread so rapidly? Because it helps people survive and bear children, says co-author Henry Harpending of the University of Utah.

"If you can metabolize milk sugar rapidly, it gives you an advantage when food is scarce," he says.

People who survive are more likely to pass a gene along to their offspring, who also are better able to survive and reproduce. But inheriting a gene doesn't always confer an advantage, Harpending says.

The gene for sickle cell anemia offers an advantage to people living in equatorial Africa, because it helps guard against malaria.

Outside Africa, it's a different story. If a child inherits two copies, one from each parent, the blessing can become a deadly scourge. "In the U.S., where there's no malaria, there are at least 70,000 people leading impaired lives," Harpending says.

Other genetic changes have taken root in the genome, though they don't have any obvious influence on survival or reproduction. "What do people with blue eyes have that made them have more children?" Hawks asks. "I dunno."

Researchers: Human evolution speeding up
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071211/ap_on_sc/evolution_speedup;_ylt=AgUWCrYsvx9bRxUspXQwUzas0NUE
Science fiction writers have suggested a future Earth populated by a blend of all races into a common human form. In real life, the reverse seems to be happening. People are evolving more rapidly than in the distant past, with residents of various continents becoming increasingly different from one another, researchers say.
"I was raised with the belief that modern humans showed up 40,000 to 50,000 years ago and haven't changed," explained Henry C. Harpending, an anthropologist at the University of Utah. "The opposite seems to be true."

"Our species is not static," Harpending added in a telephone interview.

That doesn't mean we should expect major changes in a few generations, though, evolution occurs over thousands of years.

Harpending and colleagues looked at the DNA of humans and that of chimpanzees, our closest relatives, they report in this week's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

If evolution had been proceeding steadily at the current rate since humans and chimps separated 6 million years ago there should be 160 times more differences than the researchers found.

That indicates that human evolution had been slower in the distant past, Harpending explained.

"Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation," the study says. "The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease."

And they found that different changes are occurring in Africans, Asians and Europeans.

Most anthropologists agree that humans first evolved in Africa and then spread to other areas, and the lighter skin color of Europeans and Asians is generally attributed to selection to allow more absorption of vitamin D in colder climate where there is less sun.

The increase in human population from millions to billions in the last 10,000 years accelerated the rate of evolution because "we were in new environments to which we needed to adapt," Harpending adds. "And with a larger population, more mutations occurred."

In another example, the researchers noted that in China and most of Africa, few people can digest fresh milk into adulthood. Yet in Sweden and Denmark, the gene that makes the milk-digesting enzyme lactase remains active, so almost everyone can drink fresh milk, explaining why dairy farming is more common in Europe than in the Mediterranean and Africa, Harpending says.

The researchers studied 3.9 million gene snippets from 270 people in four populations: Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa's Yoruba tribe and Utah Mormons who traced their ancestry to northern Europe.

Richard Potts, director of the human origins program at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, said he thinks the researchers reasoning regarding rapid adaptive change is plausible.

The study mainly points to an overall expansion in the human population over the past 40,000 years to explain the genetic data.

"Yet the archaeological record also shows that humans increasingly divided themselves into distinct cultures and migrating groups — factors that seem to play only a small role in their analysis. Dividing the human population into finer units and their movement into new regions — the Arctic, Oceania, tropical forests, just to name some — may have also forced quicker adaptive evolution in our species," Potts said.

Potts, who was not part of the research team, added that he liked the report "because it points to how genetic data can be used to test a variety of ideas about recent human adaptation."

Two years ago Harpending and colleague Gregory M. Cochran published a study arguing that above-average intelligence in Ashkenazi Jews — those of northern European heritage — resulted from natural selection in medieval Europe, where they were pressured into jobs as financiers, traders, managers and tax collectors.

Those who were smarter succeeded, grew wealthy and had bigger families to pass on their genes, they suggested. That evolution also is linked to genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher in Jews.

The new study was funded by the Department of Energy, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Aging, the Unz Foundation, the University of Utah and the University of Wisconsin.

Human evolution at the crossroads
Genetics, cybernetics complicate forecast for species
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7103668/
Scientists are fond of running the evolutionary clock backward, using DNA analysis and the fossil record to figure out when our ancestors stood erect and split off from the rest of the primate evolutionary tree.

But the clock is running forward as well. So where are humans headed?

Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says it's the question he's most often asked, and "a question that any prudent evolutionist will evade." But the question is being raised even more frequently as researchers study our past and contemplate our future.

Paleontologists say that anatomically modern humans may have at one time shared the Earth with as many as three other closely related types — Neanderthals, Homo erectus and the dwarf hominids whose remains were discovered last year in Indonesia.

Does evolutionary theory allow for circumstances in which "spin-off" human species could develop again?

Some think the rapid rise of genetic modification could be just such a circumstance. Others believe we could blend ourselves with machines in unprecedented ways — turning natural-born humans into an endangered species.

Present-day fact, not science fiction
Such ideas may sound like little more than science-fiction plot lines. But trend-watchers point out that we're already wrestling with real-world aspects of future human development, ranging from stem-cell research to the implantation of biocompatible computer chips. The debates are likely to become increasingly divisive once all the scientific implications sink in.

"These issues touch upon religion, upon politics, upon values," said Gregory Stock, director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at the University of California at Los Angeles. "This is about our vision of the future, essentially, and we'll never completely agree about those things."

The problem is, scientists can't predict with precision how our species will adapt to changes over the next millennium, let alone the next million years. That's why Dawkins believes it's imprudent to make a prediction in the first place.

Others see it differently: In the book "Future Evolution," University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward argues that we are making ourselves virtually extinction-proof by bending Earth's flora and fauna to our will. And assuming that the human species will be hanging around for at least another 500 million years, Ward and others believe there are a few most likely scenarios for the future, based on a reading of past evolutionary episodes and current trends.

Where are humans headed? Here's an imprudent assessment of five possible paths, ranging from homogenized humans to alien-looking hybrids bred for interstellar travel.

Unihumans: Will we all be assimilated?
Biologists say that different populations of a species have to be isolated from each other in order for those populations to diverge into separate species. That's the process that gave rise to 13 different species of "Darwin's Finches" in the Galapagos Islands. But what if the human species is so widespread there's no longer any opening for divergence?

Evolution is still at work. But instead of diverging, our gene pool has been converging for tens of thousands of years — and Stuart Pimm, an expert on biodiversity at Duke University, says that trend may well be accelerating.

"The big thing that people overlook when speculating about human evolution is that the raw matter for evolution is variation," he said. "We are going to lose that variability very quickly, and the reason is not quite a genetic argument, but it's close. At the moment we humans speak something on the order of 6,500 languages. If we look at the number of languages we will likely pass on to our children, that number is 600."

Cultural diversity, as measured by linguistic diversity, is fading as human society becomes more interconnected globally, Pimm argued. "I do think that we are going to become much more homogeneous," he said.

Ken Miller, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University, agreed: "We have become a kind of animal monoculture."

Is that such a bad thing? A global culture of Unihumans could seem heavenly if we figure out how to achieve long-term political and economic stability and curb population growth. That may require the development of a more "domesticated" society — one in which our rough genetic edges are smoothed out.

But like other monocultures, our species could be more susceptible to quick-spreading diseases, as last year's bird flu epidemic illustrated.

"The genetic variability that we have protects us against suffering from massive harm when some bug comes along," Pimm said. "This idea of breeding the super-race, like breeding the super-race of corn or rice or whatever — the long-term consequences of that could be quite scary."

Environmental pressures wouldn't stop
Even a Unihuman culture would have to cope with evolutionary pressures from the environment, the University of Washington's Peter Ward said.

