Topics

121

Football / L.A. No Confidential...Gullit, Lalas out!

« on: August 12, 2008, 03:53:13 PM »

Gullit resigns as Galaxy coach; Lalas out as wellAssociated Press

Updated: August 11, 2008, 3:10 PM EST

Ruud Gullit has resigned as coach of the slumping Los Angeles Galaxy for personal reasons, and president/general manager Alexi Lalas also is out of a job.
"We are stepping up and doing what we need to do to straighten this thing out," Galaxy investor/operator Tim Leiweke told The Associated Press on Monday in announcing the changes.


The Galaxy, led by English star David Beckham and Landon Donovan, are on a seven-match winless streak as they play Chivas USA on Thursday night.

"There are two good people that for different reasons aren't part of this organization today, and that's a shame," Leiweke said. "The fact is, the players have to look deep inside themselves and understand they have to be responsible for some of this.

"Am I angry we find ourselves in the situation we find ourselves in? Yes. This is not a fun week. The Galaxy hasn't made the playoffs for a couple years. Punting on this season is not acceptable. It starts Thursday."

Much was expected when Beckham joined the Galaxy last season. But he was limited to five games because of injuries and the Galaxy went 9-14-7 for 34 points, and were eliminated from playoff contention on the season's final day.

The Galaxy were in pretty good shape this season before the recent winless streak left them at 6-8-5 with just 23 points.

Gullit will be succeeded on an interim basis by 37-year-old Cobi Jones, a first-year assistant who retired following last season after spending his entire pro career with the Galaxy. The 45-year-old Gullit signed a three-year contract last November, making him one of the MLS' highest-paid coaches.

"I think this was a tough move professionally and personally for Ruud," Leiweke said. "I don't think it was working out for him and his family. I have no issues with Ruud, I appreciate what he's done for us. And we move on."

Leiweke, the president and CEO of AEG, said Jones was the interim coach "for right now."

"I appreciate Cobi's stepping in," Leiweke said. "The one guy's loyalty and passion over there I don't question is his. I think we have eliminated any and all excuses now. No one can point any fingers."


Leiweke said no potential head coaches have been contacted.

"But we have a short list," he said. "We respect Cobi, he's stepping in and filling a void. Whether or not Cobi's comfortable being the head coach or whether or not he has the experience, we'll play that one by ear. Cobi certainly will have a voice in this."

Leiweke said he hopes Jones will remain with the team no matter how the search for a coach goes.

"Hopefully Cobi feels the same way," Leiweke said. "That said, we'll see where we go with the head coaching position."

Leiweke said he didn't know whether a permanent head coach will be named before the end of the season.

"I don't think we're going to mandate or dictate that," he said. "We certainly could make a quick decision if that's what's necessary. My guess is a lot of people will want to throw their name in the ring here."

The 37-year-old Lalas' contract runs out at the end of the season.

"I think because of the Ruud situation, it was an opportunity to once and for all look for a fresh start," Leiweke said. "Alexi's been with us a long time. I'm very appreciative of everything he's done for the Galaxy. That one is painful. We haven't made the playoffs for two years running, and we're headed for a third year. You can't blame Alexi entirely. I do think we need a fresh start."

Leiweke said Tom Payne, who has served as Lalas' assistant, will run the business side of the team. Paul Bravo, the director of soccer, will work with Jones on personnel decisions, he said.

Lalas left a similar position with the New York Red Bulls to join the Galaxy on April 17, 2006, as the successor to Doug Hamilton, who died of a heart attack.

Source

122

Other Sports / Olympic Women's Beach Volleyball

« on: August 11, 2008, 07:32:52 PM »

I have died and officially gone to Heaven....


Cuba is playing the US in Women's Beach Volleyball... Cuba getting they asses handed to them... but I'd love to get dey asses handed to me as well


...Ay Dios Mio

123

What about Track & Field / Sir... uhm Ma'am?? I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to pee in this cup..

« on: July 30, 2008, 12:40:09 AM »

A Lab Is Set to Test the Gender of Some Female Athletes



July 30, 2008

By KATIE THOMAS

By the time they arrive in Beijing, most athletes have resigned themselves to the possibility of undergoing a battery of tests for banned substances, like anabolic steroids and certain cough medicines.

But some female athletes may find they are asked to submit to an entirely different examination — one that will test whether they are, in fact, women.

Organizers of the Beijing Olympics have set up a sex-determination laboratory to evaluate “suspect” female athletes, the official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported Sunday. The lab is similar to ones set up at previous Olympics in Sydney and Athens, and will draw on the resources of the Peking Union Medical College Hospital to evaluate an athlete’s external appearance, hormones and genes.

Some medical ethicists have said the practice is too intrusive. “Real people are going to be hurt by this,” said Alice Dreger, an associate professor in medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University.

“Real Olympic athletes who have spent their whole life waiting for this moment.”

Although only athletes whose gender has been questioned will be tested in Beijing, the lab is a relic of an earlier Olympic era, when every female athlete was required to submit to a sex-verification test before competing in the Games. The tests emerged in the 1960s, when the Soviet Union and other Communist countries were suspected of entering male athletes in women’s events to gain an edge.

At first, women were asked to parade nude before a panel of doctors to verify their sex. At the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, officials switched to a chromosomal test.

The tests never unmasked a man posing as a woman, but they did turn up several athletes who were born with genetic defects that made them appear — according to lab results, at least — to be men. In 1967, the Polish sprinter Ewa Klobukowska was barred from the sport because she failed the chromosomal test, even though she had passed the nude test a year earlier. In the 1980s, the Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez Patino was disqualified because the test revealed, to her surprise, that she was born with a Y chromosome. Her eligibility was reinstated in 1988.

The practice came under increasing criticism in the 1990s by doctors, scientists and athletes who argued that the tests were not just invasive, but were also bad science. During the 1996 Atlanta Games, eight athletes failed the test, but all were later cleared of suspicion because it was determined that they had a birth defect that did not give them an unfair advantage.

“It was an unethical, unscientific and discriminatory practice,” said Arne Ljungqvist, the chairman of the International Olympic Committee’s medical commission and one of the most outspoken critics of the testing.

In 1999, Ljungqvist helped abolish the blanket testing of women, but international competitions have continued to rely on sex-verification tests in isolated instances.

“We must be ready to take on such cases should they arise,” Ljungqvist said. “Sometimes, fingers are pointed at particular female athletes, and in order to protect them, we have to be able to investigate it and clarify.”

Two years ago, middle-distance runner Santhi Soundarajan of India was stripped of her silver medal at the Asian Games after failing a verification test. Ljungqvist said an official who observed Soundarajan during the mandatory urine test for doping questioned her sex, and she later refused to submit to a more thorough exam.

Although the verification test has changed to adapt to new scientific understandings about gender — athletes are now evaluated by an endocrinologist, gynecologist, a geneticist and a psychologist — critics say the test is based on the false idea that someone’s sex is a cut-and-dried issue.

“It’s very difficult to define what is a man and what is a woman at this point,” said Christine McGinn, a plastic surgeon who specializes in transgender medicine.

Because of a range of genetic conditions, people who look like women may have a Y chromosome, while people who look like men may not, she said. Many times, the people do not learn of the defects until they reach adulthood. “It gets really complicated very quickly,” McGinn said.

Despite decades of rigorous testing of women athletes, only one known case of gender cheating exists in the history of the modern Olympics — and it was not uncovered by a sex-determination test.

In 1936, a German athlete named Dora Ratjen finished fourth in the women’s high jump. Twenty years later, Ratjen disclosed that he was in fact Hermann Ratjen, and that the Nazis had forced him to compete as a woman.


Source

124

General Discussion / Puppy Kills 2-month old boy

« on: July 29, 2008, 09:22:16 PM »

Video - Breaking News Videos from CNN.com


Watching the 'parents' and the grandmother... I could only shake my head.  I doh like tuh judge, but lawd...

125

General Discussion / Count Your Blessings... sometimes we really do take them for granted

« on: July 28, 2008, 10:47:21 PM »

This is short... so check it out.  Both sad and inspiring.


Seeds of Peace: Uganda's Long Road to Recovery- Catherine's Story

126

General Discussion / Sirius and XM Merger Approved

« on: July 25, 2008, 10:38:56 PM »

Merger of Sirius and XM Approved by F.C.C.


July 26, 2008

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators have formally approved the merger of the nation’s only two satellite radio operators in a deal closely watched by Washington and Wall Street.

Approval of Sirius Satellite Radio’s buyout of rival XM Satellite Radio Holdings means that more than 18 million subscribers will be able to receive programming from both services. The buyout’s cost was about $3.5 billion. Executives say it will mean huge cost savings that will lead to the first profits for the relatively nascent industry.

