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Cell Phone Savvy

2010-05-12T12:38:00.006-06:00

More and more girls carry cell phones, and with Cell Phone Savvy they can personalize their phones to make them stand out from the crowd of black and gray look-alikes. This hip little kit provides a cute dangling charm on a cord, rhinestone stickers, and a booklet of fun cell phone hints and text messaging tricks.

Cameron is urged again to go it alone: Now senior backbenchers follow Tebbit's call not to give in to LibDem demands

2010-05-10T02:25:00.000-06:00

David Cameron has been urged to go it alone and lead a minority government by one of his senior backbench MPs.

Graham Brady, who is tipped to be the new chairman of the powerful Conservative backbench 1922 Committee, insisted there was little enthusiasm among his colleagues for a full-blown coalition deal with the LibDems.

The Tory Right has also told David Cameron to give Iain Duncan Smith a Cabinet job and hand more ministerial posts to Right-wingers if he wants a deal with Lib Dems.

In return he may be able to match Labour's offer to Nick Clegg for a referendum on changing the electoral system, Tories told The Times.

Graham Brady told the BBC's Politics Show: 'My inclination is more towards seeking to operate as a minority government bringing in the support of others where it exists and where there is a consensus that can created '.

'I think that is probably, generally, the mood of colleagues. But we, I think, do need to see a far more inclusive approach inevitably in these circumstances. I think if you don't have an overall majority you need to make sure you take people with you.'

His words came on a day in which Mr Cameron was warned not to give too much ground to the LibDems or face open revolt from the Tory Right.

Senior figures said he should attempt to lead a minority government, even if it meant a second election within weeks or months, rather than compromise over voting reform as the price of Nick Clegg's support.

Former Tory chairman Lord Tebbit said that any deal which did more than throw the Liberal Democrats 'a few crumbs' would be a mistake.

DENIED BY 16,000 VOTERS

David Cameron has been kept out of moving straight into Number 10 by the will of just 16,000 voters.

The Tories' ability to form a majority government was thwarted by just 0.06 per cent of the voting public.

The way Britain was plunged into the uncertain scenario of a hung parliament was uncovered by researchers at Plymouth University who pointed to the Tories missing out in just 19 target constituencies.

Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher said Mr Cameron came tantalisingly close to forming a government. The directors at the university's elections' centre wrote: 'Cameron came so near and yet so far. Just 16,000 extra votes for the Tories, distributed in the 19 constituencies in which the party came closest to winning, would have spared us a weekend of negotiation and speculation.'

The figures show however that if there is another election in the next few months, a small push could deliver the majority that Mr Cameron wants.

He also insisted that the Conservatives should instead try to form a minority government, essentially daring the opposition to vote their proposals down.

Last night there was speculation that a senior figure from the Tory Right - probably former leader Iain Duncan Smith, who championed plans to offer tax breaks for married couples - would be offered a Cabinet job in a Lib-Con coalition to reassure that wing of the party.

Despite the biggest Tory advance since 1931, some MPs are privately critical of the party's election campaign, particularly Mr Cameron's 'big society' message which they say was launched too late to engage voters.

They are also calling for the Conservative leader to adopt a more collegiate leadership style amid concern that key decisions have been taken by a tight inner circle.

One senior backbench MP said:

'If David is now going to deal with the Liberals, then he is also going to have to start dealing with the rest of us.'

Mr Cameron is understood to have phoned key Right-wing MPs over the weekend to sound them out about the prospects of a deal.

Last night he arrived at his Commons office and invited any concerned MPs or shadow ministers to speak to him about his power-sharing offer to the LibDems.

He will hold a crunch meeting with MPs to outline the terms of a potential deal tonight.

Mr Cameron's former leadership rival David Davis said: 'Whether it's LibDem Cabinet ministers or a much more simple arrangement, I'm comfortable with anything on that spectrum.

'But it is a fact of political life that David will have to carry the party with him. I am quite certain that he is as aware as anybody that proportional representation is anathema to the majority of the party.'

One Tory frontbencher said: 'He is going to need to broaden his Cabinet and adopt a much more collegiate style of leadership if he thinks he can pull this off.'

But in a sign that the Tory Right is split over how to react, Euro MP Daniel Hannan said Mr Cameron was right to try to ensure a stable coalition government, adding: 'It would be irresponsible of David Cameron not to seek to maximise support for an austerity administration.'

Curse of the Tatler ToriesThey were dubbed the 'Tatler Tories'. These five Conservative candidates were confident enough about their election prospects to pose for pictures for the glossy style magazine in 2008.

Two years on, the humbled quintet - who were part of the much-criticised Tory 'A-list' - are licking their wounds after failing to be elected.

Their defeats have prompted serious soul searching inside the Tory camp about whether the tactic of imposing handpicked candidates on local associations was the right one.

In 2006, Mr Cameron had promised to 'change the face of the Conservative Party by changing the faces of the Conservative Party'.

The Tatler Tories who are licking their wounds after failing to be elected: (From left to right): Shaun Bailey, Mark Clarke, Joanne Cash, Annunziata Rees-Mogg and Peter Lyburn

His A-list was to contain 50 per cent women, and a 'significant' number of ethnic minorities and the disabled. Of the original 100 A-list candidates favoured by the Tory leader, 38 ended up being elected to Parliament.

Here the Mail profiles the Tatler five:

1 SHAUN BAILEY He was standing in Hammersmith, West London, and won a swing of only 0.5 per cent - resulting in a 3,549 majority for Labour. Despite being hailed as a living embodiment of the 'Big Society', the black youth worker was hit by questions over his My Generation charity's accounts.

2 MARK CLARKE Hoping to take Tooting in South London, he attracted a 3.6 per cent swing but saw Labour transport minister Sadiq Khan hold the seat with a majority of 2,524.

Mr Clarke ran a 'model' campaign and used techniques learned on leadership courses in America, but claims from a former girlfriend and Labour's insistence that Lord Ashcroft had helped bankroll his bid both hurt him.

3 JOANNE CASH Standing in Westminster North, she won a tiny swing of 0.6 per cent, which meant that Labour's Karen Buck held on to the seat with a majority of 2,126.

Miss Cash claims it was because of a media agenda against her. But insiders say it was her decision to quit as a candidate halfway through the campaign over an internal row and then be reinstated after an intervention from Mr Cameron's office that did for her.

4 ANNUNZIATA REES-MOGG Fighting the Somerton and Frome constituency in Somerset, she actually produced a 0.9 per cent swing away from the Tories. LibDem frontbencher David Heath held on by 1,817.

She fought hard, but rejected Mr Cameron's advice to 'de-toff' herself by changing her name to Nancy Mogg, allowing Mr Heath to portray her as posh. To rub salt in the wound, her brother Jacob won North-East Somerset with fewer votes.

5 PETER LYBURN In Perth and Perthshire North he too saw a swing away from the Tories, one of 2.9 per cent, with the result that the SNP's Pete Wishart, former keyboardist in the band Runrig, increased his majority to 4,379.

Scotland resoundingly rejected the Tories at all costs, actually shoring up Labour's vote in most seats and voting for the Tories' nearest rivals in all but one seat.

Tory Jo Johnson is 1 of 20 ex-Etonians in parliament

New boys fuel the private school ParliamentBritain has elected its most socially elite Parliament for 13 years following an influx of privately educated Tory MPs, a study has found.

Fee-paying schools educate only 7 per cent of the pupil population but they produced 54 per cent of Tory MPs, 40 per cent of LibDems and 15 per cent of Labour.

Overall, 37 per cent of MPs from the three main parties elected last week were privately schooled - up from 34 per cent in 2005 and 30 per cent in 1997.

The study, by the Sutton Trust educational charity, suggests that David Cameron's bid to create a diverse base of Tory MPs has flopped.

There are 20 Old Etonians in Parliament - five more than in 2005 - the study found, with 19 of them Tory and one LibDem. All six Eton-educated candidates standing for election for the first time this year won their seats, including Boris Johnson's brother Jo in Orpington, Kent.

The authors said the findings confirmed fears over poor social mobility in Britain. Parliament must not be composed of an 'elite cadre of schools largely serving the affluent', they said.

The breakdown will deepen fears over standards in state comprehensives. Just 41 per cent of MPs from the main parties attended a nonselective state secondary school, with 23 per cent having been to grammars and the rest independent schools.

Thirteen schools - 12 of which are private --produced a tenth of all MPs in the new Parliament. The public schools Highgate, Millfield, Westminster and Nottingham High produced several MPs each, as did Reading School, a state grammar.

The study also found that serving as an MP has largely become a graduate profession. Nine in ten MPs in 2010 went to university - by far the highest proportion of any Parliament to date.

Just under three in ten - 29 per cent - went to Oxford or Cambridge.

James Chapman

OIL FUTURES: Crude Rises After IMF Approves Loan To Greece

2010-05-10T02:19:00.002-06:00

SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)--Crude oil futures in Asia rose sharply Monday after the International Monetary Fund approved a $38 billon loan package for Greece to help prevent its debt problems from spreading to the rest of Europe's economy.