Some environmentalists say toxins that work like estrogens are already having an effect: Such agents, found in pesticides and industrial PCBs, have been linked to earlier puberty for women, increased incidence of breast cancer and lower sperm counts for men.

"One of the great frontiers is going to be trying to keep humans alive in a much more toxic world," he observed from his Seattle office. "The whales of Puget Sound are the most toxic whales on Earth. Puget Sound is just a huge cesspool. Well, imagine if that goes global."

Global epidemics or dramatic environmental changes represent just two of the scenarios that could cause a Unihuman society to crack, putting natural selection — or perhaps not-so-natural selection — back into the evolutionary game. Then what?

Survivalistians: Coping with doomsday
Surviving doomsday is a story as old as Noah’s Ark, and as new as the post-bioapocalypse movie “28 Days Later.”

Catastrophes ranging from super-floods to plagues to nuclear war to asteroid strikes erase civilization as we know it, leaving remnants of humanity who go their own evolutionary ways.

The classic Darwinian version of the story may well be H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” in which humanity splits off into two species: the ruthless, underground Morlock and the effete, surface-dwelling Eloi.

At least for modern-day humans, the forces that lead to species spin-offs have been largely held in abeyance: Populations are increasingly in contact with each other, leading to greater gene-mixing. Humans are no longer threatened by predators their own size, and medicine cancels out inherited infirmities ranging from hemophilia to nearsightedness.

“We are helping genes that would have dropped out of the gene pool,” paleontologist Peter Ward observed.

But in Wells’ tale and other science-fiction stories, a civilization-shattering catastrophe serves to divide humanity into separate populations, vulnerable once again to selection pressures. For example, people who had more genetic resistance to viral disease would be more likely to pass on that advantage to their descendants.

If different populations develop in isolation over many thousands of generations, it’s conceivable that separate species would emerge. For example, that virus-resistant strain of post-humans might eventually thrive in the wake of a global bioterror crisis, while less hardy humans would find themselves quarantined in the world’s safe havens.

Patterns in the spread of the virus that causes AIDS may hint at earlier, less catastrophic episodes of natural selection, said Stuart Pimm, a conservation biologist at Duke University: “There are pockets of people who don’t seem to become HIV-positive, even though they have a lot of exposure to the virus — and that may be because their ancestors survived the plague 500 years ago.”

Evolution, or devolution?
If the catastrophe ever came, could humanity recover? In science fiction, that’s an intriguingly open question. For example, Stephen Baxter’s novel “Evolution” foresees an environmental-military meltdown so severe that, over the course of 30 million years, humans devolve into separate species of eyeless mole-men, neo-apes and elephant-people herded by their super-rodent masters.

Even Ward gives himself a little speculative leeway in his book “Future Evolution,” where a time-traveling human meets his doom 10 million years from now at the hands — or in this case, the talons — of a flock of intelligent killer crows. But Ward finds it hard to believe that even a global catastrophe would keep human populations isolated long enough for our species to split apart.

“Unless we totally forget how to build a boat, we can quickly come back,” Ward said.

Even in the event of a post-human split-off, evolutionary theory dictates that one species would eventually subjugate, assimilate or eliminate their competitors for the top job in the global ecosystem. Just ask the Neanderthals.

“If you have two species competing over the same ecological niche, it ends badly for one of them, historically,” said Joel Garreau, the author of the forthcoming book “Radical Evolution.”

The only reason chimpanzees still exist today is that they “had the brains to stay up in the trees and not come down into the open grasslands,” he noted.

“You have this optimistic view that you’re not going to see speciation (among humans), and I desperately hope that’s right,” Garreau said. “But that’s not the only scenario.”

Numans: Rise of the superhumans
We’ve already seen the future of enhanced humans, and his name is Barry Bonds.

The controversy surrounding the San Francisco Giants slugger, and whether steroids played a role in the bulked-up look that he and other baseball players have taken on, is only a foretaste of what’s coming as scientists find new genetic and pharmacological ways to improve performance.

Developments in the field are coming so quickly that social commentator Joel Garreau argues that they represent a new form of evolution. This radical kind of evolution moves much more quickly than biological evolution, which can take millions of years, or even cultural evolution, which works on a scale of hundreds or thousands of years.

How long before this new wave of evolution spawns a new kind of human? “Try 20 years,” Garreau told MSNBC.com.

In his latest book, “Radical Evolution,” Garreau reels off a litany of high-tech enhancements, ranging from steroid Supermen, to camera-equipped flying drones, to pills that keep soldiers going without sleep or food for days.

“If you look at the superheroes of the ’30s and the ’40s, just about all of the technologies they had exist today,” he said.

Three kinds of humans
Such enhancements are appearing first on the athletic field and the battlefield, Garreau said, but eventually they’ll make their way to the collegiate scene, the office scene and even the dating scene.

“You’re talking about three different kinds of humans: the enhanced, the naturals and the rest,” Garreau said. “The enhanced are defined as those who have the money and enthusiasm to make themselves live longer, be smarter, look sexier. That’s what you’re competing against.”

In Garreau’s view of the world, the naturals will be those who eschew enhancements for higher reasons, just as vegetarians forgo meat and fundamentalists forgo what they see as illicit pleasures. Then there’s all the rest of us, who don’t get enhanced only because they can’t. “They loathe and despise the people who do, and they also envy them,” Garreau said.

Scientists acknowledge that some of the medical enhancements on the horizon could engender a “have vs. have not” attitude.

“But I could be a smart ass and ask how that’s different from what we have now,” said Brown University’s Ken Miller.

Medical advances as equalizers
Miller went on to point out that in the past, “advances in medical science have actually been great levelers of social equality.” For example, age-old scourges such as smallpox and polio have been eradicated, thanks to public health efforts in poorer as well as richer countries. That trend is likely to continue as scientists learn more about the genetic roots of disease, he said.

“In terms of making genetic modifications to ourselves, it’s much more likely we’ll start to tinker with genes for disease susceptibility. … Maybe there would be a long-term health project to breed HIV-resistant people,” he said.

When it comes to discussing ways to enhance humans, rather than simply make up for disabilities, the traits targeted most often are longevity and memory. Scientists have already found ways to enhance those traits in mice.

Imagine improvements that could keep you in peak working condition past the age of 100. Those are the sorts of enhancements you might want to pass on to your descendants — and that could set the stage for reproductive isolation and an eventual species split-off.

“In that scenario, why would you want your kid to marry somebody who would not pass on the genes that allowed your grandchildren to have longevity, too?” the University of Washington’s Peter Ward asked.

But that would require crossing yet another technological and ethical frontier.

Instant superhumans — or monsters?
To date, genetic medicine has focused on therapies that work on only one person at a time. The effects of those therapies aren’t carried on to future generations. For example, if you take muscle-enhancing drugs, or even undergo gene therapy for bigger muscles, that doesn’t mean your children will have similarly big muscles.

In order to make an enhancement inheritable, you’d have to have new code spliced into your germline stem cells — creating an ethical controversy of transcendent proportions.

Tinkering with the germline could conceivably produce a superhuman species in a single generation — but could also conceivably create a race of monsters. “It is totally unpredictable,” Ward said. “It’s a lot easier to understand evolutionary happenstance.”

Even then, there are genetic traits that are far more difficult to produce than big muscles or even super-longevity — for instance, the very trait that defines us as humans.

“It’s very, very clear that intelligence is a pretty subtle thing, and it’s clear that we don’t have a single gene that turns it on or off,” Miller said.

When it comes to intelligence, some scientists say, the most likely route to our future enhancement — and perhaps our future competition as well — just might come from our own machines.