The Federal Communications Commission voted 3 to 2 to approve the buyout. The tie-breaking vote, from a Republican commissioner, Deborah Taylor Tate, came when the companies agreed to pay $19.7 million to the federal Treasury to settle F.C.C. rule violations.

The commission’s chairman, Kevin J. Martin, confirmed the final vote on Friday night.

The long-running regulatory review was closely watched by exasperated investors eager for a resolution as well as satellite radio customers with questions about what effect the merger would have on their service.

The land-based radio industry was opposed to the buyout, as were consumer groups, various members of Congress and state attorneys general, all of whom argued a satellite radio merger would hurt consumers and was not in the public interest.

The commission’s two Democrats, Jonathan S. Adelstein and Michael J. Copps, voted against the buyout. Joining Mr. Martin and Ms. Tate was the other Republican commissioner, Robert M. McDowell.

Source

127

General Discussion / Truly Inspirational

« on: July 23, 2008, 10:17:52 PM »

Roland G. Fryer:

Product of an abusive single-parent home...

Former small-time drug dealer...

...and at 30, the youngest African-American to become a full-tenured professor (Economics) at Harvard University



http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/20/magazine/20HARVARD.html?pagewanted=1


Long read... but very good read.  We have to teach our kids to achieve no matter what hurdles they encounter.

128

Entertainment & Culture Discussion / The Dark Knight

« on: July 17, 2008, 08:51:50 PM »

Showdown in Gotham Town



By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: July 18, 2008

Dark as night and nearly as long, Christopher Nolan’s new Batman movie feels like a beginning and something of an end. Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, it goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind — including “Batman Begins,” Mr. Nolan’s 2005 pleasurably moody resurrection of the series — largely by embracing an ambivalence that at first glance might be mistaken for pessimism. But no work filled with such thrilling moments of pure cinema can be rightly branded pessimistic, even a postheroic superhero movie like “The Dark Knight.”

Apparently, truth, justice and the American way don’t cut it anymore. That may not fully explain why the last Superman took a nose dive (“Superman Returns,” if not for long), but I think it helps get at why, like other recent ambiguous American heroes, both supermen and super-spies, the new Batman soared. Talent played a considerable part in Mr. Nolan’s Bat restoration, naturally, as did his seriousness of purpose. He brought a gravitas to the superhero that wiped away the camp and kitsch that had shrouded Batman in cobwebs. It helped that Christian Bale, a reluctant smiler whose sharply planed face looks as if it had been carved with a chisel, slid into Bruce Wayne’s insouciance as easily as he did Batman’s suit.

The new Batman movie isn’t a radical overhaul like its predecessor, which is to be expected of a film with a large price tag (well north of $100 million) and major studio expectations (worldwide domination or bust). Instead, like other filmmakers who’ve successfully reworked genre staples, Mr. Nolan has found a way to make Batman relevant to his time — meaning, to ours — investing him with shadows that remind you of the character’s troubled beginning but without lingering mustiness. That’s nothing new, but what is surprising, actually startling, is that in “The Dark Knight,” which picks up the story after the first film ends, Mr. Nolan has turned Batman (again played by the sturdy, stoic Mr. Bale) into a villain’s sidekick.

That would be the Joker, of course, a demonic creation and three-ring circus of one wholly inhabited by Heath Ledger. Mr. Ledger died in January at age 28 from an accidental overdose, after principal photography ended, and his death might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive. But his Joker is a creature of such ghastly life, and the performance is so visceral, creepy and insistently present that the characterization pulls you in almost at once. When the Joker enters one fray with a murderous flourish and that sawed-off smile, his morbid grin a mirror of the Black Dahlia’s ear-to-ear grimace, your nervous laughter will die in your throat.

A self-described agent of chaos, the Joker arrives in Gotham abruptly, as if he’d been hiding up someone’s sleeve. He quickly seizes control of the city’s crime syndicate and Batman’s attention with no rhyme and less reason. Mr. Ledger, his body tightly wound but limbs jangling, all but disappears under the character’s white mask and red leer. Licking and chewing his sloppy, smeared lips, his tongue darting in and out of his mouth like a jittery animal, he turns the Joker into a tease who taunts criminals (Eric Roberts’s bad guy, among them) and the police (Gary Oldman’s good cop), giggling while he-he-he (ha-ha-ha) tries to burn the world down. He isn’t fighting for anything or anyone. He isn’t a terrorist, just terrifying.

Mr. Nolan is playing with fire here, but partly because he’s a showman. Even before the Joker goes wild, the director lets loose with some comic horror that owes something to Michael Mann’s “Heat,” something to Cirque de Soleil, and quickly sets a tense, coiled mood that he sustains for two fast-moving hours of freakish mischief, vigilante justice, philosophical asides and the usual trinkets and toys, before a final half-hour pileup of gunfire and explosions. This big-bang finish — which includes a topsy-turvy image that poignantly suggests the world has been turned on its axis for good — is sloppy, at times visually incoherent, yet touching. Mr. Nolan, you learn, likes to linger in the dark, but he doesn’t want to live there.

Though entranced by the Joker, Mr. Nolan, working from a script he wrote with his brother Jonathan Nolan, does make room for romance and tears and even an occasional (nonlethal) joke. There are several new characters, notably Harvey Dent (a charismatic Aaron Eckhart), a crusading district attorney and Bruce Wayne’s rival for the affection of his longtime friend, Rachel Dawes (Maggie Gyllenhaal, a happy improvement over Katie Holmes). Like almost every other character in the film, Batman and Bruce included, Harvey and Rachel live and work in (literal) glass houses. The Gotham they inhabit is shinier and brighter than the antiqued dystopia of “Batman Begins”: theirs is the emblematic modern megalopolis (in truth, a cleverly disguised Chicago), soulless, anonymous, a city of distorting and shattering mirrors.

From certain angles, the city the Joker threatens looks like New York, but it would be reductive to read the film too directly through the prism of 9/11 and its aftermath. You may flash on that day when a building collapses here in a cloud of dust, or when firemen douse some flames, but those resemblances belong more rightly to our memories than to what we see unfolding on screen. Like any number of small- and big-screen thrillers, the film’s engagement with 9/11 is diffuse, more a matter of inference and ideas (chaos, fear, death) than of direct assertion. Still, that a spectacle like this even glances in that direction confirms that American movies have entered a new era of ambivalence when it comes to their heroes — or maybe just superness.

In and out of his black carapace and on the restless move, Batman remains, perhaps not surprisingly then, a recessive, almost elusive figure. Part of this has to do with the costume, which has created complications for every actor who wears it. With his eyes dimmed and voice technologically obscured, Mr. Bale, who’s suited up from the start, doesn’t have access to an actor’s most expressive tools. (There are only so many ways to eyeball an enemy.) Mr. Nolan, having already told Batman’s origin story in the first film, initially doesn’t appear motivated to advance the character. Yet by giving him rivals in love and war, he has also shifted Batman’s demons from inside his head to the outside world.

That change in emphasis leaches the melodrama from Mr. Nolan’s original conception, but it gives the story tension and interest beyond one man’s personal struggle. This is a darker Batman, less obviously human, more strangely other. When he perches over Gotham on the edge of a skyscraper roof, he looks more like a gargoyle than a savior. There’s a touch of demon in his stealthy menace. During a crucial scene, one of the film’s saner characters asserts that this isn’t a time for heroes, the implication being that the moment belongs to villains and madmen. Which is why, when Batman takes flight in this film, his wings stretching across the sky like webbed hands, it’s as if he were trying to possess the world as much as save it.

In its grim intensity, “The Dark Knight” can feel closer to David Fincher’s “Zodiac” than Tim Burton’s playfully gothic “Batman,” which means it’s also closer to Bob Kane’s original comic and Frank Miller’s 1986 reinterpretation. That makes it heavy, at times almost pop-Wagnerian, but Mr. Ledger’s performance and the film’s visual beauty are transporting. (In Imax, it’s even more operatic.) No matter how cynical you feel about Hollywood, it is hard not to fall for a film that makes room for a shot of the Joker leaning out the window of a stolen police car and laughing into the wind, the city’s colored lights gleaming behind him like jewels. He’s just a clown painted on black velvet, but he’s also some kind of masterpiece.

“The Dark Knight” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Consistently violent but not bloody.

THE DARK KNIGHT
Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Christopher Nolan; written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, based on a story by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer; Batman character created by Bob Kane; Batman and other characters from the DC comic books; director of photography, Wally Pfister; edited by Lee Smith; music by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard; production designer, Nathan Crowley; produced by Charles Roven, Emma Thomas and Christopher Nolan; released by Warner Brothers Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 32 minutes.

WITH: Christian Bale (Bruce Wayne/Batman), Michael Caine (Alfred), Heath Ledger (the Joker), Gary Oldman (James Gordon), Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Rachel Dawes) and Morgan Freeman (Lucius Fox).