The loan, which was approved Sunday, is the largest financial commitment the IMF has ever made to one country and triggered a sharp rise in the euro against the U.S. dollar, making commodities priced in dollars such as oil cheaper for investors.

The IMF's move also made investors more optimistic about the region's economic recovery and future demand for oil.

On the New York Mercantile Exchange, light, sweet crude futures for delivery in June traded at $77.23 a barrel at 0705 GMT, up $2.12 in the Globex electronic session. June Brent crude on London's ICE Futures exchange rose $1.79 to $80.06 a barrel.

"Concerns that Greece's issue would lead to a contagion in Europe were challenging the market's thinking of economic recovery," said David Moore, a commodities strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

In the coming days investors will be scrutinizing the loan package to determine whether it is adequate or aggressive enough on key issues, he added. "The markets will still be very focused on developments in Europe."

However, not all traders were convinced the loan package would support higher oil prices.

"In the short run crude should be strong because of a stronger euro," said Clarence Chu, a trader at Hudson Capital Energy in Singapore. "But if you ask me, I don't think the package solves the problem, it merely postpones it."

Chu added that there might be political obstacles that may prevent European countries from contributing the funds necessary to pull Greece out from its crisis.

Nymex reformulated gasoline blendstock for June--the benchmark gasoline contract--rose 496 points to $2.1747 a gallon, while June heating oil traded at $2.1202, 407 points higher.

ICE gasoil for May changed hands at $668.75 a metric ton, up $11.00 from Friday's settlement.

By Wayne Ma

New Tiger looks nothing like the old 1

2010-05-10T02:17:00.000-06:00

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Even at his worst, Tiger Woods has never looked this bad.

It was only a month ago that Woods returned to golf with a performance that satisfied everyone but him. He tied for fourth in the Masters, his first competition in five months. And while his personal life was a mess, it appeared his golf game wasn't about to suffer.

So much has changed in such a short time.

Woods looked lost on the golf course in missing the cut at Quail Hollow last week with the highest 36-hole score of his career. He looked even more distant as he sat in front of his locker Sunday at the TPC Sawgrass with his head bowed, elbows resting on his knees. He failed to finish another tournament, this time because of a sore neck that forced him to withdraw after six holes.

It was the first time Woods, with more than $93 million in career earnings, has gone consecutive weeks without making a dime.

"It's early," Paul Goydos said. "What he's going through is unprecedented. We don't know what's going on. At some point, his life will normalize, as normal as Tiger's life ever gets. And then we'll see."

When he looked up to take a few questions, Woods leaned against his locker with his eyes closed as if he were not listening. At one point, he slammed his shoe to the floor.

Three months ago in the same clubhouse at the TPC Sawgrass — down the hallway and up a flight of stairs — Woods appeared in public for the first time to read a statement about the extramarital affairs that shattered his image and fractured his family.

He wore a dark suit then, his Sunday red shirt now.

In both cases, his aura of invincibility was missing.

It is too early to judge how Woods will recover from this scandal, and it doesn't help that Woods is no more forthcoming about his game or his health than he was even in good times.

Only at the Masters did he reveal he had a torn Achilles' during 2009. And while he said Friday that his rebuilt left knee was 100 percent, he never said anything about his neck until Sunday, when he mentioned that it had been bothering him before the Masters.

Who knew?

He has received warm receptions, though the praise is not universal. One woman in Charlotte, N.C., gave a thumbs-down when Woods walked by on his way to the tee. The low point might have come Saturday, when a young boy with an autograph from Phil Mickelson yelled out to Woods, "Tiger, say so long to No. 1. Kiss it goodbye."

Mickelson, who could have replaced Woods at No. 1 with a victory Sunday, was standing only a few feet away.

"He got heckled by a 7-year-old," Goydos said with wonder. "That's brutal. He's got to get used to that. He's got a lot on his head and the game is hard. And it's hard for everybody. He made it look so easy, so when he's not making it look easy, we wonder what's wrong. He's going through a tough patch. If he has 80 percent of the people completely idolizing him, that's still a big drop.

"He hasn't been playing, and he's not playing well," Goydos said. "And he's never been under a microscope like this before."

Woods bristled at the media for making a big deal about hitting five balls in the water during nine holes of practice Tuesday. He said he was working on his swing, not overly concerned with the results when he wasn't keeping score. But when the tournament began, there were shots that didn't belong to the No. 1 player — or any PGA Tour player.

Woods twice popped up a tee shot so badly that he had to hit 5-wood for his second shot into a par. Another went 45 degrees to the right and landed in the pond on an adjacent hole.

Even the shots that stayed inside the gallery looked ordinary. This hardly looked like the guy who collected his 82nd title worldwide in Australia six months ago, or who has 14 majors going into a year in which he is expected to resume his pursuit of Jack Nicklaus.

The U.S. Open next month is at Pebble Beach, where Woods won by 15 shots. Then comes the British Open at St. Andrews, where he already has won twice by a combined 13 shots.

"His history is particularly good at those golf courses, "Goydos said. "If he goes through all those places and is not competitive, then you can ask questions."

So many questions still remain.

Woods will not delve into family matters, although a divorce seems imminent. He spent some of his time at The Players Championship denying speculation that he is about to leave Hank Haney, his swing coach since 2004.

Haney said he had been paid last week for work in the next quarter. Woods followed by confirming that he was still working with Haney, although he didn't go into specifics and spoke throughout the week about changes to his swing.

Meanwhile, it already is May and Woods is No. 122 on the PGA Tour money list. He is tied for 147th in the FedEx Cup standings. He will stay No. 1 in the world for the next two weeks, at least until Mickelson next plays at the Colonial and gets another shot at him.

Above all, he does not look like the same Tiger — and he's certainly not playing like him.

"Tiger is facing his greatest challenge," Hal Sutton said earlier in the week. "Tiger meets every challenge with his head held high and knowing that he will overcome. He's had better control of his mind than almost any player I've ever watched play the game.

"You know, I'm sure Tiger will figure that out," he said. "He's figured everything else out."

Wayne Rooney shows off baby son Kai to Manchester United fans at Old Trafford

2010-05-10T02:15:00.000-06:00

Roo cheered by baby

Wayne Rooney is cheered up with a cuddle from son Kai yesterday after Man United were pipped to the Premier League title by Chelsea.

The England striker, 24, beamed with pride as he carried the sixmonth-old round Old Trafford in an end-of-season lap of honour.

Kai showed a few dribbling skills of his own - blowing bubbles and smiling as he was shown off in front of more than 75,000 fans after the 4-0 victory over Stoke City.

Down in London it was another family affair after Chelsea clinched the title with an 8-0 thrashing of Wigan at Stamford Bridge.

Love rat captain John Terry paraded round the pitch holding the trophy with wife Toni and their children Georgie and Summer dressed in Blues kit. And hat-trick hero Didier Drogba grabbed an Ivory Coast flag to celebrate with sons Joel and Freddy.

England boss Fabio Capello - who announces his provisional 30-man World Cup squad on Tuesday - will be nervously waiting to hear if Rooney has aggravated his groin injury. He limped off the pitch. But United boss Alex Ferguson said: "He'll be OK. I don't think it's serious."

Despite all the smiles on the last day of the season, there were angry scenes as angry United fans held protests against the club's American owners, the Glazers.

Earlier, the club store was closed after a smoke bomb went off.

Hundreds of fans, wearing green and gold in protest, chanted at the directors' box and one group apparently tried to storm the entrance to the lounge. Fan John Corless, 39, said: "They were furious."

Paul Byrne

Prader-Willi Syndrome

2010-05-10T02:12:00.003-06:00

May is Prader-Willi Syndrome awareness month and we would like to help spread its awareness. Prader-Willi Syndrome or PWS is an uncommon genetic disorder that can be present since birth. The common symptom is overeating that do not stop even when the person is already full, other symptoms include muscle weakness and behavioral problems. This rare disease and its symptoms are currently observed to be shown by 40 people in Uruguay.

The rare chronic disease is very hard to fight as only little information is known on how to treat and support the patients and their families. This was the case for Maria Ines Fonseca whose daughter was diagnosed with the Prader-Willi Syndrome recently after birth.

Doctors say that the disease has different symptoms that can be observed the same way or same intensity for each case of the Prader-Willi Syndrome. To add with muscle weakness and other disabilities, an insatiable appetite which leads to obesity can be observed on all cases.

The rare disease which is not hereditary records only one case per 15,000 births. It is first observed in 1956 by Swiss Doctors Andrea Prader, Alexis Labhart and Heinrich Willi where the disease got its name. The doctors observed that nine patients are showing the same symptoms of obesity, short stature, muscle weakness, and other physical and intellectual disabilities.

Lena Horne, Singer and Actress, Dies at 92

2010-05-10T02:12:00.000-06:00

Lena Horne, who was the first black performer to be signed to a long-term contract by a major Hollywood studio and who went on to achieve international fame as a singer, died on Sunday night at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York. She was 92 and lived in Manhattan.