Cyborgs: Merging with the machines
Will intelligent machines be assimilated, or will humans be eliminated?

Until a few years ago, that question was addressed only in science-fiction plot lines, but today the rapid pace of cybernetic change has led some experts to worry that artificial intelligence may outpace Homo sapiens’ natural smarts.

The pace of change is often stated in terms of Moore’s Law, which says that the number of transistors packed into a square inch should double every 18 months. “Moore’s Law is now on its 30th doubling. We have never seen that sort of exponential increase before in human history,” said Joel Garreau, author of the book “Radical Evolution.”

In some fields, artificial intelligence has already bested humans — with Deep Blue’s 1997 victory over world chess champion Garry Kasparov providing a vivid example.

Three years later, computer scientist Bill Joy argued in an influential Wired magazine essay that we would soon face challenges from intelligent machines as well as from other technologies ranging from weapons of mass destruction to self-replicating nanoscale “gray goo.”

Joy speculated that a truly intelligent robot may arise by the year 2030. “And once an intelligent robot exists, it is only a small step to a robot species — to an intelligent robot that can make evolved copies of itself,” he wrote.

Assimilating the robots
To others, it seems more likely that we could become part-robot ourselves: We’re already making machines that can be assimilated — including prosthetic limbs, mechanical hearts, cochlear implants and artificial retinas. Why couldn’t brain augmentation be added to the list?

“The usual suggestions are that we’ll design improvements to ourselves,” said Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. “We’ll put additional chips in our head, and we won’t get lost, and we’ll be able to do all those math problems that used to befuddle us.”

Shostak, who writes about the possibilities for cybernetic intelligence in his book “Sharing the Universe,” thinks that’s likely to be a transitional step at best.

“My usual response is that, well, you can improve horses by putting four-cylinder engines in them. But eventually you can do without the horse part,” he said. “These hybrids just don’t strike me as having a tremendous advantage. It just means the machines aren’t good enough.”

Back to biology
University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward also believes human-machine hybrids aren’t a long-term option, but for different reasons.

“When you talk to people in the know, they think cybernetics will become biology,” he said. “So you’re right back to biology, and the easiest way to make changes is by manipulating genomes.”

It’s hard to imagine that robots would ever be given enough free rein to challenge human dominance, but even if they did break free, Shostak has no fear of a “Terminator”-style battle for the planet.

“I’ve got a couple of goldfish, and I don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m gonna kill these guys.’ … I just leave ’em alone,” Shostak said. “I suspect the machines would very quickly get to a level where we were kind of irrelevant, so I don’t fear them. But it does mean that we’re no longer No. 1 on the planet, and we’ve never had that happen before.”

Astrans: Turning into an alien race
If humans survive long enough, there’s one sure way to grow new branches on our evolutionary family tree: by spreading out to other planets.

Habitable worlds beyond Earth could be a 23rd century analog to the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin’s evolutionary laboratory: just barely close enough for travelers to get to, but far enough away that there'd be little gene-mixing with the parent species.

“If we get off to the stars, then yes, we will have speciation,” said University of Washington paleontologist Peter Ward. “But can we ever get off the Earth?”

Currently, the closest star system thought to have a planet is Epsilon Eridani, 10.5 light-years away. Even if spaceships could travel at 1 percent the speed of light — an incredible 6.7 million mph — it would take more than a millennium to get there.

Even Mars might be far enough: If humans established a permanent settlement there, the radically different living conditions would change the evolutionary equation. For example, those who are born and raised in one-third of Earth’s gravity could never feel at home on the old “home planet.” It wouldn’t take long for the new Martians to become a breed apart.

As for distant stars, the SETI Institute’s Seth Shostak has already been thinking through the possibilities:

Build a big ark: Build a spaceship big enough to carry an entire civilization to the destination star system. The problem is, that environment might be just too unnatural for natural humans. “If you talk to the sociologists, they’ll say that it will not work. … You’ll be lucky if anybody’s still alive after the third generation,” Shostak said.
Go to warp speed: Somehow we discover a wormhole or find a way to travel at relativistic speeds. “That sounds OK, except for the fact that nobody knows how to do it,” Shostak said.
Enter the Astrans: Humans are genetically engineered to tolerate ultra long-term hibernation aboard robotic ships. Once the ship reaches its destination, these “Astrans” are awakened to start the work of settling a new world. “That’s one possibility,” Shostak said.
The ultimate approach would be to send the instructions for making humans rather than the humans themselves, Shostak said.

“We’re not going to put anything in a rocket, we’re just going to beam ourselves to the stars,” he explained. “The only trouble is, if there’s nobody on the other end to put you back together, there’s no point.”

So are we back to square one? Not necessarily, Shostak said. Setting up the receivers on other stars is no job for a human, “but the machines could make it work.”

In fact, if any other society is significantly further along than ours, such a network might be up and running by now. “The machines really could develop large tracts of galactic real estate, whereas it’s really hard for biology to travel,” Shostak said.

It all seems inconceivable, but if humans really are extinction-proof — if they manage to survive global catastrophes, genetic upheavals and cybernetic challenges — who’s to say what will be inconceivable millions of years from now? Two intelligent species, human and machine, just might work together to spread life through the universe.
“If you were sufficiently motivated,” Shostak said, “you could in fact keep it going forever.”

BABE OF THE DAY-Portia de Rossi

2007-12-10T12:34:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005577/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_de_Rossi

Song of the day/Tv show of the Day

2007-12-10T12:32:00.000-05:00

Song
Arrested Development
People Everyday

Tv show
Arrested Development

Story of the Day-Ricky Hatton vs Floyd Mayweather

2007-12-10T12:28:00.000-05:00

Richard Hatton MBE (born October 6, 1978, in Stockport, Greater Manchester, England), is an English boxer. He is seen by many as one of the greatest British fighters of all-time and is ranked among the best pound for pound boxers in the world by Ring Magazine.

Hatton is a two-time IBF and IBO Light Welterweight Champion, having relinquished the IBF belt, only to step back down to the weight class and beat Juan Urango. He was the WBA Welterweight Champion, but relinquished this title on August 31, 2006.[3] Hatton is also the former WBU, WBA Light Welterweight Champion and WBC, WBA, WBO Inter-Continental Light Welterweight Champion.

Until December 8, 2007 he was undefeated (with a career record of 43 wins, 31 by KO) when Floyd Mayweather Jr stopped him in the 10th round of their encounter for the WBC Welterweight Crown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Hatton

RICKY HATTON COMPILATION

Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (born February 24, 1977 in Grand Rapids, Michigan) is a professional boxer who has a record of 39-0 (25 KOs or TKOs).

Since July 18, 2005, he has been rated by The Ring magazine as the number-one pound-for-pound boxer in the world. [1] Mayweather has won six world boxing championships in five different weight classes, and he was the WBC welterweight champion. He recently defeated Ricky Hatton on December 8, 2007, in a 10th round TKO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather_Jr

floyd mayweather highlight

Unbeaten Mayweather knocks out Hatton, retains title
http://proxy.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3147356
The overwhelmingly British crowd was deafening as it cheered, chanted and sang for Ricky Hatton throughout the fight, but it couldn't fight for him.

He could have used the help.

Floyd Mayweather, faster, more skilled and far more accurate with his punches, dominated Hatton and knocked him out in the 10th round to retain the welterweight championship at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Saturday night.

Most of the fans in the wild sold-out crowd of 16,459 had come all the way from England to support their hero. They sang throughout the fight, even singing for Hatton as he lay dazed on the canvas after being knocked down for the second time.

