Spy vs. Spy
They had Robert Hanssen. We had Sergei Tretyakov.
The Untold Secrets of Russia's Master Spy In America After the End of the Cold War
By Pete Earley
Putnam. 340 pp. $25.95
The CIA and the FBI were hugely damaged by the supermoles Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, who ran their own private spy bazaars and peddled vast amounts of U.S. secrets to the Russians for years. No one seemed to notice when Ames drove a red Jaguar XJ6 to CIA headquarters or when the FBI's Hanssen escorted a stripper to Hong Kong.
So it is understandable that the two agencies might want the public to know that for at least a few years in the late 1990s, they had a mole sending secrets the other way. Enter Col. Sergei Tretyakov, a Russian spy who defected in New York in 2000 as the deputy rezide nt (station chief) there of the SVR, the successor to the KGB's foreign intelligence directorate. Some four years later, author Pete Earley found himself in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Tysons Corner with two FBI agents, two CIA officers, soft drinks, snacks and the defector. The meeting had been set up by an FBI agent who contacted Earley and encouraged him to write a book about the Russian. Earley, a former reporter for The Washington Post, is the author of Family of Spies, a well-received account of the John Walker naval spy ring, and Confessions of a Spy, a perceptive book about Ames that did not receive the attention it deserved, perhaps because it came out after four other books about the case, including (full disclosure) one by this reviewer.
Tretyakov, who had been assigned to the Russian mission at the United Nations since 1995 and to Ottawa before that, gave the FBI 5,000 secret SVR cables and more than 100 Russian intelligence reports, according to one U.S. intelligence official cited by Earley. Tretyakov apparently first tried to defect around 1997 but agreed to remain as an "agent in place," passing secrets to the FBI until October 2000, when he vanished from a Russian residential compound in the Bronx with his wife, daughter and cat. Four months later, the United States acknowledged his defection, but Comrade J (the title is drawn from the KGB's code name for Tretyakov, Comrade Jean) is the first account of his espionage career. "It is one of our biggest success stories," puffed the unnamed U.S. intelligence official.
Perhaps so. But to put the case in perspective, Tretyakov spied for the United States for about three years, while Ames sold secrets to Moscow for nine years (and caused the death of 10 Soviets working for the CIA), Walker spied for 18 years, and Hanssen betrayed America on and off for 22 years. Yet, if Tretyakov was not a world-class mole, he was definitely a world-class name-dropper. And that is the difficulty with his story. All defectors tend to exaggerate their own importance, or at least the importance of their information, especially if they worry that when they run out of secrets to reveal they may be cast aside.
Tretyakov's claims about Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of state under President Clinton, are a case in point. "Russian intelligence had tricked and manipulated him," Tretyakov said. "He became an extremely valuable intelligence source." Georgi Mamedov, the Russian deputy minister of foreign affairs, was "a longtime co-optee" of the SVR, who met often with Talbott and who "was reporting everything that was said or done by Mr. Talbott directly to us at the Center." Employing a familiar Nixonian technique -- ironic for a KGB man -- Tretyakov is careful to add that Talbott "was not a Russian spy." Talbott, contacted by Earley, called the defector's charges "erroneous and/or misleading." When he spoke with Mamedov, Talbott said, both officials presumed they would each report everything back to their own governments.
Similarly, Tretyakov says a friend who was the KGB man in Israel had Prime Minister Golda Meir as his "main target." But Tretyakov, Earley writes, said his friend "was elusive whenever he was asked whether or not Meir had been a KGB source." And, if one is to believe Tretyakov, the KGB "created the myth of nuclear winter" in the 1980s by hornswaggling Carl Sagan and other American and foreign scientists -- although, Earley points out, whether that is true "is impossible to discern." Tretyakov also accuses Eldar Kouliev, Azerbaijan's representative to the United Nations in the 1990s, of being "a deep-cover SVR intelligence officer." And former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Earley notes, "frequently met with Kouliev." And no doubt with Strobe Talbott.
The defector describes five Canadians he says he recruited while stationed in Ottawa and gives their code designations but not their real names. He says he also recruited Alex Kindy, a former member of the Canadian parliament. He claims that Alexander Kramar was the SVR's man inside the much-criticized U.N. Oil-for-Food program -- part of the sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime -- and helped the Russians steal half-a-billion dollars "to line the pockets of top Russian government leaders in both the Yeltsin and Putin presidencies." Also, according to Tretyakov, before the Soviet Union collapsed, KGB chief Vladimir Kryuchkov sent up to $50 billion in Communist Party funds out of the country, although where the money went, nobody knows. That's an oft-told tale in Russia; Tretyakov provides no details to substantiate the story of the party gold.
The real value of Sergei Tretyakov's saga lies less in his scattershot claims and innuendoes than in his sharp eye and gossipy insider's view of the KGB/SVR's training, methods, foibles and tricks. The CIA resettles defectors and pays well the ones it likes. It certainly must like Tretyakov because, Earley reports, his pay package topped a record $2 million. He lives now in a secret location under a new name. His wife, Helen, drives a Porsche, and Sergei has a Lexus SUV. *
David Wise is the author of "Nightmover: How Aldrich Ames Sold the CIA to the KGB for $4.6 Million" and "Spy: The Inside Story of How the FBI's Robert Hanssen Betrayed America."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/24/AR2008012402750.html
Sunday, January 27, 2008
INTELLIGENCE
Miss Michigan Crowned Miss America
By KATHLEEN HENNESSEY
The Associated Press
Sunday, January 27, 2008; 12:04 AM
LAS VEGAS -- Miss Michigan Kirsten Haglund, a 19-year-old aspiring Broadway star, was crowned Miss America 2008 on Saturday in a live show billed as the unveiling of the 87-year-old pageant's new, hipper look.
Haglund, of Farmington Hills, Mich., sang "Over the Rainbow" and walked a crowd-pleasing strut in a black and gold bikini to clinch the title. She beat Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash, the first runner up, and Miss Washington Elyse Umemoto, the second runner up for the $50,000 scholarship and year of travel that comes with the crown.
Haglund, who studies music at the University of Cincinnati, grew up in a pageant family. Her mother is an active volunteer, and her grandmother Iora Hunt, competed for the crown as Miss Michigan 1944. Hunt joined Haglund at a news conference.
"The only words that come to my mind is that this is a dream come true, not just for me but for my family as well," Haglund said. "I'm not just standing up here alone."
Haglund, a cheery, classic blond, wore a revealing silver sequined dress and black bikini during the evening gown and swimsuit portions of the pageant. As her platform issue, she promised to advocate for awareness of eating disorders, an illness from which she has recovered.
The crowning at the Planet Hollywood Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas Strip was aired for the first time on TLC. It capped a four-week reality series, "Miss America: Reality Check," which followed the contestants as they were pushed to shed the dated look of Miss Americas past and adopt a more updated style.
The show was the latest in a series of attempts to find an audience with a younger demographic after more than a decade of declining ratings.
The 52 newly made-over aspiring beauty queens who sought the top tiara sported updated hairdos, sassy attitudes and red carpet-worthy fashion throughout the competition.
Usually tame by modern TV standards, the swimwear competition kicked it up a notch. Most contestants wore black bikinis, and some struck provocative poses and twirled as the audience howled. Contestants also wore blue jeans and added a bit of humor to the traditional opening number, the parade of states.
Haglund's moves won howls from the audience. "I think for the audience, the swimwear and evening wear was much more entertaining, am I right?" Haglund said when asked about the show's new look.
The changes included a chance for "Reality Check" viewers to text message votes for their favorite contestant. Miss Utah, Jill Stevens, an Army medic who served in Afghanistan, was named "America's Choice."
Stevens did not make to the final 10, but she took the disappointment with pluck. She dropped and gave the audience push ups before joining the other losers on a riser on the side.
Producers added a twist to the interview portion, as well. They asked people on the street to pose questions, and the results were edgier than usual. Contestents were asked about binge drinking, HIV and Britney Spears' pregnant younger sister, Jamie Lynn.
"No I don't think she should be fired," Miss Indiana Nicole Elizabeth Rash said. "They're still people, they're still human beings. We all deserve second chances."
The long-struggling pageant had promised a new look for this year's beauty battle. "Entertainment Tonight" reporter Mark Steines was the master of ceremonies of the show. Clinton Kelly of TLC's hit "What Not to Wear" also helped with the hosting duties. Kelly had instructed the girls on how to update their looks during the reality show.
The pageant sounded different, too. A deejay spun dance music from turntables set up on stage. Contestants danced and waved to the audience during commercials breaks. The losers were seated on risers on one side of the stage, while the parents of the finalists, in black tie, were seated on the other.
The show was the latest in a series of attempts to find a new audience after more than a decade of declining ratings. The fading institution was dropped from network television in 2004. It spent a two-year stint on Country Music Television before being picked up last summer by TLC, a cable channel reaching 93 million homes in the U.S.