Lena Horne appeared in “Jamaica,” a musical that ran on Broadway from 1957 to 1959.
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Ms. Horne and Cab Calloway in “Stormy Weather.” The title song became one of her signatures.

Her death was announced by her son-in-law, Kevin Buckley.

Ms. Horne might have become a major movie star, but she was born 50 years too early, and languished at MGM in the 1940s because of the color of her skin, although she was so light-skinned that, when she was a child, other black children had taunted her, accusing her of having a “white daddy.”

Ms. Horne was stuffed into one “all-star” musical after another — “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “Broadway Rhythm” (1944), “Two Girls and a Sailor” (1944), “Ziegfeld Follies” (1946), “Words and Music” (1948) — to sing a song or two that could easily be snipped from the movie when it played in the South, where the idea of an African-American performer in anything but a subservient role in a movie with an otherwise all-white cast was unthinkable.

“The only time I ever said a word to another actor who was white was Kathryn Grayson in a little segment of ‘Show Boat’ ” included in “Till the Clouds Roll By” (1946), a movie about the life of Jerome Kern, Ms. Horne said in an interview in 1990. In that sequence she played Julie, a mulatto forced to flee the showboat because she has married a white man.

But when MGM made “Show Boat” into a movie for the second time, in 1951, the role of Julie was given to a white actress, Ava Gardner, who did not do her own singing. (Ms. Horne was no longer under contract to MGM at the time, and according to James Gavin’s Horne biography, “Stormy Weather,” published last year, she was never seriously considered for the part.) And in 1947, when Ms. Horne herself married a white man — the prominent arranger, conductor and pianist Lennie Hayton, who was for many years both her musical director and MGM’s — the marriage took place in France and was kept secret for three years.

Ms. Horne’s first MGM movie was “Panama Hattie” (1942), in which she sang Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things.” Writing about that film years later, Pauline Kael called it “a sad disappointment, though Lena Horne is ravishing and when she sings you can forget the rest of the picture.”

Even before she came to Hollywood, Brooks Atkinson, the drama critic for The New York Times, noticed Ms. Horne in “Lew Leslie’s Blackbirds of 1939,” a Broadway revue that ran for nine performances. “A radiantly beautiful sepia girl,” he wrote, “who will be a winner when she has proper direction.”

She had proper direction in two all-black movie musicals, both made in 1943. Lent to 20th Century Fox for “Stormy Weather,” one of those show business musicals with almost no plot but lots of singing and dancing, Ms. Horne did both triumphantly, ending with the sultry, aching sadness of the title number, which would become one of her signature songs. In MGM’s “Cabin in the Sky,” the first film directed by Vincente Minnelli, she was the brazen, sexy handmaiden of the Devil. (One number she shot for that film, “Ain’t It the Truth,” which she sang while taking a bubble bath, was deleted before the film was released — not for racial reasons, as her stand-alone performances in other MGM musicals sometimes were, but because it was considered too risqué.)

In 1945 the critic and screenwriter Frank Nugent wrote in Liberty magazine that Ms. Horne was “the nation’s top Negro entertainer.” In addition to her MGM salary of $1,000 a week, she was earning $1,500 for every radio appearance and $6,500 a week when she played nightclubs. She was also popular with servicemen, white and black, during World War II, appearing more than a dozen times on the Army radio program “Command Performance.”

“The whole thing that made me a star was the war,” Ms. Horne said in the 1990 interview. “Of course the black guys couldn’t put Betty Grable’s picture in their footlockers. But they could put mine.”

Touring Army camps for the U.S.O., Ms. Horne was outspoken in her criticism of the way black soldiers were treated. “So the U.S.O. got mad,” she recalled. “And they said, ‘You’re not going to be allowed to go anyplace anymore under our auspices.’ So from then on I was labeled a bad little Red girl.”

Ms. Horne later claimed that for this and other reasons, including her friendship with leftists like Paul Robeson and W.E.B. DuBois, she was blacklisted and “unable to do films or television for the next seven years” after her tenure with MGM ended in 1950.

This was not quite true: as Mr. Gavin has documented, she appeared frequently on “Your Show of Shows” and other television shows in the 1950s, and in fact “found more acceptance” on television “than almost any other black performer.” And Mr. Gavin and others have suggested that there were other factors in addition to politics or race involved in her lack of film work

Although absent from the screen, she found success in nightclubs and on records. “Lena Horne at the Waldorf-Astoria,” recorded during a well-received eight-week run in 1957, reached the Top 10 and became the best-selling album by a female singer in RCA Victor’s history.

In the early 1960s Ms. Horne, always outspoken on the subject of civil rights, became increasingly active, participating in numerous marches and protests.

In 1969, she returned briefly to films, playing the love interest of a white actor, Richard Widmark, in “Death of a Gunfighter.”

She was to act in only one other movie: In 1978 she played Glinda the Good Witch in “The Wiz,” the film version of the all-black Broadway musical based on “The Wizard of Oz.” But she never stopped singing.

Ms. Horne in 1981 after she won two Grammy awards for “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music.”

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.She continued to record prolifically well into the 1990s, for RCA and other labels, notably United Artists and Blue Note. And she conquered Broadway in 1981 with a one-woman show, “Lena Horne: The Lady and Her Music,” which ran for 14 months and won both rave reviews and a Tony Award.

Ms. Horne’s voice was not particularly powerful, but it was extremely expressive. She reached her listeners emotionally by acting as well as singing the romantic standards like “The Man I Love” and “Moon River” that dominated her repertory. The person she always credited as her main influence was not another singer but a pianist and composer, Duke Ellington’s longtime associate Billy Strayhorn.

“I wasn’t born a singer,” she told Strayhorn’s biographer, David Hajdu. “I had to learn a lot. Billy rehearsed me. He stretched me vocally.” Strayhorn occasionally worked as her accompanist and, she said, “taught me the basics of music, because I didn’t know anything.”

Strayhorn was also, she said, “the only man I ever loved,” but Strayhorn was openly gay, and their close friendship never became a romance. “He was just everything that I wanted in a man,” she told Mr. Hajdu, “except he wasn’t interested in me sexually.”

Lena Calhoun Horne was born in Brooklyn on June 30, 1917. All four of her grandparents were industrious members of Brooklyn’s black middle class. Her paternal grandparents, Edwin and Cora Horne, were early members of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and in October 1919, at the age of 2, Lena was the cover girl for the organization’s monthly bulletin.

By then the marriage of her parents, Edna and Teddy Horne, was in trouble. “She was spoiled and badly educated and he was fickle,” Ms. Horne’s daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley, wrote in her family history, “The Hornes.” By 1920 Teddy had left his job with the New York Department of Labor and fled to Seattle, and Edna had fled to a life on the stage in Harlem. Ms. Horne was raised by her paternal grandparents until her mother took her back four years later.

When she was 16, her mother abruptly pulled her out of school to audition for the dance chorus at the Cotton Club, the famous Harlem nightclub where the customers were white, the barely dressed dancers were light-skinned blacks, Duke Ellington was the star of the show and the proprietors were gangsters. A year after joining the Cotton Club chorus she made her Broadway debut, performing a voodoo dance in the short-lived show “Dance With Your Gods” in 1934.

At 19, Ms. Horne married the first man she had ever dated, 28-year-old Louis Jones, and became a conventional middle-class Pittsburgh wife. Her daughter Gail was born in 1937 and a son, Teddy, in 1940. The marriage ended soon afterward. Ms. Horne kept Gail, but Mr. Jones refused to give up Teddy, although he did allow the boy long visits with his mother.

In 1938, Ms. Horne starred in a quickie black musical film, “The Duke Is Tops,” for which she was never paid. Her return to movies was on a grander scale.

She had been singing at the Manhattan nightclub Café Society when the impresario Felix Young chose her to star at the Trocadero, a nightclub he was planning to open in Hollywood in the fall of 1941. In 1990, Ms. Horne reminisced: “My only friends were the group of New Yorkers who sort of stuck with their own group — like Vincente, Gene Kelly, Yip Harburg and Harold Arlen, and Richard Whorf — the sort of hip New Yorkers who allowed Paul Robeson and me in their houses.”

Since blacks were not allowed to live in Hollywood, “Felix Young, a white man, signed for the house as if he was going to rent it,” Ms. Horne said. “When the neighbors found out, Humphrey Bogart, who lived right across the street from me, raised hell with them for passing around a petition to get rid of me.” Bogart, she said, “sent word over to the house that if anybody bothered me, please let him know.”

Roger Edens, the composer and musical arranger who had been Judy Garland’s chief protector at MGM, had heard the elegant Ms. Horne sing at Café Society and also went to hear her at the Little Troc (the war had scaled Mr. Young’s ambitions down to a small club with a gambling den on the second floor). He insisted that Arthur Freed, the producer of MGM’s lavish musicals, listen to Ms. Horne sing. Then Freed insisted that Louis B. Mayer, who ran the studio, hear her, too. He did, and soon she had signed a seven-year contract with MGM.

