Sitting at a computer for long periods of time could kill you, according to a new study reported in the February 2003 edition of the European Respiratory Journal.
It says there is a risk of developing life-threatening blood clots from sitting for long periods at a computer, similar to a problem that has injured or killed some airline passengers on long flights.
The report centers on a case from New Zealand in which a young man who spent up to 18 hours a day sitting at his computer nearly died after developing a massive blood clot that formed in his leg veins, broke off and traveled to his lungs, a condition called pulmonary embolism.
This new disorder has been termed "e-thrombosis" by the authors to describe what may become the 21st century variant of thrombosis associated with immobility from prolonged sitting. This condition was first described in people sitting in deck chairs in air raid shelters during the Blitz in London and subsequently identified with prolonged air travel.
Dr. Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand and his colleagues warn that there may be a large unrecognised risk of developing blood clots in this situation when the widespread use of computers in so many aspects of modern life is considered.
"It may be similar to the situation with the risk of blood clots with long distance air travel — it was not until there was publicity with individual cases that the real extent of the problem was recognised," he says.
The authors recommend that, with the current state of knowledge, it would seem prudent to advise all people who commonly sit for prolonged periods at a computer to undertake frequent leg and foot exercises and to take regular breaks away from their computer.
Akron- A U.S. Postal Service manager was forced to disrobe and walk naked in front of about a dozen employees yesterday morning by a colleague who threatened to kill her unless she complied.
Lonnie Wilson, 60, who planned to retire on Friday, is in Summit County Jail, charged with kidnapping, aggravated menacing and gross sexual imposition.
"We have no idea what led to this," Terrence Sullivan, a postal inspector from Cleveland, said. "They didn't work together, and we can't understand why this occurred."
Wilson, of Canton, was a revenue assurance specialist. He worked in a section of offices adjoining a Postal Service encoding facility, where workers type in codes for the destination of handwritten letters that cannot be read by automated machines, Sullivan said.
Wilson had worked for the Postal Service for 24 years and had no prior problems.
The 43-year-old Akron woman worked in the same office area, in marketing, but normally did not interact with him. Sullivan did not know how long she had worked there.
At 8:30 a.m. yesterday, Wilson approached the woman, became angry and said he was going to kill her if she didn't do what he said, according to police reports. He ordered her to disrobe and forced her to walk in front of employees. He also hugged her and told her to kiss him, the report said.
Sullivan said Wilson, at 6 feet 5 and 235 pounds, can be physically intimidating. He did not have a weapon, but employees were scared.
As Wilson left the building, police were arriving. He drove away slowly, followed by police, and was stopped a short distance from the Exeter Avenue building. He is scheduled to be arraigned today in Akron Municipal Court.
Sullivan said Wilson will be placed on administrative leave. The locks to the building have been changed, and he has no access to computers.
Counselors will be available to talk to the woman and the employees.
"We are very concerned about the victim," Sullivan said. "She was not physically harmed, but emotionally she had a very rough day, the first of some rough days."
Mary Wilson Concerned For Diana Ross
January 29, 6 a.m. ET, Launch
Mary Wilson is one of the many artists showing their concern for Diana Ross following her December DUI arrest in Tucson, Arizona.
When asked if she's had a chance to speak with Ross during the last few weeks, Wilson said, "I have not spoken to her but I would love to. I really have tried to reach out to her but I can't reach her. I can't get in touch with her."
When Ross launched the Supremes reunion tour several years ago, Wilson was left out of the lineup. Despite any ill feelings Wilson might have had towards her former groupmate over the snub, she took the high road and refused to speculate on what exactly could be occurring with Ross. "You know, that's very personal," Wilson said. "I think that people go through things in their lives. And unfortunately for entertainers, you know, our lives are in the papers for everyone to scrutinize, and I don't want to be the one to talk on that."
Singers Rick James, Teena Marie Hope to Tour Again
by NewsRoom/Reuters/Variety
Singers Rick James, Teena Marie Hope to Tour Again
Fri Jan 24, 9:59 AM ET Add Entertainment - Reuters/Variety Music to My Yahoo!
By Franklin Paul
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Soul singers Rick James and Teena Marie, two of the 1980s best-known performers, have traveled vastly different paths since they made hits together, but they hope to collaborate again on a joint tour this year.
In the 1980s, James, 54, and Marie, 46, sustained solo careers driven by a knack for both floor-shaking funk jams, such as his "Give It To Me Baby," and touching love songs.
James produced her 1979 debut album "Wild and Peaceful" and wrote most of its songs, including their hit duet "I'm Just a Sucker for Your Love." Their most popular collaboration was "Fire and Desire," a heartbreaking 1981 ballad about a failed relationship.
Both enter 2003 optimistically, fueled by new projects, all the while hoping to leaving behind decades of record industry troubles and, in James' case, illness and prison.
"We are back together again. We have two things on her new album and a tune on mine, and we are going on tour," James told Reuters in a recent interview.
Despite their enthusiasm for what would be their first joint tour in almost two decades, no firm plans exist yet. A spokesman for Universal Music, the current parent of Motown Records, was not aware of dates for any joint concerts.
FOREVER LINKED
While they each scored numerous solo hits, rhythm and blues history links them forever. Marie, a white, 4-foot-11-inch (150 cm) guitar player gifted with a robust bluesy voice, was signed while still a teen-ager by Berry Gordy to join his legendary Motown label, where she joined a roster made famous by its African-American soul artists.
Her debut album was a hit, even though Gordy and James decided that her picture should not appear on its cover because they thought audiences would be less willing to accept her if they knew she was white.
Today, Marie says her memories of Motown are mixed.
"I don't think that I could have had the career that I had were I not there," she said by telephone from her Los Angeles home. "I understood what they were saying and it kind of made sense. Rick and Berry are brilliant individuals and I felt they probably knew what they were talking about."
James and Marie's potential 2003 return comes on the heels of the release of remastered versions of critical 1981 Motown albums for both: "Street Songs," James's biggest seller, and Marie's "It Must Be Magic."
Ironically, "Magic" was Marie's last album for Motown. Money woes drove her away from the place where she recorded hits like "Portuguese Love" and rubbed elbows with greats like Stevie Wonder. Legal action yielded the "Teena Marie law," which protects artists rights, and she eventually won a suit against the label for nonpayment of royalties.
"There were certain things that happened back then that make me feel a little funny sometimes," she said. "Rick and I had the No. 1 and No. 2 albums that summer, and we were selling out on tour, but I didn't make any money."
STAYING CLOSE
Marie and James did not work together again after she left Motown. But despite ups and downs in their friendship, they have stayed close and she sang at his mother's funeral in 1991.
Her fate improved after she moved to Epic Records, where Marie, born Mary Christine Brockert, went on to string together more hits, such as "Lovergirl."
Her luck turned again, for the worse, in 1994 when she tried to record, produce, press and distribute an album without the help of a major label. To put it mildly, "Passion Play" was a business disaster.
"I have 40,000 CDs in my garage," she said as she cooked a meal at home. "We sold about 100,000 copies, but I learned not to do it by myself again."
Since then she's been touring sporadically, recording when she can and raising her daughter, Alia. She has been grinding out songs for her new package of original songs, "Black Rain," for almost four years but won't try to publish it on her own.
This time she is paired with an unlikely group -- the gold-teeth-flaunting hip-hop crew at Cash Money Records, home of the Grammy-nominated duo the Big Tymers. It's a savvy deal: Cash Money broadens its roster to rhythm and blues, and Marie gains a machine that has proven it can sell records.
James applauds Marie's decision, but said he wants to go it alone with his plan to sell a double-album of new cuts later this year.
"She feels comfortable with a company: I don't, and I have the intelligence and I do the due diligence," he said. "I know what it takes to make a record happen."
'SUPERFREAK'
In the late 1970s, James first used that winning formula to help resuscitate Motown after its star had begun to fade, with his flavor of brash, no-holds-barred funk. Created with his Stone City Band, James melded his percussive bass with disco's energy to make "let-me-hold-you-tight" grooves.
The height of his wining streak was "Street Songs," whose party-life themes, such as "Superfreak," reflected the rascality of James and his crew.
"It was the best time of my life," he said. "We were doing groundbreaking tours, and a lot of drugs and drank a lot. We didn't know anything about Betty Ford or addiction in those days. It's hard to reflect and remember those times, they are very vague to me -- a lot of it is a haze."
Misfortune followed for James. He served two years in prison for a 1993 conviction on charges of assaulting two women while under the influence of cocaine and suffered a stroke in 1998 caused by a condition known as rock 'n' roll neck, brought on by whiplash-like motion of the head and neck on stage.
And in November, Los Angeles police began probing allegations that James sexually assaulted a woman at his home. James contends he was the victim of a financially motivated smear campaign.
Still, his music, like Teena Marie's, has remained in demand, a sign they hope that audiences will want their live shows as much as they want to perform them. Their baselines thrive in the hip-hop genre, which has borrowed from each to make hits, such as The Fugees reworking of her "Ooh La La La," and his "Superfreak," known best as the key to MC Hammer's 1990s phenomenon "U Can't Touch This."
"She's ready and I'm ready and people are ready for it," said James. "They are ready for some love."
By Jane Macartney and Bernhard Warner
Reuters
Saturday, January 25, 2003; 10:53 AM
SEOUL/LONDON (Reuters) - A rapidly spreading computer worm on Saturday infested networks and bogged down Internet traffic across the globe, crippling online services in one of the world's most wired countries, South Korea.
Called "Sapphire" or "SQL Slammer," the worm carries a self-regenerating mechanism that enables it to multiply quickly across the Internet, said Mikko Hypponen, manager of anti-virus research at F-Secure, the Helsinki-based computer security firm.
"It is so good at replicating that it generates massive amounts of traffic that will slow down networks," Hypponen said. "The end user never sees it. They only experience the slowdown on the Net."
Security experts blamed the worm for crashing almost all Internet services in South Korea.
It was the first time South Korea's broadband and mobile Internet services have been shut down on such a scale, although hackers are fairly active in the country where 70 percent of households have Internet access.
"It is highly likely hackers have launched an all-out attack on the country's Internet system," Yonhap news agency quoted an official of the Ministry of Information and Communication as saying.
CODE RED SIMILARITIES
The problem was not limited to South Korea, with systems slowing from Japan to Europe to the United States, officials said.
The worm has been likened to the "Code Red" bug of July, 2001, an infestation that slowed traffic dramatically on the Internet. The authors of that malicious code remain a mystery.
The worm infects computer servers that run on Microsoft Windows 2000 SQL software. Once it attaches to a server it transmits multiple data requests in a random manner to other IP addresses on the Internet looking for more vulnerable servers to infect.
The effect is a flood of traffic that bogs down ISP networks and can even knock Web sites off-line, Hypponen said. He added the worm was probably installed on a faulty server by a virus writer or hacker within the past few days.
A patch is available on Microsoft's Web site, www.microsoft.com, he added.
Left unchecked, Hypponen warned that the worm could continue to create large network disruptions for ISP customers, plus knock out some Web sites over the coming days.
Hypponen said it had disabled the email server of a corporate client in Slovenia. Meanwhile, ISP customers in the United States and Britain lodged distress notes on Internet message boards on Saturday complaining about slowdowns in Internet traffic.
TARGET: SOUTH KOREA
The biggest impact appeared to be in South Korea, however, where police were called in to investigate the matter.
The infestation impacted the country's largest ISP, KT Corp, bringing down its entire Internet service, said a company spokesman.
He said services were down for several hours in the afternoon but were now recovering. However, the networks of number two operator Hanaro Telecom Inc and number three Thrunet Co were still experiencing trouble.
The crash was triggered by a huge volume of transmissions flowing into KT's Hyehwa service in Seoul, officials said.
All of South Korea's major high-speed Internet services use the KT server, so all suffered the same interruption of service.
Graham Cluley of Sophos Anti-Virus, a UK virus detection firm, said the first reports to his firm came from companies in Asia. A number of companies in Europe have also contacted the firm reporting a degradation in Internet speed, he added.
AOL, the world's largest ISP with over 35 million subscribers, appeared to survive unscathed. A spokesman for AOL the Time Warner Internet unit said the worm had no impact on its service.
Ja Rule & Ashanti Booed At Philly Football Game
January 22, 8 p.m. ET, Launch
Murder Inc. Records superstars Ja Rule and Ashanti weren't greeted with the cheers they're used to when they performed at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia on Sunday (January 19). The two artists performed Ja Rule's latest hit, "Mesmerize," to a chorus of boos during halftime at the NFC Championship game between the Philadelphia Eagles and Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Ja Rule was so taken aback that he spat on the stage before exiting.
Sunday's booing wasn't the first time that the "City Of Brotherly Love" failed to show love to a visiting recording artist. Philadelphians booed Destiny's Child in June of 2001 during their halftime performance at Game Three of the NBA Finals between the Philadelphia 76ers and Los Angeles Lakers.
Ja Rule's latest effort, The Last Temptation, has been greeted with lukewarm sales and is Number 11 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Although the set has been certified platinum, the rapper will need a strong sales boost to maintain his run of consecutive triple-platinum albums. His 2000 set, Rule 3:36, as well as 2001's Pain Is Love were both certified triple-platinum for sales of three million copies.
Student leaders and administration are beginning a dialogue and responding to questions surrounding an off-campus ghetto-themed party that at least one student considered racially offensive after it made national news this past week.
Texas A&M Student Body President Zac Coventry paraphrased a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., calling for students to "stand together and speak up about things that matter."
Memorial Student Center (MSC) Council President Barry Hammond said the party was offensive to him as a minority student.
"It is obviously making fun of a prominent African-American leader and is disrespectful of the whole culture," he said.
Hammond, a senior finance major, said an event of this type was never OK.
"Any time anyone dresses up in blackface it is not appropriate," he said.
The party was a yearly event that usually fell around the birthday of King, one of the few national holidays that A&M observes with a day off for students and faculty.
University officials learned of the event from a fax signed "Sorry, but I cannot give my name." The memo accused Walton residents and staff of participating in a "ML King party" where party-goers dress in "blackface or other negative stereotypes of African Americans."
It indicated that members of the Walton staff were "the moving force behind organizing the event," and also involved former members of Walton Hall.
University officials are investigating both the Walton Hall Council and Walton Residential Advisers (RAs). While flyers advertising the party were apparently distributed in Walton Hall, Walton RAs say they had no former knowledge of the event.
A&M President Dr. Robert M. Gates said the event does not reflect a climate of racism on campus.
"I think it was a case of poor judgment on the part of a few students," he said. "It is illustrative of the kind of problem we have to deal with at A&M where minorities do not feel welcome here."
Former yell leader and recent graduate Arouna "Boo Boo" Davies said that he was one of the many students who attended the same party last year.
"I did go to the party. I thought it was wrong from the beginning but it wasn't meant to be a racist event," he said. "The way people dressed, it might have looked racist, but it was just a theme. The whole thing has been blown way out of proportion."
Briggs Hall Council President Veronica Garza said she attended the party in 2002 and did not find it racially offensive.
"There were a lot of minorities at the party," said Garza, a Hispanic and sophomore French major. "That's why I don't understand what the big deal is. We are bombarded by these 'negative images' by MTV and BET all the time. Yet when there is a 'thug' party, we are called racist. It doesn't make sense."
University officials are concerned that the "ghetto" party fosters the unwelcoming environment that Gates' Vision 2020 diversity plan is aimed at eliminating.
Ron Sasse, director of Residence Life, said in an A&M news release that such an event could only serve to "disgrace, divide and deteriorate the campus environment that Texas A&M is working diligently to build."
Residence Life officials delivered "strongly worded letters condemning such actions" to students at Walton hall and will "provide training sessions to make them more aware of the adverse affects of their actions," according to a University news release.
NEW YORK - The people who run the MuchMusic USA cable channel believe they can build a solid business by following the model essentially abandoned by MTV about 15 years ago.
The danger is: An MTV offshoot may have beaten them to the punch.
Seen now in nearly 30 million homes in the United States (out of 107 million with TV), MuchMusic USA is trying to become MTV's first serious competition. It claims to be about music, nothing else, and will take its direction from its 12- to 24-year-old audience.
MTV started two decades ago primarily airing music videos. But its executives quickly learned that fickle viewers would turn away if they saw a video, or an ad, they didn't like. MTV needed other programming to survive.
With cultural phenomena including "Beavis & Butt-Head," "Real World," "Jackass" and "The Osbournes," MTV has not only survived, but thrived. The network is a powerful brand and huge money-maker for its parent company, Viacom (which also owns CBS, UPN and the Paramount movie studio).
But it lost something along the way, said Marc Juris, president of MuchMusic USA.
"They're just not a music network anymore," he said. "They're a lifestyle network, although they don't want to say it."
MuchMusic was a Canadian service, started in 1984, and began simulcasting on some U.S. cable and satellite systems a decade later. The Long Island-based Rainbow Media bought the U.S. network in 2000 and has been replacing the Canadian programming with an all-U.S. feed.
The network airs a heavy dose of videos, concerts and profiles with an interactive twist.
"There's an audience out there of music lovers that isn't being served," Juris said. "So we built the network on what they want and how they want it."
"Oven Fresh" plays new videos and lets viewers vote on whether they join the regular rotation. "Soundtrack to Your Life" interviews viewers about songs that are important to them and "Dedicate Live" allows fans to dedicate songs and e-mails the recipient.
One heavy metal fan, Juliya Chernesky, proved so persistent and sharp in her observations that MuchMusic gave her a show. She was 12 when Guns N' Roses' "Appetite for Destruction" album "changed my life," she said.
Now 20 and a Hunter College student, she chooses the playlist and interviews stars for "Uranium," a show about hard rock.
"I can say that I think this band is really great and they say, "Go for it,' " Chernesky said. "I don't think there's any other network that allows you to have so much freedom of expression. I state my opinions and don't worry about being politically correct or anything."
If MTV was just MTV, MuchMusic would be a clear alternative. But Viacom also owns MTV2, which has a much sharper focus on music and a distinct advantage in reach. MTV2 is currently seen in some 47 million homes.
MTV2 was also nimble and savvy enough to air a two-hour documentary on the Clash just hours after receiving word that its former lead singer, Joe Strummer, had died last month.