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/07/18/movies/18knig.html?8dpc


Excellently written review...

129

Other Sports / The Great Barry Sanders...

« on: July 15, 2008, 10:55:34 PM »

Fuh allyuh men who could appreciate some NFL football...dunno if he's the greatest ever, but damn sure the greatest I've ever seen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lW6FYB_L2aU (my personal favorite Barry highlight at 6:10)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooXOZfR4EBw&feature=related (check de sweet 'B' button spin move at 00:50')

130

Football / Remi Gaillard- dead ball specialist/freestylist

« on: July 15, 2008, 09:55:21 AM »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdAOZg12tOE&feature=related


check out some of his other vids as well, dis man is tears.

131

General Discussion / PSA- Encounters with the Police in America

« on: July 12, 2008, 07:21:35 PM »

So I decide tuh take ah break and end up watching COPS... and I must say, looking at the show for the first time in years I now see it with different eyes.  There are entirely too many stupid criminals out there... and too many innocent people who don't know their rights.  This is just a heads up for any of us who may be pulled over or otherwise may encounter the cops here in the US.



1. Shut up.

2. No matter what they tell you otherwise, anything you say to incriminate yourself can and will be used against you later on.

3. Cops are not your friends- with every stop they looking for a reason to advance their careers...i.e. arrest you.

4. Provide them only the bare necessities...name, ID, Registration, Insurance... as applicable.

5. If you're in a car, they need probable cause (such as a moving violation) to stop you.
   (a) That moving violation could be something as simple as driving w/o a seatbelt fastened, or talking on your cell phone
   (b) In some jurisdictions, that's not only probable cause to stop, but also probable cause to arrest you.  Yes, in some
        jurisdictions you can go to jail for talking on your phone while driving, or for not wearing your seatbelt.

6. If they ask to search your vehicle, you have a right to decline...and they cannot hold that against you.

7. They have a right to ask you to step out of the vehicle.

8. Don't make any sudden movements.  That will only give them reason to frisk you...if you're lucky.  At worst, you give
    them reason to shoot you.

9. If you give them reason to arrest you they get a free search of the car and everything in it- EXCEPT the trunk.
    So if you're stupid enough to be riding around with contraband or something illicit, don't give them consent to search, and
    don't give them a reason to arrest you.

10. If arrested... shut up.  Once the interrogation starts...shut up...or better yet... ask for your lawyer.  Once you ask for a
     lawyer, by law they cannot even ask you if you want a cup of water until she shows.

132

Trinbago, NBA & World Basketball / NBA Draft...

« on: June 26, 2008, 07:24:02 PM »

Your thoughts?


I will limit my comments to what my hapless Knickerblockheads have done thus far... I really ent know nutten about dis Danilari dude to really pass judgment, but we probably shoulda try to trade down.  There was plenty of mediocrity available lower down at a more negotiable price and the sucess of Bargnani in TO aside, I'm still not sold on these European dudes.  There's Dirk, there's Gasol and after that is ah reach.  Once yuh reaching fuh names like Biedrins yuh know dat pool too shallow tuh hold any fish.


I'll be back with general thoughts... but on the surface Portland fans might be due for a catharsis, talk about a stocked team getting a wingman like Rush to supplement Roy and Webster.

133

Football / Euro 2008: Spain v. Russia

« on: June 26, 2008, 10:50:58 AM »

Spain is ah team I never rooted for b/c ah de national fixation with diving... but ah dunno, cyah make up mih mind on this one.

Either way ah have to miss dis one....will peep and get some updates in dis thread.

134

General Discussion / Only in America- 25-year old wins $300 million Military Contract

« on: June 24, 2008, 08:37:19 PM »

Now his ass in hot water...


Arms Dealer Had Troubled History



June 25, 2008

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — When the Army last year awarded a contract worth up to nearly $300 million to a tiny Miami Beach munitions dealer to supply ammunition to Afghanistan’s security forces, it overlooked a very checkered past.

A Congressional committee revealed Tuesday that by the time the Army awarded the bid, State and Defense Department officials had canceled or delayed at least six earlier contracts with the company, AEY Inc., for poor quality or late deliveries.

But that record, including a botched $5.6 million order for 10,000 Beretta pistols for Iraq’s security forces, was either ignored or omitted from databases that American military contracting officials have used to weed out companies suspected of involvement in suspect arms deals.

Congressional investigators also determined that the Afghanistan ammunition contract, which the company is also accused of mishandling, may have been unnecessary: Bosnia, Bulgaria, Hungary and Albania, the Eastern European countries from which AEY bought its ammunition, had offered to donate the type of Soviet-style rifle and machine-gun cartridges that the Afghan Army and police forces use.

With AEY’s business dealings now shut down and its top executives charged last week with defrauding the government on the Afghan contract, lawmakers on Tuesday criticized four State and Defense department officials for what the legislators called a case study in military contracting gone wrong.

A hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Tuesday hinged on a central question posed by its chairman, Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California: “How did a company run by a 21-year-old president and a 25-year-old former masseur get a sensitive $300 million contract to supply ammunition to Afghan forces?”

It is a question many federal and Congressional officials have been asking since March, when the Army suspended AEY from future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that the company’s young president, Efraim E. Diveroli, misled the Army by saying the munitions were from Hungary. American law prohibits trading in Chinese arms.

House investigators have also gathered testimony that the American ambassador to Albania, John L. Withers II, helped cover up the illegal Chinese origins of ammunition that AEY was shipping from Albania to Afghanistan under the Army contract.

Tom Casey, a State Department spokesman, said Tuesday that the department’s inspector general had been asked to investigate the charges. A statement posted on the Web site of the United States Embassy in the Albanian capital, Tirana, said that Mr. Withers expected to be absolved of any blame.

One answer to Mr. Waxman’s question is that Pentagon officials never consulted a “watch list” the State Department had compiled of 80,000 individuals and companies suspected of illegal arms transactions, including Mr. Diveroli and some middlemen the company used.

Under American law, American dealers must disclose every entity involved in an arms shipment overseas, including brokering, transportation and repackaging companies.

The State Department checks subcontractors and partners against a watch list of organizations and people suspected of involvement in illegal arms deals.

But the law exempts federal agencies and contractors working for them. Arms-trade researchers have complained that many contractors supplying munitions for the wars abroad, including AEY, have worked with suspicious companies abroad, and that the Pentagon has not screened their activities.

Lawmakers also criticized the government officials for failing to review several AEY contracts that had been canceled or delayed, many of which never raised red flags with contracting officials because they fell under the $5 million contract value that was the warning threshold.

In October 2005, the committee report found, AEY delivered a shipment of damaged helmets to the American training command in Iraq. One American inspector said in an e-mail message obtained by the committee: “The helmets came to Abu Ghraib by mistake. They are not very good. They have peeling paint and a few appear to have been damaged such as having been dropped.”

About the same time, AEY failed to deliver more than 10,000 Beretta pistols under contract to Iraqi security forces.

According to the contracting officer, Mr. Diveroli blamed the delays in part on a plane crash that had destroyed important documents and a hurricane that hit Miami.

When pressed by several lawmakers about the youth and relative inexperience of AEY’s top officials, Jeffrey P. Parsons, executive director of the Army Contracting Command, said that Army contracting officers were not required to know the age of a company’s owners, and that they had not known in AEY’s case.

Pentagon and State Department officials sought to defend their contracting procedures, arguing that AEY had repeatedly deceived officials or took advantage of loopholes in federal rules.

But the officials said the Pentagon, and specifically the Army, was reviewing how it ordered foreign munitions and supervised their quality, packaging and shipment. The military is also planning to revamp how it vets Pentagon-sponsored deals in the often murky world of foreign arms procurement.

“We’re going to do everything we can to ensure this never happens again,” said Brig. Gen. William N. Phillips, commander of the Joint Munitions and Lethality Life Cycle Management Command.

But that still left lawmakers angry and puzzled about how the Army could miss warning signs of trouble before it awarded AEY the Afghan ammunition contract in January 2007.

House investigators determined that Melanie A. Johnson, a contracting officer with the Army Sustainment Command, had overruled a contracting team that raised concerns about AEY’s inexperience and had concluded that there was “substantial doubt” that the company could fulfill the contract.

Investigators said Ms. Johnson had later acknowledged to them that she was unaware of the poor past performance of AEY, including the Beretta contract, when she awarded the company the Afghan bid.

“Obvious evidence of consistently shoddy performance was somehow missed or ignored as substandard or illegally obtained munitions were apparently being sent to Afghanistan,” said Representative Thomas M. Davis III of Virginia, the committee’s ranking Republican.