The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated that contract as a weapon in its war to get better movie roles for black performers. Her father weighed in, too. In a 1997 PBS interview, she recalled: “My father said, ‘I can get a maid for my daughter. I don’t want her in the movies playing maids.’ ”

Ms. Horne is survived by her daughter, Gail Lumet Buckley. Her husband died in 1971; her son died of kidney failure the same year.

Looking back at the age of 80, Ms. Horne said: “My identity is very clear to me now. I am a black woman. I’m free. I no longer have to be a ‘credit.’ I don’t have to be a symbol to anybody; I don’t have to be a first to anybody. I don’t have to be an imitation of a white woman that Hollywood sort of hoped I’d become. I’m me, and I’m like nobody else.”

ALJEAN HARMETZ

Nash, Suns Finally Get Past Their Rivals

2010-05-10T02:07:00.000-06:00

SAN ANTONIO -- It didn't matter that Two-Time, as teammates call Steve Nash because of those two MVP trophies back home, was down to one functioning eye.

It didn't matter that the Phoenix Suns' double-digit lead vanished almost as soon as Nash left the floor to get six stitches to close a deep cut.

It didn't matter that the San Antonio Spurs would also hit the Suns with a four-point play in the final minute, which only added to the here-we-go-again dread that even Nash couldn't completely fend off -- when he wasn't arching his eyebrows as high as he could during stoppages in play in an unsuccessful attempt to keep that right eye open.

Nash and the Suns survived it all on this bloody Sunday night. They weathered Tim Duncan's inadvertent elbow to Nash's face on a drive and every last ounce of the San Antonio's old desert-haunting mojo, pulling out a 107-101 victory in a sweep-sealing Game 4 that somehow generated the tension of a Game 7.

When he finally made it to the postgame podium, with his eye swollen completely shut and his eyelid unmistakably (and fittingly) purple once you got up close to him, Nash cracked: "Do we need to even say anything?"

The implication was clear. Nash couldn't see his audience too well, but he figured everyone in the room had a fair idea of what it meant for the Suns to complete a 4-0 brooming of their longtime playoff tormentors, after San Antonio KO'd Phoenix from the postseason four times in a six-season span from 2003-08.

You've also surely heard that six of Nash's previous 13 seasons ended with a loss to the hosts. That should help explain why Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, Duncan and finally Spurs legend David Robinson, spilling onto the floor from his courtside seat, looked legitimately happy for Nash during the postgame exchange of hugs.

"I couldn't be happier for a class, class, class guy," Popovich said. "I hate him, but he's classy."

Said Nash: "Fortunately someone was smiling on us tonight."

That's true to some degree. Unlike the unforgettably bloody nose he suffered in crunch time of Game 1 of the teams' 2007 epic series, Nash had the good sense to get nailed in the third quarter this time, giving the Suns' training staff sufficient time to sew up this gash and set him up to return for the whole fourth quarter.

In this series, though, these Suns consistently earned a good slice of their fortune, repeatedly proving -- despite the absence of injured center Robin Lopez -- that they're tougher, deeper and more legit defensively than any of the teams San Antonio tortured throughout the previous decade. Phoenix failed to score 20 points in the first quarter in both games in San Antonio and still managed to creep past 100 in both cases, finishing off this improbable sweep of a team that had just dumped No. 2-seeded Dallas with a vintage display of two-man dominance from the Suns' longest sufferers.

Nash (10 points, five assists) and Stoudemire (12 points) combined for 22 of the Suns' 35 points in the final period, despite vintage San Antonio pressure on the ball in the backcourt and the rather limited peripheral vision that admittedly had Nash "pretty worried" when he first went back in. It was the famously steady Duncan, meanwhile, who committed a bad fifth foul out of frustration with nearly six minutes to play in regulation and finished a fatal 16-for-34 from the free-throw line for the series.

Stoudemire wound up with 29 points, Nash totaled 20 points and nine assists and Jared Dudley emerged as the latest difference-maker off the Phoenix bench, contributing 16 points and six boards on near-perfect shooting.

"As you can see," Dudley said, "it's a different [Suns] team and a different year."

Nash believes it, too, but admits that his confidence was briefly shaken after taking the hit from Duncan with 5:52 to go in the third, after which Phoenix quickly surrendered the final seven points of its seemingly comfortable 64-53 lead.

"We'd gone 3 1/2 games with clear sailing," Nash said, explaining why he initially assumed the worst while being worked on in the Suns' locker room.

Then Nash caught himself, realizing he was falling prey to "something always happens against San Antonio" thinking that could easily spread to less-experienced teammates.

Here-we-go-again pity, Nash concluded, is "just a self-fulfilling prophecy."

So he came back and flourished, offering up a decent facsimile of the 36-year-old who shredded the Spurs for 33 points and 10 assists in a tone-setting Game 1. The Spurs responded with plenty of their trademark toughness -- Tony Parker, for example, had to get a pre-game painkiller shot in his posterior to deal with his sore shoulder and back after multiple falls in Game 3 -- but couldn't prevent their 15th successive loss in the playoffs when surrendering 100 points.

"It just hard to guard those guys -- for us to guard them -- for 48 minutes," Popovich said. "You have to be pretty perfect. We have to be pretty perfect."

It proved too much to ask. The Spurs quietly managed to hold Jason Richardson under 20 points for the third successive game -- well aware that Phoenix is 30-4 this season when Richardson gets to 20 -- and still couldn't avoid the sight of a joyous Stoudemire, walking off the podium as Nash was heading for the microphone, to make a giddy joke about his own eye issues last season.

"Two-Time with the Stoudemire vision," Amare said to his point guard.

For once they're leaving this town with a laugh ... along with an endorsement from Duncan about their chances of surprising the mighty Lakers next.

None of this was expected back in October when the Suns convened for training camp, or even as recently as February when Stoudemire was nearly dealt before the trading deadline. Now?

The Suns are on a 36-9 roll since Jan. 26. And it certainly can't hurt Nash, Lopez or Grant Hill -- reincarnated at 37 as a defensive stopper -- that the Suns' trip to the conference finals probably won't start for another week.

"The way they're playing," Duncan said, "they have a chance against anyone."

By Marc Stein

Malik Sealy’s Death Remembered by Kevin Garnett

2010-05-10T02:03:00.000-06:00

Malik Sealy (February 1, 1970 – May 20, 2000) was a professional American basketball player who was active from 1992 until his death in 2000. He was Kevin Garnett’s most admired player and also his close friend.

Malik Sealy was first seen as a college varsity player for St. John’s College. In that college, Malik caught the eye of the young ‘Kid’, Kevin Garnett. Kevin Garnett also had the same team number as Malik, 21. At the year 1999, they became team mates under the team of the Timberwolves.
During their reign in the NBA arena, Sealy and Garnett were inseparable due to their bond together as close friends, but at the date of May 19, 2000, Sealy went with KG to a party to celebrate Garnett’s 24 birthday.
As Sealy went home at the morning of May 20, 2000, he had a car collision which caused his death.

Now, as Kevin Garnett celebrates his 34 birthday, he remembers the death of his team mate, and close friend, Malik Sealy.

Einsel Davenport

Braden throws 19th perfect game

2010-05-10T02:01:00.000-06:00

When Cliff Pennington picked up the roller by Gabe Kapler and flung the ball to first, Dallas Braden came off the mound - his mound - and he gave a little undercut fist pump. Then he raised his arms in triumph as he was mobbed by his teammates near first base.

Braden, 26, had just thrown the 19th perfect game in big-league history, and the second in A's franchise history. He retired all 27 men he faced Sunday, and there weren't even any near misses or close plays in Oakland's 4-0 victory over Tampa Bay.

"I just let Dallas work," A's catcher Landon Powell said. "He was magical."

Braden did something he insists he is incapable of doing: He dominated the league's top team, keeping hitters honest with his inside fastball and then fooling them with the great movement on his changeup.

"The guy had the pitches when he needed them," sad Rays third baseman Evan Longoria, who was in the lineup last year when Chicago's Mark Buehrle threw the majors' last perfect game, also against Tampa Bay. "I didn't see two pitches in the same spot the whole game. And that was the same way Buehrle was on the day he did it. He had something special going."

Many of the A's said they sensed something unusual might happen, even in the early innings as Braden was making short order of the Rays. Powell said he started to get nervous in the sixth inning. "Not for me, for Dallas," Powell said.

Third baseman Kevin Kouzmanoff described the feeling in the dugout and on the field as one of nervous energy, and he put that to good use: He ran into the A's dugout to chase down a foul ball by Carlos Peña for the second out of the eighth inning. Then Braden struck out B.J. Upton, and the mood was, according to Kouzmanoff, "It's gonna happen. It's gonna happen!"

Braden took the mound to a standing ovation in the ninth, and the crowd of 12,228 remained on their feet. Braden might have been the least anxious person in the building; the effervescent left-hander was just taking it all in.

"Running out there and hearing everyone yelling was pretty cool," he said, then he added jokingly. " 'I've never pitched a complete game before - is that what they're yelling about?' "

First, Willy Aybar hit a soft, curving liner to first that Daric Barton corralled. Then Dioner Navarro lined out to Eric Patterson in left, and Kapler, on a 3-1 pitch, hit the grounder to shortstop, where Pennington was waiting.