Mayweather put an exclamation point on his pound-for-pound No. 1 status with a clinical destruction of the reigning junior welterweight champion, who moved up for the opportunity to face the "Pretty Boy" in one of the most anticipated fights in years.

"I took my time. I fought inside and outside," Mayweather said. "A true champion can adapt to anything. I already knew coming in it was going to be a rough night and that it was going to be tougher than most of my fights. I didn't prepare halfway. I had a great training camp."

Mayweather, who is 30, hinted that it might have been his last training camp and talked about retiring, the same way he did after winning the title from Carlos Baldomir in November 2006.
When asked about facing titleholder Miguel Cotto next, Mayweather said, "He's a hell of a champion, and there are great guys at 154 [pounds], but I have done everything I can do in the sport of boxing and I am not going to fight anybody. I accomplished a goal tonight because one of my dreams was to fight in the U.K., but I couldn't. So I had the best of the U.K. come to me."

Hatton (43-1, 31 KOs) was never really in the fight even though he tried to rough Mayweather (39-0, 25 KOs) up by bulling him into the ropes, wrestling with him and making it a physical fight.

Hatton took the loss with good humor.

"What a fluke that was," he said. "He is very good at making you miss. He was better inside than I thought. He caught me. It was working, but I didn't quite stick to the game plan. I was a little gung ho. He wasn't the biggest welterweight I've seen, but I felt the difference. I knew what the tactics were. I wasn't quite good enough to apply it tonight."

Mayweather was clearly in control before rocking Hatton in the 10th round. He knocked him down with a left hook, and Hatton was badly hurt. He didn't look as though he knew where he was when he got up, but referee Joe Cortez let the fight continue.

Mayweather wasted no time jumping on him again, landing a flurry of punches, including another left hook that sent Hatton staggering backward and down again. Cortez called off the fight at 1:35 without a count at the same time the white towel was thrown from Hatton's corner.

"He was definitely the toughest competitor I ever faced," Mayweather said. "I was throwing body shots, and he kept coming. I see now why they call him the 'Hitman.' But then I threw the check hook. They teach us that in northern Michigan in the amateurs, and he walked right into the shot. He never saw it coming."

Said Hatton, "He's very clever. He picked up a couple of shots, and that was that. I was forcing it, and I was doing well. I should have been a touch more careful. He knocked me out, but he wasn't the hardest puncher I've ever fought. He's very accurate. Knock me down, I keep getting up. Ricky Hatton is still going to fight."

The entire week of the fight, the Brits had poured into Las Vegas hoping Hatton could replicate other massive British upsets against American fighters, such as Randy Turpin's shocker against Sugar Ray Robinson to win the middleweight title in 1951 and Lloyd Honeyghan's shocking knockout of Donald Curry to win the undisputed welterweight title in 1987.

It wasn't to be.

It took a few rounds for Mayweather, who was fighting in his adopted hometown, to look comfortable against relentless Hatton, but when he finally did, he started to let his hands go and was able to catch Hatton with combinations.

He cut Hatton, 29, over the right eye in the third round, and in the fourth, Mayweather started to land clean, crisp shots. He stunned Hatton with a three-punch combination.

In the sixth, Hatton lost a point when he shoved Mayweather into the ropes and hit him behind the head.

Mayweather shook the blow off, then continued to pick Hatton apart. He staggered Hatton in the eighth with a straight right hand that snapped his head back as the Americans in the crowd burst into a chant of "USA! USA! USA!"

Mayweather continued the assault and was battering Hatton with combinations and body shots, which was supposed to be Hatton's forte.

By the ninth round, Mayweather's stiff left jab was snapping Hatton's head back and it looked as though it was only a matter of time until the end.

Mayweather said he wanted the knockout. His power has been questioned, and he has battled hand injuries.

"I wanted to show the fans I can punch with power," he said. "I feel like in one of my last fights, I gave the fans a dud. So I wanted to come back and give the fans a great fight."

HBO will replay the bout Dec. 15 (10:15 p.m. ET/PT).

The victory was a culmination of a huge year for Mayweather. He earned more than $20 million to go with the nearly $30 million he earned May 5 when he outpointed Oscar De La Hoya in the richest fight in boxing history. In between the fights, Mayweather emerged as a mainstream star with his performance on the ABC reality series "Dancing With the Stars." Dancing competitors Helio Castroneves, Mark Cuban and Wayne Newton walked him into the ring.

"Money" Mayweather KOs Hatton

There's only one Floyd Mayweather Jr. as Ricky Hatton and his fans find out
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22171714/
Their man was lying sprawled on his back on the canvas below, and still Ricky Hatton's fans in the cheap seats at the MGM Grand hotel-casino were waving beers high and singing his praises to the tune of "Winter Wonderland."

"There's only one Ricky Hatton, one Ricky Hatton," they crooned collectively, though slightly off-key.

Floyd Mayweather Jr. heard them, partly because Mayweather hears everything that goes on in the ring. Once, HBO's Jim Lampley was babbling too much ringside at a Mayweather fight, and Mayweather stopped in mid-action to urge him to calm down.
Hatton heard them too, though at the moment he wasn't hearing much of anything. A savage left hook from a boxer who supposedly couldn't punch began his downfall and a flurry of punches put him down and out for the second and last time on this night.

Besides, he had already heard enough.

"I'm about sick of that song myself now," he said after recovering what was left of his senses.

Credit Hatton for his honesty, though this wasn't a fight built on honest expectations. About the only ones who thought the undersized brawler from Manchester had much of a chance against the best fighter in the world were the thousands of fellow Brits who traveled across the pond to drink, sing, and cheer their man on.

They did their job well, even bringing a small brass band along to help with the only tune they seemed to know. It was all in the spirit of good drunken sportsmanship until they dishonored both themselves and their country by drowning out the national anthem sung by Tyrese Gibson with loud boos and ear-splitting whistles.

The few Mayweather fans among the 16,000 or so who packed the hotel arena tried with little success to overcome that by singing the national anthem as loudly as they could. And there was no shortage of one-fingered salutes to the Brits, including some from the ringside press section.

But it was left to Mayweather to extract the best revenge, and he did his best for God, country and about $11 million. Hatton had some early success with his frenetic, brawling style, but there hasn't been anything Mayweather hasn't seen in a boxing ring and he wasn't going to let the challenger to his throne be the only one doing some dirty work.

They went after each other with fists to the face, elbows to the neck, and heads to the head. They held and clinched and wrestled despite the best efforts of referee Joe Cortez, who did everything humanly possible to turn it into some sort of a boxing match _ including stopping the fight twice to lecture both fighters.

But it was always going to be that kind of a fight largely because it was Hatton's only possible way to win. The style had carried him to victory in all 43 of his other fights, and he wasn't going to change it even against a fighter who possesses the best defensive skills of anyone of his generation.

"Tough as nails," Mayweather said of his foe. "I had him hurt a couple of times and he was still coming forward."

By the middle of the fight, Mayweather was scoring effectively with right leads and left hooks as Hatton continued to come forward relentlessly. Hatton was falling behind, and it didn't help his already slim chances when Cortez took a point from him in the sixth round after he pushed Mayweather's head between the ropes.

Hatton knew the point deduction made it even more unlikely that he could win by decision. So he played into Mayweather's hands by starting to take more chances on the distant hope that he might catch the 147-pound champion with a big shot to turn the fight around.

"I think I put my foot on the gas a bit too much when the point got taken off," Hatton said.

Soon, Mayweather was administering a beating. In the eighth round he rocked Hatton with big punches to the head, landing 32 punches in the round to only six for the challenger as desperation grew in the Englishman's corner.