"We're in more homes and, based on just our mix of live concerts and music videos and special music blocks, we look at ourselves as blazing our own trail," said Tom Calderone, executive vice president of music and talent at the MTV Networks and a Buffalo State College alumnus. "We don't really look at MuchMusic. The distribution is not there."
Bob Chiappardi, president of the music marketing firm Concrete Media, said the penetration level prevents MuchMusic from being a major player in the industry at this point.
"No one ever says, "I just got played on MuchMusic,' " said Chiappardi, who conceded he's working with another company planning a venture into music television.
There's evidence that some artists are interested in MuchMusic: Melissa Etheridge, Wyclef Jean, Alanis Morissette and Buffalo's Goo Goo Dolls have all made concert appearances for the network.
Juris believes MTV2 is not a priority at Viacom. "Their effort, their energy and their passion goes into MTV," he said. "MTV2 is not the flagship."
Young music fans love the sense of discovery when it comes to music, and don't like to be dictated to, Juris said. They're looking for something other than what Viacom - which also operates VH1 and VH1 Classic - has to offer, he said.
"They are the establishment," he said. "We have a much more edgy, raw feel. It's not some company telling you what you like."
While he can't deny that the MTV networks all have the same ownership, Calderone said each channel is separate and distinct with different leadership. "It's not like there's one big conference room where the same people sit down and decide what to do for all of them," he said.
Juris believes his target audience will root for the underdog.
"MTV is a marketing machine, and kids are increasingly perceptive and intuitive about that," he said. "There's also an opportunity in being the other guy. Avis made a big business out of it. People like choice."
Pete Townshend has been arrested on suspicion of possessing, making and of incitement to distribute indecent images of children.
He is currently in custody at a south-west London police station.
A Scotland Yard spokesman confirms two arrest warrants have been executed at separate addresses in Richmond, Surrey.
A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "He has been arrested under the Protection of Children Act 1978 on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children, suspicion of making indecent images of children and on suspicion of incitement to distribute indecent images of children."
"One address is a business address and the other is residential. A number of items, including computers, have been removed from the residential address for forensic examination.
"The Met are not discussing the matter further. Officers from the major investigations team, part of the Child Protection command, are conducting the inquiry."
WHO NEEDS BUFFALO? NIAGARA FALLS NOW WNY'S POWER CITY
by Niagara Falls Reporter
WHO NEEDS BUFFALO? NIAGARA FALLS NOW WNY'S POWER CITY
By Mike Hudson
It was nice to have a week off, especially a week as hectic as the one that saw the opening of the Seneca Niagara Casino. The Reporter hosted two visiting journalists who came to town for the event -- Mike Adams of the Baltimore Sun and Shea Dean, who writes for "Reader's Digest," "Harper's" and other national publications.
Adams was here in July, and did an excellent piece that appeared on the Sun's front page complete with a photo of Eddie Gadawski. It's hard to believe that, as recently as last summer, a lot of people still didn't believe the casino would open, much less that it would open on schedule.
After the opening, both Adams and Dean crossed the river to check out Casino Niagara and came back reporting the Seneca Niagara Casino was superior in every respect.
Seneca gaming sources said it took all of 15 hours for the casino to make its first million dollars, that's roughly $1,000 a minute. And the Senecas weren't the only ones making money. On New Year's Eve, Flo Acotto's Press Box restaurant on Niagara Street was packed from lunch on, and by 10 p.m. patrons were standing four deep at the bar and nearly every steak in the cooler had been eaten.
The casino bar, named the 101 Club both for the number of Seneca referendum votes that passed the gaming initiative and the number of days it took from the start of construction to opening day, apparently isn't having the negative impact on local watering holes some had feared.
There were still some isolated naysayers. One guy called the office to complain he couldn't find a place to park on the street near his South End home and we heard a few of the usual comments from a few of the usual old-timers still longing for the days when the petrochemical industry was king here.
It becomes harder and harder to have any patience with such people. The 2,000 men and women working at the casino are averaging $30,000 a year apiece, and that means a $60 million annual shot in the arm for the Niagara economy. People who were putting off buying that new washing machine, replacing their old jalopy or going out to dinner at their favorite restaurant because of economic uncertainty now have jobs in an industry that's here to stay.
You're not going to be reading any stories about casino layoffs, and that kind of consumer confidence will benefit everyone doing business in the area.
On the Canadian side, the opening of the casino led to the creation of 6,000 new hotel rooms and thousands of jobs in that industry.
Hell, maybe John Prozeralik will be able to hire a breakfast chef at his Days Inn Riverview and we won't have to eat his cooking anymore.
"They just turned the lights back on in Niagara Falls, New York," Canadian developer Eddy Cogan told me last week. "You're not going to believe how fast things happen from here on in. Those lights are just going to get brighter and brighter."
In addition to the thousands of casino jobs and the thousands of new hotel jobs that will be created in the near future, members of the building trades unions will see a boom unlike anything they've experienced since the 1970s. The Senecas already have plans on the table for a new, 400-room luxury hotel, a second casino and a 3,000-car parking garage that should keep any number of electricians, carpenters, laborers, pipefitters and plumbers busy for years to come.
And again, the result will be a huge infusion of cash for businesses in every sector throughout the city.
The opening of the casino has returned Niagara Falls to the position of power it once enjoyed in the region, and should make it harder for people like Niagara USA Chamber CEO Bobby Newman to sell people here the line that we need help from Buffalo to succeed.
The biggest problem here now is the region's political leadership. Niagara Falls Mayor Irene Elia -- whose family helped finance Niagara County Legislature Chairman-elect Sean O'Connor's Majestic Tours -- has her own ideas about who should benefit from the largess that is certain to come.
Who star link to paedophile probe
Saturday, January 11, 2003 Posted: 1810 GMT
Townshend: "I think I may have been sexually abused as a child and I was doing research into it"
RICHMOND, England -- Rock legend Pete Townshend has issued a public statement denying being a paedophile after his name was linked with a police Internet porn inquiry.
But The Who guitarist and song-writer did admit studying child pornography for research into a campaign against it. He told reporters on Saturday that he told police what he was doing.
Standing on the doorstep of his mansion in Richmond, in south-west London, the Press Association reported the 57-year-old star as saying: "I am not a paedophile. I think paedophilia is appalling."
Townshend, who is married with children, continued: "To fight against paedophilia, you have to know what's out there.
"I have been involved in a campaign against paedophilia on the Internet but it fizzled out.
"I think I may have been sexually abused as a child and I was doing research into it. I've been writing my life story and the research is for a book.
"I've been in touch with Scotland Yard to tell them what I was doing. I have contacted them but no police officers have contacted me.
"I am waiting for the police to talk to me but they haven't been round. I have done a lot of work on paedophilia and my Web site has highlighted it.
"I have looked into the abuse that children have suffered in Chechnya and Kosovo and the portrayal of these children on the Internet and it appals me.
"I was worried this might happen and I think this could be the most damaging thing to my career."
The Press Association reporter told CNN that Townshend appeared "earnest and serious" during the interview.
The reporter said that following the statement he gave on his doorstep, Townshend later issued a second, fuller written statement to the press. (Statement)
The star said he was interested in adult porn, adding: "I've always been into pornography and I have used it all my life.
"I'm going to talk to my lawyers to see what happens next."
Asked if he had a message for his fans, or if he planned to make a statement, he said: "I am not a paedophile. I want to clear my name."
Leaving his home, he said: "I'm going to see my son. I've not been charged with anything. I've always been warned about campaigning about this."
He added: "I'm hoping that this will go away. I've been warned not to say anything on this."
Reporters questioned Townshend following a report in two British tabloid newspapers, The Daily Mail and The Sun, that details of an unnamed internationally-famous musician had been passed to detectives dealing with an American pay-per-view porn ring.
The Daily Mail said Scotland Yard officers were now investigating and deciding whether to make an arrest.
A Scotland Yard spokeswoman refused to discuss details of the inquiry.
She told CNN. "We can't confirm that we are investigating a British rock star. We don't discuss individuals," said a spokesman.
British police are conducting their largest-ever investigation, code-named Operation Ore, into online paedophilia and child pornography.
About 1,300 people, including a judge, magistrates, dentists, hospital consultants and a deputy headmaster, have so far been arrested.
In 1999 British pop star Gary Glitter was jailed for four months after indecent pictures of children were found on his laptop computer.
Earlier this week the former glam rock star, real name Paul Gadd, was arrested in Cambodia and deported from the country.
In another case, singer, record producer and broadcaster Jonathan King was jailed for seven years in 2001 for sex attacks on five boys.
NEW YORK (Variety) - The newly created RCA Music Group will lay off about 50 staffers from its RCA Records and J Records labels as part of an effort to trim back-office expenses and build a new team under recently installed chief Clive Davis.
The layoffs, which had been expected, came two months after parent BMG bought the half of J it didn't already own from Davis, pairing it with RCA Records to form the group. Davis then replaced the outgoing Robert Jamieson as group chief.
The cuts will hit hardest at RCA, which has a more substantial back-office infrastructure. Sources close to the company say the promotion and sales departments at both labels will take the brunt, with some additional downsizing in A&R.
"Staff reductions at RCA Music Group are part of our effort to eliminate duplicate positions and responsibilities among certain areas at RCA Records and J Records," the company said in a statement. "These changes won't affect the independent creative integrity of the two labels."
RCA is riding high with Christina Aguilera (news)'s "Stripped" and an Elvis Presley (news) hits package, while J is resurrecting Rod Stewart's career.
Anti-censorship groups say freedom of speech is at stake
A German man could be jailed for three years over a comment posted on the internet, in which prosecutors say he belittled the events of 11 September.
Congratulations to the murderers of 11.09.02
In a case which critics say has major implications for freedom of speech on the internet, Holger Voss stands accused of "glorification of a criminal act".
Mr Voss, who will appear in court in the western German town of Muenster on Wednesday, insists his comments were meant to be sarcastic.
He had written a final sentence at the foot of his remarks - posted last summer on the Telepolis message board - which he says indicates that the sentiments expressed were not to be taken seriously.
"The court will decide whether he did indeed mean them ironically, and if so, whether or not that makes any difference," court spokesman Juergen Wrobel told BBC News Online.
Anonymous tip-off
The apparently offending remarks were made in response to a message posted by another internet user - Engine_of_Aggression - who appeared to be pleased about the alleged murders of thousands of Taleban fighters by local militias during the downfall of the Afghan regime in 2001.
"Congratulations to the people, who in this over-critical time, dare to grab evil at its root and eradicate it from the face of the earth!" wrote Engine_of_Aggression.
Mr Voss, who describes himself as an anti-militarist, responded:
"Yes, Congratulations to the murderers of 11.09.02.... Good, that on 11.09 a couple of real men (!) found the courage to show the evil ones, the USA how it really is!"
An anonymous complaint to the police led to the prosecution under a German law which forbids the glorification of a criminal act.
In a statement posted on the anti-censorship site Stop24, Mr Voss insists he was attempting to display the hypocrisy in valuing American lives over others.
The suit has also sparked controversy as the prosecution forced the owner of the discussion board to hand over details about Mr Voss.
Federal investigators searched the New York offices of Murder Inc., the record label home of Ja Rule and Ashanti, on Friday as part of an ongoing investigation into label head Irv Gotti, according to The Los Angeles Times.
On Saturday, the newspaper reported that a yearlong investigation into an alleged financial link between Gotti and a New York drug gang called the "Supreme Team" led to the raid. Authorities are reportedly investigating whether or not money from drug tafficking helped Gotti, real name Irving Lorenzo, break into the music business. Specifically, authorities are reportedly investigating an alleged link between Gotti and Kenneth McGriff, the convicted head of the Supreme Team.
The Times also reported that authorities are looking into allegations of money laundering and a number of attacks as part of their investigation.
Agents from the FBI and the New York Police Department reportedly seized computers and documents during the raid, according to the Times.
McGriff — who co-produced and co-wrote the Murder Inc. film "Crime Partners 2000" — was reportedly arrested in 1988 and eventually convicted on federal narcotics conspiracy charges.
It was the most traumatic experience the Smoak family of North Carolina has ever had, and it happened yesterday afternoon as they traveled through Cookeville on their way home from a vacation in Nashville.
Before their ordeal was over, three members of the family had been yanked out of their car and handcuffed on the side of Interstate 40 in downtown Cookeville, and their beloved dog, Patton, had been shot to death by a police officer as they watched.
What was their crime?
There was no crime.
But a passerby with a cell phone apparently assumed a crime had occurred when a wallet flew from a car on Interstate 40 near Nashville.
That citizen called police and inadvertently set in motion what would make it the most horrible vacation the James Smoak family of Saluda, North Carolina, has ever had.
Today, the Smoak children and their parents were still weeping over what happened to them in Cookeville.
By today, they had also filed complaints with two police agencies, prompting internal investigations, they had met with Tennessee Highway Patrol Capt. Randy Hoover, and they were on their way to talk to Cookeville Mayor Charles Womack.
Because official internal investigations are underway at the Tennessee Highway Patrol and at the Cookeville Police Dept., the Herald-Citizen was unable to get details of those two agencies' accounts of the incident.
But the Smoak family willingly told their story to anyone who would listen; they hope by doing so that something might be done to prevent it from happening to another family.
James Smoak, 38, who was traveling in the family station wagon with his wife, Pamela, their 17-year-old son, Brandon, and the family's two pet bulldogs, Patton and Cassie, had lost his wallet after stopping for gas as they left Davidson County on Wednesday afternoon.
But he didn't know he lost it. Apparently, he had placed it on top of the car while pumping gas, and it flew off somewhere on the highway a short time later.
Not knowing his wallet was lost, he and his family traveled on, heading east on their way home to North Carolina.
A few cars behind James and Pamela's station wagon, his parents and the two younger Smoak children were traveling in the elder Smoak's car.
Just a few miles east of Cookeville, James Smoak began to notice that a THP squad car was following him, though the officer was not pulling him over, just staying behind him, changing lanes any time Smoak did, moving in and out of traffic each time Smoak did.
"It was obvious he was looking at me, not at other vehicles, and I'm thinking I must have done something (in my driving), but I don't know what," Smoak said today.
When Smoak reached the 287 exit area in Cookeville, three other police cars suddenly appeared, and the trooper then turned on blue lights and pulled the Smoak car over.
"I immediately pulled to the side, and expecting him to come to the window, I started reaching for my wallet to get my license and it was not there," Smoak said.
About that time, he heard the officer broadcast orders over a bullhorn, telling him to toss the keys out the car window and get out with his hands up and walk backwards to the rear of the car.
Still not knowing what he was being stopped for, Smoak obeyed, and when he reached the back of the car, with a gun pointed at Smoak, the trooper ordered him to get on his knees, face the back of the car and put his head down.
When he did that, the officer handcuffed him and placed him in the patrol car. Then the same orders were blared over the bullhorn to "passenger" and Pamela Smoak got out with her hands up, was ordered to the ground, held at gunpoint, and handcuffed. Next, Brandon was ordered out and handcuffed in the same way.
Terrified at what was happening to them for no reason they knew, the family was also immediately concerned about their two pet dogs being left in the car there on the highway with the car doors open.
"We kept asking the officers -- there were several officers by now -- to close the car doors because of our dogs, but they didn't do it," said Pamela Smoak.
And as the officers worked in the late evening darkness, their weapons drawn as the Smoaks were being handcuffed, the dog Patton came out of the car and headed toward one of the Cookeville Police officers who was assisting the THP.
"That officer had a flashlight on his shotgun, and the dog was going toward that light and the officer shot him, just blew his head off," said Pamela Smoak.
"We had begged them to shut the car doors so our dogs wouldn't get out, and they didn't do that."
As the dog was heading out of the car toward the officer, "we had yelled, begging them to let us get him, but the officer shot him," she said.
Grieving for their dog and in shock over their apparent arrest for some unknown crime, the family could only wait. At one point, one state trooper did tell them they "matched the description" in a robbery that had occurred in Davidson County, Pamela Smoak said.
The ordeal went on for a time after that, the family terrified and in grief over the dog.
Finally, after a time, someone in authority figured out that the officers here had stopped and were holding the very family that someone in Davidson County had assumed had been robbed, though how that assumption grew to the authorization for a felony stop, James Smoak cannot understand, he said today.
"Finally, they asked me my name and I told them my name, date of birth, and other information, and they talked by radio to someone in Davidson County and finally realized that a mistake had been made," he said.
"A lady in Davidson County had seen that wallet fly off our car and had seen money coming out of it and going all over the road, and somehow that became a felony and they made a felony stop, but no robbery or felony had happened," Pamela Smoak said.
"Apparently, they had listened to some citizen with a cell phone and let her play detective down there," said James Smoak.
"Here we are just a family on vacation, and we had to suffer this."
When the officers did discover the mistake, "they said, 'Okay, we're releasing you and we're sorry,'" Smoak said.
As soon as Brandon was released from the handcuffs, he rushed over to the dead dog and began to cry, Smoak said.
And that's when one of the most infuriating parts of the ordeal happened, according to James Smoak.
"I saw one of the THP officers walk over to the city officer who had shot the dog and grin," he said.
He reported that to the supervising officer, THP Lt. Jerry Andrews, and Andrews "was very nice, very professional," Smoak said.
"He told me the officer was not laughing, but I know he was," said Smoak.
Smoak's parents had come along behind the other car and had seen all the commotion and stopped too, and now all three children were crying over their pet dog, as they were still doing today.
The Smoaks gathered the body of their pet and went to a motel here to spend the night. But they didn't get much rest, and at one point, James Smoak became so upset he had to go to the hospital for medical treatment.
They also worked throughout last night to contact all the authorities they could in order to lodge their complaints about what had happened.
Today, Beth Womack, a THP spokesperson in Nashville, told the H-C that an Internal Affairs investigation is underway and that every effort will be made to "find out exactly what happened and why."
"As I understand it, a report was made in Davidson County to our officers that this car had been seen leaving at a high rate of speed and that a significant amount of money had come out of the car and someone became suspicious," she said.
An internal investigation is also underway at the Cookeville Police Dept., Capt. Nathan Honeycutt told the H-C today.