"You know the situation, obviously," Pennington said. "It's one of those things - you've got to do everything right. It's like, 'Oh, God, here we go.' But it was good. It was great. It was perfect."

Then Pennington dashed over to congratulate Mr. History. "I had my arms around him, I was jumping up and down," Pennington said.

Asked if he'd even thrown a no-hitter before at any level, Braden said, "In Little League, I had a couple under my belt. And in the bullpen, I'm damn near perfect every day."

Navarro's liner in the ninth and a lineout by Peña in the fifth might have been the most difficult plays of the game, Braden said. Jason Bartlett hit a shot toward third to open the game, but Kouzmanoff got it with a real big stretch.

In the sixth, Kapler had the best at-bat of the day against Braden, who needed 12 pitches before getting him to hit a foul pop toward third.

"I was thinking maybe the knuckleball, the gyroball, the behind-the-back pitch, because I'd tried everything else," Braden said. "I threw him a 64 mph screwball and he fouled it off. I threw him one more pitch and it was the correct location."

Braden threw first-pitch strikes to 17 of 27 hitters. He went to three-ball counts only four times, including the last batter.

"I'm not going to blow anything by anyone," Braden said. "I just need them not to square it up."

"It's a great feeling to know the guy on the mound is in control," A's pitching coach Curt Young said. "That's really the art of pitching, right there."

Still in full uniform an hour after the game, and doing nonstop interviews, Braden had the game ball and the Tampa Bay lineup card, personalized by Rays manager Joe Maddon, in front of him.

"Of all the games ever played, only 19?" Young said of Braden's perfecto. "Wow."

A's no-hitters

Oakland

Sunday, Dallas Braden vs. Tampa Bay, 4-0-x

June 29, 1990, Dave Stewart at Toronto, 5-0

Sept. 29, 1983, Mike Warren vs. Chicago, 3-0

Sept. 28, 1975, Vida Blue (5 innings), Glenn Abbott (1), Paul Lindblad (1) and Rollie Fingers (2) vs. California, 5-0

Sept. 21, 1970, Vida Blue vs. Minnesota, 6-0

May 8, 1968, Catfish Hunter vs. Minnesota, 4-0-x

Philadelphia

Sept. 3, 1947, Bill McCahan vs. Washington, 3-0

Sept. 9, 1945, Dick Fowler vs. St. Louis, 1-0

Aug. 26, 1916, Joe Bush vs. Cleveland, 5-0

May 12, 1910, Charles Bender vs. Cleveland, 4-0

July 22, 1905, Weldon Henley at St. Louis, 6-0

No-hitters vs. Tampa Bay Rays

May 9, 2010, Dallas Braden, A's, 4-0-x

July 23, 2009, Mark Buehrle, White Sox, 5-0-x

April 27, 2002, Derek Lowe, Red Sox, 10-0

27 up, 27 down

1. Bartlett lined out to third

2. Crawford grounded out to first

3. Zobrist flied out to center

4. Longoria flied out to center

5. Peña grounded out to first

6. Upton struck out looking

7. Aybar struck out looking

8. Navarro lined out to center

9. Kapler flied out to left

10. Bartlett grounded out to third

11. Crawford struck out swinging

12. Zobrist grounded out to short

13. Longoria struck out swinging

14. Peña flied out to left

15. Upton grounded out to third

16. Aybar struck out swinging

17. Navarro fouled out to third

18. Kapler fouled out to third

19. Bartlett lined out to left

20. Crawford grounded out to second

21. Zobrist flied out to right

22. Longoria flied out to center

23. Peña fouled out to third

24. Upton struck out swinging

25. Aybar lined out to first

26. Navarro lined out to left

27. Kapler grounded out to short

Susan Slusser, Chronicle Staff Writer

Jesse Stone: No Remorse on CBS Network

2010-05-10T01:52:00.000-06:00

Jesse Stone: No Remorse, starring Emmy and Golden Globe Award winner Tom Selleck, will be broadcast Sunday, May 9th, on the CBS Television Network. Jesse Stone: No Remorse is the sixth entry in the CBS series of TV-movies based on the characters created by the late Robert B. Parker – and the first to not be based, in any way, on a Parker novel.

In No Remorse, police chief Jesse Stone (Tom Selleck), who was suspended by the Paradise, Mass. Town Council, begins moonlighting for his friend, State Homicide Commander Healy, by investigating a series of murders in Boston, leaving Rose and Suitcase to handle a crime spree in Paradise on their own. Jesse pours his energy into his work in an effort to push away his twin demons: booze and women. When his investigation leads to notorious mob boss Gino Fish, Jesse’s pursuit becomes hazardous.

Kathy Baker (“Picket Fences”) and Kohl Sudduth (“Grosse Pointe”) reprise their roles as Rose Gammon and Luther “Suitcase” Simpson, the only police officers in Paradise. Stephen McHattie (“2012″) reprises his role as State Homicide Commander Healy, as does William Devane (“24″) as Jesse’s psychiatrist, Dr. Dix, and William Sadler (“The Shawshank Redemption”) as Gino Fish. Saul Rubinek (“Warehouse 13″) returns as Hasty Hathaway, fresh from a stint in prison, and Krista Allen (“The Starter Wife”) joins the cast as Hathaway’s ex-wife, Cissy, who never misses an opportunity to tell Jesse she’s interested.

Elena Kagan Personal Life

2010-05-10T01:50:00.002-06:00

Elena Kagan Personal Life, Elena Kagan (pronounced /?ke???n/), born April 28, 1960) is Solicitor General of the United States. She is the first woman to hold that office, having been nominated by President Barack Obama on January 26, 2009, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 19, 2009. Kagan was formerly dean of Harvard Law School and Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Law at Harvard University. She was previously a professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. She served as Associate White House Counsel under President Bill Clinton.

Late in the evening of May 9, 2010, MSNBC, followed by the New York Times, reported that Kagan will be nominated as an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing retiring Justice John Paul Stevens, by President Obama on May 10, 2010.[3][4] If nominated and confirmed, she would become the fourth female Supreme Court justice in United States history and third on the court’s current bench. She would also be the eighth Jewish justice in United States history and the third on the current bench.

Airports reopen after volcanic ash cloud air disruption

2010-05-10T01:49:00.000-06:00

Airports across Europe are reopening after travellers faced weekend flight disruption caused by the volcanic ash cloud.

Most European airports, bar a few in Portugal, are due to open as normal.

Eurocontrol, the European air safety body, said some airspace closures were still in place over Iceland, the Atlantic and Portugal.

Porto Santo and Funchal, in Madeira, and Cascais and Lisbon in Portugal will remain closed until at least 1000 GMT.

In all, more than 200 flights were grounded over the weekend in Portugal, including 71 at Lisbon's airport.

There will still be re-routing of aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean on Monday, which may cause some delays.

UK air traffic control service Nats has no airspace closures.

Portugal, France and Austria were all forced to ground some flights on Sunday night.

Abta's Frances Tuke says volcanic ash is hitting air travel less than in April

In Italy, airports at Milan, Pisa and Florence reopened after midday but disruption was widespread and there were delays for UK-bound flights.

And French authorities grounded at least 70 flights bound for southern Europe from airports in Paris, Lyon, and Nice.

Spanish airspace began returning to normal on Sunday after 19 airports in the north of the country were closed on Saturday.

However, seven airports - Asturias, Santander, Bilbao, Salamanca, Valladolid, Leon and Burgos - were forced to close again from 1600 BST on Sunday.

In Scotland, airports in Inverness, Kirkwall, Wick, Benbecula and Stornoway were shut for a time, but later reopened.

And the Irish Aviation Authority imposed restrictions on Donegal, Sligo and Knock airports in the west of the country on Sunday afternoon

Last month, ash from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano shut down airspace across Europe for five days.

Recent images have shown activity in the volcano increasing and emitting ash up to 20,000ft (6,000m).

Passengers are urged to check details of their flights before travelling to the airport.

Michelle Obama honors her mom, South Sider Marian Robinson, at Mothers Day Tea

2010-05-10T01:47:00.002-06:00

WASHINGTON--First Lady Michelle Obama celebrated Mothers Day at the White House early this year, with a Friday tea that honored her "mommy" Marian Robinson, who left Chicago's South Side to move in with the First Family and others, including former First Lady Rosalynn Carter and daughters and grandaughters of Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon. There were cabinet members, military spouses and "Sex and the City" star Cynthia Nixon--not the daughter of the president, that's Patricia, and she was there.

Clark finally gets US win at Players Championship

2010-05-10T01:46:00.000-06:00

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Tim Clark was good enough to win on three continents and play on three Presidents Cup teams. He was better than everyone but Phil Mickelson in the 2006 Masters.

Good enough to win on the PGA Tour? Clark was starting to wonder.

In more than eight years and 204 tournaments on golf's toughest circuit, he was a runner-up eight times but nothing more. The worst moment was last year at Colonial, where he missed two putts to win, in regulation and a playoff.