TLC added the pageant to its reality-TV stable, and announced plans to reinvent the look of the show and find an "It girl" ready for modern celebrity.
In addition to the $50,000 scholarship, Haglund will embark on a year of promoting the pageant, her platform issue and the Children's Miracle Network, a pageant partner.
___
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/26/AR2008012601668.html?hpid=moreheadlines
Lexington's Grace Gore in Miss America Pageant tonight
Grace Gore, the Lexington resident currently wearing the tiara of Miss Tennessee, is one of 52 ladies competing tonight at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino in Las Vegas for the title of Miss America.
The pageant begins at 7 p.m. local time on the TLC cable channel.
Read more in Sunday's edition of The Jackson Sun. And learn more about Gore, including photo galleries from the 2007 Miss Tennessee Pageant, at the link below:
http://orig.jacksonsun.com/misstn2007/index.html
Snowboarder carries extreme burden
Hospitalized father's legal troubles heavy on Fresno X-Gamer's mind
By MAREK WARSZAWSKI
last updated: January 25, 2008 03:49:45 AM
The High Five
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When pro snowboarder Andy Finch starts sliding down the halfpipe at this weekend's Winter X Games, he knows his wife, Amber, will be at the bottom cheering him on.
Finch knows his mother, Joanie, will be home in Fresno watching on television, crossing her fingers that her 26-year-old daredevil son doesn't get hurt.
And Finch knows his father, Cliff, will be lying in bed at the Palo Alto veterans hospital, battling constant pain and partial paralysis on his right side -- and facing attempted murder charges back in Fresno.
Soon, most of the country will also know about Cliff Finch's ordeal.
One of the world's top snowboarders and a 2004 Olympian, Andy Finch has long been adept at launching his body in the air and making it spin two or three times before landing.
But since that September day when his father was shot seven times by police officers after leading them on a high-speed chase across Fresno, Finch has had to learn a new technique: how to perform those aerial maneuvers while keeping his mind grounded and focused on the task at hand.
"It's pretty easy not to think about my dad when I'm over in Europe, but here it's going to be a little bit different," Finch said Wednesday by phone from Aspen, Colo. "It's going to be a little more real."
Things will get a lot more real Saturday evening as Finch prepares for his qualifying run in men's superpipe. That's when ESPN is scheduled to broadcast a feature story on Finch and his family situation.
Cliff Finch, who police said shot at officers before they returned fire, pleaded not guilty to charges of attempted murder and evading police and posted $125,000 bail. A pre-preliminary hearing is scheduled today in Fresno County Superior Court.
Although Andy Finch said doctors have not determined what caused his father's behavior, some family members believe Cliff Finch might have been suffering from a condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder from his days in Vietnam.
Andy said, "He, to me, was the dream father -- what every kid would love to have. That's what makes this so tough.
"My father respects the police. In his right mind he'd never do anything like that."
Part of the ESPN feature was filmed at Fresno's Veterans Administration hospital, where Cliff Finch was in recovery before being transferred to Palo Alto last week to take advantage of that facility's spinal cord injury unit, and part of it was filmed at Andy Finch's house in Truckee.
The feature will be seen not only by the millions of households that subscribe to the cable sports network but also live at the Winter X Games on several Jumbotron screens stationed around the halfpipe.
"It's going to be on right before I ride," Finch said. "That'll be a little weird."
Those thoughts are echoed by fellow Fresno native Eric Asistin, a friend of Andy's who will be in attendance this weekend in Aspen.
"If it were me, I'm not sure I would've done (the ESPN feature)," Asistin said. "But this is Andy we're talking about. He finds the good in any situation."
Despite the mental strain, Finch is enjoying one of his best seasons in pro snowboarding. The 1999 Bullard High graduate is ranked second in the Swatch TTR World Snowboard Tour standings.
Finch earned one of the biggest victories of his career Jan. 5 in the halfpipe at the O'Neill Evolution in Davos, Switzerland. The following weekend, despite a badly bruised lower back, he placed fifth at the Burton European Open in Laax, Switzerland.
A man of deep religious convictions, Finch credits his faith and the support of his wife, Amber Shelhamer, with keeping him focused on his career through difficult times.
Known for his reckless, go-for-broke style, Finch said he will keep a recent promise he made to his father about taking it easy in practice this week.
After earning a silver medal at the 2005 Winter X Games, Finch has since been unable to compete in the finals because of injuries he suffered during training runs.
"Every year I do something silly that busts me up a little bit," he said. "It's a habit I've got to break."
Finch said the 8-inch diameter bruise on his lower back, which caused him to miss a week of filming in France with his main sponsor, Rip Curl, will be 100 percent healed when he competes in the elimination round Saturday evening.
The finals are scheduled for Sunday afternoon.
"The X Games are definitely on my list of (contests) I want to win," Finch said. "I only have a couple left, and this is the one I really want."
This year, there's even more incentive than usual.
http://www.modbee.com/sports/outdoors/story/191092.html
Why Paige Davis Returned to Trading Spaces (and Vice Versa)
By JOE RHODES
TV GUIDE
Paige Davis — perky as ever, but older, wiser and with darker, straighter hair — thought long and hard before agreeing to return to TLC's Trading Spaces, the genre-establishing home-makeover show that made her famous in 2001 and then abruptly fired her in 2005 because producers wanted the show to go in a different direction. Which it did — straight down the ratings tubes. Now Davis is back and the new season premieres tonight at 10 pm/ET.
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When new management took over at TLC last year, one of their first priorities was revitalizing Trading Spaces, which at its peak drew as many as nine million viewers and was consistently Saturday night's top-rated cable show. Brant Pinvidic, TLC's new senior vice president of programming, decided the only way to save the franchise was to get Davis back in the fold. It wasn't easy. "We felt like the bad boyfriend who had dumped her at the prom," Pinvidic says, "and now we're asking for a second chance."
Davis, who has spent most of the intervening years doing musical theater (including a Broadway run of Chicago) after a development deal with CBS for possible talk shows and a sitcom didn't pan out, was interested — but with conditions. She wanted the old gang back together again: original designers Doug Wilson, Hildi Santo Tomas, Laurie Hickson-Smith and Frank Bielec. And she insisted the show return to its original low-budget premise — two rooms, two days, for $1,000 or less — a format that had been tinkered with to the point of unrecognizability as the show tried to keep up with the wave of more, shall we say, "extreme" makeover shows that had flourished in its wake.
"To watch something that I loved crash and burn was really sad," says Davis, covered in sawdust and debris on the set of a house in Palm Desert, California, visible evidence that the New Paige will be just as involved, if not more so, than she was before. She is everywhere on the set, asking questions, vacuuming, pitching in, even when the cameras aren't on. Trading Spaces, she says, is still about the fun of making over a room on a budget and an impossible deadline, and it's still about the homeowners and the designers. But it's also clear that, in many ways, the show is also about her.
"To not use a host was one of the more visible destructive mistakes they made in terms of the fans," she says. "I know what the fans love. And what they don't like. They wanted the old show back. They wanted the theme music and the fast-motion overhead camera and the goofy antics. And they wanted the family back."
Still, there have been tweaks, the most noticeable being that there will be more interesting backstories for the homeowners, who won't necessarily be neighbors but will have some connection. The Palm Desert episode involved a divorced couple, the ex-husband and wife making over each others' bedrooms. So yes, there are issues beyond whether to upholster the headboards.
"I was really nervous when they started talking about storylines and rivals and conflict; I was like, 'Whoa, whoa, whoa, we are not Jerry Springer here,'" she says. "But I'm satisfied that it doesn't overtake the show. I'm all for it, because I think it allows the audience to be more invested in whether the homeowners actually like the rooms.
"But it doesn't get in the way at all. We're still the same innocent, charming show we were. I kept saying that the show has to have bounce. It's got to be goofy and corny and bouncy."
Get all five of our collectible Lost covers, then go behind the scenes on the set for our exclusive preview of the new season. Plus: Take a sneak peek at this year's hot new Super Bowl ads. Try four risk-free issues of TV Guide now!
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/tvguide/348934_tvgif26.html
Former Indonesian dictator Suharto dies
By ZAKKI HAKIM, Associated Press Writer
JAKARTA, Indonesia - Former dictator Suharto, an army general who crushed Indonesia's communist movement and pushed aside the country's founding father to usher in 32 years of tough rule that saw up to a million political opponents killed, died Sunday. He was 86.
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Suharto had been ailing in a hospital in the capital since Jan. 4 when he was admitted with failing kidneys, heart and lungs. Doctors prolonged his life through dialysis and a ventilator, but his condition dramatically worsened over the weekend. He stopped breathing and slipped into a coma Sunday.
A statement issued by chief presidential doctor, Marjo Subiandono, said he was declared dead at 1:10 p.m. The cause of death was given as multi-organ failure.