James Smoak wonders about the logic of "a robber who would be tossing the money out of the car."
He also wonders about police procedure that would "take this insinuation from a citizen" and "turn it into what happened to us."
"Out there after they handcuffed us at gunpoint and put us in the police cars, they did not ask for ID, and later on, they actually released us just on my word about my identity, with only the confirmation by radio from an officer in Davidson County who was looking at my lost wallet and the ID in it down there," he said. "What if I actually had been a robber and not just a family man on vacation?"
His children hope they never come to Tennessee for another vacation.
"Poor Patton," said 13-year-old Jeb Smoak. "When he was killed out there, it was the first time I ever saw my brother, Brandon, cry. Brandon is the toughest person I've ever met, and he cried."
The other dog, a puppy named Cassie, was "trembling all over" after the ordeal, Jeb Smoak said.
"She's being real quiet today. She knows we're all grieving."
James Smoak, though still deeply upset today, said he understands that "the officer will say the dog was coming after him."
But it could all have been prevented, didn't have to happen, he is convinced.
In addition to telling his family's story to Capt. Randy Hoover, who "was very nice and very professional," and to a Cookeville Police official last night and to Mayor Womack today, Smoak also plans to tell his lawyer, he said.
"And I also want to tell it to the Tennessee Department of Tourism," he said.
A federal judge in New York blocked the deportation of Ricky "Slick Rick" Walters on Friday (Dec. 27), giving the rapper fresh hope of winning his battle to stay in the U.S. Judge Kimba Wood's decision allows Walters, 37, to fight a deportation order stemming from his attempted murder conviction for shooting a cousin, the cousin's pregnant girlfriend, and a bystander.
The shooting occurred in 1990, a year after Walters' Def Jam solo debut album, "The Great Adventures of Slick Rick," went platinum. He pleaded guilty and spent five years in a New York prison.
Alex Solomiany, Walters' lawyer, said he was happy Wood agreed to block the deportation, which had been expected to take place Saturday. Solomiany said the judge found there was a substantial possibility that Walters could show he should not be deported. An immigration judge earlier decided that Walters should be allowed to stay because he had rehabilitated himself.
Under Wood's order, Walters will remain in the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Bradenton, Fla. The rapper has lived in the U.S. since he was 11, but had been prepared to move to England, his birthplace. In June, INS agents enforcing a U.S. law requiring deportation of foreigners convicted of violent felonies arrested him aboard a cruise ship. He has been jailed ever since.
"This is a good start," Solomiany said. Prosecutors did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Jamie Wilson
Monday December 30, 2002
The Guardian
Channel 4 was yesterday back in the dock over plans to broadcast a programme showing a performance artist eating the flesh of a dead baby.
The documentary, Beijing Swings, which looks at the extreme practices of some artists in China, also shows a man drinking wine that has had an amputated penis marinaded in it.
The programme, which has been condemned by the Chinese embassy in London, will be broadcast on Thursday night. A spokesman for Channel 4 said last night: "The programme will be controversial and will shock some viewers but a warning will be given before it goes out on air."
The documentary shows stills of Zhu Yu, the artist, biting into the body of a stillborn infant. He says: "No religion forbids cannibalism. Nor can I find any law which prevents us from eating people. I took advantage of the space between morality and the law and based my work on it."
Zhu, who is a Christian, says religion has had a major impact on his work.
But the Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, said: "Jesus Christ said suffer the little ones to come unto me, not that they should be eaten for public entertainment. This programme sounds hideous."
Damages for slavery legacy sought
Southern writer fights for reparations
By JANITA POE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
NEW ORLEANS -- Antoinette Harrell-Miller says companies that profited from slavery should pay her for their misdeeds, and she's going to court to make her case.
"These companies amassed great wealth over the years from the labor of my ancestors," Harrell-Miller, 41, said recently in the former slave quarters of her modest but once-stately home in central New Orleans. "I am three generations away from slavery, but I and especially my elders have suffered from it."
Harrell-Miller is among thousands of African-Americans across the country who are plaintiffs in a handful of reparations lawsuits filed against various corporations -- mainly tobacco, railroad and insurance outfits -- they accuse of benefiting from slavery.
A former hair stylist who now works full time as a writer and genealogist, Harrell-Miller is one of some 3,000 Louisianans who filed their suit in September in federal court in New Orleans.
The suit seeks unspecified damages for each plaintiff from the defendants: a financial management company, Brown Brothers Harriman; two insurers, Aetna and Lloyds of London; three tobacco companies, the Liggett Group, Brown & Williamson and R.J. Reynolds; four railroads companies, CSX, Canadian, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific; and the Loews Corp., a diversified holdings firm that owns hotels, tobacco and off-shore drilling companies.
The lawsuit argues companies that insured slaves as property for plantation owners or used their labor should pay reparations to descendants of slaves.
Lawyers and plaintiffs in the suit say financial compensation is the only way to make up for present-day differences between blacks and whites -- disparities in such things as home ownership, educational attainment, health status and life expectancy.
"This is a lawsuit for all descendents of African slaves in the United States," said lead lawyer Pius Obioha, who has taken the case on a contingency basis. "It is an idea that has been in discussion for a long time, and it is long overdue."
'Town hall' meeting
Harrell-Miller, like most of the plaintiffs in the case, signed onto the lawsuit at a reparations "town hall" meeting organized by Obioha and other lawyers.
She has no proof her ancestors worked for the named defendants. But she believes that she, and all descendants of American slaves, deserve cash payments as reparations.
"Most companies at that time benefited from slave labor, and most African-Americans are descendants of slaves," Harrell-Miller said.
Because limited records are available for black genealogical research, Harrell-Miller said, the typical African-American has no way of fully tracing his or her roots to specific slaves who worked for the companies.
"Records have been destroyed and many black families never learned the importance of genealogy," Harrell-Miller said. "It's hard to make the connection."
Harrell-Miller, who is married and the mother of two children, says her family and friends support her in the case. A cousin, the Rev. Adam Gordon, said he believes Harrell-Miller is pursuing a good cause.
"She has spent a lot of time in putting this thing together," said Gordon, 59, pastor of the Church of God in Christ in Amite, La. "Evidently it's something she has taken to heart."
The companies named in the suit say they should not be singled out to pay for the social wrongs of the distant past.
"These issues in no way reflect Aetna today," Aetna says on its Web site. "Over the past 20 years, Aetna has invested more than $36 million in the African-American community, targeting such areas as education, health, economic development, community partnerships and minority-owned business initiatives. Our company has embraced diversity and we are proud of our record of employing a diverse work force and supporting diverse causes."
But Harrell-Miller said the corporations would not be where they are today if it weren't for slavery.
"Companies like Aetna built their empires off the backs of enslaved Africans," said Harrell-Miller. "Over time, the companies and the stockholders became wealthy, while enslaved Africans were not educated and often died at an early age. They were never compensated for their work, and their offspring were never compensated."
Similar suits
The Louisiana reparations case follows a similar suit that was filed in March in New York. Groups in Illinois, Texas and California also filed reparations lawsuits this year. And famed lawyer Johnnie Cochran is expected to file a suit soon.
Though the cases are a recent development, the call for slavery reparations dates back to the 1800s.
After the Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman promised 40 acres and a mule to all former slaves. (President Andrew Johnson later rescinded the plan.)
Other major slave reparations campaigns have included those by National Ex-Slave and Bounty Society founder Callie House at the turn of the century and black nationalist Marcus Garvey in the 1920s.
Advocates of a congressional effort and those involved in the lawsuits have sometimes differed over which strategy is most likely to succeed.
But Horace Huntley, a Birmingham Civil Rights Institute historian, says the two efforts might help each other.
The lawsuits could help Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) get his 13-year-old bill passed for a commission to study the institution of slavery, Huntley said.
"Conyers' bill has been around for a long time," he said. "These lawsuits could serve as a springboard for the discussions he has been advocating."
Other groups have successfully obtained reparations for past wrongs. Since the end of World War II, Germany has paid billions in reparations to Jewish Holocaust survivors and families of victims. In 1988, the U.S. government paid $20,000 each to 82,000 Japanese-Americans interned during World War II.
In those cases, however, the institutions responsible for the wrongs directly paid their victims or victims' relatives. Slavery reparations are more difficult, because the element of time and poor genealogy records make it nearly impossible for most plaintiffs to prove direct lineage to the slaves who worked for the defendants.
Nevertheless, Harrell-Miller is enthusiastic about the prospects for success -- and about simply going through the process of the lawsuit as well.
Her "coach house," as citified slave quarters were known, serves as an office and library filled with books on genealogy and black history. On the walls, Harrell-Miller has hung pictures of her ancestors, including her great-great-grandfather Robert Harrell, who was born a slave in South Carolina.
She says she owes it to her forebears to learn their history and to fight for their rights, even though they are no longer living.
"If this country is going to embrace its history," Harrell-Miller said, "it has to address this issue."
EMINEM ON TOP: 2002 brought giant success, steely focus
It was his legacy year, but you wouldn't know it to talk to Marshall Mathers III. He's been keeping his head down, working, maintaining a steely focus.
December 28, 2002
The night his movie premiered in Detroit, the week he became the undisputed champion of popular culture, Eminem went to bed early.
Flash to November: "8 Mile" is days from storming the nation's theaters. At the Bleu nightclub in downtown Detroit, a snazzy VIP room awaits, custom-built for a celebratory party following the night's private gala screening. Bottles of $300 champagne line the bar; a lavish spread of edibles sits nearby.
But the guest of honor never shows up. On one of the biggest nights of his life, Eminem watches his flick, ducks out down the red carpet and heads home to sleep.
His daughter has school the next morning, and he wants to get an early jump on work.
Recalling that night in a Free Press interview last week, Eminem says he has no regrets. "I've got a curfew."
The symbolism is rich: In what was a bona fide legacy year for Detroit music, Eminem skipped the party. For most of 12 months, as stardom swirled around him and riches poured into his bank account, he switched to autopilot and learned to keep his eyes fixed firmly ahead.
The year teemed with temptations to celebrate. The Detroit rapper persuaded Americans to hand over more than $300 million for his music and movie. "The Eminem Show" sold 7.4 million copies, the "8 Mile" soundtrack 3.5 million. The movie, with Eminem in a critically praised leading role, has carved its notch in Hollywood's belt as one of the most successful pop music films in history.
But as life has exploded around him -- as Eminem has morphed into an entity far beyond the control of Marshall Mathers III -- he has learned to keep his head down, forcing himself into a strict daily regimen. This year delivered mammoth success, but the rapper and those around him say it brought something else: a steely, unrelenting focus.
Consider it a coping mechanism: As long as he doesn't stop to process what's happening around him, maybe he can avoid drowning in the unreality of it all. If you look hard enough, if you penetrate the dazzling glare of fame, you'll find a man determined not to lose himself.
"Looking back at this year? I really haven't thought about it," he says. "I haven't taken it all in yet. I never really stop to look back on things and reflect on them. I keep 'em on the head, but I'm concentrating on next year more than anything.
"It's definitely crazy. It's a lot to take in."
Friends call Eminem a workaholic. He keeps long, intense hours behind the board at 54 Sound studio in Ferndale, slipping out to spend his evenings at home in Clinton Township with his 7-year-old daughter, Hailie.
His ex-wife, Kim, recently moved back in, and the couple are reconciling what has been a famously tumultuous relationship. They'll likely be moving into a new home next year, possibly a lakefront estate in Oakland County.
Gone is the feisty rapper who fawned over LSD in song and lionized his love for narcotics with a Vicodin tattoo. Mathers is now a 30-year-old man with a health addiction. He's abandoned the drugs, and he hits the weights daily. At his side in the studio is an omnipresent supply of Slim Jim snacks, fueling his protein cravings while he conspicuously avoids carbohydrates.
Eminem is clean now, and he may not have had much choice. In June 2000, as "The Marshall Mathers LP" was hurtling him into the stratosphere, he griped to the Free Press that "fame was turning into more of a nightmare than a dream." Today he looks back and reckons that if he had kept up his pace -- the drugs, the parties, the relentless family crises -- he'd be dead.
But the kid who grew up on food stamps still struggles to get an emotional grip on his notoriety.
"It's almost to the point where I truly believe I may be getting too big for my own good," he says. "And I never really asked for that."
Exposure control
For a guy who seems to be everywhere, Eminem is mighty insulated. His interview with the Free Press was one of just a handful he agreed to this year. The Eminem show is now a juggernaut that rumbles forward all on its own.
Even as Eminem's handlers circle the wagons around him, they've started to worry about overexposure. They understand that public appetite can quickly transform into public burnout. Though he's got new music in the can, there won't be another Eminem album until 2004.
"You can only control exposure so much. But where we can control it, we try to," says manager Paul Rosenberg, a Detroit native who now handles business from a Manhattan office. "You're not going to see Eminem on 'The Tonight Show.' It's a bad idea."
Eminem says he has his own reasons for keeping it low-key.
"I don't really care to bask in the glory," he says. "At this point I don't want to make it seem like I'm rubbing it in people's faces -- 'I told you I'd do it!' I'm not like that."
While he may have cut back on the press, the press hasn't cut back on him. Eminem remains acutely conscious of what others are saying. For all his newfound self-discipline, the trigger temper remains.
Success hasn't softened the sting of criticism. A throwaway comment from Moby about Eminem's misogyny becomes fuel for a vicious -- if one-sided -- feud. Insiders say the rapper was particularly hurt last year when reviewers panned the debut album of his group, D12. And despite making the cover of Rolling Stone three times this year, Eminem is still brooding over a recent article questioning whether he has anything left to say musically.
"They put me on the cover and basically bashed me," he says. "You've got to sit back and laugh at that. It's like you're the one sweeping the floor, and somebody else is sitting back saying, 'You missed a spot.' "
The triumph of "8 Mile" comes with its own brand of Hollywood-bred danger: the mainstreaming of bad boy Eminem, whether he wants it or not. He's painfully aware of a New York Times column last month in which writer Maureen Dowd confessed her "yuppie love" for the rapper and declared him "as cuddly as Beaver Cleaver."
"That's when it's getting bad. That's when it gets scary," he says. "When everyone loves you, who's left to hate you? The kids want something they can hold onto that their parents hate. I know I did growing up. I didn't want to listen to anything my parents listened to."
Still, there's no escaping that Eminem has matured, right down to the wire-rimmed glasses he's taken to wearing. Talking to him today, you hear a thoughtful, articulate man who has largely dropped the street patois that used to mark his speech.
Satisfaction, he says, remains simple. Hearing his music pumping out of a fan's car at a stoplight in Detroit -- "that's where the true pleasure comes from."
"People have got to understand that all you can do, really, is just keep working," he says. "You work and you do your best and you put it out there. How the public accepts it is how they accept it."
Longer range
If Eminem hasn't thoroughly destroyed the myth that he's a pawn at the hands of a Svengali-like Dr. Dre, he will soon. Cool with his instincts after years of working at the side of Detroit producers Mark and Jeff Bass, he has seized increasing control of his music. At Ferndale's 54 Sound, he's wrapping up production on albums from Obie Trice, D12 and 50 Cent, a New York rapper poised to break big-time in 2003.
Eminem seems to have grasped the big picture: Success as a hip-hop front man won't last forever. "I'm trying to build my clientele," he says, foreseeing a day when he settles into a full-time role as producer and label chief.
Detroit has as rich a musical legacy as any place in the world. But in just three years, Eminem has written his own chapter. "The Marshall Mathers LP" and "The Eminem Show" are the best-selling albums in the city's history, topping anything released by Aretha Franklin, Bob Seger or even Motown Records.
He hesitates to place himself among such lofty figures. But he does say that making a name for Detroit hip-hop stands as one of his proudest achievements. He's intent on showcasing local music through his Shady Records label.
"As far as hip-hop, there's talent in Detroit -- it's just hidden. It hasn't been exposed yet," he says. "I want to open up the market here." It would have been easy to take his life and financial treasure elsewhere -- somewhere more fashionable, perhaps, or simply warmer. But he says he has never considered abandoning the hometown that made him.
"People seem to forget it," he says. "But I'm here. Why leave? This is where I'm comfortable. There are certain spots I need to see. I need to visit old neighborhoods, people I need to see. This is the edge I have for staying ahead of everyone else and being different."
HOLLYWOOD, Fla. (AP) -- Ushering in either a brave new world or a spectacular hoax, a company founded by a religious sect that believes in space aliens announced Friday that it has produced the world's first cloned baby.
A healthy 7-pound girl, nicknamed Eve by scientists, was delivered by Caesarean section Thursday somewhere outside the United States, said Brigitte Boisselier, chief executive of Clonaid. Boisselier said the girl is an exact genetic copy of the American woman who gave birth to her.
At a news conference, Boisselier offered no scientific proof, provided no photographs and did not produce the mother or child. She said proof - in the form of DNA testing by independent experts - will be available in perhaps eight or nine days.
"You can still go back to your office and treat me as a fraud," she told reporters. "You have one week to do that."
Cloning experts were skeptical or reserved judgment on the announcement, which is certain to touch off fierce ethical, religious and scientific debate. In Washington, the Food and Drug Administration said the agency will investigate whether the experiments violated U.S. law.
The United States has no specific law against human cloning. But the FDA contends its regulations forbid human cloning without agency permission.
"The very attempt to clone a human being is evil," said Stanley M. Hauerwas, a professor of theological ethics at Duke University. "That the allegedly cloned child is to be called Eve confirms the godlike stature these people so desperately seek."
Boisselier would not say where Clonaid has been carrying out its experiments and did not identify any of the scientists involved.
She said the mother as a 31-year-old with an infertile husband. The couple have decided not to face the media now, she said.
She said four other couples are expected to give birth to Clonaid-created clones by early February.
Clonaid was founded in the Bahamas in 1997 by Claude Vorilhon, a former French journalist and leader of a sect called the Raelians. Vorilhon, who calls himself Rael, claims a space alien visiting him in 1973 revealed that extraterrestrials had created all life on Earth through genetic engineering.
Boisselier, who claims two chemistry degrees, identifies herself as a Raelian "bishop" and said Clonaid retains philosophical but not economic links to the Raelians. Rael is "my spiritual leader," Boisselier said.