"There was a part of me that thought, 'Man, what have I been doing?' When you play that many tournaments, and when you have weeks where you feel like you've played well enough to win and you haven't, it gets a bit frustrating," Clark said. "You do start to wonder, 'When is it going to happen for me?'

"Luckily for me, this week I did play my best," he said. "That's about as good as I can play."

Regarded as one of the best players to have never won on the PGA Tour, Clark ended that conversation Sunday by beating the best field in golf at The Players Championship.

And he did it in style.

Trailing by seven shots going into the weekend, Clark set a TPC Sawgrass record with the largest 36-hole comeback, breaking by one the previous mark by Tiger Woods in 2001.

On a frightening Stadium Course that played its toughest in the final round — the greens were so firm they were brown — he didn't make a single bogey. The 34-year-old South African dropped only one shot on the weekend, and he played the final 26 holes at par or better.

The streak never mattered more than on the final hole.

Having survived the famous island-green 17th hole, Clark faced an 8-foot par putt on the 18th hole. He had a two-shot lead over Robert Allenby of Australia and Lee Westwood of England, but they still had three holes to play, including the par-5 16th that could easily be reached in two shots with an iron.

For Clark, it was about the same length he faced at Colonial last year. It was close to the same length of the birdie putt at the Bob Hope Classic this year, when he finished one shot behind.

"I knew I needed that putt, and I knew I needed it at the Colonial," Clark said. "Today, I just trusted myself and just tried to get into that shot and tried to hit that shot as best as I could. That's really the whole key. I think in the past, I've maybe been thinking about winning way too much. Today, I just tried to hit every shot as good as I could."

Allenby hit them just as well. He just didn't hit two putts quite hard enough.

Allenby can relate to Clark, having won plenty around the world, but not on the PGA Tour since September 2001. Two shots behind, he drilled his approach into 18 feet for eagle and a share of the lead. It lacked just enough pace to fall in.

One shot behind on the 17th, Allenby hit another pure shot that cleared the water, the bunker and looked as though it would funnel to the hole for a tap-in birdie. Instead, it checked up. His putt looked good all the way until it rolled up to the edge of the cup, then turned away. Allenby was so shocked he walked to the edge of the water, and no one would have blamed him for jumping in.

"For it to go up to the hole and take a little look over the top and then come back, that was a bit rude," Allenby said. "But obviously, the golfing gods were with Tim today, and I can accept that. I did everything that I could possibly do to try and win the tournament."

Allenby closed with a 70 to finish runner-up for the seventh time since his last PGA Tour victory.

Clark finished at 16-under 272 and earned $1.71 million from the richest prize in golf. It comes with a five-year exemption on the PGA Tour, and a three-year exemption to the Masters.

U.S. Open champion Lucas Glover wound up third with a strong finish — a 31 on the back nine, including a 50-foot birdie putt on the 17th.

Westwood tied for fourth, four shots behind, although he had as good of a chance as anyone. He had a one-shot lead going into the final round, just as he did at the Masters, and held it going to the back nine.

Clark, however, ran off four straight birdies starting and ending with 18-foot putts on No. 9 and No. 12 to take the lead. Westwood, who made so many clutch pars early in the round, kept within two shots by making a 50-foot par on the 15th.

But his birdie putt caught the lip on the 16th, and his tee shot on the 17th clattered against the boards and went into the water, giving him a double bogey.

"Disappointed, but not something I'm going to pull my hair out over," Westwood said. "If you don't play well, you don't deserve to win. And I just didn't play well over the weekend."

No one will question whether Clark played well. He was simply at his best.

"I did all I could out there," Clark said when he finished his round. "That's as good as I could have played. I feel like I hit every shot I like I wanted to today."

It led to the best feeling of all — a victory on the PGA Tour.

By DOUG FERGUSON

Arroyo's shadow over Philippines election

2010-05-10T01:44:00.000-06:00

Manila, Philippines

After a mud-slinging presidential campaign, some 50 million Filipinos are heading to the polls Monday to choose from a field dominated by the son of a beloved former president and a wealthy real-estate developer.

Philippines election: Doubts arise over electronic voting machines

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who took office in 2001, isn’t eligible to run. But her legacy, and her influence, has loomed over the contest. While her own party’s candidate has kept his distance from her, the frontrunners have accused one another of being in her pocket, a slur that is considered a major turn-off for voters, such is the president’s unpopularity.
“The main issue in this campaign is not corruption. It’s not poverty. It’s Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,” says Ramon Casiple, who runs the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila.

Lame-duck presidents are often a liability, as during the 2008 US presidential campaign in which John McCain steered clear of outgoing President Bush. But Arroyo’s negative drag is amplified by deep suspicion of her political ambitions after she steps down as president in June.

In an unusual move, Arroyo is running for Congress in her home district in central Luzon. From fading away, she seems determined to stay on the political stage. With enough seats, her party says it would propose Arroyo as House Speaker, setting up a potential rivalry with the next president.

Avoiding the incumbent

Leading the pack is Sen. Benigno Aquino, son of former President Corazon Aquino. Since February, he has pulled ahead of second-placed opponent, Sen. Manuel Villar, a real-estate tycoon. Mr. Villar has been dogged by speculation that Arroyo is secretly backing him and not her party’s struggling candidate, Gilberto Teodoro. Commentators call the alleged joint candidacy "Villaroyo," combining the two surnames.

Villar has denied any dealings with Arroyo. His side has shot back with a similar allegation against Mr. Aquino, using the coinage "Gloriaquino," and identifying several members of Aquino’s family who serve in Arroyo’s administration. Villar has argued that he doesn’t need help from Arroyo as he has plenty of his own money for campaigning.

But analysts say the "Villaroyo" tag has stuck, in part because pro-Aquino media has pushed it hard. There has also been a stampede of ruling-party defections to Villar, as well as reports that the party isn’t investing heavily on its presidential hopeful, suggesting that resources and orders are going elsewhere.

Alberto Lim, executive director of the Makati Business Club, a lobby group that favors Aquino, says the outgoing president isn’t leaving anything to chance. “(Arroyo) has several irons in the fire. She’s not just betting on one house. That’s why Villaroyo is not so far-fetched,” he says.

Arroyo's plans

By running for Congress and allegedly making deals with presidential frontrunners, Arroyo may simply be trying to stay in the political game. Some opponents have warned that she is angling to become a future prime minister under a long-mooted and still inchoate plan of constitutional reform.

But a more likely explanation is legal and political protection after she loses her presidential immunity, says Prospero De Vera, an expert on elections at the University of the Philippines. Civil-rights groups are planning to sue Arroyo over human-rights abuses, including the disappearance or murder of hundreds of activists, mostly from leftist groups that are targeted by security forces in anti-communist campaigns. Her administration has also been dogged by several corruption scandals.

Philippines election: Doubts arise over electronic voting machines

“A lot of civil society groups are waiting to bring cases against her locally and internationally,” says De Vera, who is an unpaid advisor to Villar.

Much of the campaign has turned on personality attacks, with Villar’s rags-to-riches narrative being picked apart by Aquino’s camp and retaliatory attempts to frame Aquino as an idle aristocrat. Most candidates have sought to win over voters by promising to tackle poverty and revive the economy, but have offered few specifics on how to plug the budget deficit or advance the peace process in troubled Mindanao.

Fears of violence

The election process remains a big concern. Widespread vote-rigging in 2004, allegedly at Arroyo’s behest, cast a shadow over the poll results. Some of the most egregious cheating was in Maguindanao province, where 57 people were massacred last November in a political dispute. On April 17, the government dropped murder charges against two members of the Ampatuan family blamed for the massacre, a move that sparked protest from relatives of the dead, then reapplied them. The Ampatuans are longtime allies of Arroyo.

This time the national ballot count will be fully automated, in what critics say is a risky bet on the efficiency of counting machines that have had a mixed run in other countries. Election monitors have warned that power cuts may disrupt the count and that voters haven’t been taught properly how to fill out the new type of ballot.

In a close race, any breakdown in the counting system might spark unrest, warns Mr. Lim. Already, dozens were killed during the campaign season, and four more were shot dead on Monday. “If people don’t believe in the process, there could be blood on the streets,” he says.

By Simon Montlake

Pound strengthens against US dollar

2010-05-10T01:41:00.000-06:00

The pound has risen against the dollar and leading shares have jumped sharply despite continuing uncertainty about who will form the next UK government.

However, sterling fell sharply against the euro after European leaders agreed measures to try to stop the Greek debt crisis affecting other countries.

The pound rose by almost a cent against the dollar to $1.4865. Against the euro it fell by a cent to 1.1510 euros.

The FTSE 100 rose 3.4% in early trading, after sharp falls on Friday.

Last week's UK general election failed to give any party a clear majority.

The major parties have been holding talks to try to form a coalition government.

Reports of progress on the talks seem to have calmed investors' nerves for the time being.

Sharp falls

However, there are fears that if the process takes too long, the pound and share prices could be hit.

The main concern is that a weak government will not be able to pass measures to reduce the UK's budget deficit quickly.