Finally toppled by mass street protests in 1998, the U.S. Cold War ally's departure opened the way for democracy in this predominantly Muslim nation of 235 million people and he withdrew from public life, rarely venturing from his comfortable villa on a leafy lane in the capital.
Suharto had ruled with a totalitarian dominance that saw soldiers stationed in every village, instilling a deep fear of authority across this Southeast Asian nation of some 6,000 inhabited islands that stretch across more than 3,000 miles.
Since being forced from power, he had been in and out of hospitals after strokes caused brain damage and impaired his speech. Blood transfusions and a pacemaker prolonged his life, but he suffered from lung, kidney, liver and heart problems.
Suharto was vilified as one of the world's most brutal rulers and was accused of overseeing a graft-ridden reign. But poor health — and continuing corruption, critics charge — kept him from court after he was chased from office by widespread unrest at the peak of the Asian financial crisis.
The bulk of political killings blamed on Suharto occurred in the 1960s, soon after he seized power. In later years, some 300,000 people were slain, disappeared or jailed in the independence-minded regions of East Timor, Aceh and Papua, human rights groups and the United Nations say.
Suharto's successors as head of state — B.J. Habibie, Abdurrahman Wahid, Megawati Sukarnoputri and Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono — vowed to end corruption that took root under Suharto, yet it remains endemic at all levels of Indonesian society.
With the court system paralyzed by corruption, the country has not confronted its bloody past. Rather than put on trial those accused of mass murder and multibillion-dollar theft, some members of the political elite consistently called for charges against Suharto to be dropped on humanitarian grounds.
Some noted Suharto also oversaw decades of economic expansion that made Indonesia the envy of the developing world. Today, nearly a quarter of Indonesians live in poverty, and many long for the Suharto era's stability, when fuel and rice were affordable.
But critics say Suharto squandered Indonesia's vast natural resources of oil, timber and gold, siphoning the nation's wealth to benefit his cronies and family like a mafia don.
Jeffrey Winters, associate professor of political economy at Northwestern University, said the graft effectively robbed "Indonesia of some of the most golden decades, and its best opportunity to move from a poor to a middle class country."
"When Indonesia does finally go back and redo history, (its people) will realize that Suharto is responsible for some of the worst crimes against humanity in the 20th century," Winters added.
Those who profited from Suharto's rule made sure he was never portrayed in a harsh light at home, Winters said, so even though he was an "iron-fisted, brutal, cold-blooded dictator," he was able to stay in his native country.
Like many Indonesians, Suharto used only one name. He was born on June 8, 1921, to a family of rice farmers in the village of Godean, in the dominant Indonesian province of Central Java.
When Indonesia gained independence from the Dutch in 1949, Suharto quickly rose through the ranks of the military to become a staff officer.
His career nearly foundered in the late 1950s, when the army's then-commander, Gen. Abdul Haris Nasution, accused him of corruption in awarding army contracts.
Absolute power came in September 1965 when the army's six top generals were murdered under mysterious circumstances, and their bodies dumped in an abandoned well in an apparent coup attempt.
Suharto, next in line for command, quickly asserted authority over the armed forces and promoted himself to four-star general.
Suharto then oversaw a nationwide purge of suspected communists and trade unionists, a campaign that stood as the region's bloodiest event since World War II until the Khmer Rouge established its gruesome regime in Cambodia a decade later. Experts put the number of deaths during the purge at between 500,000 and 1 million.
Over the next year, Suharto eased out of office Indonesia's first post-independence president, Sukarno, who died under house arrest in 1970. The legislature rubber-stamped Suharto's presidency and he was re-elected unopposed six times.
During the Cold War, Suharto was considered a reliable friend of Washington, which didn't oppose his violent occupation of Papua in 1969 and the bloody 1974 invasion of East Timor. The latter, a former Portuguese colony, became Asia's youngest country with a U.N.-sponsored plebiscite in 1999.
Even Suharto's critics agree his hard-line policies kept a lid on Indonesia's extremists. He locked up hundreds of suspected Islamic militants without trial, some of whom later carried out deadly suicide bombings with the al-Qaida-linked terror network Jemaah Islamiyah after the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S.
Meanwhile, the ruling clique that formed around Suharto — nicknamed the "Berkeley mafia" after their American university, the University of California, Berkeley — transformed Indonesia's economy and attracted billions of dollars in foreign investment.
By the late 1980s, Suharto was describing himself as Indonesia's "father of development," taking credit for slowly reducing the number of abjectly poor and modernizing parts of the nation.
But the government also became notorious for unfettered nepotism, and Indonesia was regularly ranked as one of the world's most corrupt nations as Suharto's inner circle amassed fabulous wealth. The World Bank estimates 20 percent to 30 percent of Indonesia's development budget was embezzled during his rule.
Even today, Suharto's children and aging associates have considerable sway over the country's business, politics and courts. Efforts to recover the money have been fruitless.
Suharto's youngest son, Hutomo "Tommy" Mandala Putra, was released from prison in 2006 after serving a third of a 15-year sentence for ordering the assassination of a Supreme Court judge. Another son, Bambang Trihatmodjo, joined the Forbes list of wealthiest Indonesians in 2007, with $200 million from his stake in the conglomerate Mediacom.
Suharto's economic policies, based on unsecured borrowing by his cronies, dramatically unraveled shortly before he was toppled in May 1998. Indonesia is still recovering from what economists called the worst economic meltdown anywhere in 50 years.
State prosecutors accused Suharto of embezzling about $600 million via a complex web of foundations under his control, but he never saw the inside of a courtroom. In September 2000, judges ruled he was too ill to stand trial, though many people believed the decision really stemmed from the lingering influence of the former dictator and his family.
In 2007, Suharto won a $106 million defamation lawsuit against Time magazine for accusing the family of acquiring $15 billion in stolen state funds.
The former dictator told the news magazine Gatra in a rare interview in November 2007 that he would donate the bulk of any legal windfall to the needy, while he dismissed corruption accusations as "empty talk."
Suharto's wife of 49 years, Indonesian royal Siti Hartinah, died in 1996. The couple had three sons and three daughters.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080127/ap_on_re_as/indonesia_suharto
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Muse shares story behind ‘Hey There Delilah’
Woman who inspired hit song clears up truth about Plain White T’s tune
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:02 a.m. ET Jan. 23, 2008
As a nationally ranked runner and an Olympic hopeful, Delilah DiCrescenzo is used to being chased — but by other athletes, not by pop singers from Chicago. But, she said on Wednesday, she doesn’t mind the attention the chase has brought her.
“What I really hope through all of this is that it spotlights track and field, and it gives the sport a face, which is really important to us athletes in an Olympic year,” the woman who inspired Song of the Year nominee “Hey There Delilah” told TODAY co-hosts Meredith Vieira and Matt Lauer on Wednesday.
It’s been a long chase both for her and for Tom Higgenson, lead singer for the Plain White T’s, who wrote the song five years ago after being introduced to DiCrescenzo by a friend. Higgenson was smitten and even though she had a boyfriend, he told her he was going to write a song about her.
“I thought he was just being flirtatious and leading me along,” the 24-year-old athlete told Lauer and Vieira. “I had a boyfriend at the time, so I really didn’t believe him.”
Higgenson and his band played the song for years at club dates and concerts, and it became a favorite with their fans. But it wasn’t until last summer that it broke out into the mainstream and began climbing the charts until it was the nation’s top single. That was when Higgenson performed the song on TODAY and told Ann Curry the story of unrequited love that had inspired it.
DiCrescenzo, meanwhile, remained all but anonymous. A graduate of Columbia University, she had returned to her native Chicago to work. A good but not great runner in high school and college, she gave the 3,000-meter steeplechase a try in 2006 and found that she was good enough in the grueling race to think about trying to make the Olympic team this year. To pursue that dream, she moved to Conshohocken, Pa., where she trains full-time while working as an assistant track and cross-country coach at Bryn Mawr.
She kept casually in touch with Higgenson, mostly through e-mails and instant messages. When the song was nominated for a Grammy as Song of the Year, he called and invited her to come to the Feb. 11 ceremony with him. With her boyfriend’s blessing, she accepted and found herself in the spotlight.
She said it’s something of a relief to go public with her identity and to clear up any confusion about her role in a love song whose lyrics seem unequivocal:
Hey there Delilah, I’ve got so much left to say
If every simple song I wrote to you
Would take your breath away, I’d write it all
Even more in love with me you’d fall, we’d have it all.
“I knew it was fictionalized, and I’m glad that I finally get the opportunity to say I do have a boyfriend and it is romanticized,” she said. “The song means so much to so many different people. I’m just happy that it’s had so much success, and I don’t mind playing along with it.”
Her boyfriend, who did have bouts of jealousy when the song came out, is also relieved. “He’s a lot happier now that I get a chance to clear up the confusion,” she said. “He’s been a good sport through the whole thing.”