Source

135

Other Sports / Raiders WR Javon Walker- A Cautionary Tale

« on: June 24, 2008, 08:29:01 PM »

Vegas police make arrest in Walker case



Associated Press

Updated: June 24, 2008, 8:14 PM EST

One man was arrested and a second was sought Tuesday in a robbery and beating that left Oakland Raiders receiver Javon Walker unconscious on a side street after a long night of partying at Las Vegas nightclubs.
Police said Arfat Fadel, of Las Vegas, was accused of multiple felonies, including kidnapping, robbery, battery and conspiracy in a June 16 robbery. Lt. Clinton Nichols said Walker lost about $3,000 in cash and $100,000 worth of jewelry in the robbery.


The loot has not been recovered, he said.

"Mr. Walker was in town to have a good time, as many of our visitors to Las Vegas do," Nichols said. "As he will readily admit, he probably had a little too much to drink and he did not pick up on the clues that Mr. Fadel was someone he probably should not have been with."

Police released a booking photo of the 30-year-old Fadel and a black-and-white surveillance videotape image of the other alleged assailant who they said they believed was still in Las Vegas.

"The suspects knew who Mr. Walker was. He did not know who they were," Nichols said. "Whether they were part of his entourage or not remains to be seen."

Nichols said Walker got out of one vehicle he was riding in with friends and got into Fadels's black Range Rover with Fadel and the other man before he was assaulted and robbed.

"He willingly got in the vehicle on his own," Nichols said of the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Walker. "We're unsure why."

Nichols said during a news conference the two men were seen in some of the crowded nightclubs where Walker was shown on surveillance videotapes partying from about 9 p.m. June 15, until shortly before he was found unconscious at 7:19 a.m. the next morning about a block east of the Las Vegas Strip.

Police said Walker was hospitalized for treatment of a moderate concussion and significant facial injuries.

Walker was released by the Broncos last February and was signed by the Oakland Raiders to a six-year, $55 million deal.


The team declined comment. Walker's agent, Kennard McGuire of Richmond, Texas, did not immediately respond to messages.

Fadel was booked on the Walker case while he was being held at the Clark County jail on unrelated kidnapping and battery domestic violence charges after an arrest Friday, jail records show.

He was due in a Las Vegas court Wednesday morning. It was not immediately clear if he was represented by a lawyer, and police Sgt. John Loretto said Fadel refused interview requests.

Nichols said Fadel had a record that included "a variety of criminal charges" in California, New York, Michigan and Nevada. He did not specify the charges.

Walker "assumed these people were friendly or responsible," Nichols said, "and unfortunately, they turned out not to be."

Records show Fadel pleaded guilty in April in Las Vegas to malicious destruction of property, a gross misdemeanor, and was given a suspended six-month jail sentence. Fadel also promised to pay $579.44 in restitution, move to New York and provide proof of employment there, court records show.

Fadel's lawyer in that case, Osvaldo Fumo, declined comment Tuesday. He said he had not been hired to represent Fadel in the Walker case.

Walker, a former first-round 2001 draft pick by the Green Bay Packers, was traded to the Denver Broncos in 2006. On New Year's Day 2007, Broncos teammate Darrent Williams died in Walker's arms in the back of a limousine after a drive-by shooting in downtown Denver.

Walker later said then-teammate Brandon Marshall and his cousin exchanged angry words with two men who confronted Williams and his group after taking offense when Marshall sprayed them with champagne.
 

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8260092/Vegas-police-make-arrest-in-Walker-case

136

Football / Euro 2008: Turkey v. Germany

« on: June 24, 2008, 08:00:02 PM »

Euro 2008

Germany, Turkey and Jumbled Loyalties



June 25, 2008

By NICHOLAS KULISH

BERLIN — A game is not just a game when it pits the national soccer teams of the deeply intertwined countries of Germany and Turkey against each other.

When the German team takes the field Wednesday night against Turkey in Basel, Switzerland, in the semifinals of the European Championship, it will also face two German natives on the Turkish side. The versatile midfielder Hamit Altintop hails from the West German city of Gelsenkirchen and defender Hakan Balta is a Berliner.

The World Cup gives national teams the ultimate soccer bragging rights, but the neighborly rivalries in the European event make for what at times feels like a more intense tournament. The frenzy has reached a peak over Wednesday’s intriguing semifinal because of the estimated 2.7 million people either of Turkish citizenship or heritage living in Germany, the country’s largest minority.

With both teams still alive, it has been doubly festive here and up to this point mutually supportive, as many Germans have cheered on the Turks and vice versa. Each Turkish victory in the tournament has brought enthusiastic fans draped in the country’s red flag onto the streets, where they set off firecrackers and shot bottle rockets into the night sky, with parties often lasting until morning. German fans have packed pubs and beer gardens for their team’s run to the semifinals.

Now the country is practically humming with anticipation for the match, with an overriding optimism for a nationwide party spiked with an edge of nervousness that a friendly sporting rivalry could spill over into something more serious in the streets. Police officials say they are prepared, especially in Berlin where some 500,000 people are expected at the public viewing area at the Brandenburg Gate.

All of Europe has been in the grip of what it calls football fever for the past two and a half weeks as the continent’s best teams have squared off. The tournament has given audiences some displays of masterful soccer, but also more than a few intriguing subplots as the increasingly mobile populations around Europe and the world create an overlapping web of confused loyalties.

Mixed allegiances are hardly new to international soccer. Players often duel against teammates and friends from their professionals squads. Some coaches know no borders. Russia’s coach, Guus Hiddink, celebrated his team’s latest victory over his home country, the Netherlands.

And, as in the Germany-Turkey matchup, there are often political overtones. A matchup in the final between Germany and Russia, which plays Spain in the other semifinal, could well exhaust a decade’s worth of World War II references.

The Germans already faced Robert and Niko Kovac, brothers born in West Berlin, when they lost to Croatia in the group round. Not that German soccer fans are in any position to complain about the Croats or the Turks, seeing how their team beat neighboring Poland, 2-0, in their tournament opener with both goals from Lukas Podolski, one of the squad’s three Polish natives.

Though Austria and Switzerland have been the co-hosts of the European event, the ouster of both countries’ teams in the group stage meant that they were not the stars of their own show. If the most memorable symbol of Germany’s successful hosting of the World Cup in 2006 was the German flag displayed without shame or second-guessing, the motif this time around for German spectators are the twin Turkish and German flags flapping from countless car windows around the country.

“Of course my heart lies first with the German team,” said Rainer Krause, 63, a Berlin native who bought a red Turkish flag as well as a German one at a store in the heavily Turkish Neukölln neighborhood, where he works., “But over the decades the loyalties have grown together, there are such strong feelings of connection.”

Altintop, who plays for the German club champion, Bayern Munich, agrees. In an interview this week with Spiegel Online, he declared, “I owe much, actually everything, to Germany.” But when asked whether he considered himself German at heart, Altintop, the Turkish team’s mainstay, reinforced the sense of dual loyalty, saying: “No. Maybe I’m both.”

The Turkish side will need everything Altintop can give it, with the team whittled down by injuries and suspensions to just 15 players — 11 starters and 4 potential substitutes. The possibility that one of the team’s backup goalies could play forward has added to their underdog appeal.

Some Germans have gone so far as to switch allegiances from their home team to Turkey, a sentimental favorite of the tournament if not quite a Cinderella, considering its run to the semifinals in the 2002 World Cup. “It’s only fair,” said Rosie Lambrecht, who was out shopping for a Turkey T-shirt on Tuesday morning and who roots with her Turkish friends and neighbors in Neukölln. “They’ve never won the tournament.”

The Turkish team has teetered on the brink of elimination from the beginning, losing its opener to Portugal and trailing much of the second game against Switzerland after a first-half goal by none other than Hakan Yakin, a Swiss player from a Turkish family. The Turks pulled out the game against the Swiss with two second-half goals.

In the final group match against the Czech Republic, the theatrics really began, with Nihat Kahveci scoring twice in the closing minutes for an improbable come-from-behind 3-2 win. Against Croatia, the team tied the score in the closing moments of the match just minutes after a Croatia goal appeared to end the tournament for Turkey, and then prevailing in penalty kicks over a visibly demoralized Croatian team.

That set up the showdown with the Germans for the right to play in the final, which is hardly being treated as just another game. Germany’s foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, told a television news channel he hoped that “no attempts would be made to disturb a peaceful soccer party.”

After the match Friday between Turkey and Croatia, which got rough among the players at points, opposing fans in Vienna, where the match was played, threw bottles and paving stones at one another, leading to a dozen arrests. There were also arrests in the German city of Frankfurt, which like Berlin is hosting public screenings of the match.

“Certainly we’ve raised our security measures for the match,” said Thomas Feda, the managing director of the Frankfurt tourism board. “But the mood has been great for the matches, with lots of families bringing their children.” Feda said he expected a peaceful event, and added that there would be no separating of fans by their rooting interests.

