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May 30, 2008
Harvey Korman of 'Carol Burnett show' dies at 81
Harvey Korman, the award-winning comedic actor who rose to fame playing second banana to Carol Burnett on her television variety series and who starred in hit movies like "Blazing Saddles" and "High Anxiety," died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 81.
The cause was complications from the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm four months ago, his family said in a statement released by the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center.
A tall man known for his outlandish characterizations, Korman was nominated for seven Emmys for his television work and won four. He also was nominated for four Golden Globe awards, winning one.
"Everything he did on 'The Carol Burnett Show,' especially the Mother Marcus character, was a special favorite," his daughter, Katherine Korman, said in an interview on Thursday. Mother Marcus, which he played in drag, "was a Yiddish grandmother based on his own real-life grandmother," she said.
Korman also considered Hedley Lamarr, his role in the 1974 film "Blazing Saddles," as one of his favorites, she said.
Posted by James at 05:00 AM
May 21, 2008
Hai Hai - Panjabi Hit Squad
Posted by Jim at 05:49 PM
The punditry disconnect continues on primary night
May 21, 2:07 AM EDT
By DAVID BAUDER
AP Television Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Television's news networks brought all of their punditry and electronic firepower to the Democratic presidential primary coverage on Tuesday, but left viewers yearning for the simplest of things.
Say, a reporter with a microphone who could walk into a bar in rural Kentucky and ask some voters what was on their minds.
The night of political water-treading - commentators who had already declared the Barack Obama-Hillary Clinton race over were declaring it again after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries - did little to repair the campaign's punditry disconnect.
"It's another one of those split-screen nights," MSNBC's Chris Matthews said shortly before the networks called Oregon for Obama.
Clinton's victory in Kentucky was massive, a "severe drubbing" in Fox News Channel anchor Brit Hume's estimation, and exit polls showed the clear problem Obama had in attracting the votes of working class, white Democrats.
"The overall message here has been no more race and yet he is losing," said Fox commentator Juan Williams.
When they addressed the subject, TV talkers spent much of their time debating whether this could change for the general election. MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and Harold Ford theorized that Obama had spent little time courting these voters, and offered suggestions on how to do it.
What was missing was any real attempt by the networks to find out directly from these voters what their misgivings were, and why they came to the polls to express those feelings despite being told that the nomination fight was essentially done.
"Some have said the campaign is over, your votes don't matter," Clinton told a Kentucky rally, in a part of her speech Tuesday that drew one of the strongest responses from the audience. "You know our political process is about more than candidates running or the pundits chattering."
Fox News cut away from her speech before its end to return to commentating.
"I'm not sure who that works with," Matthews said of Clinton's reasoning.
Clinton had used the faces of Matthews and NBC News' Keith Olbermann and Tim Russert this past week in an Oregon ad chiding the media for obsessing about the political horse race. Commentators also have been second-guessed for essentially writing off John McCain last year and nearly burying Clinton after her January loss in Iowa.
Because of his prominence, Russert's declaration after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries that Obama was now the Democratic nominee was seen as a pivotal moment in the media closing the window on Clinton's candidacy.
He didn't back down on Tuesday.
"The pool (of up-for-grabs delegates) now is minimal, and there's no way you can go into that pool and find enough votes to get you over the top," Russert said. "Everyone knows that."
CNN's Gloria Borger likened Clinton's chances to those of a meteor falling out of the sky. Her colleague, Jeffrey Toobin, said he found it interesting that Clinton's poll numbers hadn't diminished despite so much media talk that the race had been decided.
"People want to vote," he said.
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.
Posted by Jim at 05:44 PM
May 19, 2008
As homes foreclose in U.S., squatters move in
By Jason Szep
Mon May 19, 2008 2:47am EDT
BROCKTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) - They enter through a broken first-floor window each night to sleep on a moldy bed in the abandoned four-family house at 827 Main Street, part of a new generation of squatters emboldened by America's housing foreclosure crisis.
"For squatters, foreclosed homes like this are like a camp-ground with free camping," says real-estate broker Marc Charney, a foreclosure specialist, as he enters the home in Brockton, Massachusetts, and shines a flash-light at a mattress where homeless people have been sleeping each night.