She hasn’t gotten a dress for the occasion yet. “I’ve been concentrating on my training for the Olympics,” she admitted. Her event, the steeplechase, is contested over hurdles and a water hazard. For the first time at this year’s Olympics, it will be run by women as well as by men, and DiCrescenzo will compete in the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials in June. The top three finishers at the trials will go to Beijing in August.
Asked by Lauer which would be more exciting, seeing Higgenson win the Grammy or making the Olympic team, DiCrescenzo chose to be diplomatic.
“I want both,” she said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22799483/
ESPN benches Jacobson
Remarks at roast ripping Notre Dame called inappropriate
ESPN's Dana Jacobson arrives at the premiere of "United 93" during the Fifth Annual Tribeca Film Festival at the Ziegfeld Theatre on April 25, 2006 in New York City. (Evan Agostini/Getty Images / January 23, 2008)
By Ed Sherman | Tribune reporter
January 23, 2008
Add ESPN's Dana Jacobson's name to the list of media members who recently found themselves in trouble because of inappropriate comments or actions.
Sources have confirmed that Jacobson, a co-host of "First Take" on ESPN2, currently is serving a one-week suspension because of her behavior at a Jan. 11 roast for ESPN Radio personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic at Atlantic City, N.J.
While declining to confirm Jacobson had been suspended, ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said, "Her actions and comments were inappropriate and we've dealt with it."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/chi-23-espnbritejan23,0,6613456.story
ESPN Suspends Dana Jacobson For Derogatory Remarks
Atlanta, GA 1/23/2008 04:09 PM GMT (FINDITT)
ESPN suspended sports announcer Dana Jacobson for a week due to her behavior at a Jan. 11 roast for ESPN Radio personalities Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic at Atlantic City, N.J.
At the roast, Jacobson made a drunken, rambling speech that included vulgar references about Notre Dame. Jacobson said "F*** Notre Dame," "F*** Touchdown Jesus," and finally "F*** Jesus."
Jacobson is a Michigan graduate, and she and Golic, a former Irish defensive lineman, often have exchanged rants about the rivalry between the schools.
A newspaper account said the crowd booed Jacobson. Notre Dame coach Charlie Weis also was in attendance.
Golic and Greenberg are the hosts of ESPN's "Mike and Mike in the Morning" radio show.
For more sports news, please check out http://news.finditt.com/NewsList.aspx?cat=6&wcat=5
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=34087&cat=6
The Center for Public Integrity: Administration Lied About Iraq
A new web project called The Center for Public Integrity, which focuses on ethics and integrity, concludes in a recent study that the Bush administration deliberately lied about Iraq, in order to get public support for going to war with Iraq.
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Presently the The Center for Public Integrity website is down due to public interest and technical reasons. Since people can't access the site very easily we tried gather quotes from the media on what The Center For Public Integrity has concluded about the Bush Administration, The War in Iraq and who is behind The Center.
Here is what The New York Times has to say.
The Center for Public Integrity, a research group that focuses on ethics in government and public policy, designed the new Web site to allow simple searches for specific phrases, such as “mushroom cloud” or “yellowcake uranium,” in transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words, including remarks by President Bush and most of his top advisers in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks…. There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”
The database is online at publicintegrity.org.
"Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the research center say their work has documented “at least 935 false statements” on hundreds of occasions, particularly that Iraq had unconventional weapons, links to Al Qaeda, or both."
An interesting story from FreeAmericaDigital Blog asks Did the United States go to war under false pretenses?
Did the United States go to war under false pretenses? It’s sad to say as an American, but it sure is looking that way. President Bush and his top officials made at least 935 false statements in the two years following 9/11 about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq - quote from The Center for Public Integrity.
The fact is I didn’t need these people to tell me how messed up the situation is. I like most of America drank the kool-aid. I was told, even showed pictures of weapons of mass destruction, what a dog and pony show. I was told about the intricate links between the terrorist that attacked my country and this evil man Saddam Hussein. All, as we now know was a lie, even President Bush admitted that the intelligence was wrong, I love how he said, “but big deal Saddam Hussein is such a bad man we should break every international law there is and go kill him any way”( I paraphrased). One America saw through this cloud of crap, he knew that the only way for America to keep it’s integrity was to stick strictly to the Constitution, that American is Ron Paul.
He voted to stay out of Iraq, right now over 30,000 Americans would be alive, over 200,000 Americans would have their arms and legs. War unfortunately is something that will happen, when our territory is invaded, when every possible avenue is exhausted then war is something that we will have to face.
When that day comes I will stand up and support my country. However, that day did not come. Congress never declared war as the Constitution the law of the land says we must do. We were fed lies and in the emotional time that was 9/11 we gobbled up those lies. We were duped, tricked, and in the end we have all paid the price, some of us with our lives.
CNN has the following highlights on The Center For Public Integrity Report
"Study searched database for statements by Bush, aides, in 2001-2003. Bush made 260 false statements about Iraqi weapons, al Qaeda, study says. Study accuses former Secretary of State Colin Powell of 244 false statements. Also on the list: Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, former White House spokesmen."
http://www.huliq.com/48095/center-public-integrity-administration-lied-about-iraq
Documents of War
By Tobin Harshaw
Tags: C.I.A., Iraq War, National Security
“Students of how the Bush administration led the nation into the Iraq war can now go online to browse a comprehensive database of top officials’ statements before the invasion, connecting the dots between hundreds of claims, mostly discredited since then, linking Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda or warning that he possessed forbidden weapons,” reports this morning’s Times:
The Center for Public Integrity, a research group that focuses on ethics in government and public policy, designed the new Web site to allow simple searches for specific phrases, such as “mushroom cloud” or “yellowcake uranium,” in transcripts and documents totaling some 380,000 words, including remarks by President Bush and most of his top advisers in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks…. There is no startling new information in the archive, because all the documents have been published previously. But the new computer tool is remarkable for its scope, and its replay of the crescendo of statements that led to the war. Muckrakers may find browsing the site reminiscent of what Richard M. Nixon used to dismissively call “wallowing in Watergate.”
While the left side of the blogosphere (see here and here and here) is crowing indignant, you can consider Ed Morrissey less than impressed:
The Center for Public Integrity hardly qualifies as “independent”. It gets much of its funding from George Soros, who has thrown millions of dollars behind Democratic political candidates, and explicitly campaigned to defeat George Bush in 2004 … Besides Soros, it gets financing from the Streisand Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Los Angeles Times Foundation. The FIJ shares most of its board members with the CPI, which hardly makes it a separate entity in terms of its political direction …
In fact, there is nothing new in this site that hasn’t already been picked apart by the blogosphere, and some of it discredited. It includes the debunked charge that Bush lied in the “sixteen words” of the 2003 State of the Union address. Joe Wilson’s own report to the CIA and to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence confirmed that, at least according to Niger’s Prime Minister, Iraq had sought to trade for uranium in 1999. The CPI site has the sixteen words posted as one of their false statements.
Let’s boil this down. An organization funded by known political activists puts up a website with shopworn quotes taken mostly out of context and misrepresented — and this somehow qualifies as news?
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/documents-of-war/
An Online Scavenger Hunt on Prewar Claims: What Did You Find?
By JOHN H. CUSHMAN Jr.
WASHINGTON — While reporting for an article in The New York Times today, I spent a while rummaging around in the new online database assembled by the Center for Public Integrity, which allows users to do keyword searches of every public statement made by President Bush and his key advisers about Iraq, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction, from just after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, until after the fall of Baghdad.
For all the power of search engines and Boolean logic, and for all the foregone conclusion of the enterprise, there’s still an element of serendipity in this kind of approach to reliving the past. You never know what you’ll come up with. You might not even be all that sure what, precisely, you are looking for. Even knowing that every single document in this compilation has been published elsewhere already, it’s inevitable that you’ll find something to raise your eyebrows.
One striking feature of the material in the data base was the sheer opacity of some of what important people were saying, based on intelligence that most people now acknowledge was spurious.
For example, about ten weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Tim Russert of NBC News asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice whether she agreed with an assessment by the Czech government that Iraqi agents met with one of the hijackers who flew into the World Trade Center.
“In evaluating the report,” Ms. Rice replied, “certainly one would have to suspect that there’s no reason to believe Saddam Hussein wouldn’t do something exactly of that kind; that he would not be supportive of terrorists is hard to imagine. But this particular report I don’t want to comment on, because I don’t want to get into intelligence information.”
Now, was that a lie? Or a demurral? A confirmation, or a non-denial? Hard to say. But if there is one lesson that journalists learn over and over, it is that a fuzzy answer should be a red flag.