"I do believe we've been created by scientists," she said. "And I'm grateful to them for my life."
She said neither the infertile couple nor the four other couples are Raelians. The other couples are a pair of lesbians from Northern Europe; two couples from North America and Asia who seek to clone dead children from cells taken before their deaths; and a second Asian couple, she said.
So far, 10 women have been implanted with Clonaid-created cloned embryos; five had miscarriages in the first three weeks, and the other five led to "Eve" and the four current pregnancies, Boisselier said.
No couple has paid for the cloning effort, but some of the first five couples invested in Clonaid, she said. She said she does not know how much Clonaid will charge once it begins to offer the service commercially.
To gain convincing proof that "Eve" is a clone, Boisselier said she accepted an offer by former ABC News science editor Michael Guillen. Guillen, now a free-lance journalist who said he has no connection to Clonaid, said he has chosen "world-class, independent experts" whom he did not identify to draw DNA from the mother and the newborn and test them for a match.
To do the cloning that led to "Eve," scientists removed the nucleus from an egg of the woman and merged the altered egg with a skin cell from her, Boisselier said. The DNA from the mother's skin cell took over direction of the egg.
"The baby is very healthy," Boisselier said. "The parents are happy. I hope that you remember them when you talk about this baby - not like a monster, like some results of something that is disgusting."
The notion of human cloning is controversial, both because of the apparent risk to a baby - cloned animals have shown a host of abnormalities - and because of other ethical considerations.
Boisselier contends that defects seen in cloned animals will not necessarily appear in humans.
"If my science is giving babies to parents who have been dying to get one with their own genes, is my science worse than the one preparing bombs to kill people?" she asked. "I am creating life."
Several countries, including Britain, Israel, Japan and Germany, have banned human cloning. Legislation in Congress stalled last summer over cloning for medical research purposes.
"The president believes, like most Americans, that human cloning is deeply troubling," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Despite the widespread skepticism among scientists and medical professionals about today's announcement, it underscores the need for the new Congress to act."
The Vatican, which holds that life begins at conception, has condemned cloning because extra embryos are destroyed in the process. The 16-million-member Southern Baptist Convention disapproved of Boisselier's announcement.
"There is a global race going on by rogue scientists who are operating outside the mainstream," said Richard Land, head of the Southern Baptists' public policy arm. "If you allow cloning at all, some people will try to reproduce them with predictably horrific results."
Scientists said they looked forward to the promised proof.
"We'll wait and see, I guess. I'm still a skeptic and I'm hoping that it's not true," said University of Georgia cloning expert Steve Stice.
Mark Westhusin of Texas A&M University, who made headlines in February by cloning a cat, said if Boisselier's announcement is true, "they are taking a big risk in terms of health hazards to the child."
The American Society of Reproductive Medicine said in a statement: "Based on the current state of knowledge, we do not believe taking a clonal pregnancy to term would be possible in humans."
In Rome, fertility doctor Severino Antinori, who announced weeks ago that a cloned baby would be born in January through a separate effort, dismissed Clonaid's claims and said the company has no scientific credibility.
FAMED PHOTOGRAPHER HERB RITTS DEAD
Thurs Dec 26 2002 17:10:20 ET
Top celebrity and fashion photographer Herb Ritts died Thursday morning at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 50.
He died of complications from pneumonia, his publicist Stephen Huvane confirmed.
Ritts made his name snapping celebrities like Jim Carrey, Tom Cruise, Richard Gere, Elizabeth Taylor, Jack Nicholson, Cindy Crawford and even Monica Lewinsky for covers and spreads in magazines such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, Playboy and Rolling Stone.
He also directed highly stylized music videos for Madonna, Janet Jackson and Chris Issac, and did commercial work for, among others, Donna Karan, Calvin Klein, The GAP, Giorgio Armani.
Ritts' last shoot was taken earlier this month with Ben Affleck for a forthcoming Vanity Fair cover.
Jailed rapper faces deportation to England
Alex Veiga - Associated Press
Thursday, December 26, 2002
Bradenton, Fla. --- For six months, Ricky ''Slick Rick'' Walters has been hoping for the best and preparing for the worst, but now the worst is imminent.
At any moment, the 1980s rapper, known for crafting humorous rhymes on classic tracks such as ''Mona Lisa'' and ''The Show,'' could be deported to England, where he was born 37 years ago --- his ability to travel legally to the United States again seriously jeopardized.
From a cell in Manatee County Jail, 1,200 miles away from his home in the Bronx, New York, Walters has watched his appeals be rejected. He waits for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to carry out the order to send him to a country where he hasn't lived since he was 11. And he wonders what it all will mean for his career and family.
''My whole life has been uprooted. One minute you're in America, you got your ties . . . the next minute you're being deported,'' Walters said. ''It's ripping [my] whole family apart. It's nerve-racking.''
Walters is facing deportation because of an attempted murder conviction 11 years ago.
In 1990, a year after his solo debut album, ''The Great Adventures of Slick Rick,'' went platinum, Walters shot his cousin, the cousin's then-pregnant girlfriend and a bystander during a dispute. He pleaded guilty and spent five years in a New York prison.
In the years that followed, Walters returned to the Bronx, where he owns property, to focus on raising his son and daughter, both now 11, and getting his career back on track.
But in June, three months after he was inducted into the Hip-Hop Hall of Fame along with his original partner, Doug E. Fresh, a U.S. law requiring the INS to deport foreigners convicted of ''aggravated felonies,'' such as murder, rape and some lesser offenses, caught up with Walters.
Citing a 1997 Board of Immigration Appeals order to deport him, INS agents arrested Walters as he came into port after performing on a Caribbean cruise. He's been in the Bradenton jail, 32 miles south of Tampa, ever since.
''It's like being re-punished,'' Walters said. ''I was in the process of working on another album. I'd been on the street for seven years, no problems.''
Walters has taken to calling New York radio stations to speak about his situation. Russell Simmons, who owns Walters' label, Def Jam Records, has lobbied members of Congress for support and collected thousands of signatures on a petition calling for the rapper to be allowed to return to New York while he fights deportation.
But it doesn't look good.
''Looks like a 95 percent chance that I'm being deported,'' Walters said. ''So I have to be a realist. I have to prepare myself for the worst right now.''
Walters' wife, Mandy, a New York native, says she's been preparing for a new life in London, where the couple plans to live if Walters is deported. His children from a previous relationship live with their mother.
Walters says he has spent much of his time in jail reflecting on what put him in this position in the first place.
''I would tell my fans to learn from my mistake and never take the law in your own hand,'' he said. ''It's an old case, [but] it still comes back to haunt you.''
His ability to perform in the United States in the future also could be hurt if he is deported. Aliens convicted of an aggravated felony are not allowed to re-enter the United States unless they obtain permission from the U.S. attorney general, said INS spokeswoman Barbara Gonzalez.
Still, Walters says he's eyeing a comeback. Def Jam has an office in London.
''Luckily for me they speak English, and it's not like a Third World country,'' he said.
He has been writing rhymes for the follow-up to 1999's hit ''The Art of Storytelling.'' While one might expect the new material to be dark, reflecting his imprisonment and separation from his wife and children, Walters says the tone will be upbeat as always.
''What can you do? You gotta put a smile on it,'' he says, adding that while he had decided to title the record ''Ferocious,'' he has changed mind in recent weeks.
''I'm leaning more to 'The Adventure Continues.' ''
Rap music mogul Marion "Suge" Knight was arrested yesterday (Dec. 23) for allegedly violating the terms of his parole, Los Angeles sheriff's officials said. The alleged parole violations involve his alleged association with reputed gang members, police said. Authorities learned of the possible violations after raiding the rap mogul's office and home last month.
Knight was arrested after meeting with his parole officer.
Knight's attorney said his client has done nothing wrong, adding that if he did come into contact with any gang members it would only have been in connection with his responsibilities as a record company executive. "He hasn't done anything but try to obey the law and work hard since his release," attorney David Chesnoff said. "I'm hopeful that when this is all thoroughly analyzed that he'll be permitted to be released."
Sheriff's investigators raided Knight's Malibu home and the Beverly Hills office of his Tha Row records Nov. 14 in connection with a pair of unsolved homicides. Authorities have said Knight is not a suspect in the killings.
In August 2001, Knight was released on parole after serving five years for violating probation on assault charges by getting into a fight in a Las Vegas hotel. The 1996 altercation occurred hours before rapper Tupac Shakur was killed in a drive-by shooting while riding in Knight's car.
A young Norwegian mother who took a litter of puppies to her own breast when her dog died giving birth remains proud of her unusual move. Now, six weeks later, both her infant son and eight of the puppies that survived are crawling around the family's Christmas tree in Siggerud, west of Oslo.
"I've had lots of reaction, mostly positive," Kine Skiaker tells newspaper Aftenposten. But Skiaker also had to tolerate some less-than-flattering remarks.
"No one has complained to me directly, but I've heard from others that some people thought it was disgusting that I would nurse Emil (her son) and the puppies at the same time," she said. "I just have to tolerate that, and can only say that I washed myself thoroughly after I'd nursed the puppies."
Skiaker says she's also been told by experts that she helped save the puppies' lives. "That makes me feel good," she said. "Then I can accept that some think what I did was nauseating."
The drama began Friday November 8 when Skiaker's Canarian Warren Hound, named Aida, started giving birth to a litter of 14 puppies. Suddenly the puppies stopped coming and the next stop was the vet's office.
In the end, both Aida and three of the puppies died, while another three died later.
Those that survived were in desperate need of nourishment, and that's when Skiaker impulsively took them to her breast. She fed them over that first weekend, until surrogate mother dogs could be found to take over.
Today, the eight surviving puppies (four males and four females) are back in the Skiaker's home and in good health. So is baby Emil, now five months old and happy to play with his canine comrades in the Skiakers' living room.
One of the puppies will be soon be delivered to new owners in Kongsberg. She's the only one with a name, so far, and it's Aida, after her late mother.
Joe Strummer (real name: John Mellor), former lead singer of the legendary British punk band The Clash, died yesterday (Dec. 22) at his home in Broomfield, England. He was 50. The British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) quoted Clash video director Don Letts as saying the guitarist/vocalist/songwriter died of a heart attack.
A statement released by Epitaph Records said Strummer "died peacefully at his home." It added that Strummer's wife Lucy, two daughters, and stepdaughter "request privacy at this harrowing time."
Epitaph managing director Hein van der Rey said he learned of the death this morning. "We do not know the circumstances. It is pretty devastating news," he said, adding that Strummer had been working on a new album with his band, the Mescaleros, for the label.
Strummer's death was announced on his official Web site. "Joe Strummer died yesterday," said the simple statement. "Our condolences to Luce and the kids, family and friends."
Strummer was born in Ankara, Turkey, the son of a British diplomat. The Clash was known for injecting left-wing politics into punk. The band's album "London Calling" was named the best album of the 1980s by Rolling Stone magazine, despite being released in 1979.
Between 1977 and 1982 Strummer and Clash co-founder Mick Jones composed, performed, and recorded dozens of songs, using musical ideas from reggae and rockabilly, as well as punk. With Jones's crisp guitar playing and Strummer's staccato, Cockney voice, the band -- which also included Keith Levene, Paul Simonon, Terry Chimes, and Nicky "Topper" Headon -- was known for its electrifying stage performances.
In 1980, a fight erupted during a concert in Hamburg, Germany and Strummer was arrested after hitting a fan with his guitar. In 1982, he disappeared for three weeks, forcing the band to cancel its U.K. tour. Strummer later explained that he had doubts about his career, so he went to Paris and had been "living like a bum."
The Clash signed with CBS Records for $200,000, and the band's eponymous first album was released in the U.K. in 1977. The record company considered the album too crude for U.S. release, however. It wasn't until 1979 that a similarly titled compilation album would be released Stateside.
The band split in the early 1980s after a dispute between Strummer and Jones, who subsequently formed the group Big Audio Dynamite (B.A.D.).
After a few turbulent months and lineup changes, in September 1983, Strummer and Simonon fired Jones from the band. He went on to form Big Audio Dynamite, and the Clash continued with a new lineup, and released "Cut the Crap" in late 1984. The album met with poor reviews and sales, and Strummer disbanded the Clash early in 1986.
Strummer began his solo career with a pair of songs contributed to Alex Cox' 1986 film "Sid and Nancy"; he later scored Cox' "Straight to Hell," in which he also starred. His first solo album was 1989's "Earthquake Weather" (Epic). Along with a short stint as lead singer of the Pogues, he recorded sparingly throughout the 1990s, until releasing his second solo set, "Rock Art and the X-Ray Style," his first with the Mescaleros and first for Epitaph, in 1999.
Last year, Strummer and the band released "Global A-Go-Go," and followed it with European and U.S. tours, all to critical acclaim. In April, he said that his work with the Mescaleros was invigorating.
"I'm enjoying this freedom of being able to do whatever the hell I want," he admitted. "We sell very few records, and that fact alone makes us the wildest gang in town, because we can afford to be really crazy! We're free. So many other people aren't, because of constraints or big companies."
Strummer recently collaborated with U2 singer Bono and Dave Stewart of the Eurythmics on a song honoring of former South African President Nelson Mandela. Titled "48864," Mandela's number in prison, the song will be performed at a Feb. 2 AIDS benefit concert Mandela is sponsoring at his former prison on Robben Island.
Bush's Kwanzaa Message
By The Associated Press
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Text of President Bush's Kwanzaa message:
I send greetings to those celebrating Kwanzaa.
Kwanzaa celebrates the traditional African values of unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, and faith. From December 26th to January 1st, people of African descent gather to renew their commitment to these seven principles, known as Nguzo Saba, and give thanks for the blessings of family, community, and culture. Kwanzaa is also a time for Africans and African-Americans to honor their common heritage by participating in events based on early harvest gatherings called matunda ya kwanza, or first fruits.
As individuals and families join together during Kwanzaa, their joy enriches communities in the United States and across the globe. By uniting people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs, this holiday promotes mutual understanding and respect. These universal principles inspire us as we work together for a future of freedom, hope, and opportunity for all.
Laura joins me in sending our best wishes for a memorable Kwanzaa, and for peace, happiness, and success in the coming year.
Charleston police arrested an East Bank man for allegedly having sex with a sheep used in a West Side funeral home's live nativity scene.
Joey Armstrong, 29, allegedly broke into a shed that housed the animals used in the holiday scene at the Bartlett-Burdette-Cox Funeral Home on Tennessee Avenue about 5:50 a.m. Saturday, Charleston Police Sgt. Brent Webster said.
Police, who were responding to a suspicious person call, say they found the suspect at the nativity scene, Webster said.
Armstrong was charged with trespassing, destruction of property and cruelty to animals. He was being held at South Central Regional Jail on $2,500 bond.
Webster said police are consulting with the prosecutor's office and bestiality charges could be issued against Armstrong.
XXXXX DRUDGE REPORT XXXXX SUN DEC 08, 2002 9:04:38 ET XXXXX
GANGS OF HOLLYWOOD: AULETTA TREATMENT OF MIRAMAX WEINSTEIN IN COMING NEW YORKER
Reporter Ken Auletta attempts to carve out pounds of fresh flesh from MIRAMAX Lord Harvey Weinstein in a coming issue of NEW YORKER, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.
Headlined "Beauty And The Beast", the results of Auletta's six month investigation is a feeding of Hollywood-style payback, against a movie mogul who has lived a giant life of controversy.
Drudge review of Auletta: Three out of Five Knives.
"In today's Hollywood, tantrums are commonplace. But even in this context Harvey Weinstein stands out," Auletta writes, in 15,000+ words, in the date-stamped December 16, 2002 issue of NEW YORKER.
One Hollywood executive says Weinstein "is on the same trajectory" as the once powerful talent agent Michael Ovitz because he, like Ovitz, "has lost the ability to see things clearly."
Another executive, at DISNEY, which owns MIRAMAX, says, "In Hollywood, they don't root for you until they hear your cancer is terminal. This is a town that smells blood. When they smell blood, they circle like sharks. In Harvey's case, there is a sense that his streak has waned, that the magic may be gone."
"Those who have been witness to his outbursts," Auletta reports, "public and private, describe not a lovable rogue, but, rather, a man with little self-control, whose tone of voice and whose body language can seem dangerous."
In May, Auletta reports, Weinstein spotted Barry Diller, the chief executive of UNIVERSAL ENTERTAINMENT, at Cannes, and asked him, loudly, "Why'd you call me a bully?" Bully Diller replied, "You are a bully."
In March, after a test screening of Julie Taymor's FRIDA at a theatre on the Upper West Side, Weinstein became incensed when Taymor dismissed the audience's complaints about the film. "You are the most arrogant person I have ever met," Weinstein said, ripping up the test results and dropping the scraps in front of Taymor and her collaborator and partner, Elliot Goldenthal. After walking away, Weinstein returned, yelling at Taymor's agent, "Get the **** out of here!... I don't like the look on your face," he told Goldenthal, adding, after moving toward him, "Why don't you defend her so I can beat the **** out of you?" One member of Taymor's team described Weinstein's behavior as bordering on "criminal assault," Auletta reports. Weinstein says he did not threaten Goldenthal. "I am not saying I was remotely hospitable. I did not behave well. I was not physically menacing to anybody. But I was rude and impolite."
Weinstein tells Auletta, "I think Hollywood's long knives are out for everybody. That's sort of a way of life out there. If somebody's held in high esteem, based on, you know, hits, or something like that, then five minutes later everybody's got a knife out for them. It's the way of life."
MIRAMAX princess Gwyneth Paltrow tells Auletta, "Harvey has a more old-fashioned approach to relationships with movie stars. It's very sort of mafioso. We're all in this together. He looks out for me."
One powerful agent sums up Weinstein this way, on the eve of MIRAMAX's GANG OF NEW YORK epic: "He was on track to be one of the greats of this business. The degree of narcissism and the number of people he's alienated has caught up with him. What was once charming is now seen as reprehensible. I told him this. Harvey's life in show business is going to be a great book. I hope Harvey in the end is closer to who he was at the beginning."
And if the Scorsese does well, all will be forgotten.
Streets Monday...