Squatting is on the rise across the United States as foreclosures surge, eviction notices mount and homes go unsold for months, complicating the worst U.S. housing slump in a quarter century and forcing real-estate brokers to enlist the help of law enforcement and courts to sell empty houses.
In some regions, squatting is taking on new twists to include real-estate scams in which thieves "rent out" abandoned homes they don't own. Others involve "professional squatters" who move from one abandoned home to another posing as tenants who seek cash from banks as a condition to leave the premises -- a process known by real-estate brokers as "cash for key."
"There are people who move in and know exactly who to contact and say 'If you want this house, why don't you come out here and offer me cash,'" said Detective Erin Camphouse of the Los Angeles Police Department's Real Estate Fraud Unit.
"It's just cheaper for the banks to do that rather than going into the courts," she said. "The squatters are getting sophisticated and turning it on these banks who own the properties."
She cited another case in which a Los Angeles man recently "leased" three abandoned homes to unsuspecting renters through Craig's List, the online classified advertising company. The renters paid first and last month deposits, moved their belongings in and lived in the homes for several months.
"In one case, there were loose ends of rehab on the house that needed to be done and the crook wasn't coming through or wasn't completing it. So they offered to do it instead of paying rent. They put down tiles and carpet and all that kind of stuff. And it wasn't until the sheriff put the lockout notice on the door that they realized something was wrong."
POSING AS TENANTS
New Jersey real-estate broker Bill Flagg is in a different type of legal tussle with occupants of a foreclosed home who refuse to leave in Plainfield, a city of 47,829 people.
"We know the people are squatters. But we have had the cops there. We had the electricity shut off and the cops wouldn't put the people out. We have to go to court to get them out. They claim to be tenants," Flagg said.
Such cases of squatters posing as tenants are on the rise, said Bill Collins, president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers.
"These people claim that they have a lease but they can't find it. And the property owner has been removed from the property or been foreclosed on, so they have no interest in confirming if this person is a valid tenant," he said.
"So now you have squatters who are assuming that they are tenants and have rights to some degree to stay in the property until we can go through the court system to get them out.
"And they have caught wind that what most of these banks are doing is giving cash for keys, so cash for eviction -- anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500. So here you have a squatter who goes into a property, takes up residence, tells you that he is a tenant, goes to court and says that he is a tenant.
"Who can prove otherwise?"
California real-estate broker Steve Smallson said he finds about three squatting cases a month, compared to none last year, in his region of Woodland Hills, a middle-class district of Los Angeles. That includes a case in April involving a foreclosed home worth $1 million where police were called after neighbors reported squatters filming pornography in the house.
The problem is compounded in some states by the weakening economy and its effects on America's homeless, who number about 744,000 each night according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, an advocacy organization in Washington.
"The rise of squatting is a natural consequence of these properties sitting there empty caused by the whole foreclosure crisis," said Steve Berg, a vice president at the alliance.
(Reporting by Jason Szep; Editing by Eddie Evans)
Posted by Jim at 06:28 AM
May 15, 2008
California's top court overturns gay marriage ban
May 15 01:43 PM US/Eastern
By LISA LEFF
Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - In a monumental victory for the gay rights movement, the California Supreme Court overturned a voter-approved ban on gay marriage Thursday in a ruling that would allow same-sex couples in the nation's biggest state to tie the knot.
Domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage, the justices ruled 4-3 in an opinion written by Chief Justice Ron George.
Outside the courthouse, gay marriage supporters cried and cheered as news spread of the decision.
"Our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation," the court wrote.
The city of San Francisco, two dozen gay and lesbian couples and gay rights groups sued in March 2004 after the court halted San Francisco's monthlong same-sex wedding march.
"Today the California Supreme Court took a giant leap to ensure that everybody—not just in the state of California, but throughout the country—will have equal treatment under the law," said City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who argued the case for San Francisco.
Posted by Jim at 11:55 AM
May 10, 2008
ArcelorMittal sells off US steel mill
May 10 11:09 AM US/Eastern
The world's largest steel group ArcelorMittal said Saturday it has finalised the 810 million dollar (525 million euro) sale of a plant in the United States to Russian steelmaker Severstal.