Asked what had surprised him during the center’s own look at its data, Charles Lewis, who founded the center, mentioned several things. One was the sheer number of lies — that’s his word; the center is definitely taking a stand on this, referring to the project as the “False Statements Database.” The next surprise he mentioned was how many times it was former Secretary of State Colin Powell whose statements were wrong — second only to President Bush himself. Mr. Lewis said he was sure why that was so — maybe it was because of Powell’s role drumming up international support for the Administration’s policy. In any event, the observation shows that Mr. Lewis, too, came to the task with preconceptions.
The database is more than just a collection of transcripts with a customized search engine. It also includes newspaper articles, books, and government reports published later, allowing a user to compare some of what is known now to what was said then. (For example, it includes the follow-up reporting by Jim Risen of The Times that helped debunk the Czech report about the hijacker Mohammad Atta supposedly meeting with Iraqi intelligence handlers in Prague.)
Mr. Lewis said that he hoped people would send in even more data, documents, and statements to add to the database. Social bookmarking tools included in the site, like Diggit and del.icio.us, will enable users to combine their efforts and share their results.
Meanwhile, on the first day of the site’s operation today, it appeared to be overwhelmed by traffic — there was quite a lag waiting for its pages to load.
Once the crowd thins out, readers who visit the project, at publicintegrity.org, are invited to return here and report back on which search terms generated the most striking results and what kinds of things turned up that were the most surprising.
I’ll report back myself, with a couple more intriguing searches and results.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/23/an-online-scavenger-hunt-on-prewar-claims-what-did-you-find/
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
The New Batman Movie Star Heath Ledger Has Died
Shock, Grief as Family, Friends, Colleagues Mourn Heath Ledger
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
AP Jan. 22: Actor Heath Ledger was found dead in his New York City apartment Tuesday afternoon.
In Heath Ledger's native Australia, where the actor as a teen heartthrob had set the local entertainment industry afire years before American audiences got their first glimpse of the blonde star, fans and colleagues are mourning the loss of a promising talent who had been anointed the heir apparent to the mega-watt legacy of Aussie exports Mel Gibson and Russell Crowe.
"It is equal parts shock and dismay, a waste of a talent," Michael Bodey, film reporter for The Australian, said of the Australian reaction to news of the actor's death in his New York City apartment Tuesday. "He was always one of the most interesting and intriguing actors to interview," Bodey said.
The news rocked Hollywood's tight-knit group of Australian actors.
"What a terrible tragedy. My heart goes out to Heath's family," fellow Aussie actress Nicole Kidman told London's Daily Telegraph.
Informed of the news at the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, actress Naomi Watts, Ledger's former long-term flame and "Ned Kelly" co-star, reportedly broke down in tears.
In Hollywood, where one of Ledger's first major U.S. roles was playing Mel Gibson's son in "The Patriot," Gibson issued a statement calling Ledger's death "a tragic loss."
“I had such great hope for him. He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss," Gibson said in the statement. "My thoughts and prayers are with him and his family.”
In a statement read by Ledger's father, Keith Ledger, on Australian television, Ledger's family expressed their shock at his "untimely and accidental" death, language aimed at thwarting media speculation that what appeared Tuesday to be a drug overdose could have been a suicide.
Bodey, who had interviewed Ledger several times throughout his career, said the media frenzy surrounding Ledger's death would be particularly difficult for his family because of Ledger's rocky relationship with the Australian press -- he reportedly did not live in Australia because of the paparazzi's relentless pursuit.
While Ledger was never comfortable with being branded a superstar, or the media attention that came with that, he was a gifted and dedicated artist who loved the craft of acting, Bodey said.
"He was quite generous and willing to take part in the creative aspect of his business," Bodey said. "He never came to enjoy the business side of show business, but was a talented actor only now beginning to hit his stride."
In recent years, Ledger had made his home in New York City, where, Bodey said, he found relief from the media spotlight he loathed. On Tuesday night, residents of his lower Manhattan neighborhood were devastated by the news of his death.
"I'm very, very sad," said Tamba Mossa, the superintendent of the building where Ledger had been living for the past four or five months. "I wasn't prepared to hear about his death at that moment. He was a very great man," Mossa said.
Mossa said Ledger had recently "looked sad."
Following an Oscar nomination for 2005's "Brokeback Mountain," Ledger's career was expected to skyrocket with his upcoming appearance as The Joker in "The Dark Night," the latest Warner Bros. installment in the "Batman" franchise slated for release in July 2008.
"The studio is stunned and devastated by this tragic news," Warner Bros. president Alan Horn told London's Daily Telegraph. "The entertainment community has lost an enormous talent. Heath was a brilliant actor and an exceptional person. Our hearts go out to his family and friends," Horn said.
In a statement released Tuesday night, Ledger's publicist Mara Buxbaum asked the public and the media to respect the family's privacy.
"We are all deeply saddened and shocked by this accident," Buxbaum said in the statement. "This is an extremely difficult time for his loved ones and we are asking the media to please respect the family's privacy and avoid speculation until the facts are known."
Ledger, who earned an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of a gay cowboy in 2005's "Brokeback Mountain," was found dead Tuesday at his downtown Manhattan residence, naked in bed with sleeping pills in the apartment, police said. He was 28.
Death of Heath Ledger throws films into disarray
by Claire Sutherland
January 23, 2008 09:15am
HEATH Ledger's shocking demise is not only a terrible loss for his daughter Matilda, his Perth-based family and his many fans, it also throws into disarray two movies.
Ledger was in production with the next instalment in the Batman series, The Dark Knight, in which he was starring opposite Christian Bale as a macabre joker.
Related links:
Heath Ledger found dead in New York apartment
Heath Ledger's life in pictures
Early photos from the set suggest Ledger was taking the series into a new darker chapter.
Also on Ledger's slate was the new Terry Gilliam film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, about a travelling theatre company. It was due to start filming in London shortly.
Ledger was one of Australia's true international acting stars. His American breakthrough role came with the teen hit 10 Things I Hate About You, but real global respect came with his Oscar nominated turn in the moving gay cowboy drama Brokeback Mountain.
He met his now ex-partner Michelle Williams on the set of the film. The pair had a baby, Matilda, but broke off their engagement and split recently.
Gossip has since linked him with troubled young actor and party girl Lindsay Lohan.
Ledger had a troubled relationship with the media in his home town of Sydney. Paparazzi photographers squirted Ledger and Williams with water pistols at the premiere of Brokeback Mountain.
He later angrily denied reports he had spat on the photographers.
"It was just silly and unnecessary. It really hurt our feelings and it hurt my feelings to suddenly have a quick title above my name now, that we're a gang of spitters,'' he told the Herald Sun later.
But he said he regretted flicking the finger at photographers.
"Pulling finger signs at photographers, it's not representing who I am, it's representing the panic that occurs when you turn around and there's a camera staring in at you. You see red, or I do.
"I'm a young guy and I've grown up with this in the younger years when you're more passionate and protective and you're more explosive during that time of your life and it felt like a natural reaction for me.
"I didn't feel that I was rebelling against anything. Obviously it's not the most polite way of dealing with things, but I didn't feel they were being polite. I forget that when I do that I'm not pulling a finger sign at a guy holding a camera, I'm pulling a finger sign in a newspaper that everyone reads.''
Ledger later sold his Sydney dream house, claiming the paparazzi had driven him out, and moved to Brooklyn in New York where he lived with Williams and Matilda before the split.
Ledger can be seen in cinemas now in the Bob Dylan biopic I'm Not There.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23095502-2902,00.html
Heath Ledger Found Dead in New York City
By TOM HAYS – 59 minutes ago
NEW YORK (AP) — Heath Ledger, the talented 28-year-old actor who gravitated toward dark, brooding roles that defied his leading-man looks, was found dead Tuesday in a Manhattan apartment, facedown at the foot of his bed with prescription sleeping pills nearby, police said.
There was no obvious indication that the Australian-born Ledger had committed suicide, NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.
Ledger had an appointment for a massage at the SoHo apartment that is believed to be the home of the "Brokeback Mountain" actor, Browne said. The massage therapist and a housekeeper found his naked body at about 3:30 p.m. They tried to revive him, but he was already dead.
"We are all deeply saddened and shocked by this accident," Ledger's publicist, Mara Buxbaum, said in a statement Tuesday night. "This is an extremely difficult time for his loved ones and we are asking the media to please respect the family's privacy and avoid speculation until the facts are known."
Outside the building on an upscale street, paparazzi and gawkers gathered, and several police officers put up barricades to control the crowd of about 300. Onlookers craned their necks as officers brought out a black bodybag on a gurney, took it across the sidewalk and put it into a medical examiner's office van.
As the door opened, bystanders snapped pictures with camera phones, rolled video and said, "He's coming out!"
An autopsy was planned for Wednesday, medical examiner's office spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.