The pound fell sharply against the dollar on Thursday - the day of the general election - and Friday.

It also fell heavily against the euro at the end of last week.

The political uncertainty also hit shares, with the FTSE 100 index losing 2.6% on Friday.

Emergency funding

The pound's fall against the euro on Monday had less to do with concerns about the political situation in the UK, and more to do with the measures agreed in Europe to tackle the Greek debt crisis, which threatens to engulf other highly-indebted nations.

On Sunday, European Union finance ministers brokered a 500bn euro ($649bn; £436bn) emergency loan deal.

Under the terms of the deal, the 16 members of the eurozone will have access to 440bn euros of loan guarantees and 60bn euros of emergency European Commission funding.

In addition, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will also contribute up to 250bn euros.

On Friday, eurozone leaders approved an 110bn-euro loan package to Greece, which will be backed by the EU and IMF.

Braden's grandmother put him on right track

2010-05-10T01:39:00.000-06:00

Perfect pitcher's closest relative steered him toward success

OAKLAND -- Dallas Braden's undying love for his hometown of Stockton, Calif., extends much farther than the rather large "209" tattoo inked across his midsection honoring the city's area code, and is exemplified by his closest relative.

That much has been evident by his numerous volunteer efforts in the Stockton community, where he still calls home just five blocks from his grandmother, Peggy Lindsey -- the selfless woman who raised Braden by herself following his mother's death when he was in high school.

On Sunday, he took that love and shared it with several fellow Stockton natives by offering them a special ticket deal in Section 209 at the Oakland Coliseum, where fans from his hometown and surrounding areas -- including his grandmother -- cheered him on against the visiting Rays.

Braden plans on extending the half-price discount ($12) for a handful of games he pitches in this year, but it's safe to assume none of those will amount to the historic measures that came out of Sunday's outing.

The A's lefty tossed just the 19th perfect game in Major League history in a 4-0 victory over the Rays, who entered the series with baseball's best record. It also marked Braden's first career complete game and the sixth no-hitter in Oakland history.

To be able to do it not only in front of Lindsey on Mother's Day but in the presence of those who surrounded his upbringing made an already perfect day "pretty cool," Braden admitted with a smile.

"I didn't know that today was going to be the first day of the ticket deal until earlier this week," he said. "Everything like that coming together in my mind, it's something that I never thought I'd be a part of in terms of big league baseball -- that I'm going to have this section of mine for people to sit in, and that I'm going to be toeing the rubber on Mother's Day with everything we've gone through. So in that respect, it's pretty special."

The city of Stockton likely feels the same way -- especially considering the roller-coaster ride that has been Braden's life. Long before making a name for himself wearing a Major League uniform, Braden didn't exactly pave a path for himself to succeed at all, let alone as a professional baseball player.

As a student at Amos Alonzo Stagg High School, Braden found himself kicked off the baseball team during his freshman and junior years for not making grades and "doing other stuff." He mentioned he missed 79 of 81 days during a quarter in his junior year, a point during which Lindsey put a stop to all the nonsense.

"I veered off enough to only play two years of high school baseball," he said. "I was not doing what I should have been doing when I should have been doing it. I was doing pretty much everything in my power to take every opportunity that my mother and grandmother have given me away. But she wasn't going to let that happen.

"My grandmother just made it very clear to me that all the sacrifices my mom had made and that she had made and the life that we had led up till that point was all to get me on the baseball field and to keep me out of jail. ... She made it very clear like, 'This is what we're going to do.' She didn't leave an option."

Thus, Braden quit his trips to Chico, where he had friends at the school he deemed "a pretty cool party college." Rather, he took to the diamond again and eventually ended up at American River College and Texas Tech University before being selected by the A's in the 24th round of the 2004 First-Year Player Draft.

Braden spent four years in Oakland's Minor League system, including a stint for his hometown Stockton Ports in 2005 and '06, before making his Major League debut in '07 in Baltimore, where Lindsey sat in the stands just as she does at every home game.

It was no different on Sunday, when she arrived at the Coliseum for a tailgate at 9 a.m. on Mother's Day.

"It's very exciting," she said. "We had a lot of friends with us from Stockton visiting today. ... Dal and I are really close. We've been close since Dallas was born."

Following Braden's historic performance, Lindsey said she planned to celebrate with her grandson back in Stockton, where the two are so much more than just neighbors.

"It's phenomenal having her so close," Braden said. "Any time she needs anything or any time I start to worry, I can go over there or she can come over to me. We've got over 30 close, close, close-knit friends -- when I say close, I mean 30 people that I can leave my house to and would not have a problem with it. It's not just neighbors, these are people that I've grown up with, and so she's got a pretty big network. They were all here."

By Jane Lee

US solicitor general Elena Kagan to be nominated to Supreme Court

2010-05-10T01:37:00.000-06:00

President Barack Obama will today nominate Elena Kagan, the US solicitor general, for the American Supreme Court.

The former dean of Harvard Law school will become only the fourth woman to serve on America’s highest court, after Mr Obama chose hispanic Sonia Sotomayor last year.

Ms Kagan, 50, who will replace retiring liberal Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, if she is confirmed by the Democratic-controlled Senate will be the youngest member of the current court.

A high-powered legal scholar and veteran of the Clinton White House, Ms Kagan, unlike most Supreme Court nominees has not served for years as a judge. Some liberal and legal interest groups had pressured the president to chose someone from outside the “judicial monastery.”

She is also said to have cultivated ties with some conservatives, which could help her prospects of confirmation.

Mr Obama said in April that he would chose a replacement for liberal icon Mr Stevens who “knows that in a democracy, powerful interests must not be allowed to drown out the voices of ordinary citizens.”

Republicans may make a show of opposing Kagan’s nomination, but many observers believe that she is almost certain to win Senate confirmation.

When she was facing Senate confirmation as solicitor general, Attorney General Eric Holder praised Ms Kagan’s “intelligence, experience and commitment to the rule of law.” She was confirmed to serve as solicitor general last year by 61 votes to 31 in the Senate.

Ms Kagan, who was passed over by Mr Obama last year when he chose Ms Sotomayor as his first Supreme Court nomination will be only the fourth woman after Sandra Day O’Connor, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Ms Sotomayor, who made history as the first Hispanic justice, to sit on the nation’s top court.

A 1981 graduate of Princeton University, Ms Kagan completed her studies at Harvard Law School in 1986, leaving just two years before Mr Obama arrived there.

She was professor of law in Chicago, Mr Obama’s home town and was chosen by then President Bill Clinton to serve as his associate counsel and then advisor on domestic policy between 1995 to 1999.

During her time with the Clinton administration, Kagan cultivated contacts with many of the lawyers now serving in various capacities in the Obama administration.

She went on to become a visiting professor of law at Harvard in 1999 and then professor of law in 2001. She was appointed dean in 2003.

In a letter to the Harvard Law School when Mr Obama chose her as solicitor general, Ms Kagan said she had accepted the nomination “to help advance this nation’s commitment to the rule of law at what I think is a critical time in our history.”

Anne Barrowclough

Obama picks Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court

2010-05-10T01:35:00.000-06:00

Founding dean of the School of Law at the University of California at Irvine

No one is surprised that Elena Kagan is President Obama's pick to replace Justice John Paul Stevens. Like Sonia Sotomayor last year, she is someone sure to be confirmed by the Senate and will require little of the president's political capital. Kagan is impeccably qualified. Unlike other recent nominees, she has a small paper trail. She's never been a judge, so there are no prior opinions to scrutinize. She's written only five major law review articles, and none are controversial.

On the other hand, that is the risk in Obama's selection of Kagan: no one is sure of her views on key issues. Presidents who have picked nominees without a paper trail often have been stunned by the results. David Souter, for example, had been a justice on the New Hampshire Supreme Court, but no one knew where he was on the ideological continuum. He deeply disappointed Republicans after being selected by President George H. W. Bush when he turned out to be a fairly liberal justice. No one knows whether Kagan will be as liberal as Stevens, more conservative or even more liberal. And no one will know until she's on the high court.

ERWIN CHEMERINSKY

Be frank when facing temptation of franks

2010-05-10T01:32:00.000-06:00

Have you ever been to Las Vegas? If you have, you know the opportunity to gamble hits you as soon as you deplane. Slot machines welcome you at nearly every gate, drawing you in with pings, dings and electronic sounds. Come on, "throw a few in" before hitting the Strip.

For me, going home to Chicago is the same kind of experience, except instead of blinking one-armed bandits I am welcomed by the temptations of Chicago food, starting with the famous Chicago-style hot dog available at the stand right there inside O'Hare Airport.

It's a soft sesame seed hot dog bun, a Vienna Beef frank, mustard, onions, green relish, hot peppers, cucumbers, tomato slices and a pickle wedge topped off with a sprinkle of celery salt. Now that's good eatin.'

Some of you might be saying, "That's too much to put on a hot dog." Well, it isn't. That's why hot dogs are famous in Chicago. They are a part of the city.

Whenever I go home, my friends here ask me if I'm going to have any of that Chicago pizza or Italian beef.