It was ordered to dispose of the Sparrows Point plant in Baltimore, Maryland, by US authorities as a condition for their clearance of Mittal Steel's acquisition of Arcelor last year.
A deal to sell Sparrows Point to US companies Esmark and Whelling-Pittsburgh failed at the end of last year when financing fell through.
ArcelorMittal has lodged a complaint with the New York state supreme court, seeking more than 540 million dollars in compensation over an August 2007 agreement to sell for 1.35 billion dollars.
The facility, with more than 3,000 employees, has an annual capacity of 3.9 million tonnes.
Copyright AFP 2008, AFP stories and photos shall not be published, broadcast, rewritten for broadcast or publication or redistributed directly or indirectly in any medium
Posted by Jim at 09:56 AM
First-class stamp prices rise 1 penny to 42 cents Monday
May 10 11:31 AM US/Eastern
By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - The cost of mailing a letter goes up a penny to 42 cents on Monday, the latest in what are expected to be annual price adjustments by the Postal Service.
A new law regulating the post office makes it easier to raise rates as long as the agency doesn't exceed the rate of inflation. Rates are to be adjusted each May.
But the post office also has introduced a way for people to save money when the price goes up, the Forever stamp, which remains valid for first-class postage regardless of any increases.
With the rate increase approaching, sales of the Forever stamp reached 64 million-a-day in April, postal officials said.
Forever stamps currently sell for 41-cents, but can be used after the rate increase without any additional postage. However, when the rate goes up, so does the price of Forever stamps.
Unlike the Forever stamps, other 41-cent stamps will require additional postage under the new rates, and postal officials said they printed an additional 1.5 billion 1-cent stamps in anticipation of the demand.
Also, for the first time the agency has stamps available at the new rate before the change takes effect.
A set of five 42-cent stamps honoring pioneering journalists went on sale in April, as did a set of four stamps featuring the American flag flying at different times of day.
A 42-cent stamp featuring singer and actor Frank Sinatra will be released Tuesday.
The increase comes just a week after the post office announced it had a loss of $700 million in the second quarter of the fiscal year, blamed largely on declining mail volume and rising fuel prices.
While the charge for the first ounce of a first-class letter rises to 42 cents, the price of each added ounce will remain 17 cents, so a two-ounce letter will go up a penny to 59 cents.
The cost to mail a post card will also go up a penny, to 27 cents.
Other rates set for Monday:
—Large envelope, 2 ounces, $1, up 3 cents.
—Money Orders up to $500, $1.05, unchanged.
—Certified mail, $2.70, up 5 cents.
—First-class international letter to Canada or Mexico, 72 cents, up 3 cents.
—First-class international letter to other countries, 94 cents, up 4 cents.
—Priority mail flat-rate envelope, $4.75, up 25 cents.
—Express mail flat-rate envelope, $16.50, up 25 cents.
But, the Postal Service said that overall prices for Express Mail, its overnight service, will be lower at the weights and in the delivery zones used by most customers.
And Express mail and Priority mail customers can save money simply buying postage online, the agency said. Express mail customers will receive 3 percent off the published retail prices and Priority mail customers will save an average 3.5 percent.
In Los Angeles, Stamps.com said it has released new software which will include discounts on Express and Priority mail for customers buying postage through its Internet site, targeted to small business and home offices.
Postage rates last went up in May 2007, with a first-class stamp jumping 2 cents to the current 41-cent rate. That change came under the old law governing the post office, while the current boost uses the simpler procedures of the new one.
___
On the Net:
U.S. Postal Service: http://www.usps.com
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Posted by Jim at 09:54 AM
Corpse left in home for months
Body left on toilet as others prayed for her
By JESSE GARZA and ERIN RICHARDS
jgarza@journalsentinel.com
Posted: May 10, 2008
The discovery of the decaying corpse of a 90-year-old woman in a Necedah house led to criminal charges Friday and an account of a "religious community" praying that she be brought back to life.
The corpse had been on a toilet for more than two months, according to a criminal complaint filed in Juneau County.
A man and woman instructed her two children to pray for a miracle that would bring life back to the corpse, according to the complaint.