While not a marquee movie star, Ledger was an award-winning actor who chose his roles carefully rather than cashing in on big-money parts. He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as a gay cowboy in "Brokeback Mountain." During filming, he met Michelle Williams, who played his wife in the film. The two had a daughter, now 2-year-old Matilda, and lived together in Brooklyn until they split up last year.
It was a shocking and unforeseen conclusion for one of Hollywood's bright young stars. Though his leading man looks propelled him to early stardom in films like "10 Things I Hate About You" and "A Knight's Tale," his career took a notable turn toward dramatic and brooding roles with 2001's "Monster's Ball."
"I had such great hope for him," said Mel Gibson, who played Ledger's vengeful father in "The Patriot," in a statement. "He was just taking off and to lose his life at such a young age is a tragic loss."
In the Australian city of Perth, where Ledger was born and raised, his father called the actor's death "tragic, untimely and accidental."
"He was (a) down-to-earth, generous, kind-hearted, life-loving, unselfish individual, extremely inspirational to many," Kim Ledger said, reading from a prepared statement. "Heath has touched so many people on so many different levels during his short life."
Ledger eschewed Hollywood glitz in favor of a bohemian life in Brooklyn, where he became one of the borough's most famous residents. "Brokeback" would be his breakthrough role, establishing him as one of his generation's finest talents and an actor willing to take risks.
Ledger began to gravitate more toward independent fare, including Lasse Hallstrom's "Casanova" and Terry Gilliam's "The Brothers Grimm," both released in 2005. His 2006 film "Candy" now seems destined to have an especially haunting quality: In a particularly realistic performance, Ledger played a poet wrestling with a heroin addiction along with his girlfriend, played by Abbie Cornish.
But Ledger's most recent choices were arguably the boldest yet: He costarred in "I'm Not There," in which he played one of the many incarnations of Bob Dylan — as did Cate Blanchett, whose performance in that film earned an Oscar nomination Tuesday for best supporting actress.
And in what may be his final finished performance, Ledger proved that he wouldn't be intimidated by taking on a character as iconic as Jack Nicholson's Joker. Ledger's version of the "Batman" villain, glimpsed in early teaser trailers, made it clear that his Joker would be more depraved and dark.
Curiosity about Ledger's final performance will likely stoke further interest in the summer blockbuster. "Dark Knight" director Christopher Nolan said this month that Ledger's Joker would be wildly different from Nicholson's.
"It was a very great challenge for Heath," Nolan said. "He's extremely original, extremely frightening, tremendously edgy. A very young character, a very anarchic presence that taps into a lot of our basic fears and panic."
Ledger told The New York Times in a November interview that he "stressed out a little too much" during the Dylan film and had trouble sleeping while portraying the Joker, whom he called a "psychopathic, mass-murdering, schizophrenic clown with zero empathy."
"Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," Ledger told the newspaper. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted, and my mind was still going." He said he took two Ambien pills, which worked for only an hour, the paper said.
Ledger was a widely recognized figure in his Manhattan neighborhood, where he used to shop at a home and children's store. Michelle Vella, an employee there, said she had frequently seen Ledger with his daughter — carrying the toddler on his shoulders, or having ice cream with her.
"It's so sad. They were really close," Vella said. "He's a very down-to-earth guy and an amazing father."
Before settling down with Williams, Ledger had relationships with actresses Heather Graham and Naomi Watts. He met Watts while working on "The Lords of Dogtown," a fictionalized version of a cult classic skateboarding documentary, in 2004.
Ledger was born in 1979 to a mining engineer and a French teacher and got his first acting role playing Peter Pan at age 10 in a local theater company. He began acting in independent films as a 16-year-old in Sydney and played a cyclist hoping to land a spot on an Olympic team in a 1996 television show, "Seat."
After several independent films, Ledger moved to Los Angeles at age 19 and starred opposite Julia Stiles in "10 Things I Hate About You." Offers for other teen flicks soon came his way, but Ledger turned them down, preferring to remain idle than sign on for projects he didn't like.
"It wasn't a hard decision for me," Ledger told the Associated Press in 2001. "It was hard for everyone else around me to understand. Agents were like, `You're crazy,' my parents were like, 'Come on, you have to eat.'"
Associated Press writer Sara Kugler contributed to this report.
Monday, January 21, 2008
Tara Wilson and Chris Noth are Now Parents
Tara Wilson and her boyfriend, Chris Noth, AKA Mr. Big in Sex and the City, announced in November that they were going to have a baby.
Wilson gave birth the 3.5 kg bundle of joy in her Los Angeles home Friday night. The baby was named Orion Christopher.
Wilson first met 53 year old Noth while working at the Cutting Room, Noth’s New York bar. They have been together for four years. They will soon be on the big screen together in an indie drama, Frame of Mind.
Noth will be playing Mr. Big in a big way this spring for the release of Sex and the City: The Movie.
befound@finditt.com
www.finditt.com
Tough loss leaves Brett Favre to ponder uncertain future
GREEN BAY, Wis. - Brett Favre's season lasted longer than anyone would have guessed - even Favre himself.
Now that it's over, will he be back for another? A 2007 season noteworthy for the remarkable resurgence of both Favre and his Green Bay Packers ended in disappointment Sunday night, as the Packers lost to the New York Giants 23-20 in overtime in the NFC Championship game at Lambeau Field.
The game seemed to be setting up for another one of Favre's magical moments after Giants kicker Lawrence Tynes missed a potential game-winning 36-yard field goal attempt at the end of regulation, giving Favre another shot at the victory in overtime.
However, Favre threw an interception to Corey Webster on the Packers' second play, and Tynes kicked a game-clinching 47-yarder to send the Packers home for the winter.
Favre was 19-of-35 for 236 yards on Sunday, with two touchdowns and two interceptions.
He rebounded from an uneven start to put the Packers on the scoreboard early in the second quarter, lofting a pass to his favourite receiver, Donald Driver, that Driver turned into a 90-yard touchdown. He was 10-of-18 for 163 yards and a touchdown in the first half, but cooled off considerably in frigid conditions in the second half.
Now, Favre is left to ponder the decision that has kept Cheeseheads on edge for each of the past several cold off-seasons: Will he retire, or decide to return for his 18th NFL season?
"I'm not going to rush to make any quick decision, but I think probably it'll be much quicker than it has been in the past - and people will probably appreciate that," Favre said. "But I'm just going to try to enjoy this season we had as much as I can and try to block this game out. It's going to be very hard. I'm not going to let this game sway my decision one way or another."
Favre said he would likely speak to Packers coach Mike McCarthy on Monday, then go home to make his decision.
"We will talk about it in a timely fashion," McCarthy said.
Certainly, the smart money seems to be on Favre returning.
Favre himself hinted at that before the Packers' divisional playoff game victory over Seattle last week, telling his hometown newspaper, the Biloxi (Miss.) Sun Herald, that he would "like to continue longer."
After the Seattle game, Favre said he hadn't made a final decision; as usual, he'd huddle with his family after the season before he decided. For the record, his two daughters want him to come back.
Packers linebacker Nick Barnett can't imagine Favre not coming back.
"I know he had a great season and we had a great year, minus missing the Super Bowl," Barnett said. "I just don't see him walking away. I think he has so much more left in him. He still loves to play the game. If he walks away, it'll be a surprise to me."
This certainly isn't the first time No. 4 has flirted with retirement, as the Favre watch has become as much a part of winter in Wisconsin as snowmobiling and ice fishing.
It has taken weeks and even months for Favre to make his decision after recent seasons, with Cheeseheads hanging on his every word.
Favre ended the 2006 season by tearing up on television, leading many to wonder whether it would end up being his final season. Then he came back anyway.
When he made the comments to the Biloxi Sun-Herald two weeks ago hinting he might be coming back, he sent the entire state of Wisconsin to overtime, even prompting the governor's office to issue a statement prematurely congratulating Favre for his decision, the political version of a false start.
Even though it has been widely assumed Favre would return after having one of the best seasons of his career in 2007, the quarterback and his coach have said they would wait until after the season to discuss the issue.
And Favre said his decision wouldn't be automatic, even if the Packers had gone to the Super Bowl and won.
"Had we won this game and gone to the Super Bowl, whatever happened in that game, when it was over I was going to go home and think about where I wanted to go from there," Favre said. "I don't think that that's going to really change because we didn't make it. It's been a great year, and I'm very disappointed. But had we gone to the Super Bowl and lost, unfortunately, I would have been disappointed there, too. Had we been fortunate enough to win, the decision was still there, and there were several ways to look at it."
Now the end of the season has arrived. It went on longer than expected, which just adds to the intrigue.
thecanadian
Lindsey Paulat Fires Handgun in Home of Cedrick Wilson
Paulat was the girlfriend of the wide receiver, Cedrick Wilson, of the Pittsburgh steelers. She will be arraigned today on her charges.
According to police, the incident happened following an argument between Paulat and Wilson, resulting in Wilson leaving the apartment. Paulat remained inside the home causing a standoff between her and the police which ended when she threw the gun form the door twelve hours after the police arrived.