The end finally came in the 10th round when Mayweather, fighting with his back to his corner, unleashed a left hook he had been working on in training camp and used early in the fight before Hatton began catching on to it. He called it a "chip hook," and Hatton never saw it as it connected to the side of his jaw and he went sprawling on the canvas.

Hatton got up, but he wasn't going to last long. Mayweather caught him with two more shots to the head and he went down in a delayed reaction at the same time Cortez was moving in to stop the fight and his corner was throwing in the towel.

Mayweather answered his few remaining critics who complained that he only fought defensively and was afraid to take chances to finish a fighter. In his first fight since his megafight with Oscar De La Hoya, he delivered the kind of performance expected from the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world.

Mayweather hinted at retirement as he usually does after a fight, but there's little doubt he will be back, possibly against Shane Mosley or Miguel Cotto.

"What else is there for me to prove?" he asked. "I've beaten so many champions. I've beaten the brawlers and the boxers. And I can beat them at their own game, that's the difference. I said I would fight him inside and I did. I knew he was going to get dirty and I had to do the same."

Hatton, meanwhile, was in fairly good spirits after his first defeat and vowed to come back himself though the knockout loss probably spoiled a big May payday with De La Hoya. He had $5 million to take home, and the band was there at the post-fight press conference to serenade him once again.

This time, though, it was Mayweather singing, and he had some new lyrics.

"There's only one Mayweather. There's only one Mayweather. He talks the talk, and he walks the walk, walking to the money land."

So what if he didn't sing any better than Hatton's fans. Mayweather didn't need to.

He had already done his job for the night.

BABE OF THE DAY-Olga Kurylenko

2007-12-07T12:45:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1385871/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olga_Kurylenko

Song of the day/Movie of the Day

2007-12-07T12:41:00.000-05:00

Song
Soul Asylum
Misery

Movie
Hitman

Story of the Day-Glamour to Slammer

2007-12-07T12:37:00.000-05:00

Modern Day Bonnie & Clyde

Police arrest "Bonnie and Clyde" in Greenwood
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22103905/
Greenwood - Police in Greenwood arrested a couple linked to a string of robberies in four states after a chase Monday night on the south side.

Calling them a "modern-day Bonnie and Clyde", investigators say Ronald Palmer and Savannah Myers admitted to nearly a dozen crimes, most of them bank robberies. Myers was recently released from the Marion County Jail for a similar crime.

"They admitted to robberies in Louisville and Jeffersonville," said Matt Fillenwarth, Greenwood Police Department. "They admitted to a couple other robberies in the Indianapolis jurisdiction."

Police believe the duo is responsible for robberies in Missouri and Ohio as well. Investigators in Louisville and Jeffersonville contacted local police when they discovered the couple was living in Greenwood. Police there kept a close eye on the apartment, and followed the two when they left by car Monday evening.

Officers tried to pull them over on the interstate, but that resulted in a chase north on I-65 and finally to a Beech Grove hotel, where a foot chase ensued. Police chased the two across six lanes of rush hour traffic on the highway before the two were caught.

"You don't get too many male-female bank robbery teams. It was a little unusual," Fillenwarth said.

Police say Myers would go into the banks while Palmer, considered "the Michael Jordan of weightlifting" who won a contest as "strongest man in the world", drove the getaway car.

"That's what she liked to do, brandish the gun, go into the bank, order everyone down," Fillenwarth said.

Police say they found dye-stained money in the couple's apartment. They also say the couple led them to a gun used in two of the robberies hidden under a vending machine in the hotel where the car chase ended. A Greenwood officer was injured during the chase.

Myers was arrested for a bank robbery in Indianapolis and released on bond when she allegedly committed the crimes in Louisville and Jeffersonville. Both are currently in the Johnson County jail.

Jet-Setters Charged With Identity Theft
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gIGiwX_6-n_B-u1ipXyNzVBg1EGQD8TAN3DG1
They were young, rich and in love.

But the jet-setters financed their fun on the credit cards of unsuspecting neighbors in their high-end apartment building and other identity-fraud victims, police said Monday.

Jocelyn Kirsch, 22, and Edward K. Anderton, 25, were charged Friday with identity theft, forgery, unlawful use of a computer and a laundry list of other counts.

Their fraud scheme, estimated at $100,000 this year alone, paid for jaunts to Paris, London and Hawaii and other luxury perks, including Kirsch's stop at a tony salon for $1,700 worth of hair extensions, police said.

"They were two young people that were given many gifts in life," said Detective Terry Sweeney, who spoke of the couple's supportive families and private schooling. "And the very best thing they could do was victimize other people."

It was not immediately clear if the couple had hired attorneys. Neither has a listed telephone number in Philadelphia.

Police started investigating Nov. 19 after one of the couple's neighbors reported that she thought her identity had been stolen. A day later, the woman heard from a local UPS store about a waiting package, although she had not ordered anything.

Police kept an eye on the store and arrested Anderton and Kirsch on Friday when they walked in to pick up the package, detectives said.

A weekend search of the couple's $3,000-a-month apartment turned up a cache of tech toys: four computers, two printers, a scanner and an industrial machine that makes ID cards. Police also found $17,500 in cash, dozens of credit cards and fake drivers' licenses, and keys to unlock many of the apartments and mailboxes in their upscale Rittenhouse Square apartment building. Police are not yet sure how they got the keys.

"They were like a parasite that infected that building," Sweeney said.

The search also turned up a book titled, "The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims," as well as a newspaper article on "How to Spot Fake IDs."

Police believe the scheme dates back at least two years and involves victims beyond the apartment house. A slideshow found on one of their computers shows the couple's high-flying travels: kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, sporting matching red swim wear at a ritzy oceanfront resort; and dining at an elegant restaurant.

Anderton was recently fired from a job as a financial analyst that had paid for at least his initial stay in the apartment, Lt. George Ondrejka said. Kirsch is a student at Drexel University.

Sweeney fears that police are not finished finding victims. So far, they know of five victims, one of whom was taken for $30,000.

Kirsch's father arrived from Winston-Salem, N.C., to post her $25,000 bond Sunday. Anderton, who hails from Washington state, posted bond Monday, police said.

Everett man, girlfriend accused of ID theft to finance life of fun
http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/northwest/story/223192.html
PHILADELPHIA – A young couple whose sleek laptop computer offered police a road map of a high-flying lifestyle allegedly financed through identify theft hopes to win a plea deal on state charges.
But their troubles are mounting.

The FBI is weighing federal charges against college student Jocelyn Kirsch and her boyfriend, University of Pennsylvania graduate Edward Anderton.

“We’re investigating with the intention of charging them federally,” FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams said late Thursday, hours after Kirsch’s parents bailed her out of jail on a long list of state charges.

Anderton remained in custody Thursday afternoon. His parents, who live in Everett, were expected to post bail and take him there.

Philadelphia police believe the young jetsetters financed their $3,000-a-month condo and luxury trips to Paris, London, Hawaii and the Caribbean with other people’s money. Specifically, police allege they stole the identity of neighbors in their upscale building – and at least twice broke into their victims’ units.

Detectives put the scope of the fraud in the past year alone at more than $100,000. They know of at least five victims so far, one of whom was taken for $30,000.

“I’ve talked to both of them. They know how much trouble they’re in,” said defense lawyer Ronald Greenblatt, who represents Kirsch but spoke for both defendants.

Greenblatt described both sets of parents as hardworking and said they cannot fathom what led their children to get involved in such a massive fraud scheme.

The lawyer hopes to negotiate plea deals, and does not expect Kirsch and Anderton to turn on each other.

“From the information I have, they’re both responsible for this,” Greenblatt said. “For either one to be pointing the finger at the other just belies the evidence in the case.”