Tammy D. Lewis, 35, who calls herself "Sister Mary Bernadette," and 57-year-old Alan A. Bushey, known as "Bishop John Peter Bushey," each were charged with two counts of causing mental harm to a child, party to a crime, in connection with the death of Magdeline Alvina Middlesworth.
Lewis' 12-year-old and 15-year-old children lived in the house and were there when a Juneau County sheriff's deputy arrived and found the body Wednesday in the home's bathroom. The deputy had been sent to check on Middlesworth's welfare.
As word of the charges spread, neighbors told a story of family members wearing religious garb, and one Necedah resident said Bushey had once been affiliated with the nearby Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine.
According to neighbors, Tammy Lewis and her children hadn't lived long in the blue one-story house on Shrine Road in Necedah, a small town about 90 miles northwest of Madison.
Harlan Johnson, who lives next door, said the woman and her two children moved in sometime in the last year or two.
"We'd sometimes see the kids and the mom walking the grandmother around the yard," said Johnson, who assumed Middlesworth was the children's grandmother. "But in the last two to three months, we haven't seen hide nor hair of the kids or the grandma."
Johnson also recalled that a man dressed as a priest used to be in and out of the house a lot when the Lewis family moved in, but he hadn't seen him much lately either.
Townspeople say the Lewis children did not attend public school, but nobody knows if they attended the Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine school, part of a religious sect loosely linked to the followers of Mary Ann Van Hoof, who claimed to see apparitions of the Virgin Mary in 1949.
The kids were always "real quiet," Johnson said.
Johnson said Lewis and her daughter were usually dressed in full-length traditional blue-and-white habits. Johnson remembers seeing the boy dressed in nice dress slacks and a button-up shirt, even if he was playing in the yard.
At Rosie's Coffee Haus Café on Main St., a worker who gave her name only as "Christy" said people were familiar with Bishop John Peter Bushey and that he appeared to have developed his own religious followers.
The speculation at the coffeehouse is that he was cut off from the Shrine followers for some reason and had developed his own religious following, she said.
Residents say the stream of pilgrims who come to visit the town because of the shrine has tapered off in recent years and many new people have moved into homes on Shrine Road.
But residents also say the town is known for the clear divide between the Roman Catholic church in town and the Queen of the Holy Rosary Shrine.
Sister called sheriff
According to Friday's complaint:
Middlesworth's sister called the sheriff's department because she hadn't heard from her sister for some time and was worried about her.
When Deputy Leigh Neville-Neil arrived at the Necedah residence, Lewis identified herself as "Sister Mary Bernadette" but refused to allow the deputy inside.
Lewis, who was acting very nervous, told the deputy Middlesworth was on vacation and was alive and well.
When the deputy asked again to enter the home, Lewis grabbed a cordless telephone and said she had to call her "superior."
When the deputy was finally allowed inside, she detected a strong odor of incense and burned wood. The deputy also heard religious hymns playing on a stereo and noticed that the house was filled with religious items.
Neville-Neil began opening doors inside the house, and Lewis again told her Middlesworth was not home. When the deputy opened the door to the bathroom, she was hit by an overpowering odor.
She then saw a "pile of something on what appeared to be a toilet" that Lewis identified as Middlesworth's body, according to the complaint.
The complaint further said:
The deputy then ordered Lewis to take her children outside, where they and the mother began crying hysterically.
Upon further questioning by Neville-Neil, Lewis said the last time she saw Middlesworth alive, she was helping the older woman put on undergarments.
She said Middlesworth collapsed in her arms, so she propped her on the toilet. Although Middlesworth was still breathing, instead of calling 911, Lewis called Bushey, who instructed her to leave Middlesworth in the bathroom.
He also told her "that he had received signs from God that God would raise Alvina from the dead in a miracle."
Lewis told the deputy that God told her if she prayed hard enough, Middlesworth would come back to life and that she and her children prayed up to four days with the bathroom door open.
When Bushey arrived at the residence Wednesday and spoke with Neville-Neil, he confirmed Lewis' account and said "Lewis was obedient and served the Lord as she should."
Lewis later told an investigator she placed Middlesworth on the toilet March 4.