No one was injured during the incident.
befound@finditt.com
www.finditt.com
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Presidential race brings a new spirit to the day
by Alan Jones
The celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day has a particular poignancy this presidential election year. There's been a lot of talk about our wanting "to believe in America" again. Some of us are experiencing a cautious optimism that politics doesn't have to be business as usual. With citizens like Oprah Winfrey, Denzel Washington, Forest Whitaker and Barack Obama, the African American struggle for justice and freedom has, at last, become what it always was, a universal story. The cry for universal freedom heard through the particular stories of oppressed peoples was made evident in the recent movie "The Great Debaters." The movie brilliantly expressed, through the particulars of a specific struggle, the truth that freedom and dignity are part of the birthright of all human beings. Are we finally getting it into our heads and hearts that when one human being is in chains we are all diminished?
Martin Luther King was committed to nonviolence but he was not passive. He was subversive. His celebrated letter from the Birmingham Jail (April 16, 1963) still challenges us. "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed ... For years now I have heard the word 'Wait.' It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This 'Wait' has almost always meant 'Never.'"
Now there's a new form of resistance to change to add to the obscene request to "wait" for justice. The message is that nothing can be done because the laws of the market are inexorable - like the laws of nature and of God. The bottom line is the supreme deity. But here the African American experience gives us hope, provides us with a strategy for change. We can become subversives and even tricksters to turn the world of those who claim to have a handle on reality upside down. Think of Sophia Auld - a naive, well-meaning woman, who, in 1826, taught an 8-year-old slave boy to read. She was unwittingly subversive because she didn't know the "proper" way to treat him. That slave was Frederick Douglass, who wrote that Sophia "did not deem it impudent ... for a slave to look her in the face." Underneath Douglass's statement lies a brilliant strategy for change - the strategy of "stealing" back what had always been his by right.
Sophia did the unforgivable. She taught him to read. "Just at this point in my progress, Mr. Auld found what was going on and at once forbade Mrs. Auld to instruct me further, telling her, among other things, that it was unlawful, as well as unsafe, to teach a slave to read."
Douglass concludes, "It was a great achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom."
And here's the subversive joke. Douglass, in running away, was an admitted thief. What did he really steal? He "stole" himself! "All the education I possess, I may say, I have stolen as a slave. I did manage to steal a little knowledge of literature, but I am now in the eyes of the American law a thief and a robber, since I have not only stolen a little knowledge of literature, but have stolen my body also."
Was he right to escape, to learn to read? After all, according to law, he was owned by a Col. Lloyd? The question then and the question now is, "How do you change the rules?" How do the oppressed escape from a plantation culture and enter the true world that can see that slavery itself is a form of terrible theft? Author Lewis Hyde asks, "What do you do when you are born into a world where two distinct moral systems are in conflict?"
In the spirit of the Rev. King, isn't it our job to steal back what rightly belongs to all of us, without exception? Douglass, by simply writing and speaking, undercut plantation culture. The assumption was that such things belonged inherently and eternally to whites. So, let's ask ourselves, "What things do we think of as inherently ours and yet, in reality, belong to everyone?" Education, health care, security, a living wage, a safe environment? That's as much a question for today as it was a 150 years ago. It's also an essential question for this election year.
The Rev. Alan Jones is the dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco.
This article appeared on page C - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, January 20, 2008
US actress Suzanne Pleshette dies
US actress Suzanne Pleshette, best known for playing the wife in 1970s sitcom The Bob Newhart Show, has died.
Pleshette was nominated for four Emmy Awards over 30 years and also appeared in Alfred Hitchcock's film The Birds.
In recent years, she had parts in TV comedies Will and Grace and 8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter.
She was 70 years old and died of respiratory failure at her Los Angeles home, her lawyer Robert Finkelstein told the Associated Press news agency.
The actress had chemotherapy for lung cancer in 2006.
Pleshette started her career in Broadway in the late 1950s before moving into TV shows such as Dr Kildare and movies including The Birds, in which she played Annie, and Nevada Smith with Steve McQueen.
Pleshette provided the voice of reason amid the eccentricity of The Bob Newhart Show from 1972-77, earning two Emmy nominations for best TV comedy actress.
She also won acclaim for playing property tycoon Leona Helmsley in a TV movie in 1990.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
An Appraisal - Fischer vs. the World: A Chess Giant’s Endgame
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: January 19, 2008
There may be only three human activities in which miraculous accomplishment is possible before adulthood: mathematics, music and chess. These are abstract, almost invented realms, closed systems bounded by rules of custom or principle. Here, the child learns, is how elements combine and transform; here are the laws that govern their interactions; and here are the possibilities that emerge as you play with signs, symbols, sounds or pieces. Nothing else need be known or understood — at least at first. A child’s gifts in such realms can seem otherworldly, the achievements effortlessly magical. But as Bobby Fischer’s death on Thursday might remind us, even abstract gifts can exact a terrible price.
In 1956 Mr. Fischer, at 13, displayed powers that were not only prodigious but also uncanny. A game he played against Donald Byrne, one of the top 10 players in the United States, became known as “the Game of the Century,” so packed was it with brilliance and daring (and Mr. Fischer’s sacrifice of a queen). “I just got good,” he explained — as indeed he did, winning 8 of the 10 United States Championship tournaments held after 1958 and then, of course, in 1972, breaking the long hold that Soviet chess had on the international championship.
“All I want to do, ever,” he said, “is play chess.” And many thought him the best player — ever. Garry Kasparov once said that he imagined Mr. Fischer as a kind of centaur, a human player mythologically combined with the very essence of chess itself.
But of course accompanying Mr. Fischer’s triumphs were signs of something else. His aggressive declarations and grandiose pronouncements were once restricted to his chosen playing field. (“Chess is war over the board. The object is to crush the opponent’s mind.”) Eventually, they grew in scope, evolving into ever more sweeping convictions about the wider world.
After his triumph against Boris Spassky in Reykjavik, Iceland, he all but abandoned chess, and seemed to replace the idea of a seated challenger pushing pieces on a 64-square board, with that of a demonic Jewish world conspiracy that was (as he said in radio broadcasts from the Philippines) perpetrated by a “filthy, lying bastard people” who kill Christian children (“their blood is used for black-magic ceremonies”) while exploiting that “money-making invention,” the Holocaust.
In this vision the circumscribed rules of chess were overturned, and in their place were imagined esoteric plottings of evil grandmasters. In a 2002 essay in The Atlantic Monthly Rene Chun chronicled Mr. Fischer’s “pathetic endgame.” He was reported to keep a locked suitcase with him, containing pills and home remedies:
“If the Commies come to poison me, I don’t want to make it easy for them,” he said. He had his dental fillings removed, worrying about the secret signals and controlling forces that might be channeled through his jaw. The 9/11 attacks, he said, were “wonderful news.”
What was all this? “I don’t believe in psychology,” Mr. Fischer once said about chess competition. “I believe in good moves.” And yes, without the good moves, he would never have struck the fear in his opponents that he once did. But how did faith in good moves mutate into such perverse psychology? Was there any connection between his gifts in chess and his later delusions?
You might of course speculate that his perceptions were affected by never having seen his father, a physicist named Mr. Fischer, after he was 2. A revealing profile in Harper’s magazine in 1962 indicated that Mr. Fischer’s mother, Regina Wender, also had other preoccupations. Bobby’s sister described her as a “professional crusader.” Bobby had dropped out of high school and was a chess wunderkind with a world reputation, while, at the time of the profile, his mother was spending eight months walking to Moscow in a “pacifist” protest.
A few years ago the Philadelphia Inquirer, obtaining F.B.I. records under the Freedom of Information Act, also found compelling evidence that Bobby Fischer’s father was not the man named on his birth certificate, but a brilliant Hungarian scientist, Paul F. Nemenyi, with whom his mother had an affair. Mr. Nemenyi apparently paid to help support Bobby, and there is even the record of a complaint he made to a social worker about Bobby’s upbringing. If that identification is accurate, the paradoxes of Mr. Fischer’s virulent anti-Semitism become still more profound, since Mr. Nemenyi, like Ms. Wender, was Jewish.
Chess too can seem to encourage a streak of craziness. ( “I like to see ’em squirm,” Mr. Fischer proclaimed.) But for paranoia and posturing, nothing could come close to the 1972 championship match in Reykjavik. In recent years the argument has been made that the attention given to the confrontation between Mr. Fischer and Mr. Spassky had little to do with the cold war. Mr. Spassky himself was no party-line comrade, and Mr. Fischer, with all his idiosyncrasies, was far from a comfort to the United States State Department; moreover, by 1972, such confrontations no longer had the symbolic power they had during the era of Sputnik. But there is still no question that the contest drew its worldwide audience partly because it presented two conflicting national idols.