Kirsch, 22, had invited friends to join the couple at a wine bar Wednesday night to mark Anderton’s 25th birthday. The pair instead spent the night in jail.

On Thursday morning, she looked drawn and anxious when she appeared by video hookup for a bail hearing. The seemingly brash woman who flaunted sexy clothes, expensive hairdos and colored contact lenses in her world travels was reduced to a sweat shirt and glasses, with jail cinderblocks as a backdrop. She blinked hard and fought back tears as she heard lawyers discuss the crimes.

Anderton’s mother broke down at one point, briefly sobbing as she waited for her son’s hearing.

The pair was arrested at a UPS store by waiting police Friday and charged with identity theft, forgery, unlawful use of a computer and related offenses.

They posted bail, but turned themselves in Wednesday to face additional burglary charges for the alleged break-ins. Police contend they may have installed spyware on some of their victims’ computers.

During a weekend search of the couple’s home, police said they found $17,500 in cash, dozens of credit cards, fake driver’s licenses, keys to many of the apartments and mailboxes in their building, and an industrial machine that makes ID cards.

They also found a dazzling array of travel photos on the laptop: Kirsch modeling a red bikini at an elegant resort and reclining nude in a spa-sized bubble bath; the pair riding horseback on a beach and kissing beneath the Eiffel Tower.

The photo album, released to the press, has attracted a crush of national media and numerous Internet hits.

Bail Commissioner Dwain Hill, told that Anderton’s father works at a newspaper in Washington state, looked out at the throng of reporters and quipped, “He works at a newspaper? How ironic.”

A preliminary hearing scheduled for Thursday morning on the initial charges was postponed until February.

Assistant district attorney Mark Winter believed a reasonably high bail was needed to ensure the pair’s appearance, given that neither has permanent ties to Philadelphia. Hill split the difference between the defense and prosecution requests, raising Kirsch’s bail to $105,000 and Anderton’s to $130,000.

None of the parents commented publicly on the charges.

Kirsch was released from jail Thursday afternoon, diving into the back of a car with a hooded sweat shirt covering her face. She was expected to return to Winston-Salem, N.C., with her father, a plastic surgeon.

Anderton, a youth swimming standout who swam for Penn, was recently fired from a job as a financial analyst. He has no prior arrests, said his lawyer, Larry Krasner.

Kirsch is a student at Drexel University. She was charged last year with three counts of retail theft, one of which ended in a conviction, Greenblatt said. The other charges were dropped.

“It’s terrible that someone with this kind of potential would engage in this kind of activity and throw away unbelievable career opportunities in life,” he said of his client. “I’m just hopeful that she’ll get some kind of chance to redeem herself.”

Police: Pair financed fun with ID theft
http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2007-12-03-2376193681_x.htm
They were young, rich and in love. But the jet-setters financed their fun on the credit cards of unsuspecting neighbors in their high-end apartment building and other identity-fraud victims, police said Monday.
The fraud scheme paid for jaunts to Paris, London and Hawaii and a stop at a tony salon for $1,700 worth of hair extensions, police said.

Drexel University student Jocelyn Kirsch, 22, and beau Edward K. Anderton, a University of Pennsylvania graduate, were charged Friday with identity theft, forgery, unlawful use of a computer and a laundry list of other counts.

"They were two young people that were given many gifts in life," said Detective Terry Sweeney, who spoke of the couple's supportive families and private schooling. "And the very best thing they could do was victimize other people."

A police search of the couple's $3,000-a-month apartment turned up a book titled, "The Art of Cheating: A Nasty Little Book for Tricky Little Schemers and Their Hapless Victims," as well as a 2005 article from Penn's campus newspaper on "How to Spot Fake IDs."

Police started investigating after a resident on their floor notified police on Nov. 19 that she thought her identity had been stolen. A day later, the woman heard from a local UPS store about a waiting package, although she had not ordered anything from the British retailer that sent it.

Police kept an eye on the store and arrested Anderton and Kirsch on Friday when they walked in to pick up the package, detectives said.

A weekend search of the couple's apartment turned up a mother lode of tech toys: four computers, two printers, a scanner and an industrial machine that makes ID cards. Police also found $17,500 in cash, dozens of credit cards and fake drivers' licenses, and keys to unlock many of the apartments and mailboxes in their Rittenhouse Square building. Police are not yet sure how they got the keys.

"They were like a parasite that infected that building," Sweeney said.

Police believe the scheme dates back at least two years and involves victims beyond the apartment house. A slideshow found on one of their computers shows the couple's high-flying travels: kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower, sporting matching red swim wear at a ritzy oceanfront resort; and dining at an elegant restaurant.

Anderton was recently fired from a job as a financial analyst that had paid for at least his initial stay in the apartment, Lt. George Ondrejka said.

Sweeney estimates the scope of the couple's fraud in the past year alone at more than $100,000. He fears that police are not finished finding victims. So far, they know of five victims, one of whom was taken for $30,000.

It was not immediately clear if the couple had hired attorneys. Neither has a listed telephone number in Philadelphia.

Kirsch's father arrived from Winston-Salem, N.C., to post her $25,000 bond Sunday. Anderton, who hails from Washington state, posted bond Monday, police said.

Alleged 'Bonnie and Clyde': From Glamour to Slammer
Couple Post Bail as Their Vacation Photos Make Internet Rounds
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=3968349&page=1
From a year of glamour to a night in the slammer, Jocelyn Kirsch emerged from a Philadelphia jail Thursday, shielding her face.

Kirsch, 22, and her alleged partner in crime, boyfriend and University of Pennsylvania graduate Edward Anderton, 25, surrendered to police Wednesday with their parents by their side.

The two were arrested after police say they stole money from neighbors in an elaborate identity theft operation.

"They're just … devastated and sad and really remorseful about all this," said Kirsch's attorney, Ronald Greenblatt.

What many are calling the modern-day Bonnie and Clyde posted bail Thursday. Kirsch's bail was set at $105,000 and Anderton's at $130,000.

Kirsch is staying with her father, a plastic surgeon, in North Carolina, and Anderton is with his parents in Washington state.

Police say the couple stole their neighbors' identities and may have even broken into their homes to install spyware on their computers. Dozens of keys, credit cards and fake IDs were discovered in the young couple's upscale apartment.

Jail is a far cry from the lavish lifestyle and trips around the world Kirsch and Anderton took with the $100,000 they allegedly stole.

'Whole Other Personality'

Sallie Cook, Kirsch's former best friend at Drexel University, claims Kirsch even stole money from her and says it was strange behavior for the sorority party girl who appeared to have it all.

"They don't have any rules or anything. They do whatever they want," Cook said about Kirsch and Anderton.

Cook said Kirsch "tried to be" charming.

"They are the 'power couple,'" Cook said. "They're both gorgeous and both very powerful. They come from money. They can talk their way out of any situation."

Former acquaintance Ian Jacobson called Kirsch manipulative.

"She dug her claws into people and twisted them into doing things the things she wanted to see," Jacobson said.

Hairdresser Jennifer Bisicchia, who claims Kirsch wrote her a bad check for $2,200 worth of hair extensions, says she received a threatening text message after confronting Kirsch.

The message said, "You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into. You seem like a smart girl walk away now, or you will regret it."
"There's this whole other side to her, this whole other personality, whole other life," Bisicchia said.

Police released photos of the couple enjoying their world travels, and the case has generated huge interest on the Internet. Some Philadelphia residents even started a Facebook page titled "She's going to jail and that's hilarious."