Well, the answer is never easy. I say no. "This trip I might have my favorite Chinese food (at least an egg roll or two) or maybe a hot dog." I have to be sooooo careful whenever I go home because a trip home usually means being tempted by the same foods that helped me grow to more than 400 pounds.

Going home and eating is so automatic, instant and, most of all, dangerous. It's all the foods I love in my favorite place in the world. It's comforting, but very tempting to have my being home experience begin as soon as I get off the plane.

Do I enjoy myself? You bet! But now I am almost hyper aware of my surroundings, situations and emotions whenever I'm near my favorite Chinese food places, hot dog stands, Italian beef purveyors, pizza parlors, fried chicken eateries, rib joints or restaurants.

An egg roll here and an order of French fries covered in homemade BBQ sauce there and it's all over. This is what I have to think about when I go home.

Nowadays, I am better. Not perfect, but better, about eating when I go home. I give myself a big pep talk before stepping foot on the plane. I tell myself, "OK, Larson. I'm sending you into the game. You know you need to make smart choices. If you're going to have this, you can't have that. Got it? Now go get 'em!"

And if I am lucky I avoid giving in to all the culinary temptations that surround me on almost at every street corner.

However, I do admit that having slot machines (and hot dog stands) in the airport is a smart idea. They may or may not get you coming in, but if you've had that much fun on your trip you'll want just one last taste before heading back to reality.

That's what I feel in the airport. Whenever I'm home I have such a blast, walking the streets, hanging with friends and eating my favorite foods. I want just one more taste of Chicago before heading back to South Jersey. You know, one more hot dog for the road.

Bill Larson

Nirvana 'Nevermind' Baby Works For Barack Obama Poster Designer

2010-05-07T06:38:00.000-06:00

The baby on the cover of Nirvana's 'Nevermind' has secured a job with President Barack Obama's 'HOPE' poster designer Shepard Fairey.

The now 19-year-old Spencer Elden is employed by Fairey's 'Obey' company in Los Angeles and works on a variety of projects including making record covers.

As well as the iconic 'HOPE' posters in support of the then Democrat candidate in 2008, Fairey also created the famous 'OBEY Giant' images of Andre The Giant in the nineties.

Speaking about his work with Fairey, Elden said: “I’ve always loved art. My Dad’s an artist – he works in the film industry and makes custom props. I used to help him out when I could.

“Having Shepherd as a boss is pretty awesome. He’s very inspiring”.

Elden also spoke about the famous Nirvana cover on the promotional video posted on Vimeo.

“My nickname is Nirvana Baby,” he said. “That's because I'm the baby on the front of the Nirvana album. It's kind of a fun fact about me I guess – everyone in the world has seen my penis.”

Explaining how it came about, he added: “My parents were going to art school with a photographer Kirk Weddle so they kind of supported him.

“He kind of got this portfolio together of underwater photography and his first big job was this Nirvana baby shoot.

“He called up my dad and said 'I've got my first big shoot and they're paying me to take this baby underwater and I don't have a baby', well I was just born so they took me down to the local pool and threw me in.”

Scott Colothan

CHP blitz slowing on Bay Bridge S-curve

2010-05-07T06:35:00.000-06:00

Fewer squad cars will assemble on the Bay Bridge to prevent accidents involving S-curve speeders.

Nearly $4 million, largely taken from bridge tolls, has already been spent enforcing the curve’s 40 mph speed limit during a safety blitz that will start to wind down.

Caltrans, the state agency that manages the bridge, isn’t recovering enforcement costs from tickets issued to speeding S-curve motorists. That money largely goes to counties.

To save money, fewer officers will be deployed to target S-curve speeders, according to Tony Anziano, a Caltrans official who oversees toll bridges.

The reduction could cut costs from $660,000 to $270,000 a month, but details have not been finalized.

“The intention is for people to understand that there is going to be enhanced enforcement out there,” Anziano said. “Exactly when it’s going to be and where it’s going to be will be determined on an ongoing basis.”

The enforcement blitz began Nov. 11, two days after truck driver Tahir Sheikh Fakhar plunged to his death from the snaking roadway, which was installed in September to reroute traffic while a replacement span is built.

Officials say Fakhar was traveling at 50 mph, the bridge’s normal speed limit, in the special 40 mph zone.

California has not responded to a claim filed by Fakhar’s family that alleges the roadway’s condition was dangerous and defective, attorney Lewis Van Blois said Thursday.

The tragedy followed two months of traffic-snarling nonfatal crashes and flipped vehicles.

The California Highway Patrol has deployed 11 officers daily since November to police speeds, according to John Goodwin, Metropolitan Transportation Commission spokesman.

Increased speed-limit enforcement was among many steps taken to slow traffic.

Rumble strips, additional signage, reflective striping and nighttime lane closures have helped slow traffic. Fencing was installed to prevent vehicles from flipping over the guardrail.

“We haven’t had any major roadway-closing accidents or fatalities since Nov. 11,” Goodwin said. “The vast majority of drivers have been driving safely through the corridor.”

The rate of accidents at the S-curve fell from nearly six per week to roughly 1.6 per week after militant speed enforcement began, figures show.

New roadway sensors will track traffic speed and patrols could be stepped up again if speeding problems grow, according to Goodwin.

The curve will be used until construction is finished on a replacement eastern span between Yerba Buena Island and Oakland. That’s expected in 2013 or later.

John Upton

Ellen Barkin Won $4.3 Million Suit From Ron Perlman

2010-05-07T06:30:00.000-06:00

Ellen Barkin, an American actress and film producer. Good news is that she won the suit from her ex-husband Ron Perlman, which costs $4.3 million. Judge ordered Ron Perlman to pay the huge amount of $4.3 million to Ellen Barkin.

Ellen and Ron had a five year marriage relationship and they agreed to split in the year 2006. She won this money in Apple head contract. According to Manhattan Supreme Court Justice, Debra James, Apple head contract and the divorce agreement were separate deals.

In this case, the judgement was given in favor of Ellen Barkin. But, Ellen Barkin was not satisfied with the justice; she expected $20 to $60 million. Ron Perlman was ordered to pay an amount of $3.4 million along with interest. So, the net amount would become $4.3 million.

She wants to invest this amount for her film production company, Barkin’s Production’s company which was co- founded by his ex husband, Ron Perlman.

E. coli forces lettuce recall; 19 ill in 3 states

2010-05-07T06:28:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON — A food company is recalling lettuce sold in 23 states and the District of Columbia because of an E. coli outbreak that has sickened at least 19 people, three of them with life-threatening symptoms.

The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that 12 people had been hospitalized and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was looking at 10 other cases probably linked to the outbreak.

Freshway Foods of Sidney, Ohio, said it was recalling romaine lettuce sold under the Freshway and Imperial Sysco brands because of a possible link to the E. coli outbreak.

College students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Ohio State in Columbus and Daemen College in Amherst, N.Y., are among those affected, according to local health departments in those states.

The FDA is focusing its investigation on lettuce grown in Arizona as a possible source for the outbreak, according to two people who have been briefed by the agency. Donna Rosenbaum, director of the food safety advocacy group Safe Tables Our Priority and one of those briefed, said the agency held a phone call with public health advocates Thursday.

Rosenbaum and other public health advocates have long been pushing for stronger food safety laws. The House passed a bill last year that would give the agency much more authority to police food production, but the Senate has not acted on it.

The New York state Public Health Laboratory in Albany discovered the contamination in a bag of Freshway Foods shredded romaine lettuce on Wednesday after local authorities had been investigating the outbreak for several weeks. The bag of lettuce came from a processing facility that was also linked to the illnesses, the FDA said. The agency would not disclose the name of that facility or its location but said an investigation was under way.

E. coli infection can cause mild diarrhea or more severe complications, including kidney damage. The three patients with life-threatening symptoms were diagnosed with hemolytic uremic syndrome, which can cause bleeding in the brain or kidneys.

It was not immediately clear why students on college campuses were sickened. Freshway Foods said the lettuce was sold to wholesalers, food service outlets, in-store salad bars and delis.

Susan Cerniglia, spokeswoman for the public health department in Washtenaw County, where the University of Michigan is located, said it doesn't appear that students who were sickened ate the contaminated food on campus. It is believed they may have been sickened at local restaurants, she said.The Erie County, N.Y., health department issued an alert late last month, however, that linked at least one diagnosis of E. coli to a student who ate at a Daemen College dining facility.

The most common strain of E. coli found in U.S. patients is E. coli O157. The CDC said the strain linked to the lettuce, E. coli 0145, is more difficult to identify and may go unreported.

Freshway Foods said in a statement Thursday that the FDA informed the company about the positive test in New York on Wednesday afternoon. The statement said "an extensive FDA investigation" of Freshway Foods' facility in Sidney has not uncovered any contamination at the plant.

The recalled lettuce has a "best if used by" date of May 12 or earlier. The recall also affects "grab and go" salads sold at Kroger, Giant Eagle, Ingles Markets and Marsh grocery stores.

The lettuce was sold in Alabama, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

By MARY CLARE JALONICK