-----------------------------------------------------------
Filed By Matt Drudge
Reports are moved when circumstances warrant http://www.drudgereport.com for updates
(c)DRUDGE REPORT 2002
'LET's have some new clichés!" said producer Samuel Goldwyn to a Hollywood writer. (In his book "Great Hollywood Wit," Gene Shalit calls Goldwyn "the king of producers and the Lord of Apocrypha.")
I'M GOING to write the following, though it will probably be unpopular to do so: If you read last week's New Yorker and Ken Auletta's article on the Miramax king Harvey Weinstein, you know that Harvey didn't always come off smelling like a rose in those pages. And though I felt the writer was bending over backward to maintain a middle-of-the-road course, I keep encountering people who say, "Boy, oh, boy, did Ken ever give it to Harvey!"
So if that's the case and that's the general feeling, let me say first off that if Harvey Weinstein resembled someone like the slim, trim and handsome Bob Iger of ABC, nobody would be running around feeling perfectly free to blast him.
Harvey is sometimes loud, aggressive and just plain plump. In a society overwhelmed with anorexic longings, Harvey's size alone makes it easy to give him a hard time.
I'M STANDING up for Harvey. If you think I'm on his payroll, let me say, he has done a lot for charity in all the directions of his life, but he has never yet given me a gift I couldn't happily pass on to the maid.
I like to think I am the first person ever to write about Harvey and the accomplishments of Miramax, which we used to call "the little engine that could." But the reality is - there was practically no movie business in New York before Miramax appeared in 1989 with "sex, lies and videotape." A few studios had development offices, but they weren't much. The only people who really made films in the city were Woody Allen, Sidney Lumet, Martin Scorsese and the now defunct Orion. Most movies emanated from Los Angeles.
With the advent of Miramax came New Line/Fine Line, Gramercy, October Films, Sony Pictures Classics, USA Studios, Fox Searchlight, Paramount Classics, etc. Many production companies such as Good Machine and Green Street blossomed. None of this could have happened without Miramax. Harvey reinvented the movie business in the East.
Gossip and entertainment reporting flourished from all this happening in the big city. There is much more fodder in this town now than B.H. (Before Harvey) and, in truth, there is much more going on in Manhattan than in California. If you want an example, there are no gossip columns in L.A., but there are lots emanating from New York. And that makes for liveliness, vivacity, interest and news whether you like the idea or not.
I SAW Harvey coming out of Morton's in L.A. the night "Shakespeare in Love" won Best Picture. He was sweating through his tux, waving his Oscar in the air, and he engendered a hatred that night by Hollywood that hasn't abated. But it's jealousy, and it's undeserved. Harvey is a true movie lover, he is a seeker of truth on film. He is a fan first and foremost, and he has a warm heart that has never come anywhere near the "suits" of the studio system.
Sometimes, he yells and loses his temper. Gossip columnists go completely crazy these days when anyone even normally raises their voice. There is so little true passion, juice and feeling going on that it is easy to exaggerate a giant like Harvey who has passions, problems and is pursuing his own brand of happiness without self-censorship. Not for nothing did the New York Landmarks Conservancy name Harvey and his brother Bob as "Living Landmarks." They have done much for New York. Not for nothing does every charity look to them for bailouts.
Not for nothing do stars and creative people turn to Harvey when the system has ground them down. I thought in the end, Ken Auletta's piece did a service just reciting Harvey's gifts to cinema - things he brought from elsewhere or things he made happen.
As you read this, Harvey and Miramax are associated with the following interesting and compelling films - "Gangs of New York," "Chicago," "The Hours," "Frida," "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind," "The Quiet American" - and "La Bohème" on Broadway. And I probably forgot a few. Take that, Hollywood!
Steve Tucker served a 10-year prison sentence for selling light bulbs. Is America's drug war worth it?
BY SCOTT HENRY
A year has passed since Steve Tucker made his unheralded return to Atlanta.
His one-bedroom flat, tucked into a sprawling Sandy Springs apartment complex, is furnished sparsely: a recliner, TV, computer and a small, picnic-style table that serves as both dining hutch and desk. The stark white static of the walls is interrupted only by three small, web-like dream catchers tacked to the Sheetrock.
It's the sort of Spartan minimalism one might expect of someone who, until recently, had to content himself with staring at bare cinderblock.
"Watch out, you're talking to a notorious ex-con." Wrapped in a sharp Middle Georgia twang, Tucker's voice betrays a suppressed smile. The slight, balding, 50-year-old Atlantan is hardly an intimidating figure.
But he's only half-kidding. Nearly a decade ago, he was sent to prison as a result of a once-infamous federal drug case that sparked national outrage for its rough interpretation of justice.
In the spring of 1994, the Tucker family received lengthy prison sentences -- 10 years for Steve, 16 years for his older brother Gary, and 10 years for his brother's wife, Joanne -- without possibility of parole, for the curiously worded federal crime of "conspiracy to manufacture marijuana."
Yet federal prosecutors never charged them with buying, selling, growing, transporting, smoking or even possessing marijuana. An 18-month DEA investigation had failed to turn up direct evidence connecting the Tuckers to even a single joint.
Instead, they were locked away for selling the lamps, fertilizer and gardening hardware from the small hydroponic supply shop Gary operated on Buford Highway that enabled their customers to grow pot.
In the mid-'90s, the Tucker case became a cause celebre among libertarian activists and other advocates of marijuana legalization. It served as an oft-cited, cautionary example of the runaway powers of the federal government and the worst excesses of the War on Drugs.
And yet, in the long years since, the Tucker case has faded from the radar. No TV cameras or microphones awaited Steve Tucker when he finally shed his prison uniform and came home.
His mother would rather it remain that way. "I'm just scared to death of the federal government," she says. At the same time, Doris Gore realizes her son has an important story to tell.
And he's determined to tell it. As he reads weekly accounts of federal agents in California arresting licensed medical-marijuana growers, he's convinced he must speak out.
"The feds don't like it when you buck them, but I'll be damned if they break me," Tucker says. "What kind of American would I be if I just kept my mouth shut?"
Steve Tucker's nightmare began with the American dream.
The funny thing is, the dream initially belonged to his older brother Gary, a balding Vietnam veteran with a house in the suburbs and a comfortable marriage. For nearly two decades, he and Steve had worked side-by-side, installing commercial fire-control systems for a Buckhead company. But by the fall of 1987, Gary was 40 and he yearned to be his own boss.
Gary's choice of businesses was pioneering: a store devoted to hydroponics, the technique of growing plants without soil or sunlight, using only powerful lamps, chemical nutrients and a self-contained irrigation system. It was, Gary decided after some research, the "wave of the future."
Whose future, however, was the question. While hydroponics is highly effective at boosting vegetable growth, the systems are so costly as to be of practical use only to orchid breeders. And, of course, to marijuana growers, who are lured by the promise of high yields that could be produced in basements and attics, away from the prying eyes of authorities.
Gary wasn't naive. He knew his customer base would include few deep-pocketed tomato enthusiasts. But just as Wal-Mart doesn't ask if the handgun ammunition it sells will be used for target practice or hold-ups, the Tuckers decided it was best to adopt a "don't ask, don't tell" policy.
"Look, we weren't stupid," Steve says with a weary smile. "We figured a percentage of our customers were growing pot. But we had store rules that if anyone asked us about marijuana, we'd ask them to leave. What someone was planning to do with fertilizer or grow lights wasn't our concern. Most of the stuff we were selling, you could buy at Home Depot. We had a legitimate business."
To finance the start-up, Gary mortgaged his home in Gwinnett and, in the spring of 1988, his business opened in a small shopping center on the edge of Norcross. It was the first hydroponics store in Georgia.
The name Gary chose for his store -- Southern Lights And Hydroponics -- was a nod to a successful Mid-Atlantic chain called Northern Lights, which itself was named after a particularly potent strain of Alaskan weed.
Steve, who had begun making child-support payments after his 10-year marriage ended in divorce, kept his regular job, but helped out weekends in his brother's store. Joanne, who worked for an insurance company, kept her husband's books.
To compensate for hydroponics' somewhat questionable image, Gary wouldn't allow High Times, rolling papers or Mr. Natural posters to be sold in the store. Any product or packaging that arrived bearing the familiar hemp-leaf silhouette would promptly be shipped back. Adding to Southern Lights' air of respectability, the brothers were invited to install working hydroponic exhibits for the agriculture departments of Gwinnett Tech and a local high school.
That's not to say the Tucker brothers didn't enjoy a joint now and again. Gary had first smoked during his tour in Vietnam and Steve would get arrested in 1991 for growing his own stash at home. For that offense, he would serve six months in a county work-release program.
"Getting busted was just my dumb luck," Steve explains. "I used to smoke pot, but I wasn't dealing. I never claimed to be 100-percent innocent, but I never conspired with anybody to do anything illegal."
What the Tuckers didn't know while they were busy preparing to launch Southern Lights was that, in Washington, the DEA was grappling with how to go after the booming number of marijuana growers who were taking their crops indoors to avoid aerial detection.
A veteran agent had hit on the answer while flipping through an issue of High Times: Cut the burgeoning industry's supply lines by focusing the agency's attack on stores selling grow lights and hydroponic gear, dozens of which advertised in the pages of head-shop magazines.
Over the next two years, the DEA subpoenaed UPS shipping records for stores across the country. Agents went undercover to browse through hydroponic shops, follow up leads on pot farms and casually ask everyone with long hair where one could buy seeds.
The agency's aggressiveness showed how far the pendulum had swung since the heyday of the marijuana-reform movement, a decade earlier. At the close of the '70s, 11 states -- following the advice of the American Medical Association and even then-President Jimmy Carter -- had decriminalized simple possession. In 1981, the first bill to legalize medical-marijuana use was introduced in Congress. Its lead sponsor was a young, conservative Georgia lawmaker named Newt Gingrich.
Under Ronald Reagan, however, the tide swiftly turned. Even while the CIA was secretly helping Nicaraguan Contras smuggle vast amounts of cocaine into the president's home state of California, the administration was cracking down on domestic pot smokers, pushing for "zero tolerance" drug laws and scolding Americans to "Just Say No." By the end of the '80s, even socially progressive Oregon had again outlawed weed.
One month after the first President Bush pledged to escalate the War on Drugs in a Sept. 5, 1989, speech televised from the Oval Office, Operation Green Merchant went public. More than 200 indoor growing operations and 30 indoor-gardening shops and mail-order houses found themselves overrun with DEA agents.
One high-profile businessman caught in that first wave of busts was Tom Alexander, the owner of a small hydroponics store in Oregon and publisher of Sinsemilla Tips, considered by some marijuana advocates to be the thinking-man's High Times.
The DEA seized an estimated $55,000 in inventory from his store, but Alexander soon discovered it would be even more costly to fight the action in court. A few months later, he was forced to shutter his magazine as well.
Alexander had been financially ruined without ever being charged with a crime. It was an approach the feds would repeat with indoor-gardening stores from coast to coast, including all six locations of Northern Lights.
So perhaps Gary Tucker shouldn't have been surprised one day in the early weeks of 1992 when DEA Special Agent Kevin McLaughlin dropped by Southern Lights with an offer its owner wasn't expected to refuse. The feds would be much obliged, McLaughlin explained, if he'd let them install hidden cameras in the store so they could snoop on his customers. If he didn't, no effort would be spared in shutting down his 4-year-old business.
The conversation lasted probably all of five minutes, but its outcome would set into motion forces the Tuckers could scarcely imagine.
Gary would later tell his family that when he told McLaughlin to get lost, the agent "said they'd get him somehow," recalls his mother, Doris Gore.
Still disgusted by the idea of being pressured into being a government spy, Steve has never second-guessed his brother's response. "This isn't Nazi Germany," he says.
Sometime in late spring 1992, Gary Tucker realized his shop was being watched by a man sitting at a desk in an empty storefront across the street. Every time a car pulled into the Southern Lights parking lot, the mystery man would scribble something into a pad. From that point on, events unfolded quickly.
In May, Mike and Andrea Williams, customers who had become friends of Gary and Joanne, were busted by the DEA. The couple used a hydroponic system to grow marijuana for Mike, who was terminally ill and smoked to combat the pain and nausea.
One evening in July, the DEA's McLaughlin, accompanied by partner Mark Hadaway, paid a visit to Jorene Deakle, who worked with Gary as Southern Lights' store manager, and accused her and her husband of growing pot in their home.
Deakle testified two years later at the Tuckers' sentencing hearing that the agents had threatened to file charges and seize her house unless she agreed to spy on her employer for them. She said she was frightened into giving them names of Southern Lights customers she thought might be growing weed.
But the agents wouldn't let up, she testified, until she came with them to point out a house where she knew marijuana was being grown. As they were driving, Deakle told the judge, she picked a house at random so they finally would leave her alone.
The terrified Deakle called the agents several times a week to feed them tidbits of information; the investigation gained momentum. Agents followed customers home, pawed through their garbage, subpoenaed their utility bills and trained sophisticated infrared-imaging devices on their houses to look for concentrated heat sources.
Then the busts began in earnest, as one green thumb after another was caught red-handed. Don Switlick, a convicted drug trafficker, was found growing 114 plants with hydroponic equipment purchased at Southern Lights. Agents discovered a grow room in the Dawsonville home of Thomas Fordham, a high-school friend of Gary's. And, in September, Chuck Rothermel, who ran a car-customizing shop, was busted for a large crop of immature plants hidden in a nondescript warehouse he was renting in Forsyth County.
Of course, not every raid paid off. In one case, agents searched a startled family's home, only to discover that the husband was using the incriminating high-watt lamps in his tropical aquarium. In another, the suspect had never heard of the store; he'd been identified through his car, which his girlfriend had borrowed for the day.
Suffering from what Steve describes as a "nervous breakdown," Deakle mysteriously quit her job. The Tuckers would later find out she had also broken off contact with the DEA.
By October, Gary had adopted what could only be called an unusual business strategy, warning everyone who came into his store that they were being watched by federal agents. "We felt it was our obligation," Steve explains.
Gary even complained to the newspaper -- somewhat naively, in retrospect -- that the DEA was harassing customers buying legal products in an effort to drive him out of business.
McLaughlin responded by dropping by the store on occasion to remind the Tuckers of his promise to shut them down, Steve says. "He was always real cocky," he recalls. "Once, Joanne put him down, so he told her he'd killed her dog, just to upset her."
Their mother begged Gary to quit the hydroponics trade. "I wanted them to get rid of that store, but Gary said they weren't doing anything illegal," Doris Gore recalls. "He was adamant about keeping it open because he said it wasn't his business what other people did with the equipment he sold."
In December, Gary and Joanne went out to dinner and drinks with a friend, Mark Holmes, who kept steering the rambling, margarita-fueled conversation back to the subject of recreational marijuana use -- in large part because he was wearing a wire.
The DEA raided the Tuckers' home and store the following spring, carrying away boxes of business records, address books, photographs and various bric-a-brac. Southern Lights was padlocked, its entire inventory seized, and the agency began forfeiture proceedings against the couple's house, bank accounts, their new truck and a boat.
On June 18, 1993, nearly two years after Operation Green Merchant had arrived in Georgia, Gary, Steve and Joanne were arrested on federal drug conspiracy charges.
The Southern Lights investigation had uncovered, all told, more than 100 small, hemp-growing operations across north Georgia, and resulted in at least 30 arrests. Which meant at least 30 potential prosecution witnesses, who had already claimed many of the available drug-defense attorneys in Atlanta by the time the Tuckers went shopping for legal counsel.
Meeting by chance at a community gathering, Gary and Joanne were introduced to Nancy Lord, a trial lawyer and outspoken Libertarian activist who had been that party's 1992 vice-presidential candidate.
With only one major drug case on her resume, Lord had just moved to Atlanta to practice under the tutelage of prominent defense attorney Tony Axam. Lord and Axam signed on to separately represent Joanne and Gary, respectively. An acquaintance of Lord's was hired for Steve.
From the beginning, Lord was passionate about her assignment, appearing at press conferences and local forums to protest the Big Brother tactics of the federal drug war and attack the flimsiness of the government's case against the Tucker family.
Certainly, to the layperson, it would have appeared weak. Despite 18 months of constant surveillance, boxes of confiscated documents, dozens of confidential informants and the DEA's own terrified mole managing the store, the agency had failed to come up with any physical evidence linking Gary to his customers' crops.
No marijuana -- growing or dime-bagged -- was found in Southern Lights, Gary's house or Steve's apartment. No paper trail of drug deals. No incriminating messages. No videotaped handoffs of suspicious packages. No blurry photos of Gary inspecting a customer's harvest. No secretly recorded advice on the finer points of cultivating Maui Wowie.
After a $1 million investigation, the only tangible exhibits the feds had to show the jury were a set of precision scales that could have been used to weigh leafy contraband, and an old pipe that Gary and Joanne readily acknowledged they had used for smoking pot.
The government's sole weapon seemed to be a lengthy list of freshly indicted, former Southern Lights customers desperate to prove themselves useful enough on the witness stand for prosecutors to let them off lightly.
The Tuckers and Lord, however, failed to fully appreciate that federal conspiracy law is far less concerned with what you did than with what you knew.
"Conspiracy law has been the darling of federal prosecutors since the 1930s, because you don't need direct evidence to score a conviction," explains Axam, now recognized as one of Georgia's top death-penalty lawyers. "The reason they use it is because they may have no hard, physical evidence, but with conspiracy, they can bring in hearsay, rumor, innuendo."
Indeed, it's tough to imagine how anyone gets acquitted, considering the standard description of conspiracy law given to federal juries: "The fact that a defendant's acts appear not to be illegal when viewed in isolation does not bar his conviction. An act innocent in nature and of no danger to the victim or society suffices if it furthers the criminal venture."
Lord, who now specializes in patent law and FDA drug approval at her solo practice outside Las Vegas, admits she underestimated the far-reaching power of conspiracy law. "I was shocked that this little evidence could send someone up for 10 years," she says.
Still, why were prosecutors willing to let admitted pot-growers and convicted drug dealers off easy so they could nail a tax-paying businessman who hadn't been caught with any grass?
Doris Gore is convinced there was an element of vengeance in the DEA's pursuit of her sons because they had refused to roll over, to name names, to cop a plea. "They hated Gary because he wouldn't do what they said," she says.