“I think it will go great, whichever team wins,” said Murat Yalcin, 33, who works at a cafe in Neukölln back in Berlin. He was wearing a Turkey T-shirt, but said that if Germany wins, he would root for it in the final. “When you live here, when you were raised here, why root for anyone else?”

Steffen Scholz contributed reporting.

Source

137

Football / Happy 10,000th...

« on: June 20, 2008, 03:22:13 PM »

Post tuh West Coast... ah true Socawarriors.net devotee 

138

General Discussion / Yuh want tuh rape? Take dat!

« on: June 04, 2008, 02:32:22 AM »

NSFW.... not for the squeamish either.  Malay authorities show how they deal with rapists in Malaysia

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mLvnoX9MaI


...doh worry nutten too gory, but Bunji would be proud.

139

Other Sports / MMA: Kevin "Kimbo Slice" v. Kevin "The Colossus" Thompson

« on: May 31, 2008, 09:37:31 PM »

On CBS right now...great fight.  Kimbo Slice is a beast...in a little bit of trouble agains Thompson, but he's so strong that it's hard to pin on the ground.  Thompson keeps trying to pin him for the 'ground and pound'...but Slice keeps escaping.  Slice facking him up good with some haymakers though.

Round 2 coming to a close...

140

Football / Roberto Mancini out at Inter Milan- Mourinho rumored to take over

« on: May 29, 2008, 12:18:30 PM »

Finished at Inter, Mancini eyes Premier League
 
London, England (Sports Network) - Roberto Mancini's advisor says his client is keen to coach in England after leaving Italy's Inter Milan but has not been in contact with Chelsea.

Maurizio de Giorgis insists Mancini has left the San Siro, although there has still been no official confirmation from the Serie A side, and has been strongly linked with the vacant post at Stamford Bridge.

However, de Giorgis told Sky Sports: "He had a meeting with the president (Massimo Moratti) and they decided not to continue with him. As of yesterday Roberto Mancini is not the coach of Inter Milan anymore.

"He is very disappointed of course, he was not expecting that to happen, but in football things can happen quickly and unexpectedly and this is one of those occasions.

"As of now there is no contact with Chelsea. Roberto Mancini is not a person or coach who likes to propose himself to a club, he waits for a club to look after him so we are in that position right now. We are not proposing Mancini to any club.

"It's a natural consequence of what has happened. Chelsea are one of the top five clubs in the world so it is more likely, if there will be any talk, there is more chances of it to happen now than before.

"There are chances but at the moment, as of today, there has been no official contact with Chelsea or any other team."

(Courtesy of sportbox.tv)


Mourinho likely to take over Inter Milan
 
Milan, Italy (Sports Network) - Former Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho is expected to be confirmed as Inter Milan's new coach after Roberto Mancini's agent announced that his client had left the San Siro.

Mancini is leaving Inter despite guiding them to their third successive Serie A title earlier this month and his agent, Giorgio De Giorgis, is in no doubt that Mourinho will be the club's next boss.

"Roberto never expected it to end like this," he told Sportitalia television. "As an outsider, I could rationally understand that something was not right, but that is the way things have gone.

"Roberto is very disappointed also because he has not yet finished his job - he wanted to try and win even more league titles, and maybe even the Champions League.

"Now Mourinho will arrive and he has only got to repeat what has happened in the last few years.

"Roberto is now considering making a statement to avoid gossip and it should be a statement praising the president and those who worked with him.

"Certainly he is shocked and has taken it badly. I have spoken with him and he sounded quite down, but it will get even worse." Mancini has been linked with the vacancy at Stamford Bridge, created by Saturday's sacking of Avram Grant.

(Courtesy of sportbox.tv)

141

General Discussion / 20-Year Journey for 15-Minute Fall- Frenchman set to parachute from space

« on: May 24, 2008, 02:37:53 PM »

20-Year Journey for 15-Minute Fall



May 24, 2008

By MATT HIGGINS
He has spent two decades and nearly $20 million in a quest to fly to the upper reaches of the atmosphere with a helium balloon, just so he can jump back to earth again. Now, Michel Fournier says, he is ready at last.

Depending on the weather, Fournier, a 64-year-old retired French army officer, will attempt what he is calling Le Grand Saut (The Great Leap) on Sunday from the plains of northern Saskatchewan.

He intends to climb into the pressurized gondola of the 650-foot balloon, which resembles a giant jellyfish, and make a two-hour journey to 130,000 feet. At that altitude, almost 25 miles up, Fournier will see both the blackness of space and the curvature of the earth.

Then he plans to step out of the capsule, wearing only a special space suit and a parachute, and plunge in a mere 15 minutes, experiencing weightlessness along the way.

If successful, Fournier will fall longer, farther and faster than anyone in history. Along the way, he can accomplish other firsts, by breaking the sound barrier and records that have stood for nearly 50 years.

“It’s not a question of the world records,” Fournier wrote via e-mail through an interpreter on Friday from his base in North Battleford, Saskatchewan. “What is important are what the results from the jump will bring to the safety of the conquest of space. However, the main question that is being asked today by all scientists is, can a man survive when crossing the sound barrier?”

In the past two weeks, Fournier’s 40-person team has assembled at the launch site, about 90 miles northwest of Saskatoon. The remote Canadian plains were picked after French authorities denied permission because of safety concerns.

Fournier faces plenty of perils. Above 40,000 feet, there is not enough oxygen to breathe in the frigid air. He could experience a fatal embolism. And 12 miles up, should his protective systems fail, his blood could begin to boil because of the air pressure, said Henri Marotte, a professor of physiology at the University of Paris and a member of Fournier’s team.

“If the human body were exposed at very high altitude, the loss of consciousness is very fast, in five seconds,” Marotte said. “Brain damage, in three or four minutes.”

Fournier’s gondola will be sealed, pressurized and equipped with oxygen. He will be in communication with a ground crew on the climb and will be tracked by G.P.S. He will wear a pressure suit and a sealed helmet supplied with oxygen.

“Another problem is decompression sickness,” Marotte said. “You have the same problem with nitrogen as divers who go too quickly from deep to the surface.”

To prevent this, which underwater divers call the bends, Fournier will breathe pure oxygen for two to three hours before liftoff.

Marotte said Fournier would be in free fall for about eight minutes. He would exceed the speed of sound within the first 40 seconds and eventually approach 1,000 miles an hour. His fall would slow at lower altitudes amid increasing wind resistance. His parachute is designed to open at around 20,000 feet.

The gondola will be released from the balloon and is equipped with three parachutes to allow for a safe landing.

Fournier’s jump can set four records: fastest free fall, longest free fall, highest altitude for a human balloon flight and highest parachute jump. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale, which bills itself as the world’s air-sports organization, sanctions jumps like this.

Fournier has attempted his stunt twice, but technical and weather-related problems foiled the efforts before he left the ground. The most recent attempt, in 2003, failed when his balloon ruptured before takeoff.

Fournier has been preparing physically and mentally for this moment for years, making more than 8,000 jumps and setting a French record from an altitude of more than 39,000 feet, his highest jump to date. By comparison, a standard sky dive is from 12,000 to 13,000 feet.

“I got to say that I’m so excited,” he said in the e-mail message. “It’s my dream coming true. It represents 20 years of work and sacrifices, and today I’m seeing the realizations of all my efforts.”

His quest began in September 1988, when the French space agency selected him to free fall and parachute from near-space. The mission was designed to test the potential for astronauts to escape without a space craft in an emergency. Only two years earlier, NASA’s Challenger shuttle disaster killed seven astronauts.

Fournier was a paratrooper, among other roles in the French army, and was among dozens of candidates subjected to physical and psychological tests before being chosen for the mission. But it never got off the ground; the program folded four months after he was picked to participate.

Yet his resolve only grew, and in 1992, he retired from the military to pursue the project privately. To pay for training and equipment, he has sold his house and most of his belongings. Together with private donations, he has spent almost $20 million.

For two decades, there were few serious competitors. But Steve Truglia, a 45-year-old movie stuntman and a former member of the British Special Forces, said he planned a similar jump over the United States in July.

“My plan is to take that record as soon as possible,” Truglia, a native of London, said by phone recently. “Whatever he does I can beat.”

Truglia holds a British record for an underwater free dive on a single breath (249 feet). A jump from near-space and a chance to reach supersonic speeds represent something more.

“I don’t think there’s a bigger stunt that I’m going to look for after this,” Truglia said. “I can’t think of a bigger stunt, other than perhaps trying to re-enter the earth’s atmosphere with just your body, and I think we’re a long way away from that.”

The highest previous recorded jump from a balloon was performed in 1960 by Joe Kittinger, a United States Air Force test pilot who leaped from 102,800 feet and exceeded 600 miles per hour before opening his parachute at 18,000 feet. He was down in less than 14 minutes.