Young, lavish couple seeks plea deal
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-12-06-couple-fraud_N.htm
A young couple accused of stealing their neighbors' identities to pay for their lavish lifestyle are hoping to negotiate a plea deal and turn their lives around, a defense attorney said Thursday.
College student Jocelyn Kirsch, 22, and boyfriend Edward Anderton, who turned 25 Wednesday, used the scam to steal an estimated $100,000 this year alone and pay for trips to Paris, London and Hawaii and other luxury perks, police said.

Ronald Greenblatt, Kirsch's attorney, said the two will likely enter plea negotiations together.

"From the information I have, they're both responsible for this," he said. "For either one to be pointing the finger at the other just belies the evidence in the case."

Kirsch and Anderton were arrested Friday and charged with state counts of identity theft, forgery, unlawful use of a computer and related offenses. They posted bail, but turned themselves in Wednesday to face more charges, including theft and burglary.

Additional charges may be coming. "We're investigating with the intention of charging them federally," FBI spokeswoman Jerri Williams said Thursday.

Police allege the pair stole the identity of neighbors in their upscale building — and at least twice broke into their victims' units. They say detectives know of at least five victims so far, one of whom was taken for $30,000.

During a weekend search of the couple's $3,000-a-month apartment, police said they found $17,500 in cash, dozens of credit cards, fake driver's licenses, keys to unlock many of the apartments and mailboxes in their building, and an industrial machine that makes ID cards.

Police also found a laptop with dazzling array of travel photos: Kirsch modeling a red bikini at an elegant resort and reclining nude in a spa-sized bubble bath; the pair riding horseback on a beach and kissing beneath the Eiffel Tower. The photo album, released to the press, has attracted a crush of national media and untold Internet hits.

Bail for Anderton and Kirsch was raised Thursday after prosecutors said the two were being kicked out of their apartment and had no current fixed address. Kirsch's bail was set at $105,000 and Anderton's at $130,000.

Kirsch was released Thursday afternoon after her family posted bail; she dove into the back of a car with a hooded sweat shirt covering her face. She was expected to return to Winston-Salem, N.C., with her father, a plastic surgeon.

Anderton remained in custody Thursday.

Kirsch, in a sweat shirt and glasses, looked drawn and anxious when she appeared by video hookup for a bail hearing. She blinked hard and fought back tears as she heard lawyers discuss the crimes.

Anderton's mother broke down at one point, briefly sobbing as she waited for her son's hearing.

Anderton, originally from Everett, Wash., is a University of Pennsylvania graduate who had been on the school's swim team; he was recently fired from a job as a financial analyst. Kirsch is a student at Drexel University.

Greenblatt said Kirsch did well at Drexel and had had a bright career ahead of her.

"It's terrible that someone with this kind of potential would engage in this kind of activity and throw away unbelievable career opportunities in life," he said. "I'm just hopeful that she'll get some kind of chance to redeem herself."

BABE OF THE DAY-Laura Prepon

2007-12-06T12:53:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0696059/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Prepon

Song of the day/Tv show of the Day

2007-12-06T12:50:00.000-05:00

Song
CheapTrick
Hang Out

Tv show

That 70's show

Story of the Day-Omaha Mall Shooting

2007-12-06T12:46:00.000-05:00

Nebraska Mall Shooting Nine Dead

Mall shooting in Omaha, Nebraska

INTERVIEW WITH EYEWITNESS - OMAHA SHOOTING - CNN

'Now I'll Be Famous': Omaha Gunman Kills 8, Himself
Robert A. Hawkins, 19, Left a Note Saying He Would No Longer Be a Trouble to Anyone
http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=3958863&page=1
Kicked out of his home, fired from his job and dumped by his girlfriend.

People who knew Robert A. Hawkins, the young man police say killed eight people and then himself inside a Omaha, Neb., mall Wednesday, say he was an "introverted troubled young man."

Five people were injured during the afternoon shooting spree inside the Von Maur department store at the Westroads Mall. The sound of gunfire sent people fleeing in all directions while others hid in clothes racks and dressing rooms.

Hawkins was found dead on the third floor of the Von Maur department store after apparently opening fire on shoppers on lower floors. Though the first widely released picture of the gunman shows a mop-topped teen, Wednesday, he wore a military-style haircut and black outfit, witnesses said.

Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be random. He did not release the victims' identities, but said there were five women and three men. He promised more details in a news conference scheduled for this morning.

Jeff Shaffart, who was shot in the arm by Hawkins, was shopping with his wife for a dress for their 2-year-old daughter. He told "Good Morning America" today that he thought balloons had popped or construction work was going on.

"It didn't dawn on me at the time I'd been shot," Shaffart said, adding that he didn't see the gunman. It wasn't until he saw blood on his fingers that he realized he had been hit. As he ducked for cover among other frightened shoppers, Shaffart said that he got separated from his wife. The sheriff arrived and essentially directed people out of the mall with a shotgun raised, reuniting the man with his wife.

'Lost Pound Puppy'
Hawkins, 19, of Bellevue, Neb., was kicked out by his family about a year ago. He moved in with a friend's family, and Debora Maruca-Kovac and her husband welcomed him into their home and tried to help the teen.

"When he first came in the house, he was introverted, a troubled young man who was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," Maruca-Kovac told The Associated Press.

She also told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle — the same type used in the shooting.

She said she thought the gun belonged to a member of Hawkins' family. She said she didn't think much of it — the gun looked too old to work.

ABC News affiliate KETV in Omaha reported that police and federal agents executed a search warrant late Wednesday night at the house where Hawkins' biological mother reportedly lives.

Records in Sarpy and Washington counties show Hawkins had a felony drug conviction and several misdemeanor cases filed against him, including an arrest 11 days before the shooting for underage drinking. He was due again in court in two weeks.

Maruca-Kovac said Hawkins was fired from his job at a McDonald's this week and had recently broken up with his girlfriend. She said he phoned her at 1 p.m. Wednesday, telling her he had left a note. She tried to get him to explain.

'It's too Late'

"He said, 'It's too late,'" and hung up, Maruca-Kovac said. She says she then called Hawkins' mother.

In the note, which was turned over to authorities, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore. He also wrote, "Now I'll be famous."

Maruca-Kovac went to her job as a nurse at the Nebraska Medical Center, where victims of the shooting soon began to arrive.

The first 911 call came in at 3:42 p.m. ET.

Police snipers and SWAT teams were on the scene inside the busy shopping mall within six minutes, police said. The mall was placed on lockdown early Wednesday as shoppers were allowed out, but no one was permitted to enter the mall.

Employees and shoppers at the mall's Von Maur department store described hiding in offices and storerooms for about half an hour, but the shooting, which apparently were random, was already over and Hawkins lay dead on the third floor.

Creighton University Hospital and federal officials confirmed to ABC News that three injured people had been taken there for treatment. A 61-year-old man was described in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the chest.

'Bang, Bang, Bang'
Roxanne Philp, an employee inside the Von Maur store on the third floor, told "GMA" that the last thing she remembered after the gunshots rang out was crawling on the floor toward a back exit.

"We have some gift-wrapping tables with the door on one end," Philp said. "I climbed inside of there and was trying to get the door closed tight so he couldn't see me."

Philp said she heard moaning from the other side of the door, but she just laid there waiting for the gunfire to stop, which it abruptly did. "You want to help the people that you love and the people you don't even know but want to help," she said. "It's just not the situation for it."

Charissa Totten, also working on the third floor of the store, immediately thought about helping guide shoppers toward the backrooms. "I kind of flagged them to the door," she told ABC News. "And then I actually stayed in the doorway because I was afraid there might be someone who hadn't made it into the backroom yet."