She may be on to something. During the trial, Garfield Hammonds, then the Southeast's top DEA official, announced to the press that Gary was no mere entrepreneur: "He's a bum, he's a parasite, he's a master of deceit, he's a marijuana czar." Hammonds, who now sits on the state Board of Pardons and Parole, didn't return a CL phone call.
It didn't help that Joanne had followed Lord's lead in publicly baiting her accusers whenever the chance arose. "My husband is a political POW," she told one reporter. "We're fighting a political war, not a drug war."
Steve Tucker still believes he and Joanne were charged primarily as added leverage against Gary. When they wouldn't give him up, the government simply steamrolled over them as well.
Axam, who's since represented such high-profile defendants as Ray Lewis and Jamil Al-Amin, won't discuss the particulars of the Tuckers' defense, but he recalls vividly the feds' take-no-prisoners determination.
"The government had a clear policy that it didn't want hydroponics stores in business," he says. "If it looks long and hard enough at any industry it doesn't like, it can find those connections."
Scheduled to begin in federal court in November 1993, United States v. Gary Tucker et al got off to a spectacularly inauspicious start.
On the morning of jury selection, activists with the Fully Informed Jury Association -- a radical libertarian group that believes juries should be empowered to dismiss charges and reject unjust laws -- were handing out flyers to everyone entering the Russell Federal Building, effectively disqualifying an entire day's jury pool for the Northern District of Georgia.
When Chief Judge William O'Kelly, who was to preside over the trial, was told Lord had been seen outside exchanging pleasantries with one of the activists, he was livid. Their courtroom relationship went downhill from there.
Resuming the first week of January 1994, the trial lasted four days. Assistant U.S. Attorney James Harper oversaw a parade of a dozen or so nervous plea-bargain witnesses, some of whom testified that Gary, and to a lesser extent, Steve and Joanne, had given them hemp-growing tips. Several claimed Gary had bought pot from them or traded hydroponic equipment for high-end herb. One said he'd glimpsed a freezer crammed with weed in the couple's garage. Another said Gary offered to look after his buds while he was out of town. A couple said Gary had privately confirmed that the vast majority of his customers were breaking the law.
The defense, spearheaded by Lord, scored too few points to overcome the damage. One witness didn't believe the Tuckers had done anything illegal. Another recalled bragging about his hemp garden, only to have Gary tell him to get rid of it. Several acknowledged hoping their testimony would spare them prison time.
One former Southern Lights customer, a 66-year-old ex-con we'll call "Bob" (who spoke to CL on condition he not be named), now says DEA agents tried to coax him into claiming the Tuckers were growing pot at their house, but stopped short of asking him to lie.
"'You help us and we'll help you,' is how they put it," he explains.
When asked to wear a wire into the store, Bob agreed -- then fled the state rather than aid an investigation he believed was intent on "railroading" the business owners.
Even though he eventually testified after police tracked him down, Bob received a four-year sentence, rather than the 18-month stretch he'd initially been offered.
"I disappointed [prosecutors] because I didn't say what they wanted me to," he says. "To my knowledge, the Tuckers didn't do anything other than sell chemicals and lights -- except for indulging."
Steve's own years behind bars have taught him not to be shocked at what someone might say on the witness stand.
"I was in prison with people who'd swear their own mother was Hitler if it would help them," he says, shaking his head. "I'll never have another close friend. I'll never be able to trust anyone that way, now that I've seen what people will do to protect their freedom."
While he concedes that he can't speak for his brother's actions, Steve insists he never offered growing advice or swapped weed with customers -- although he shared a joint on occasion.
Plain-spoken to the point of abrasive, Nancy Lord continued to criticize the DEA, pointedly suggesting that witnesses had been coerced to lie.
When the judge warned her at one point that Agent McLaughlin wasn't the one on trial, she shot back: "He should be." O'Kelly fumed that he was citing her for contempt. "If I go to jail, I go to jail," she shrugged.
"Nancy had some balls," Steve recalls, laughing. "She stood up to that judge."
But Lord now reflects that her confrontational style didn't serve her clients well, a point made painfully clear when O'Kelly told her he believed Joanne likely would have been acquitted if she'd been defended in a more professional manner.
"My problem was, I was too angry," Lord says. "I wanted to make a political statement -- to argue against the drug war -- and I thought the jury would go along with me. Now, I'd probably urge the Tuckers to re-examine taking a plea agreement."
The trial's low point came when Joanne took the stand in her own defense. The same woman who'd given tough-talking speeches defending her family and denouncing government scare tactics suddenly sounded uncertain and evasive when confronted by prosecutors.
"Joanne fell apart on the stand," Lord says. "It really was sad to watch."
Despite widespread criticism of the nation's ongoing War on Drugs, there's at least one battle Uncle Sam has convincingly won, depending on your definition of victory.
First taking effect in 1989, mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines -- combined with the elimination of federal parole -- ensure that even the most casual, recreational drug-user can be kept off his subdivision streets for many long years while paying his debt to society -- and there's not a damn thing any bleeding-heart federal judge can do about it.
Supposedly intended to iron out the sentencing inconsistencies between various district courts, mandatory minimums instead have only magnified the racial disparity of the prison population. More than 43 percent of all U.S. prison inmates are black males, and blacks outnumber whites in prison by a margin of more than 5-to-4, according to Department of Justice statistics released in July.
Bruce Harvey, Georgia's leading drug defense attorney, considers mandatory-minimum sentencing to be part of a collection of immoral federal laws whose combined impact is "nothing more than political genocide on a whole group of people -- and it's getting worse."
Because a federal drug offender's punishment now is effectively determined by the charges rather than a judge's experienced sense of justice, sentencing power lies in the hands of prosecutor, where it's frequently wielded to compel a defendant to make some agent's job easier.
Before the trial began, says Steve: "I was offered 24 months instead of 10 years if I'd testify against Gary. When I said no, they asked me to testify against Joanne. I mean, my brother or my brother's wife, what's the difference?"
Even after the jury had returned guilty verdicts against all three Tuckers, the prosecutors offered Steve one last deal: Give up the names of any pot-growers who had escaped their dragnet and get off with only two years.
"I figure I'm a man, I make my own decisions, and I'm not going to tear someone else down to spare myself some time," he says. "I said, 'I'll do my 10 years.'"
The way the Tuckers arrived at that sentencing threshold, however, involved a stunning use of statutory sleight-of-hand.
When the DEA would bust a pot farm, each plant -- from the tiniest seedling up to mature bushes in full flower -- would count as one kilo of hemp. Then the agents would break out the calculators: Assume an annual yield of five crops, multiply by the projected time the suspect had been growing, add in the number of actual plants confiscated, convert to kilos and voila!, all equaling one serious prison sentence.
In the Southern Lights case, for instance, one customer was caught growing 80 actual plants, which, after a run-in with the DEA's conversion chart, had blossomed into an "estimated" 1,200 plants, speaking of manufacturing marijuana.
The Tuckers had been charged in relation to 1,000 kilos -- exactly the amount needed to trigger a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years -- which consisted mostly of theoretical weed. Gary received an additional six years for masterminding the criminal enterprise.
"To this day, we don't know whose plants we were charged with," Steve says. Not that it mattered. Whoever they belonged to, there were plenty where those came from.
As Agent McLaughlin explained to the judge: "I stopped computing at 16,000 plants."
The one bright spot in the trial seemed to be the jury's decision to deny the federal forfeiture of Gary and Joanne's house, presumably because of the absence of evidence that it was paid for with drug money.
Nancy Lord says the government's final dirty trick came when the DEA agreed to drop its claim to the property -- only to have the home seized by the state.
Steve and Gary's introduction to Club Fed was a temporary stay -- mingling with some of the same guys who'd snitched on them -- at the minimum-security prison camp next to the notorious Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.
"What you see in the movies about prisons is pretty much true about the Atlanta Pen," Steve says.
After a few months, they were transferred to Alabama, a trip Steve recalls with disbelief: "When I left the Atlanta Prison Camp, they gave me $75 and a set of street clothes. I took a cab, a bus and another cab, and reported to my new prison. If they could trust me to do that, obviously, I'm not the kind of guy who needs to be in prison."
Even as they settled into the cell they shared at Talladega Federal Correctional Institute, Gary and Steve's convictions were being condemned in newsletters and described in magazine articles, discussed at political forums and featured in a CNN special.
The family was the subject of a chapter in the 1998 book Shattered Lives: Portraits From America's Drug War. Co-author Mikki Norris of El Cerrito, Calif., says the Tuckers' case was one of the more disturbing she studied.
"It made me very paranoid to think that you could be convicted of completing a drug transaction without even knowing it," she says.
As the months and then years wore on, the media furor eventually died down and the brothers fell into the mind-numbing routine of prison life. To keep busy, Steve edited the inmate-produced newspaper, "Prose and Cons," and counted out his time: 54 days off each year automatically for good behavior, a year off for completing a voluntary drug-rehab course.
"You work, you eat, you read -- prison's a lot like a small town," he says. "I read over 600 novels, mostly psycho-thrillers, and I wrote a few, too."
But it wasn't all dull. In October 1995, much of the federal inmate population was following the progress of a congressional bill to reduce the penalties for crack possession -- retroactively, for many already serving time.
One morning, news came that the bill had failed; a foreboding silence fell over the prison the rest of the day, Steve recalls. That evening, he says, word spread throughout the cafeteria that a California prison was rioting in protest of the vote in Washington. A few minutes later, the whole place erupted.
"We feared for our lives that night," Steve says. "The inmates tore that prison to hell. It was really harrowing."
Later, they found out the rumor about the California prison had been a hoax. Instead, it was the Talladega riot -- which caused $3 million in damages and left several buildings burned -- that had touched off at least three similar episodes in other states.
That same year, the U.S. Sentencing Commission downgraded the conversion weight for a marijuana plant from 1 kilo to 100 grams. Gary petitioned to have his sentence reduced accordingly, but Steve didn't file his own request out of concern it might somehow hurt his brother's chances.
Finally, in 1998, Judge O'Kelly reduced Gary's sentence to 10 years. In the end, it didn't make any difference.
Last December, five days after Steve was released from the halfway house where he'd spent the last few months of his sentence, Gary died of cancer at Emory Hospital.
He had been sick for a nearly a year, but prison officials refused to take his illness seriously until it was too late, his mother says.
"They'd give him an aspirin and send him back to his cell until he'd pass out and then they'd take him to the hospital," Gore says.
Steve was able to see Gary toward the end, but Joanne -- who'd been transferred from a Connecticut woman's prison to a Macon halfway house -- wasn't allowed to visit her husband the week before he died.
The diagnosis was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a cancer closely associated with exposure to Agent Orange, the deadly herbicide used in Vietnam. It would seem Gary's government had succeeded in killing him after all.
Even though his prison sentence has been served and he's returned to his old job, Steve Tucker wouldn't call himself a free man. Not when he has to call in every morning for the next four years so a recorded message can tell him whether he's been randomly selected to pee in a cup that day. Not since he had to give up his lifelong pastime of hunting because he can never again hold a gun. Not after he's seen politicians get elected on the promise to pass more draconian drug laws, and knowing he's forever lost his right to vote.
For the first time in nearly a decade, Steve brought his son and daughter, in their mid-teens, to spend Thanksgiving with his mother in Cochran, a half-hour south of Macon. He was required to seek written approval from his probation officer weeks in advance of the visit.
"When I got out, I had to learn my way around Atlanta again, but I went back to work like I'd never left; there was no adjustment problem," he says. "The hardest part is the probation, because you have to get permission to do just about everything."
In prison, Steve met guys who told him they had violated their probation on purpose because another 16 months in the big house was better than three more years of having people always looking over your shoulder, waiting for you to **** up.
The thing about federal prison that made the biggest impression on Steve was how many inmates were much like himself: small-time, non-violent offenders serving big-time sentences for reasons that made little sense.
"Even if I was guilty, 10 years seems excessive when there were bank robbers who were in there for two or three years, and I got 10 years for selling light bulbs," he says, his voice rising as if framing a question.
"This drug war forced two little kids to grow up without their dad and my ex-wife to go without child-support for eight years, and for what?" he continues. "I'm not saying I'm above the law, but I know in my heart I'm not the type of person who needed to be in prison."
And yet, once there, the outrageousness of his circumstances blended into a background of statistics: He simply became another of the anonymous drug offenders who make up 57 percent of all federal inmates.
If anything, the War on Drugs has only built momentum through the political backing of such powerful interest groups as prison guard unions; the billion-dollar drug-testing industry; private prison construction and management companies; and, of course, the DEA, which commands a $1.8-billion budget and has, in the past 30 years, more than tripled the number of special agents on its payroll.
Over the last decade, drug convictions have accounted for more than 80 percent of the growth of the federal prison population, so it's hardly surprising that, as the drug war swirled outside, amassing new victims, Steve Tucker was essentially forgotten.
His sister-in-law, Joanne, now remarried and relocated, wants to forget as well. Declining to be interviewed, she explains: "Digging up something from 10 years ago isn't going to help anything now."
Trying to piece together a ruined life takes time, but there's a freedom that comes with starting over, and Steve is hoping to write his own second act.
He's looking for a literary agent to publish one of the novels he wrote in prison, a mystery set in a town modeled loosely on Cochran. As they say, you write what you know.
"People ask me if I'm going to write about everything I've been through, but I don't think so," he says wistfully. "Who wants to read about some guy who got busted for pot?"
Jermaine Dupri's Cars, Furniture Carted Away By IRS
by NewsRoom
Jermaine Dupri's Cars, Furniture Carted Away By IRS
12.10.2002 5:54 PM EST
Jermaine Dupri — who once rapped with Jay-Z that "Money Ain't a Thang" — is finding that the Internal Revenue Service doesn't agree with his tune.
The music mogul owes millions to the federal government, and a seizure of Dupri's property, including a portion of his prized car collection, has already taken place (click for photos of Jermaine Dupri's home and cars).
Federal agents recently staged a raid at two of the hip-hop producer's Atlanta residences, carting away furniture, computers and cars, according to a report from CBS Atlanta, which cited an unidentified source close to the seizure. Atlanta's IRS field office declined to confirm the raid, since records of seizure are not considered public record. What is public record, however, is the amount of Dupri's debt. According to a federal tax lien filed in Forsythe Superior Court in Atlanta and obtained by MTV News, Dupri (whose real name is Jermaine Dupri Mauldin) owes $2,541,865.
Dupri declined to comment on the seizure, but did dispute the amount owed. "The numbers are wrong," Dupri said in a statement to MTV News, "and the truth will soon be shown."
In the meantime, Dupri is due to announce this week that he just signed a deal making Arista the new home for his So So Def label. His star acts Lil' Bow Wow and Jagged Edge will remain with Columbia, while Dupri will take rapper Da Brat, singer Fundisha and three new acts to his Arista/So So Def imprint.
Jam Master Jay Murder Suspect Arrested After Botched Holdup
by Launch
Jam Master Jay Murder Suspect Arrested After Botched Holdup
December 14, 4 p.m. ET, Launch
Ronald "Tinard" Washington, who was wanted for questioning regarding the murder of Run-DMC DJ Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell), was arrested Monday (December 9) after he and Ernest Williams allegedly robbed a clerk at a Floral Park, New York, motel.
Police apprehended the pair after a 20-minute car chase, when Washington's 2001 Hyundai crashed into another vehicle. Upon his arrest, Washington attempted to use the name Mark White but his fingerprints alerted authorities to his real identity.
Washington was seen outside the studio where Jam Master Jay was shot and killed on October 30. According to sources, Washington might have been the lookout while another man shot Jam Master Jay. Police had been looking for Washington--who disappeared days after the murder--for questioning.
One of the current theories being investigated is that Washington and another man might have been hired by Curtis Scoon, who held a grudge against Jam Master Jay after the two were ripped off of $30,000 during an attempted drug buy several years ago. Scoon phoned Jam Master Jay several times demanding payment in early October.
In related news, Randy Allen--Jam Master Jay's business partner and member of the rap act Rusty Waters--was cleared by the New York Police Department following reports that he could have been involved in the murder of his business partner in order to collect on a $500,000 insurance policy. Allen was also fearful that the reports alleging his involvement in the murder would place his life at risk as well.
The hobbled Guns N' Roses North American tour suffered a final blow today (Dec. 11), as promoter Clear Channel Entertainment confirmed it was canceling the remaining dates with which it was affiliated. A handful of shows being worked by other promoters were also axed.
"The remainder of the Guns N' Roses concert dates promoted by Clear Channel Entertainment have been canceled," the company said in a statement. "Refunds will be available at point of purchase. Clear Channel Entertainment takes pride in bringing live entertainment to the public. We apologize for any inconvenience to all the fans who purchased tickets."
Earlier today, Billboard.com was able to confirm that shows tonight (Dec. 11) in Greenville, S.C., Dec. 17 in Houston, Dec. 19 in Dallas, and Dec. 28 in Las Vegas has been canceled or removed from the schedule. As previously reported, tour dates began disappearing from GNR's schedule after the band failed to appear on stage last Friday night at the First Union Center in Philadelphia. The only reason given to fans was that an unidentified member of band was ill.
The tour, the band's first since 1993, got off to a rocky start last month in Vancouver after Rose failed to appear by showtime. When officials at the GM Place Arena announced the show was off, angry fans rioted and caused extensive damage to the venue. GNR last performed Dec. 5 to a sold-out crowd at New York's Madison Square Garden. The trek was due to wrap Jan. 3 in Inglewood, Calif.
Shots were fired and one man was killed last night (Dec. 9) during a Toronto-area video shoot for "Get Busy" by Jamaican dance hall artist Sean Paul. Paul, whose single "Gimme the Light" is No. 8 this week on the Billboard Hot 100, was filming a Little X-directed clip when shots were fired outside a house being utilized as part of the set.
According to newspaper and television reports, the victim, 21-year-old Ramesh Christie, was shot in the abdomen at around 8:30 p.m. in Vaughn, an area on the northern outskirts of Toronto. He was pronounced dead at Etobicoke General Hospital.
"We were all inside shooting the music video and we heard gunshots outside," said a production crewmember who requested anonymity. "It was extras, apparently, who shot the guy." Christie reportedly arrived on the set in a white Range Rover when the shooting occurred. The gunman and another person allegedly left in a black Mercedes SUV.