Reached by phone last week at his home outside Orlando, Fla., Kittinger, 79, said he was surprised his record had stood for so long.

Fournier and Kittinger correspond through e-mail. “I told him many years ago, it’s very hostile,” Kittinger said. “You’re in a vacuum, and your whole life is dependent on the pressure suit working properly. If the pressure suit fails, you die.”

Kittinger is contacted regularly by others interested in breaking his record. “There’s a whole bunch of them out there that are just like Fournier and just like the guy in England,” he said. “Most of them don’t have the money to do it.”

Some say that with scientific information already gathered from this kind of jump, there is little benefit beyond learning what happens to the human body at supersonic speeds. Others suggest that the leap could generate serious interest in space travel, the way the Wright brothers helped inspire aeronautics.

“A front-row seat of space,” Truglia said. “I think that will appeal to a certain sector of society, people that want to adventure and live on the edge.”

But Kittinger expressed skepticism about tourists attempting to cope at such high altitude.

“It was definitely beautiful, but it’s also hostile,” he said. His right hand swelled to twice its normal size when his glove failed to pressurize properly.

From those lonely heights, the speedy return trip was a relief.

“Yes, it was nice to be headed back to earth, because it’s an environment that we can live in,” Kittinger said. “And it’s a beautiful planet, really.”


Source

142

What about Track & Field / Pettigrew Admits to Doping

« on: May 23, 2008, 01:37:22 AM »

May 23, 2008

Pettigrew Admits to Doping, Jeopardizing Relay Gold Medals

By DUFF WILSON

SAN FRANCISCO — The Olympic gold medalist and former world champion sprinter Antonio Pettigrew acknowledged in federal court Thursday that he used performance-enhancing drugs from 1997 to 2001.

Pettigrew’s admission triggered an antidoping case that could cost him and his United States teammates the gold medals they won in the 4x400-meter relay in the 2000 Olympics and the 2001 world championship.

Testifying publicly at the trial of his former coach Trevor Graham, Pettigrew, who was visibly downcast, said, “I’m in it now, and I have to face the consequences.”

Jim Scherr, chief executive of the United States Olympic Committee, said in a statement late Thursday, “If an athlete who ran in the finals knowingly and purposely engaged in cheating, the medals won by the entire team are tarnished and, in our view, should be returned.”

Pettigrew, 40, has never tested positive for drugs, but he said he used human growth hormone to become stronger and took the blood-boosting drug EPO to improve his endurance at Graham’s suggestion. He was subpoenaed for the trial, forced to testify under penalty of perjury, and declined comment afterward.

The scope of the penalties could be worse but for an eight-year statute of limitations on doping violations in track and field. Pettigrew also helped the United States win world titles in 1997 and 1999 and was part of a world-record-setting relay team in 1998 — years when he said he took performance-enhancing drugs.

Stephen A. Starks, legal affairs director for the United States Anti-Doping Agency, took notes throughout Pettigrew’s testimony. Travis T. Tygart, chief executive of the agency, said in a telephone interview, “We can’t comment on the testimony, but we will pursue all potential doping violations based on the evidence, and we will continue to work with the federal investigators on this.”

Pettigrew’s admission would be considered a “nonanalytical positive” and constitute a violation. Marion Jones, who likewise never failed a drug test, was stripped of five medals from the 2000 Olympics last October after she admitted to taking steroids from September 2000 to July 2001. The International Olympic Committee also stripped the medals of seven of Jones’s teammates in two relay races, but the runners are appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Pettigrew’s Olympic relay teammates were Michael Johnson, Angelo Taylor, Jerome Young and the twins Alvin and Calvin Harrison.

The Harrisons have been banned for doping offenses that were not committed in the Olympic year. Young previously lost his gold medal as an alternate in that race and was banned for life for two doping offenses, but his teammates were allowed to keep their medals after the Court of Arbitration for Sport found that Young had not doped during the Olympics and because he had not run in the final.

Young also testified in the Graham trial Thursday. He said he doped from 1999 to 2003. He said Graham gave him drugs and showed him how to inject them.

His testimony adds to the likelihood of the runners losing their medals — and to the shame being heaped on the United States track and field program by widespread doping violations on the eve of another Olympics.

Pettigrew is an assistant track coach at the University of North Carolina. He is a former officer of USA Track & Field’s Athletes Advisory Committee and a former athlete representative to the U.S.O.C.

He testified that he was not truthful with federal agents in February 2005, when he was interviewed as part of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative investigation. Asked why, Pettigrew said, “Things coming out in my past that I did and that I knew was wrong.” He said he told the truth to a grand jury in 2006.

Graham, who also coached Jones, is charged with three felonies, punishable by up to 15 years in prison, for allegedly making false statements to federal investigators in 2004 about a drug supplier. The prosecution rested its case Thursday afternoon after five athletes testified against Graham.

The defense lawyer, William P. Keane, said he may call only one witness when the trial resumes Tuesday.

A verdict is possible soon after that.

Dr. Larry Bowers, senior managing director of Usada, who also testified against Graham, said in an interview that antidoping programs were making “serious progress” as shown by the results of women’s field events, easily influenced by steroids. He noted those results have declined dramatically over the last 15 years.

If the United States loses the Olympic gold in the men’s 4x400, it would go to Nigeria, which won the silver medal, with Jamaica and the Bahamas moving up. Similarly, the Bahamas, Jamaica and Poland would move up if the United States lost the 2001 world championship medal.

Still on track’s record book is the world-record time of 2 minutes 54.2 seconds in the men’s 4x400-meter relay, set in 1998. Pettigrew and Young ran that race, along with Johnson and Tyree Washington. Pettigrew is the only one of that group to admit to doping before 1998.

Source

143

General Discussion / Hazardous duty- Life of a Track meet photographer (viewer discretion)

« on: May 19, 2008, 11:26:26 PM »

Nothing too graphic but still...

Photographer speared by javelin at meet




Associated Press
Updated: May 19, 2008, 5:36 PM EST

A newspaper photographer got a little too close to the action at the state high school track championships — and was speared through the leg by a javelin.

Ryan McGeeney of the Standard-Examiner was spared serious injury Saturday, and even managed to snap a photo of his speared leg while others tended to him.

"If I didn't, it would probably be my editor's first question when I got back," McGeeney said.

The 33-year-old McGeeney, an ex-Marine who spent six months in Afghanistan, was taking pictures of the discus event and apparently wandered into off-limits area set aside for the javelin.

Striking just below the knee, the javelin tip went through the skin and emerged on the other side of his leg.

"It wasn't real painful. ... I was very lucky in that it didn't hit any blood vessels, nerves, ligaments or tendons," McGeeney said.

Much of the javelin was cut off at the scene. The piece in McGeeney's leg was removed at a hospital, and he received 13 stitches.


The javelin was thrown by Anthony Miles, a Provo High School student who said his "heart just stopped" when he saw what happened.

"One of the first things that came to my mind was, 'Good thing we brought a second javelin,"' Miles' coach, Richard Vance, said Monday. He said Miles was "in a little bit of shock," but he assured the athlete it was not his fault.

With a subsequent throw, Miles went on to win the state title in javelin for teams in Provo High's size classification, 4-A.

Source

144

Entertainment & Culture Discussion / Steelpan Music Instrument Sweeping USA High School and College Campuses

« on: April 28, 2008, 01:47:11 PM »

USA - From Maine through New York to Florida passing through Mississippi to Texas on to California and up to Alaska, the steelpan music instrument has found a home or niche on the campuses of America’s middle schools and institutions of higher learning in astonishing and profound manners. Indeed, steel orchestras supporting the full complement of the steelpan family of instruments can even be found in America’s heartland and Bible belt. Ohio, Chicago, Arizona and all the other states of the union take the instrument and its music very seriously.

click for full story

145

Football / American billionaire to buy AS Roma

« on: April 23, 2008, 10:49:49 PM »

Berlusconi opens way for USA billionaire to buy Roma

Associated Press

Updated: April 23, 2008, 9:53 AM EST

Italy's Premier-elect Silvio Berlusconi has given his blessing if American billionaire George Soros is really intent on buying AS Roma.
There was speculation that Berlusconi - who owns rival AC Milan - might oppose such a move on grounds he wanted to keep foreigners out of the Serie A, but he rejected those theories Wednesday.


"If someone comes in who can make the fans happy by strengthening the squad, he's more than welcome," Berlusconi told a local radio station.

Last week, Roma issued a statement saying that representatives of Compagnia Italpetroli SpA, which holds a 67 percent stake in the club, had met with "a potentially interested party."

Roma would not identify the interested party, but Italian media have reported that Soros is behind the possible takeover, saying he could offer some €250 million (US$400 million) for Italpetroli's stake.