Mr. Fischer, with his demands about money, his finickiness about cameras and chairs and schedule, could seem an extreme example of the American individualist, while Mr. Spassky, with his back to the audience, his stone-faced demeanor and the state support for this national game behind him, seemed an incarnation of Soviet ideology. The Soviets also answered Mr. Fischer’s egomaniacal posturing with their own versions of conspiracy mongering, suggesting that Mr. Spassky’s performance was being deliberately sabotaged by American tampering with the players’ environments; the air had to be tested and the chairs X-rayed.
But there is still something about Mr. Fischer’s craziness that is closely connected with the essential nature of chess. The gift of early insight into chess or math or music is often also accompanied by a growing obsession with those activities, simply because of the wonders of connection and invention that unfold in the young mind. The world itself, with its more messy human interactions, its complicated histories, its emotional conflicts, can be put aside, and attention focused on an intricate bounded cosmos.
Perhaps we should be grateful that such gifts are so rare, for if they were not, how many of us would prefer to remain cocooned in these glass-bead games? At least in mathematics and music, we may be grateful too that ultimately, with the coming of maturity, the world starts to put constraints on abstract play. Great music attains its power not simply through manipulation and abstraction, but by creating analogies with experience; music is affected by life, not cut off from it. Mathematics also comes up against the demands of the world, as the field opens up to understanding; early insights are tested against the full scale of what has been already been done and what yet remains undone.
But chess, alone among this abstract triumvirate, is never tested or transformed. The only way expertise is ever tried is in victory or defeat. And if a player is as profoundly powerful as Mr. Fischer, defeat never creates a sense of limits. Seeing into a game and defeating an opponent — that defines the entire world.
So when it comes time to look at the wider world, it might seem a vast extension of the game, only ever so much more frightening because its conspiratorial strategies cannot be discovered in rule books, and its confrontations cannot be controlled by formal tournaments. That was the world that Bobby Fischer saw around him as he morphed from world champion chess player into world-class crank, never realizing that he had unwittingly blundered into checkmate.
nytimes
World Golf Tour: The most photo-realistic online golf experience.
San Francisco-based World Golf Tour (WGT) offers the world’s most photo-realistic online golf experience.
AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
World Golf Tour seeks to democratize the game of golf via the Web, making golf accessible and affordable for all, and to build an online community based on its engaging, interactive golf experience. World Golf Tour enables multiple players to explore famous courses simultaneously and sparks competition with tournament play and real-life prizes.
While you can play golf free online, there are also prizes that Golf World Tour offers to the online golf players.
While you can play golf free online, there are also prizes that Golf World Tour offers to the online golf players.
Register and complete a 9 shot round earning a chance to win:
TaylorMade Burner Driver (1) - A brand new driver with a graphite shaft hot from TaylorMade. SuperFast Technology reduces total club weight to 299 grams from average of 320 and promotes faster swing speed for added drive-crushing distance. Massive 460 cc clubhead combined with TaylorMade’s Inverted Cone Technology produces an extremely-high eMOI* that exceeds 5800 (USGA conforming)
World Golf Tour adidas Polo and Sleeve of TaylorMade TP red balls (10) - Stay cool with the clima-lite black polo. Then enjoy a round with the TP red balls: Thin (.055"), multi-blend ionomer mantle works with the core to promote tour-caliber launch angle and spin off the driver and irons for optimum distance and softer sound and feel.
Source: By World Golf Tour Combined Information
Candelo show on this Sunday
MR PAUL Ubrihien will open the 121st Candelo Show on Sunday at 11.00am and this will be followed by the naming of the main pavilion, the Kameruka Estate Pavilion, in recognition of the wonderful support Kameruka has given the show over a very long period.
The gates will open at 7.00am on Sunday to receive pavilion exhibits and breakfast will be available in the lunch pavilion.
The pavilion closes for judging at 8.30am and the poultry pavilion closes a half an hour later.
At 9.30am dairy cattle and dairy goats judging commences.
At 10.00 there's a lot happening.
Morning tea is available, gardening guru Margaret Sirl will start giving advice and help, the Irish band will strike up, the tractor events will commence, there will be free carriage rides, and there will be a bullock team demonstration.
At 10.30am woodchop events commence, and in the ring there will be a karate demonstration, the Akubra hat toss, Dash for Cash heats and stick horse events.
Beef cattle judging is after the official opening at 11.00am and at 11.30 there is a three kilometre fun run for seniors, a sheep shearing and wool calssign demonstration and a working sheep dog demonstration in the ring.
Lunches are available in the pavilion at midday and there will also be a three kilometre fun run for juniors and team penning junior events.
At 1.00pm visitors to the show can see the tractor events and later another karate demonstration.
The Dash for Cash final will be held at 2.00pm and another bullock team demonstration.
The ever popular dog jump starts at 2.30pm and there will be another sheep shearing and wool classing demonstration.
Afternoon teas are available.
At 3.00pnm there will be the main pavilion presentations and a working sheep dog demonstration.
Entry to the show costs $8 for adults and $2 for children and a maximum of $20 for a family.
There will be a $5 charge for pony rides, Kids Kastle activity and inflatables and that is a day-long cover.
The secretary of the Candelo A H and D F Association, Sandy Macqueen, said "our sponsors and those who make donations have been wonderfully supportive this year".
"Due to the equine influenza epidemic there will be no horse events but even without the horses the sponsors have all given generous support and for this the committee is deeply grateful.
"Without such support the show could not happen.
"We have competition from the Wharf to Waves at Tathra and a rock concert at Kalaru, but we have presented to the local and wider community a great show for over 120 years and every year people work very hard to present the best possible.
"This year is even harder without the horse events but we still believe that people will have a wonderful day and experience many activities that are rarely seen.
"We are hopeful that being the first show of the year without horses that people will still want to enjoy this marvellous event and we say 'Show what you grow, Share what you know and meet your friends at the Candelo Show'"
bega.yourguide.com.au
Yin and Yang
Lauren Kawan
Issue date: 1/17/08
Indulging yourself usually gets reserved for only rare occasions and when time permits so at the dawn of the new semester, don't let it be a challenge to find ways to chill out.
One way to do that is to attend an event that allows you to satisfy both sides of your personality.
At the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art's Yin and Yang Fridays, the event alternates between spirited music for the more active side of your body - the yang, and restorative yoga for your mind and soul - the yin.
Yin and Yang Fridays happens for only four Fridays this semester, and they involve socializing with like-minded people among music, yoga, art, food, teas and cocktails.
Well-known yoga aficionados will be on hand to help you get the most out of this night.
Other than taking part in music and yoga, this event is housed inside the museum. So if nothing else, go and experience the art that is exhibited and listen to the featured jazz music.
This seemingly all-encompassing event will definitely indulge your yin and yang and could be a way to start practicing your breathing for mid-terms and finals.
sc: www.ecollegetimes.com
10 Things to Consider When Buying Bridal
Top Wedding Dress Searches
By Molly McCall
He proposed. You accepted. You're so happy. Now, though, you're deep in the muck of planning the wedding, and the big white gown is proving to be an elusive creature. The hunt for the perfect wedding dress transforms some blushing brides into fire-breathing bridezillas. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Thanks to the huge number of lookups for "wedding dresses" and "bridal gowns" flowing in at this time of year, we have a pretty good idea of the greatest concerns and most fashionable inclinations of searchers seeking nuptial attire online. And we're happy to pass it along to you, noble gown-hunter. Here are the top 10 things we've learned from the season's bridal buzz:
1. It's fine to be frugal. After general lookups for "wedding dresses" and "wedding gowns," demand for "cheap wedding dresses" is far and away the most popular query.
2. Vera Wang reigns supreme. Searches for "vera wang wedding dresses" not only outrank every other designer, but they're one of the most popular queries for the big white dress.
3. Gleaming white is classic, but what about a creamier tone? Buzz for "ivory colored wedding dresses" is surging. Eccentrics could always go for another popular color search—"black wedding dresses." We're not kidding.
4. Nothing beats saying your vows on the sand. Demand for "hawaiian wedding dresses" and "beach wedding dresses" is huge. Mahalo!
5. The strapless style may be losing its grip. Interest in "long sleeve wedding dresses" is on the rise.
6. Many brides are finding inspiration in earlier times. We've logged spikes for "renaissance wedding dresses," "vintage wedding dresses," "old fashioned wedding dresses," "grecian wedding dresses," "gothic wedding dresses," and "18th century wedding gowns."
7. Couples inclined toward concealment might consider the eyebrow-raising results for "camouflage wedding dresses."
8. Most popular fabric request: "lace wedding dresses."
9. The greatest idea for what to do with the dress once you're a happily married lady: "wedding dress quilts."
10. Finally, the most popular celebrity gown in Search: "britney spears wedding dress." But we don't recommend going down that aisle.