York Regional Police were examining a white Range Rover believed to be driven by the victim. Several shell casings were seen near the vehicle. Sgt. Tony Brown said in a press conference that Christie was not part of the crew or cast and that the investigation is ongoing.
One resident, identified only as Tom, said he heard the victim had just arrived on the set. "He pulled up and got shot while he was still inside [the SUV]," the man said. "He came out and got shot again."
"I was deeply saddened to hear that a shooting occurred last night in the vicinity of my video shoot," Sean Paul said in a statement. "Although I did not witness the incident, my sympathy and prayers go out to the victim's family and to those who have been affected by this tragedy. We must overcome violence and hatred. All life is precious. Respect."
Approximately 70 people were involved in the "Get Busy" video shoot. Several luxury cars and SUVs including Mercedes and Cadillacs were used in the filming. Neighbors said they thought police cars responding to the crime scene were part of the production.
The celebrated Marsalis family, which, as previously reported, is issuing the collaborative album "The Marsalis Family: A Jazz Celebration" in February via Marsalis Music, will follow its release with a short, eight-date tour of Canada and the U.S. East Coast.
The clan -- patriarch pianist Ellis and his sons, saxophonist Branford, trumpeter Wynton, trombonist Delfeayo, and drummer Jason -- will be joined by bassist Reginald Veal on the tour, which qualifies as a rare outing, as the musician Marsalises only first played together on stage Aug. 4, 2001 in New Orleans. The recording of that performance constitutes the forthcoming album.
The tour will kick off Feb. 23 in Ottawa and hit Toronto and Montreal before crossing the border and proceeding to Schenectady, N.Y.; Syracuse, N.Y.; Newark, N.J.; and Philadelphia, and closing with a March 3 engagement at Boston's Symphony Hall.
In addition to the album and the tour, a DVD and a PBS special are expected from the Marsalis clan in the coming months. For more information and tour updates, visit Marsalis Music's official Web site.
Here are the Marsalis family tour dates:
Feb. 23: Ottawa (National Arts Center)
Feb. 24: Toronto (Massey Hall)
Feb. 25: Montreal (Place des Arts)
Feb. 27: Schenectady, N.Y. (Proctor's Theatre)
Feb. 28: Syracuse, N.Y. (Landmark Theatre)
March 1: Newark, N.J. (New Jersey PAC)
March 2: Philadelphia (Verizon Hall @ Kimmel Center)
March 3: Boston (Symphony Hall)
Job hunt gets harder for African-Americans..(AKA-Black Folx)
by NewsRoom/USAToday
Job hunt gets harder for African-Americans
By Stephanie Armour
USA TODAY
The nation's economic slowdown is beginning to have a dramatic impact on African-Americans.
The unemployment rate for blacks jumped from 9.8% in October to 11% in November, the Labor Department says.
In contrast to the large jump in black unemployment, Hispanic unemployment was unchanged at 7.8%. Unemployment among whites rose from 5.1% to 5.2%, while the overall unemployment rate rose from 5.7% to 6%.
''In a jobless recovery, those taking it on the chin will be minority and high school graduates, the least advantaged in the job market,'' says Jared Bernstein, a senior economist at the Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute.
Economists say 2003 also looks bleak because of the jobless recovery, which means it will take even longer for the African-American jobless rate to improve than previous recessions. Several factors may be driving the increase:
* Labor market participation. African-Americans tend to be the last to be hired when the economy is booming. That means they also tend to be the first to lose their jobs when a downturn hits. In fact, the black unemployment rate is typically twice the overall unemployment rate.
The unemployment rate for black men ages 16 and older rose 1.4 percentage points in November to 12% -- the highest since 1994.
* Industry losses. While job losses have been deep in manufacturing and construction, they have also hit retailers, which lost 39,000 jobs in November. Jobs in those industries tend to be disproportionately held by African-Americans, economists say. Adjusting for seasonal hiring, department store hiring was down by 17,000, the worst November for store hiring since 1982, according to experts.
* Educational background. The downturn has been especially hard on those without a college degree -- another segment that is disproportionately composed of blacks. Unemployment among high school graduates ages 25 and older was at 5.2% in November. For those with a college degree, it was 2.9%. According to a 2000 Census Bureau report, 77% of blacks have at least a high school diploma, while 88% of whites are at least high school graduates.
Because monthly figures tend to vary, economists say it is hard to know whether the increase in black unemployment marks a significant change. But economists say wage increases also have been slowing for lower-income and less-skilled employees, which could hurt African-Americans.
Slick Rick One Step Closer To Being Deported
12.05.2002 5:29 PM EST
An appeals board has upheld an order to deport rapper Slick Rick back to England, where he was born and lived until age 11.
Officials wouldn't say when the matter was ruled on, but the Board of Immigration Appeals recently upheld the Immigration and Naturalization Service's order to deport the pioneering patch-wearing lyricist. According to U.S. immigration law, any non-citizen who serves more than five years in prison for a felony conviction is automatically deported, and Slick Rick (born Ricky Walters) served five years and 12 days in prison in 1996 for an attempted-murder rap.
In June, Walters was seized after performing on a Caribbean cruise ship, and he's been detained in a Florida jail ever since without bond (see "Slick Rick In Jail, Facing Deportation"). Slick Rick's family and friends have been joined by Russell Simmons, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Will Smith and many others in speaking out on his behalf (see "Slick Rick Speaks From Prison: Deportation Would Be 'Inhumane' "). And recently, John Conyers, a black Democratic congressman from Michigan, called INS officials to plead for Rick's release.
Despite the swell of support, a spokesperson for the INS said a move overseas is imminent for the rapper, but a spokesperson on Slick Rick's side told MTV News that they've filed a new appeal, this time for an emergency stay of deportation, and that "they have a few more tricks up their sleeve" before they give up on keeping Rick in America.
Slick Rick rose to prominence by appearing on Doug E. Fresh's classic "La-Di-Da-Di" in 1985. His debut album, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick, went platinum and included signature tracks like "Children's Story," "Mona Lisa" and "Treat Her Like a Prostitute."
Aging Blues and Pop Singers Get Some Cash in L.A.
Thu Dec 5, 7:09 PM ET Add Entertainment -
By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - After singing the blues over medical bills for years, soul man Sam Moore and other aging pop stars have won a key legal battle against their union which they say cheated them out of millions of dollars in benefits.
After a final hearing on Wednesday in Atlanta, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) reached an $8.4 million settlement in the nine-year class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of Moore and the estates of Motown diva Mary Wells, Jackie Wilson and Curtis Mayfield.
"The resolution clearly addresses the concerns of class members, and establishes a strong foundation for future activities on behalf of recording artists who are eligible for health and pension benefits under the AFTRA contract," AFTRA National Executive Director Greg Hessinger said Thursday.
The suit, originally filed in 1993 by Moore, who was later joined by 14 other artists, claimed that the AFTRA Health and Retirement Fund -- the pension arm of AFTRA -- failed to aid Moore and others like Wells, who became destitute and in need of medical support after their popularity had waned.
The suit said that record companies in the 1950s and 1960s did not accurately report royalty earnings to the AFTRA fund and failed to make required contributions to pension accounts.
Singer Mary Wells, once one of Motown's biggest stars, died destitute in 1992 at the age of 49 of throat cancer in a charity ward, while Moore, who was half of the hit rhythm & blues duo "Sam and Dave" with late partner Dave Prater, continues to tour to make ends meet after descending into a well-chronicled lifelong battle with drug addiction.
One obstacle to a settlement in the years-long battle with AFTRA was that the AFTRA fund was a separate legal entity from the union. But Hessinger in a statement on Thursday said that the union several months ago decided to intervene in the case on behalf of recording artists to ensure their rights would be protected.
A fund from settlement proceeds will be created to cover the costs of successful claims and improvements to the claims process, including the retention of an independent consultant to review the funds' procedures in evaluating claims.
AFTRA, which has 80,000 members nationwide, is the collective bargaining representative for recording artists, actors, broadcasters and other professionals in the media and entertainment industries.
The union resumed negotiations with the recording industry on Wednesday to reach a new sound recording contract, covering health and retirement benefits for recording artists.
The contract expired in May, when negotiations first began. The talks however went on hiatus in July until this week.
"We resumed negotiations on Wednesday and are hoping to reach a settlement by Friday," said a spokeswoman for AFTRA.
According to sources familiar with the negotiations, both sides are nearing a pact that would provide full health care coverage for all artists on all major labels.
Officials from the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) (RIAA), the trade group for the world's major labels, declined to comment.
Whitney Houston admits she's abused drugs in the past, but says she's gotten beyond that experience through prayer. The Grammy-winning singer also discusses the pressures of stardom and her decade-long marriage to fellow performer Bobby Brown in an interview with Diane Sawyer on "Primetime," scheduled to air at 9 p.m. EST tomorrow (Dec. 4) on ABC.
When Sawyer asks her, "Is it alcohol? Is it marijuana? Is it cocaine? Is it pills?" Houston responds, "It has been at times."
The 39-year-old concedes she's "addicted to a few things." "Making love," Houston says. "I don't like to think of myself addicted. I like to think ... I had a bad habit ... which can be broken."
Houston's shockingly thin frame at last year's Michael Jackson tribute sparked reports that she was ill, which she vehemently denies. She also says she's not anorexic or bulimic. "Let's get that straight. I am not sick. OK?" she says. "I've always been a thin girl. I am not going to be fat, ever. Let's get that straight. Whitney is not going to be fat, ever."
Brown also appears in the interview, and says he's frequently used marijuana because he's been diagnosed as bipolar. The 33-year-old was arrested last month in Atlanta on drug and traffic charges. "Me and drugs. We're not friends. We're not friends at all," Brown says. "I'm a very high-strung person. ... [Marijuana] seems to help me ... from going up and down."
Houston says she's done partying now, and has found strength through daily prayer. Her new Arista album, "Just Whitney," is due Dec. 10. "I'm not the strongest every day, but I'm not the weakest, either," she says. "And I won't break."
Nearly 200 passengers ill after Carnival cruise
BY JENNIFER MALONEY
jmaloney@herald.com
Passengers of the Carnival cruise ship Fascination filed off the boat this morning at the Port of Miami clutching their stomachs and leaning on each other for support.
For almost 200 people on the three-day jaunt to Nassau, the vacation had been dampened -- if not ruined completely -- by a gastrointestinal virus with symptoms similar to those plaguing other cruise liners.
''I was sick all three days,'' said Arlene Bailey, who listed symptoms including diarrheah, upset stomach and abdominal pain. Bailey said she wouldn't be deterred from going on another cruise.
But others said they had no desire to step foot on a cruise ship again.
''It was the cruise from hell,'' said a man from Pembroke Pines who identified himself only as Vinnie. ''First time on Carnival, last time on Carnival. We'll never do it again.'' Half of his party of 24 -- a group of colleagues and friends -- were ill, he said.
Passengers described family reunions and romantic getaways that turned into long waits at the ship infirmary, lots of bed rest in cabin beds and frequent visits to the head.
''I was throwing up everywhere,'' said Sammi Teller, 12, of Fort Lauderdale. ``There were people throwing up in the elevators and the hallways.''
''It was nasty,'' agreed her mother, Valya Wolf, who described the trip as ``stressful.''
A total of 190 passengers and four crew members on the Fascination reported vomiting and diarrhea, but it has not been confirmed that they have a Norwalk-like virus, said Jennifer de la Cruz, a Carnival Corp. spokeswoman.
That total may not reflect the sick passengers who stayed in bed and did not visit the ship infirmary.
''We didn't know everyone else was getting sick until we were getting off,'' said Christa Schindler, who became ill Sunday afternoon. ``We didn't really leave the room.''
As passengers disembarked, Carnival cruise line officials handed out letters that described precautions passengers could take to prevent contracting gastroentiritis from the Norwalk Virus, which has plagued more than 1,000 people on other cruise ships in the past few months.
Passengers who already had become sick were nonplussed.
''If there was a problem on other cruses, they should have told us how to prevent it,'' said Lisa Breen, whose family was on the cruise to celebrate her grandfather's 80th birthday. Two of her cousins became ill Saturday afternoon and her sister began to feel nauseous this morning.
''This is a way to cover their butts, not a way to protect us,'' Breen said.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was overseeing the cleaning of the ship, which is still scheduled to depart on a four-day cruise to Key West and Cozumel, Mexico, at 4 p.m. Monday, Carnival spokesman Tim Gallagher said.
''We're taking all possible precautions . . . given the recent incidence of Norwalk-like viruses on cruise ships,'' Gallagher said.
Fascination passengers will not receive a refund or compensation because most became ill late Sunday, the last full day of the cruise, Gallagher said.
CDC experts have obtained lab samples from the ship and passengers to determine if a Norwalk-like virus caused the outbreak, with test results expected within five days, said Bernadette Burden, a CDC spokeswoman.
The CDC does not currently have the exact number of viral cases that have been reported on cruises in recent years, but the number of gastrointestinal illnesses on cruise ships has declined since 1990, she added.
Norwalk-like virus is one of a number of common illnesses that can cause diarrhea, stomach pain and vomiting for 24 to 48 hours. It is spread through food and water and close contact with infected people or things they have touched. Its incubation period is about two to three days.
The virus is a seasonal illness that peaks in the colder months, and is not uncommon, said Dr. Steven Wiersma, the state epidemiologist.
''We've already seen some [cases] in Florida -- this is not just a cruise ship issue,'' he said.
He said it was too early to tell if the recent outbreaks represent a spike in occurrences, because more people are reporting being sick because of the increased attention given to the cruise ship cases.
The Amsterdam, which was held at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale for 10 days while be thoroughly decontaminated after nearly 1,000 people fell ill on its last four trips, departed on 10-day Caribbean cruise Sunday with 1,261 passengers aboard.
''We are very confident that we have broken the cycle,'' said Rose Abello, a Holland America spokeswoman. ``Can we guarantee that nobody will ever get sick? Absolutely not.''
Holland America Line Inc. is owned by the Miami-based Carnival Corp.
Passengers on other Holland America ships, the Ryndam and Statendam, have also contracted the Norwalk-like virus on recent sails. A lawsuit seeking class-action status was filed in Canada in August on behalf of Ryndam passengers.
CDC officials have said there is no evidence that the cruise ship outbreaks are the work of terrorists.
Tuesday 26 November, 2002, 16:42 GMT
Risk of internet collapse rising
The 11 September attack knocked out net hubs
Simulated attacks on key internet hubs have shown how vulnerable the worldwide network is to disruption by disaster or terrorist action.
If an attack or disaster destroyed the major nodes of the internet, the network itself could begin to unravel, warn the scientists who carried out the simulations.
The virtual attacks showed that the net would keep going in major cities, but outlying areas and smaller towns would gradually be cut off.
The researchers warn that the net has become more vulnerable as it has become more commercialised and key net cables are concentrated in the hands of fewer organisations.
Cutting the ties
The simulations were carried out by a trio of scientists from Ohio State University led by Tony Grubesic, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr Grubesic compared the net to US air traffic system.
"If weather stops or delays traffic in a major airport hub, like Chicago's O'Hare, air passengers throughout the country may feel the effects," said Dr Grubesic, "even if they are not travelling to Chicago."
If you destroyed a major internet hub, you would also destroy all the links that are connected to it
Morton O'Kelly, Ohio State University
In its early days the net was as decentralised, as possible with multiple links between many of the nodes forming it. If one node disappeared, traffic could easily flow to other links and route traffic to all parts.
However, said the researchers, the increasing commercialisation of the net has seen the emergence of large hubs that act as key distribution points for some parts of the web.
As a result, the net has become much more vulnerable to attack.
"If you destroyed a major internet hub, you would also destroy all the links that are connected to it," said Morton O'Kelly, Professor of Geography at Ohio State University.
"It would have ripple effects throughout the internet"
Small worlds
US cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Washington DC are large net hubs and have several connections to the web.
An attack on one hub could have ripple effects
As a result any attack would bump up traffic levels on these links, but the larger cities would probably maintain net services.
By contrast, warn the researchers, smaller cities that rely on the large hubs to keep them connected cut see their links severed by an attack on their routing centre.
The researchers said the attack on the World Trade Centre revealed how disruption could spread.
A major net hub was destroyed during the attack and severed links between New York City and three New York counties.
"The ability for networks to re-route, re-connect and have redundancy is clearly important for the survival of the internet in the face of disasters," said Dr Grubesic.
The researchers' work will appear in the February 2003 edition of Telematics and Informatics
y, 26 November, 2002, 16:42 GMT
Risk of internet collapse rising
The 11 September attack knocked out net hubs
Simulated attacks on key internet hubs have shown how vulnerable the worldwide network is to disruption by disaster or terrorist action.
If an attack or disaster destroyed the major nodes of the internet, the network itself could begin to unravel, warn the scientists who carried out the simulations.
The virtual attacks showed that the net would keep going in major cities, but outlying areas and smaller towns would gradually be cut off.
The researchers warn that the net has become more vulnerable as it has become more commercialised and key net cables are concentrated in the hands of fewer organisations.
Cutting the ties
The simulations were carried out by a trio of scientists from Ohio State University led by Tony Grubesic, Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Cincinnati.
Dr Grubesic compared the net to US air traffic system.
"If weather stops or delays traffic in a major airport hub, like Chicago's O'Hare, air passengers throughout the country may feel the effects," said Dr Grubesic, "even if they are not travelling to Chicago."
If you destroyed a major internet hub, you would also destroy all the links that are connected to it
Morton O'Kelly, Ohio State University
In its early days the net was as decentralised, as possible with multiple links between many of the nodes forming it. If one node disappeared, traffic could easily flow to other links and route traffic to all parts.
However, said the researchers, the increasing commercialisation of the net has seen the emergence of large hubs that act as key distribution points for some parts of the web.
As a result, the net has become much more vulnerable to attack.
"If you destroyed a major internet hub, you would also destroy all the links that are connected to it," said Morton O'Kelly, Professor of Geography at Ohio State University.
"It would have ripple effects throughout the internet"
Small worlds
US cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Dallas, Chicago and Washington DC are large net hubs and have several connections to the web.