It's a holiday shopping nightmare that many in Omaha will have a difficult time shaking. Carol Pardon, who was shopping inside the department store when the rampage began, said it was agonizing to sit and watch as a fellow shopper nearby was hit.

'I Couldn't Help Him, I Couldn't Go to Him'
"I couldn't help him, I couldn't go to him," Pardon said. "That scene, watching his blood, you know, drift along the tiles of the Von Maur department store, that's a scene I'll never forget."

President Bush was in town for a fundraiser in Omaha, but left at about 3 p.m. ET, before the shooting, which took place around 4 p.m. ET.

Friday night members of the Omaha police bomb squad were called to the same mall when a grenade was found in the parking lot. Security guards at the mall found the explosive intact and the bomb squad safely retrieved the device.

The Von Maur store is part of a 22-store Midwestern chain. The sprawling, three-level mall has more than 135 stores and restaurants. It gets 14.5 million visitors every year, according to its Web site.

It was the second mass shooting at a mall this year. In February, nine people were shot, five of them fatally, at Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City. The gunman, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic, was shot and killed by police.

Mall gunman made call about suicide note
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071206/ap_on_re_us/mall_shooting;_ylt=AgaYx5bZVe9QY2KEuCDtG1es0NUE

Less than an hour before he killed eight people and himself in a mall shooting spree, a troubled teenage gunman called the woman who had taken him in to tell her about a suicide note — but she said Thursday she never thought he would hurt anyone but himself.

Debora Maruca-Kovac told CBS's "The Early Show" she found the note after Robert A. Hawkins, 19, called to thank her and her family for their help, to express his love, and to tell her he had left the note behind.

"He had said how much he loved his family and all his friends and how he was sorry he was a burden to everybody and his whole life he was a piece of (expletive) and now he'll be famous," she said, describing the note. "I was fearful that he was going to try to commit suicide but I had no idea that he would involve so many other families."

Hawkins carried out his shooting spree from the third floor of the Westroads Mall, the bullets from his rifle cutting through the sound of Christmas music as he terrorized shoppers and employees.

The shooting came after a series of troubling events in his life: He had split with his girlfriend and lost his job. He had a criminal record and had left or been kicked out of his parents' house.

Police Chief Thomas Warren said the shooting appeared to be random and that the dead included five females and four males, including the gunman.

Investigators plan to examine text messages sent between Hawkins and his girlfriend, as well as his computer's hard drive for any Internet communications that could explain how he plotted the shootings, Warren told CNN.

The names of the victims were not released, but officials planned to provide more details in a news conference Thursday morning. Churches in the area were setting up vigils to pray for survivors and remember the dead.

Hawkins moved from his family's home about a year ago. Maruca-Kovac and her husband, whose sons were friends with Hawkins, welcomed him into their home and tried to help him.

"When he first came in the house, he was introverted, a troubled young man who was like a lost pound puppy that nobody wanted," Maruca-Kovac told The Associated Press.

She told the Omaha World-Herald that the night before the shooting, Hawkins and her sons showed her an SKS semiautomatic Russian military rifle — the same type used in the shooting. She said she thought the gun belonged to a member of Hawkins' family. She said she didn't think much of it — the gun looked too old to work.

Records in Sarpy and Washington counties showed Hawkins had a felony drug conviction and several misdemeanor cases filed against him, including an arrest 11 days before the shooting for having alcohol as a minor. He was due in court in two weeks.

Maruca-Kovac said Hawkins had recently broken up with a girlfriend and was fired from McDonald's. She told the World-Herald that Hawkins said he had been fired after being accused of stealing $17 from his till at the restaurant. McDonald's management declined to comment to the newspaper.

Maruca-Kovac said he phoned her at about 1 p.m. Wednesday, telling her he had left a note. She tried to get him to explain.

"He said, 'It's too late,'" and hung up, she told CNN. She then called Hawkins' mother.

In the note, which was turned over to authorities, Hawkins wrote that he was "sorry for everything" and would not be a burden on his family anymore. More ominously, he wrote, "Now I'll be famous."

Maruca-Kovac went to her job as a nurse at the Nebraska Medical Center, where victims of the shooting soon began to arrive.

The first 911 call came in at 1:42 p.m., and the shooting was already over when police arrived six minutes later, authorities said.

"We sent every available officer in the city of Omaha," Sgt. Teresa Negron said.

Hawkins opened fire in a Von Maur store, part of a Midwestern chain. The World-Herald reported that the gunman had a military-style haircut and a black backpack, and wore a camouflage vest.

Mickey Vickory, who worked in the store's third-floor service department, said she heard shots and went with coworkers and customers into a back closet, emerging about a half-hour later when police shouted to come out with their hands up. As police led them to another part of the mall for safety, they saw the victims.

"We saw the bodies and we saw the blood," she said.

Keith Fidler, another Von Maur employee, said he heard a burst of five to six shots followed by 15 to 20 more rounds. Fidler said he huddled in the corner of the men's clothing department with about a dozen other employees until police yelled to get out of the store.

Witness Shawn Vidlak said the shots sounded like a nail gun. At first he thought it was noise from construction work at the mall.

"People started screaming about gunshots," Vidlak said. "I grabbed my wife and kids. We got out of there as fast as we could."

Nebraska Medical Center spokeswoman Andrea McMaster said the hospital had three victims from the mall shooting, including Fred Wilson, 61, who was in critical condition early Thursday with a bullet wound to his chest.

Another critically wounded victim was at Creighton University Medical Center, spokeswoman Lisa Stites said.

On Wednesday night, police used a bomb robot to access a Jeep Cherokee left in the mall parking lot that authorities believe belonged to Hawkins. Officers had seen some wires under some clothing, but no bomb was found.

President Bush was in Omaha on Wednesday for a fundraiser, but left about an hour before the shooting.

"Having just visited with so many members of the community in Omaha today, the president is confident that they will pull together to comfort one another," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

The sprawling, three-level mall has more than 135 stores and restaurants. It gets 14.5 million visitors every year, according to its Web site.

It was the second mass shooting at a mall this year. In February, nine people were shot, five of them fatally, at Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City. The gunman, 18-year-old Sulejman Talovic, was shot and killed by police.

The shooting spree was Nebraska's deadliest since January 1958, when Charles Starkweather killed 10 people in Nebraska and another in Wyoming.

Mall Insecurity: Targets for Threats?
Deadly Omaha Mall Shooting Raises Questions About Shopping Center Safety
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/LegalCenter/story?id=3960056

Police have long worried that malls are the perfect target for deranged criminals or terrorists.

There is ample evidence that there is good reason for concern -- from a deadly mall shooting in Omaha Wednesday, in which a shooter took nine lives, including his own, to shootings at malls in Georgia and Texas just this past week.

Last February, an 18-year-old fatally shot five people and injured four others during a mall shooting near Salt Lake City in Utah.

In April a mall shooting spree in Kansas City left three dead.

And in 2002, the D.C. snipers murdered at least two people outside of strip malls.

"Malls are always going to be a soft target, but keep in mind they're particularly busy around the holiday season," former FBI agent Brad Garrett told ABC News.

"So for someone to go into a mall and commit the acts this individual has committed, it creates a mindset in the public, are malls really safe to go to?" he

Last month, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security sent out a bulletin warning of a plot to target malls in major cities.

The intelligence was determined to be of weak credibility, but underscores how seriously law enforcement deems the threat.

Now the concern with the holiday season is that the latest tragedy in Omaha will spur copycats.

BABE OF THE DAY-Nastassja Kinski

2007-12-05T12:33:00.000-05:00

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000176/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nastassja_Kinski

http://www.mrskin.com/Stars/00584/Nastassja_Kinski.htm