When interviewed by investigators, Lewis' son referred to Middlesworth as his grandmother. The boy said Bushey explained Middlesworth's appearance on the toilet as "the result of demons attempting to make it appear that Alvina would not come back to life."
The boy also said he considered running away because of Middlesworth's condition.
He said Bushey told him that if Middlesworth's death was discovered, the children would have to go to public schools and they would all have to get jobs because Middlesworth paid the bills.
Lewis' daughter told authorities that Middlesworth was the provider for their "religious community."
Bushey and Lewis also were charged with obstructing an officer and had their bonds set at $50,000.
The two were in custody in the Juneau County Jail on Friday night.
Juneau County Sheriff Brent Oleson said Lewis' children had been placed in foster care, The Associated Press reported Friday night.
Posted by Jim at 09:32 AM
May 08, 2008
Bed Bugs
By PATRICK GALLAHUE, JOHN MAZOR and SYLVIA HARVEY
May 8, 2008 --
Don't let the bedbugs swipe!
The blood-sucking insects aren't just living with New Yorkers at home - they're on the subways, too, according to one of the city's leading bedbug authorities.
At a recent Department of Housing, Preservation and Development forum on the subject, a city bedbug educator admitted to seeing the pests on benches in subway stations - in one case, catching a ride on an unsuspecting straphanger's caboose at Brooklyn's Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, according to people at the meeting.
The official, identified as Edward Brownbear, also reported seeing the bugs on wooden benches at the Union Square and Fordham Road stations in Manhattan and The Bronx, respectively.
Sharis Lugo, 20, of Brooklyn leaped off a bench at the Union Square station when she heard the news, saying, "Ewww! That's nasty . . . They've got to take these benches out of here!"
Posted by Jim at 03:46 PM
May 04, 2008
Fugitive financier Robert Vesco reported dead in Cuba
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Robert Vesco, the fugitive financier who left a trail of alleged bribery, embezzlement and drug trafficking that reached to the White House, died in Cuba late last year, The New York Times reported Saturday.
Vesco, who fled to Costa Rica in 1971 to avoid a US Securities and Exchange investigation into charges of cheating investors of more than 200 million dollars, died of lung cancer on November 23, the newspaper said, citing people close to him.
But it said US officials, who pursued Vesco for decades across numerous South American and Caribbean countries, were not aware of his death. Cuban officials also did not confirm the death to the paper.
"Records at Colon Cemetery in Havana indicate that a Robert Vesco was buried there on November 24, and photographs and videos viewed by The New York Times show a man resembling him in a casket with his longtime Cuban companion looking over him," the Times said.
However, it quoted author Arthur Herzog, who wrote a 1987 biography which called Vesco "The King of White Collar Crime," told the Times that Vesco may have orchestrated a fake death.
"He could have died," Herzog said. "But Bob has used disguises in the past."
Vesco, who would have been 72 at the time of his death, was caught up in the 1970s in some of the biggest scandals of the time.
Believed one of the United States' richest men at the beginning of the 1970s, after felling to avoid the SEC probe, he made an illegal 200,000 dollar contribution to then-president Richard Nixon's 1972 White House run in apparent hopes of quashing the investigations.
Five years later he was exposed trying to bribe members of the administration of president Jimmy Carter with millions of dollars.
He fled to the Bahamas and then Costa Rica in 1971, where he was sheltered by then-president Jose Figueres for years, investing millions into the country, the Times said.
Eventually he was forced to leave Costa Rica, moving to the Bahamas, Antigua and Nicaragua as US authorities sought his extradition. He finally settled in Havana, where after several years his name cropped up in US investigations into a Colombian drug smuggling ring.
Caught up in a scandal in Cuba, he was jailed in 1996 and released in 2005, the Times reported.
Posted by Jim at 05:19 AM
May 01, 2008
DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey Dead In Apparent Suicide
Police were called to the home of DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey's mother on Thursday to investigate her apparent suicide.
Police have confirmed that the dead person is Palfrey who was 52.
Palfrey was dubbed "The DC Madam" by the national media after her arrest for allegedly running an upscale call girl ring in the nation's capitol.
Posted by Jim at 01:15 PM | Comments (0)