An attack on one hub could have ripple effects
As a result any attack would bump up traffic levels on these links, but the larger cities would probably maintain net services.
By contrast, warn the researchers, smaller cities that rely on the large hubs to keep them connected cut see their links severed by an attack on their routing centre.
The researchers said the attack on the World Trade Centre revealed how disruption could spread.
A major net hub was destroyed during the attack and severed links between New York City and three New York counties.
"The ability for networks to re-route, re-connect and have redundancy is clearly important for the survival of the internet in the face of disasters," said Dr Grubesic.
The researchers' work will appear in the February 2003 edition of Telematics and Informatics
Tue November 26, 2002 09:06 AM ET
By Patricia Reaney
LONDON (Reuters) - It started as a mysterious infection among gay white men but over two decades HIV/AIDS has exploded into the worst epidemic humanity has ever faced and is now afflicting as many women as men.
AIDS will have killed 3.1 million people by the end of this year, five million more have been infected with the deadly virus and 42 million people, half of them women, are living with HIV/AIDS, according to the latest figures from UNAIDS, the United Nations agency spearheading the battle against AIDS.
"For me what is most striking is that for the first time women comprise 50 percent of the global epidemic," Peter Piot, the head of UNAIDS, told Reuters on Tuesday.
"In Africa 58 percent of all people living with HIV are women. The face of AIDS is becoming the face of young women," he added in an interview ahead of World AIDS Day on Dec. 1.
The changing dynamics of HIV/AIDS means more babies could become infected through their mothers and women, who have traditionally been the carriers, are being struck down with the illness that has afflicted their husbands, fathers and brothers.
MAKING TRADITIONAL PROBLEMS WORSE
AIDS has killed more than 25 million people worldwide since it was first discovered and it is now contributing to other disasters, particularly in southern Africa which is most affected by the epidemic.
"It has exacerbated the food crisis. That is new. I think we are starting to see the true impact of AIDS in countries that are heavily affected," Piot said.
Drought and famines are not new to Africa but in countries where a quarter or a third of the population are ill, it has intensified the problem.
"Now it is much worse because agricultural production has gone down already because of AIDS, and nutritional requirements for whole communities have increased because people are sick and need more food," Piot added. The AIDS Epidemic Update: December 2002 shows Africa, with 29.4 million people living with HIV/AIDS, is the worst affected region, Eastern Europe and Central Asia with 1.2 million cases has the fastest growing epidemic but Asia, particularly China and India are the real time bomb.
An estimated one million people in China are infected with HIV and unless effective responses take hold, the number could reach 10 million people -- equivalent to the entire population of Belgium -- by the end of this decade, the report says.
"When you look at the global figures there is no progress and the global figures will depend largely on what's going on in Asia just because the population denominator is so much bigger than anywhere else," Piot said.
In North America and Western Europe, the introduction of anti-AIDS drugs in 1995/96 lead to a dramatic fall in AIDS deaths but the trend has begun to level off.
Researchers are also reporting an increase in unsafe sex and in heterosexual transmission of the virus.
SOME GOOD NEWS
But Piot emphasized that more countries are showing evidence of the number of new infections declining. In South Africa the HIV prevalence rate among pregnant women under 20 years old fell to 15.2 percent in 2001 from 21 percent in 1998.
The report highlighted a similar decline in the virus among young inner-city women in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
"For the first time in years we have solid evidence that prevention can work even in the poorest countries," said Piot.
"There is far more money going into HIV activities than before. It is still not enough but at least there is progress there. That is what I would consider the good news part."
Drug companies have slashed the price of anti-AIDS drugs and countries like Botswana and Nigeria, and some corporations, are rolling out programs to offer treatment to people with HIV/AIDS.
But Piot said only a tiny minority of people, mostly in the developed world, are receiving drugs.
"The price reductions are real but even at a dollar a day someone has to pay for it. We are focusing on training of physicians and nurses and finding the money for it. For the poorest countries it will only be possible if money comes from the outside," he said.
"The big problem is Africa -- the poorest countries with the largest number of infected individuals."
The short-term fate of Colonel Claypool's Bucket of Bernie Brains may lie in the hands of Axl Rose.
That's because the band, which was formed by ex-Primus singer/bassist Les Claypool, features guitarist Buckethead and drummer Brain, both of whom are on the road in Guns N' Roses.
Claypool hopes to enter the studio in January with Brain, Bucket and Parliament/Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell to record the group's debut album, but if the Guns tour is extended the project will have to be put on hold and the quirky jam-rocker will begin work on his second studio solo album instead.
"If Bucket and Brain weren't committed to another project, I probably would devote much more time to it," Claypool said. "But I'm just not interested in being in a situation where my tour schedule or my release schedule is dictated by someone else."
If Claypool sounds a little bitter maybe it's because he played a major role in forwarding the careers of both Brain (a.k.a. Brian Mantia) and Buckethead (a.k.a. Brian Carroll). Brain replaced Tim "Herb" Alexander in Primus in 1996, and Buckethead first received mainstream exposure opening for Primus in 1999. In addition, Claypool was a major collaborator on Buckethead's Monsters & Robots (1999).
Even if Axl keeps Buckethead and Brain on the road through 2003, Claypool will probably still release a Bucket of Bernie Brains CD next year, only it'll have to be a live album. The band, which played together for the first time at the second stage of this year's Bonnaroo Festival, recorded its three off-the-cuff San Francisco dates.
"We just showed up and start playing," Claypool said. "They were completely improvised. We didn't even know what key we were going to be in from moment to moment. We went in there and starting throwing pasta at the walls, and it turned out great."
Considering the spontaneous nature of the project, you might expect endless walls of freeform noise, but Claypool said Bucket of Bernie Brains is surprisingly musical.
"Brain, Bernie and myself are very structured players, so everything is very groove-oriented. It's like this thing that starts in one place and just morphs itself into other places. There's not definitive changes between the jams so much as this constant morphing flow of audio."
Although he loves improvising, Claypool said a Bucket of Bernie Brains studio record would feature complete, structured songs, somewhat like The Grand Pecking Order, the 2001 album by his Oysterhead side project with Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio and Police drummer Stewart Copeland.
"That was a lot of fun, and those guys are now good friends," Claypool said. "That's one thing I love about all this. You get to make all these songs with incredible musicians, and you wind up being friends with a lot of them. I'm doing exactly what I want to do. Life's too short to do anything else."
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A Baptist minister endured the needle prick of an HIV test in front of his congregation during Sunday worship.
The Rev. Darius G. Pridgen then implored his assembly to get tested for HIV after services, the Buffalo News reported. The effort for mass HIV screening through a church is believed to be the first in the nation, organizers said.
Before lively hymns and scripture readings, Pridgen warned dozens of teenagers in the church about the dangers of sex and promiscuity. "Once you catch (AIDS), you don't just get rid of it. Do not let yourselves die for a few minutes of pleasure," he said.
"We see this as the tearing down of the traditional church barriers that excludes dialogue about sex, HIV and AIDS," said Ken Smith, a program coordinator at GROUP Ministries, the city outreach ministry that organized the event.
The day, dubbed `Breakthrough Sunday,' involved 40 HIV/AIDS educators and service providers from state and county health departments, AIDS Community Services, Project Reach, Planned Parenthood and Erie County Medical Center.
Volunteers handed out pamphlets with sex information and promoted the church's message of abstinence to the mostly African-American congregation. Almost 3,000 of more than 5,000 HIV-positive area residents are people of color, according to the AIDS Network of Western New York.
Smith said African-American churches should take their place in the fight against the disease that disproportionately affects the black community.
From the 700 members of the True Bethel Baptist Church who watched Pridgen's example, 105 stopped by the nearby charter school to be tested for the virus that causes AIDS, the paper reported.
"I wanted a peace of mind," said Michael Threat, 43, who got tested Sunday. "What I did 20 years ago could creep up to haunt me. AIDS is a long-term killer and it's easy to go home and pass on a death sentence to your loved ones without knowing it," said Threat, a married Buffalo resident with three children. His cousin died recently of AIDS after infecting his wife and mistress.
Results from the anonymous tests oral swabs or blood tests will be revealed privately at clinics, hospitals and health facilities in two weeks.
Eight Buffalo churches plan similar HIV testing days and the ministry at True Bethel hopes to make it a biannual event, said Smith.
"Historically, the church has been a mecca for change," he said. "We're hoping to maintain the pivotal role of the church and to change some of the thinking and ways in the African-American community."
RIAA orders US Navy to surrender
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 24/11/2002 at 22:43 GMT
In a timely reminder of who's really in charge here, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has mounted a daring raid on the US Navy.
Acting unilaterally at the behest of the RIAA, Navy officials confiscated 100 computers on suspicion of harboring illegally downloaded MP3s, The Capital, an Annapolis, MD daily reports. A Naval official quoted confirms the raid, adding that punishment ranges from "court martial to loss of leave and other restrictions".
For the RIAA, there are no half measures: you're either with them, or against them. So even if you're risking having your ass blown off for your country, there's no mercy.
It's no picnic in the Navy, as many Register readers serving in the forces remind us. From a terrific account of Gulf War combat by a US marine sniper in the new Harper's magazine* we learn that shortly before entering a live combat, infantry are required to remove "foreign material" from their packs: letters from women who aren't their girlfriends, mothers or wives , and pornography, because in the event of death the personal effects will be dispatched to their next of kin in their entirety.
So have MP3s now joined this list of "foreign material"? Any Reg readers in the know? ®
Harrisburg School District and county authorities are investigating allegations that a 5-year-old kindergarten girl performed oral sex on a male classmate in school last week.
City spokesman Randy King said the incident took place Nov. 15 in a classroom at Melrose Elementary School.
It wasn't clear yesterday where the teacher was at the time. She left a memo for the principal detailing the incident before she went on leave earlier this week and has yet to be interviewed. King said the teacher has a terminally ill relative and is out of town.
District officials learned of the incident after a classmate told her mother last weekend. The mother notified school district officials Monday, and they immediately launched an investigation.
Harrisburg police have turned the matter over to county social service agencies because of the age of the children.
There will be no criminal charges, King said, because of the children's age and because the act was not forced.
"However, Children and Youth Services will be investigating the matter," King said. "Children of this age who engage in such conduct don't necessarily get this from television."
The boy's mother contacted the news media yesterday, saying the school district was being unresponsive to her inquiries about the incident.
The mother, whose name is being withheld by The Patriot-News to protect the identity of the child, said that when the girl who performed the act was questioned, she admitted she had done it.
The mother said she wasn't immediately notified, and after she was, district officials told her the matter had been turned over to Dauphin County Children and Youth, told her to get her son counseling and refused to discuss it further.
She said she is concerned for her son as well as the girl, because she feels a child exhibiting such behavior may be being abused.
"This isn't kids fighting or cutting up in school," the mother said. "This is a serious matter."
District solicitor Nate Waters said that while the incident has been turned over to social service agencies, it is still not clear exactly what happened.
"Nobody that I have talked to has assured me that these things have happened," Waters said. "We don't want to keep on moving on with hearsay from 5-year-olds. We're currently attempting to contact the teacher and get some answers."
Waters said he doesn't doubt the incident took place.
"We're trying not to sensationalize 5-year-olds having sex," Waters said. "We don't want to alarm people who have 5-year-olds in classes all over the city.
"This has never happened before to my knowledge and very likely is never going to happen again," he said.
The Ben Harper documentary "Pleasure & Pain" has just begun a two-month U.S. theatrical run, on the heels of its release on DVD Tuesday (Nov. 26) by Virgin. As previously reported, the film, directed by noted photographer Danny Clinch, blends concert clips from North America and Europe with an array of off-stage footage, including interviews with Harper's grandparents in his childhood hometown of Claremont, Calif.
"It's not a concert film," Clinch told Billboard.com last year. "It's not just on the road, or on the tour bus. It really goes beyond that." Some 20 Harper songs are woven throughout the film, but only a handful, including "Please Bleed," "Faded," "Steal My Kisses," "The Woman in You," and "Power of the Gospel," are presented in near-complete forms.
For first-time filmmaker Clinch, the prospect of battling Harper in the editing room was a daunting one, but his worries proved unfounded. "I felt like there was a chance he would throw his weight around, but in the end I sent him my rough cut, and after seeing it a couple of times, he called back and said he really liked it," Clinch reveals. "[Harper and producer J.P. Plunier] respected the fact that it was my piece. I really felt honored that they chose to stay out of it and let me finish it on my own."
Harper and his band the Innocent Criminals are hard at work on their next Virgin studio album, due sometime next year. For a full list of theaters screening "Pleasure & Pain," visit the artist's official Web site.
The Associated Press
Wednesday, November 20, 2002; 3:20 PM
LOS ANGELES –– Actress-rapper Queen Latifah was arrested early Wednesday for investigation of driving under the influence of alcohol, a California Highway Patrol official said.
The 32-year-old hip-hop star was driving in North Hollywood when she was stopped about 3:15 a.m. for making an unsafe lane change, officer Alex Delgadillo said.
"Once she has made contact, they found that she was under the influence," he said. "It was a routine arrest."
The artist, who was driving a 2003 Cadillac Escalade, presented a valid New Jersey driver's license bearing her given name, Dana Owens, and then failed a sobriety test, Delgadillo said.
Latifah had a supporting role in this year's romantic comedy "Brown Sugar," and is one of the stars of the upcoming movie "Chicago."
She won a Grammy Award for best rap solo performance for the single "U.N.I.T.Y."
Jimi Hendrix Musicians & Admirers Plan Bash For Late Guitarist's 60th Birthday
November 20, 2 p.m. ET, Launch
Seattle will have a purple haze this weekend as the city and the Experience Music Project (EMP) celebrate what would have been Jimi Hendrix's 60th birthday. The bash, which is co-sponsored by the family-owned Experience Hendrix LLC, takes place Sunday (November 24), and will feature performances by blues great Buddy Guy; Hendrix's Band Of Gypsys (with the original rhythm section of bassist Billy Cox and drummer Buddy Miles); former Earth, Wind & Fire members Sheldon Reynolds, Larry Dunn, and Johnny Graham; guitarist Eric Gales; guitarist Kenny Olson of Kid Rock's Twisted Brown Trucker band; and others.
In addition to Sunday's concert in the EMP's Sky Church auditorium, the Fender Musical Instruments Corp. will present the Hendrix family with an exact recreation of the guitarist's famous white Stratocaster (the original is in EMP's collection).
On Tuesday (November 27), Hendrix's actual birthday, EMP will present a special screening of the new DVD Blue Wild Angel: Jimi Hendrix Live At The Isle Of Wight in its JBL Theater.
LAUNCH asked Cox--who in addition to the Band Of Gypsys also replaced bassist Noel Redding in the Jimi Hendrix Experience--what he thought Hendrix would be doing musically if he were still alive. "I get asked that question quite often, and we were gravitating toward more, like, 'The Rays Of The New Rising Sun.' We were gravitating toward classical music, I think. We would've taken those modes into a classical vein. And then he had thought about perhaps maybe going to Juilliard, and there's no telling. (He) always talked about it."
In addition to the DVD, Blue Wild Angel is also available in single- and double-CD sets.
Grammy-winning R&B singer D'Angelo (real name: Michael Eugene Archer) had to be subdued with pepper spray yesterday (Nov. 18) after he resisted arrest on misdemeanor charges of aggressive driving and other counts, police said. Chesterfield, Va., police said they went to D'Angelo's suburban Richmond home after an alleged confrontation with a woman at a gas station on Sunday. The singer allegedly cursed at the woman and spit on her after he cut her off in his luxury SUV, police said.
D'Angelo, 28, allegedly resisted police as they attempted to take him into custody shortly before noon yesterday and had to be subdued with the irritant spray, Maj. James B. Bourque said. The artist was released on his recognizance pending a Jan. 15 appearance in Chesterfield General Court.
In addition to the driving count, he is charged with assault, curse and abuse, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest, all misdemeanors, Bourque said.
Two years ago, D'Angelo received a Grammy for best male R&B vocal performance for "Untitled (How Does it Feel)" from the album "Voodoo," which also won a Grammy for best R&B album. Released in February 2000, the Virgin set topped both The Billboard 200 and the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.
Michael Jackson said he made a "terrible mistake" by holding his young son over the railing of a fourth-floor balcony at a Berlin hotel to show fans who wanted to see the child. The incident shocked the worldwide audience who later watched the scene on video. German and U.S. television news programs repeatedly broadcast footage of the reclusive pop star's brief appearance yesterday (Nov. 19) at the Hotel Adlon.
The boy had a white cloth over his head as Jackson held him with one arm around his waist over the edge of the hotel's iron balcony railing. The child, wearing a baby blue jumper, was the singer's third and youngest, Prince Michael II, according to a spokesperson for the Bambi entertainment award ceremony, which Jackson is attending in Berlin.
Last night, Jackson issued a statement saying he had gotten carried away when fans below the window asked to see the baby. "I made a terrible mistake," he said. "I got caught up in the excitement of the moment. I would never intentionally endanger the lives of my children."
Dozens of fans had gathered outside the hotel, just opposite Berlin's landmark Brandenburg Gate, and security had to remove some from the lobby. Several carried banners, including one that said "Save the Kids," with drawings of children's faces, a reference to Jackson's philanthropy.
Jackson, wearing a bright red shirt, smiled and waved to the fans, at one point tossing a small white towel to the crowd below. The singer then went inside and retrieved the toddler, using one arm to hold the boy out over the iron rail. Fans cheered as the pop star appeared with the child, but Jackson quickly retreated into his hotel room.
Little is known about Prince Michael II. People Magazine reported in August that he is six months old. The magazine, citing an anonymous friend, said the boy was not adopted and did not identify the mother. The singer also has two children with ex-wife Debbie Rowe: a 5-year-old boy -- also named Prince Michael -- and a 4-year-old girl, Paris. The couple divorced in 1999.
In Berlin, Jackson was taking a break from a California courtroom where he testified last week in a $21 million lawsuit claiming he backed out of concerts. He arrived in Berlin to pick up a Bambi for life achievement. Today, he is to attend a benefit for homeless children and a charity auction where he will put a jacket and hat on the block.