Soros Fund Management LLC has repeatedly denied comment - but has not denied interest in Roma.

Berlusconi said foreign investment in soccer "is a practice that has become somewhat common in Europe. Just look at what has happened in England with Abramovich."

Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich bought Chelsea in 2003 and the club is currently competing in the Champions League semifinals against Liverpool, which is run by American co-owners Tom Hicks and George Gillett Jr.

Berlusconi said he would in no way block a foreign offer for Roma.

"If anything, to the contrary. I am very respectful of the rights of others," he said.

Roma captain Francesco Totti left the hospital Wednesday following knee surgery and was asked if he preferred Italian or American ownership.

"I think the club should always speak Roman," Totti said.

Italian soccer federation president Giancarlo Abete also said he was open to foreign ownership, but reminded that soccer is "historically based on the input of great families."

"Given that the Sensi family has given and is giving a lot to Roma, it will be up to the Sensi family to evaluate the best functioning scenario," Abete was quoted as saying by the ANSA news agency.

Italpetroli is controlled by Franco Sensi, the president of Roma. Sensi's daughter, Rosella, is the club's chairwoman.

"We have to prepare ourselves to be open to this new reality, but we also have to maintain the affection of the great families in our sport," Abete said. "I don't think we're at the point where 15 of 20 clubs will fall into foreign hands. I would not be so enthusiastic about that."

Berlusconi, meanwhile, will retain ownership of Milan but will resign as club president again when he steps into office of premier for the third time, likely next month.

"I think they are incompatible," Berlusconi said of the two jobs.

Source

146

General Discussion / Trinidad and Tobago- Fastest growing economy in the Western Hemisphere

« on: April 15, 2008, 08:10:47 AM »

http://76.12.66.24/hhr/dec07/15477A.swf

147

General Discussion / Olympic Torch Relay

« on: April 07, 2008, 11:04:04 PM »

Anybody following what's been happening the past couple days??  Incredible...really great to see people stand up and take a stance.



Paris Protests Disrupt Torch Relay
Olympic Officials Move Flame Inside Bus After Repeated Attacks on Runners

By John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 8, 2008; A01



PARIS, April 7 -- Thousands of rowdy demonstrators forced cancellation of the last leg of the Olympic torch ceremony in Paris on Monday with repeated attacks on the procession, escalating international protests over China's human rights record ahead of the 2008 Games in Beijing this summer.

About 3,000 French police officers, some of them spraying Mace, sought to guard the 17-mile parade route but were often unable to stop demonstrators, many of them waving Tibetan flags, from surging onto the streets as torch carriers passed. At least three times, the torch was extinguished and the athletes retreated for protection into buses.

Protesters often used the most picturesque landmarks in Paris -- the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysees, the Louvre Museum and Notre Dame Cathedral -- as backdrops for screaming face-offs with police and large groups of flag-waving pro-China supporters.

The torch ceremony is a rich Olympic tradition, and the growing movement against it has left some Olympic officials considering whether to cut back the 58-day pageant, during which the Olympic flame is to travel 85,000 miles through 21 countries.

"The International Olympic Committee may have a bigger problem when the torch relay continues, if we get more of these demonstrations," Tove Paule, the head of Norway's Olympic Committee, told public broadcaster NRK after a meeting with Olympic officials in Beijing. "One will have to look at whether the plans need to be changed."

In recent weeks, pressure has been mounting on the International Olympic Committee to respond to complaints from activists and politicians that China's lack of political freedom is incompatible with the values enshrined in the Olympic Charter. Officials have said that they are concerned about Tibet but that the IOC is not a political organization and cannot strong-arm the host government.

On Monday, amid reports of the developing chaos in Paris, IOC President Jacques Rogge mentioned Tibet by name again. "I'm very concerned with the international situation and what's happening in Tibet," he said at a ceremony in Beijing. "The torch relay has been targeted. The International Olympic Committee has expressed its serious concern and calls for a rapid, peaceful resolution in Tibet."

The Chinese People's Liberation Army entered Tibet in 1950. The Dalai Lama, leader of Tibetan Buddhism, fled to India nine years later amid an uprising. He is based in India today, along with a Tibetan government-in-exile. A number of international rights groups and celebrities have championed the cause of Tibet independence for years; Chinese authorities' suppression of demonstrations in Tibet and the upsurge in protests abroad have drawn new international attention.

On Wednesday, the torch is scheduled to be carried on a six-mile procession through San Francisco, its only U.S. stop. Organizers are bracing for thousands of pro-Tibet demonstrators, and police said they would station hundreds of extra officers on the city's streets. Protesters climbed cables on the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday and unfurled a giant banner reading "One World, One Dream, Free Tibet '08."

In Paris, the assaults began almost simultaneously with the first relay runner's departure from the starting point, the Eiffel Tower. As Chinese dancers performed with colorful, gyrating dragons under France's most famous landmark, Green Party activist Sylvain Garel lunged for the passing torchbearer, shouting "Freedom for the Chinese!"

As they made their way along the streets of Paris, athletes were surrounded by Chinese security teams as well as French police on in-line skates. Police on horseback, bicycles and motorcycles filled the streets of the route. Black-suited divers patrolled the Seine River, and helicopters monitored the route overhead.

But barely 30 minutes from the Eiffel Tower, protesters closed in, forcing the torchbearer to extinguish the flame and seek refuge inside a bus for several minutes.

Two hours later, as the wheelchair-using table tennis player Emeric Martin rolled by the Trocadero plaza holding the unlighted torch aloft, he and two colleagues were pelted with plastic juice bottles, fruits and other projectiles by pro-Tibet demonstrators.

"Normally, this is supposed to be a celebration -- the torch is a symbol of peace," Martin said just after one of his companions was hit in the face with an object and they retreated to a bus. "This was not very pleasant."

Near the Louvre Museum, a torchbearer was forced inside the bus again when a protester approached with a fire extinguisher. Chinese officials ordered the torch into the bus and demanded that it bypass Paris's City Hall after local officials hung a banner outside declaring: "Paris defends human rights everywhere in the world."

Later, with the relay dragging hours behind schedule because of the confrontations, Olympic organizers in Paris and at the Chinese Embassy halted the procession 3 1/2 miles from its end and carried the torch inside a bus for the remainder of the route.

"Even with the unbelievable number of police on the route, the organizers didn't manage to protect the flame," said Benoit Hervieu, a spokesman for the press freedom advocacy group Reporters Without Borders, which managed to drape its banners depicting the Olympic rings as handcuffs on the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame Cathedral. "It will have a disastrous effect on China and the Olympic Committee. Today was clearly a nightmare for them."

"This event shows that sports and politics now go hand in hand," said Jacques Gasnier, a 61-year-old municipal employee who watched the protests in front of the ornate City Hall. "It is easier to demonstrate today than boycott Chinese products or ban Chinese boats from entering our harbors."

Chinese television showed no footage of Monday's events, which were covered extensively by international TV networks and Web sites.

The protests were an escalation of demonstrations that disrupted the torch relay Sunday in London. Police there tackled protesters to the ground when activists tried to grab the flame. Thirty-seven people were arrested.

David Wallechinsky, an Olympic historian and author, called Monday's protests "unprecedented" in their scope and organization, noting that other torch processions had been disrupted only "by the occasional odd person who jumps out."

The International Olympic Committee allowed the problem to spiral by failing to put pressure on China after awarding the Games in 2001, Wallechinsky said. "The IOC waited too long," he charged. "They should have dealt with the Chinese Communist Party earlier."

In France, Olympic athletes have proposed wearing a badge in Beijing emblazoned with the Olympic rings below the words "France" and "For a better world" to demonstrate their concern over China's human rights record. French pole vaulter Romain Mesnil, a leader of the campaign, said it was aimed at "putting the Olympic values back into the heart" of the Games.

The growing protests underscore the deep divide between many national governments -- which are developing extensive trade ties with China and are reluctant to offend an emerging economic power -- and their citizens, who often take a harder line on abuses. Recent surveys show that more than half the people in France, Switzerland and Denmark want their countries to boycott the opening ceremony in Beijing on Aug. 8.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has threatened to boycott the opening ceremony. Spokesmen for President Bush and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said they plan to attend. On Monday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), a candidate for president, called on Bush to boycott the event unless China improves on human rights.

Chinese organizers of the Beijing Olympics held a hastily called news briefing Monday to "strongly condemn" the "separatists" who have disrupted the torch procession.

"The torch relay has been well-welcomed by local people and it's operation has been smooth," said Wang Hui, director of media and communications for the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. "But it's a pity that a few Tibetan separatists want to disrupt and sabotage the torch relay."

During a March 24 lighting ceremony in Olympia, Greece, Rogge had said the torch relay was designed to be "a journey of harmony, bringing the message of peace to the people of different nationalities, cultures and creeds."


Correspondent Maureen Fan in Beijing, researcher Corinne Gavard in Paris, and staff writers Amy Shipley in Washington and Ashley Surdin in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Source

Video

148

Football / Beckham Scores his first MLS goal- LA Galaxy v. San Jose Earthquakes

« on: April 03, 2008, 10:14:41 PM »

Beckham scored a nice simple goal to get himself into the MLS books...slotting home a pass from Landon Donovan in the 9'...going between the keeper's legs.  Nothing fancy, but a good milestone for him all the same.  Donovan later returned the favor, finishing off a Beckham pass to make it 2-0...happy for Ruud Gullit, headed to his first win...but that's not the story for me.

I like this San Jose franchise...the past Trini connections make me want to root for them, but they're struggling to link passes in midfield and seem to lack any kind of identity.  On a more superficial note, I also like their colors, though the kit is kinda plain....it has potential

149

General Discussion / 'Killing Fields' Survivor Dith Pran Dies

« on: March 30, 2008, 07:36:05 PM »

'Killing Fields' Survivor Dith Pran Dies


By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 30, 2008; 10:47 AM


Dith Pran, 65, a journalist and human rights advocate who became a public face of the horrors in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge regime and whose life was portrayed in the influential movie "The Killing Fields," died today at a New Jersey hospital. He had pancreatic cancer.

For much of the early 1970s, Dith Pran was a resourceful guide and interpreter in Cambodia for Sydney H. Schanberg of the New York Times, whose reporting on the country's civil war and rise of the Khmer Rouge won a Pulitzer Prize.

"Pran was a true reporter, a fighter for the truth and for his people," Schanberg told the Associated Press when announcing his death. "When cancer struck, he fought for his life again. And he did it with the same Buddhist calm and courage and positive spirit that made my brother so special."

Schanberg's partnership with Dith Pran became the basis for the film "The Killing Fields" (1984), which conveyed in personal terms the brutality of the Khmer Rouge under despot Pol Pot from 1975 to 1979. Nearly 2 million Cambodians died during those years.

"The Killing Fields" had a major impact on public opinion, said Ben Kiernan, who directs Yale University's Genocide Studies Program. "A mass audience saw the story of what happened in a way that had never been done before, a dramatic and accurate depiction of a horrifying experience for millions of people," he said.

"Pran was one of the major figures in the United States in bringing the issue of justice for Cambodian genocide to public attention, and in pushing the U.S. government to support the accountability of the Khmer Rouge," Kiernan said.

In speeches and lectures, Dith Pran gave vivid and compelling accounts of the genocide, including the death of 50 members of his family. During a famine, he said he was nearly beaten to death for stealing more than the daily ration of a spoonful of rice. He was told one of his brothers, who served in the Cambodian army, was thrown to crocodiles by the Khmer Rouge.

The Khmer Rouge, which followed a radical communist path of social engineering, tried to remake the country by killing anyone with political opinions or who seemed educated. Dith Pran spent four years disguising his middle-class background by dressing as a peasant and working in rice fields.

Of the killing fields, or mass graves in the countryside, he once told Schanberg, "In the water wells, the bodies were like soup bones in broth. And you could always tell the killing grounds because the grass grew taller and greener where the bodies were buried."

Peter Cleveland, a foreign affairs expert working for then Sen. Charles Robb (D-Va.), said Dith Pran worked with other outside groups to help influence passage of the Cambodian Genocide Justice Act of 1994.

The act, which Robb sponsored, created the State Department's Office of Cambodian Genocide Investigations, which gathered evidence against Pol Pot and his deputies for crimes against humanity.

Pol Pot died in Thailand in 1998 without answering to an international tribunal. United Nations-backed trials began last year, after years of resistance from the Khmer Rouge's supporters.

Dith Pran founded an organization to collect personal stories about Khmer Rouge crimes and compiled a book of survivor's memories, "Children of Cambodia's Killing Fields" (1997).

"There is no doctor who can heal me," he told the Los Angeles Times in 1991, when Pol Pot was protected in Thailand. "But I know that a man like Pol Pot, he is even sicker than I am. He is crazy in the head, because he believed in killing people. He believed in starving children. We both have the horror in our heads."

Dith Pran, whose father was a public works official, was born Sept. 27, 1942, in Siem Reap, in northeastern Cambodia near the ancient temples at Angkor Wat.

He learned French and English in school, and his language skills brought him work as a translator of Khmer, the Cambodian language, for the U.S. military and visiting film crews. He was a receptionist at a hotel near Angkor Wat when the escalation of the Vietnam War dried up tourism.

The subsequent American bombing of Cambodia, the militarist coup led by Western-backed Cambodian Gen. Lon Nol and an erupting civil war led Dith Pran, his wife, Meoun Ser, and their four children to flee to the capital city of Phnom Penh.

There, Dith Pran became a favorite of the visiting press corps. He gained a reputation for adeptness at obtaining hotel rooms and bribing teletype operators to get stories out. He also knew how to bribe officials to win access to parts of the country otherwise closed off to reporters.

He formed his closest working relationship with Schanberg, who said he came to regard Dith Pran as his brother. "He got hooked on this story in the same way I did," Schanberg said. "Cambodia was ignored. The Western press corps was in Saigon. People only came in when things heated up. . . .

"He wanted the story of what was happening to get out," Schanberg said. "People in such a Third World country who are suffering did not know if anyone in the outside world understood what they were going through -- crude, Chinese-made rockets landing in hospitals, schoolyards, people's backyards."

Dith Pran's wife and children were able to leave Cambodia through Schanberg's connections at the U.S. Embassy. At great peril, the two men remained in the capital after the Khmer Rouge entered the city in April 1975.

At one point, bullying Khmer Rouge soldiers robbed Schanberg and two English-speaking colleagues of their equipment and forced them aboard a truck likely bound for their execution.

Schanberg credited Dith Pran with their survival, when Dith Pran pleaded to board the truck and persuaded the driver that the reporters were French -- and were there to cover the Khmer Rouge victory with sympathy.

Back in Phnom Pehn, Schanberg was able to obtain safe passage to Thailand through the French embassy, but Dith Pran was among the many Cambodians turned away after the Khmer Rouge threatened embassy officials about awarding passports to help local citizens escape.

He found work in rice fields near his home village. Like others, he was reduced to rations of a spoonful of rice a day plus whatever snails, rats, insects and tree bark he could find. Any excuse was used to beat or execute people, including unauthorized work breaks.

Following months of extreme malnourishment, Dith Pran said he took a risk one night by sneaking into a rice paddy to steal rice kernels. Two guards caught him and ordered the villagers to beat him with bamboo-cutting blades. He was left bleeding in the rain.

After the Vietnamese invasion, Dith Pran began his search for family members. Only his mother and one sister had survived. The rest died of starvation or had been executed.

Seeking refuge in Thailand, he traveled a circuitous route of 60 miles, careful to avoid bands of Khmer Rouge soldiers, unmarked mine fields and other dangers. He was accepted into a refugee camp and was treated for malaria.

The New York Times arranged for his safe passage to New York and trained him for work as a staff photographer, a position he held since 1980, while also assuming a greater role as an activist.

"The Killing Fields," starring Sam Waterston and Haing S. Ngor as Schanberg and Dith Pran, elevated Dith Pran's name recognition. Ngor, a Cambodian doctor-turned-actor, won the Academy Award for his supporting role. Ngor was killed in a robbery in 1996.

Soon after the film's release, Dith Pran became a U.S. citizen and goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

"I'm not a politician. I'm not a hero. I'm a messenger," he said. "It's very important that we study genocide because it has happened again and again. We made a mistake because we didn't believe Cambodians would kill Cambodians.

"We didn't believe that one human being would kill another human being. I want you to know that genocide can happen anywhere on this planet. . . . Like one of my heroes, Elie Wiesel, who alerts the world to the horrors of the Jewish holocaust, I try to awaken the world to the holocaust of Cambodia, for all tragedies have universal implications."

His marriages to Meoun Ser Dith and Kim DePaul ended in divorce.

Survivors include his companion, Bette Parslow; four children from the first marriage, Titony Dith of Herndon, Hemkarey Tan of Silver Spring and Titonath Dith and Titonel Dith, both of Lynwood, Wash.; a sister; and eight grandchildren.






I'm more than a little bit saddened by this....in a world of few heroes this man was a giant.  Some people, it is said are destined for greatness...others assume the burden out of necessity, and amid much less fanfare.

R.I.P. and safe passage home to your people.

150

General Discussion / It has served us well, this myth of Christ....let's discuss

« on: March 10, 2008, 11:22:41 PM »

So Morvant (and others)...this has been attributed to Pope Leo X.


What's your take on it and what significance do you derive from it...seeing that it's your siggy and all?




Truetrini we know yuh salivating...easy.