Agnieszka Radwanska responds to Body Issue controversy

The Polish tennis star was dropped by a Catholic youth group.

 

Tennis star Agnieszka Radwanska broke her silence about the uproar in her native Poland about her nude photo shoot for ESPN The Magazine’s Body Issue. Earlier this week, Radwanska was dropped from a Catholic youth group for her “immoral behavior.”

The following statement was posted Friday on her Facebook page.

    “For those that are not familiar with the magazine, ESPN The Body Issue is a celebration of the beauty of the bodies of the best athletes in the world. It includes both men and women of all ages and all shapes and sizes. Other athletes photographed include San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick, 77-year-old golf legend Gary Player, and Olympic volleyball gold medalist Kerri Walsh Jennings – during and after her pregnancy. My tennis colleagues Serena Williams, Daniela Hantuchova and Vera Zvonareva have all participated in the past.

    The pictures are certainly not meant to cause offense and to brand them as immoral clearly does not take into account the context of the magazine. Moreover, they do not contain any explicit imagery whatsoever. I train extremely hard to keep my body in shape and that’s what the article and the magazine is all about. If you read the interview, it only discusses my job as an athlete and what I have to do physically to be able to participate at the highest level of sport.

    It has been suggested by some members of the press (among others) that I was paid for the photo shoot. This is absolutely not the case. Neither I nor any of the other athletes were paid. I agreed to participate to help encourage young people, and especially girls, to exercise, stay in shape and be healthy.”

This was the right tone for a statement. Note that she doesn’t apologize, nor show contrition. She explains her thought process and intentions.

Radwanska could have been stronger in her rebuke of the morality police who insinuated she was a bad role model for young women, but given the outrage in Poland, she played it well.

Norwegian convicted over rape report issues Gulf caution

Interior designer appealing 'very harsh' sentence for illicit sex after she reported being raped by a co-worker.

The Norwegian interior designer convicted in Dubai of having illegal sex after she reported being raped is appealing her jail sentence and alerting Western women to the Islam-based legal system of the United Arab Emirates.

"I just want to get fair treatment," Marte Deborah Dalelv, 24, told the AFP news agency Friday. She called her 16-month sentence Tuesday — for extramarital sex, perjury and illegal alcohol consumption — "very harsh," saying she had appealed immediately. A hearing is set for Sept. 5.
Since the Norwegian government secured Dalelv's conditional release after she was charged in March, she has been living under the protection of the Norwegian Seamens' Center, a church in Dubai. But now that she has been sentenced, she told Norway's NRK News that she is officially wanted by the authorities, the BBC reported.

"I should have been imprisoned since Tuesday," she said. "But I have been told they are not searching for me."

She told AFP she was "very nervous and tense."

"I hope for the best, and I take one day at a time," she said by telephone. "I just have to get through this."

Nonetheless, Dalelv stressed she did not want to criticize the UAE government.

"They have their legal system," she said.

Under United Arab Emirates law, sex outside of marriage is illegal, and a rape conviction requires either a confession or four adult male witnesses to the attack. Similar convictions involving foreigners and Emirati women have occurred over the past several years, although the law on extramarital sex is not generally enforced for tourists or several hundred thousand Westerners and others living there on resident visas.

Marte Dalelv was sentenced to 16 months in jail for extramarital sex, perjury and consuming alcohol without a license. She was charged after reporting in March that a co-worker had raped her in a Dubai hotel where she was attending a business conference.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Dalelv said she wanted to "spread the word" about significant differences in the emirates' legal code compared with Western legal systems.

"After my sentence we thought, 'How can it get worse?'" she said from the church. She has been in regular contact with her family, who live outside of Oslo.

Explaining the March 6 attack at a hotel where she was attending a business conference, Dalelv said she awoke to find a co-worker raping her. She fled to the lobby to report the assault, and said the staff questioned whether she wanted to involve the police.

After questioning and a medical examination, she wound up being jailed for four days, charged and having her passport confiscated.

Dalelv said her attacker was sentenced to 13 months for extramarital sex and consuming alcohol without a license.

She also revealed that she was suspended by Qatar-based home-furnishings company The One after her arrest, according to media in Norway, where her case has dominated the news and sparked outrage.

She told NRK that her suspension letter cited "gross misconduct on the job in direct violation of the company's policy" and the firm wants to fire her.

In response, Norwegian colleges cut their ties with The One, which has recruited students from across Scandinavia to come work in the Gulf, The Local reported.

Dubai authorities have not responded or issued any public statements about her case.

Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide said was trying to reach his counterpart in the Gulf nation, but communications were slowed by Ramadan and Friday, Islam's holy day.

Thursday, the Norwegian Department of Foreign Affairs said the verdict "flies in the face of our notion of justice" and was "highly problematic" in terms of Western human rights.

Westerners often misunderstand Dubai, a cosmopolitan Arabian Gulf city-state boasting the tallest building in the world and glamorous malls.

"It can seem modern here, and the comfort level is high," one Norwegian resident told NRK. "But it's a Muslim country, and folks must realize that before they travel."

Noting the influence of Sharia law, he added, "In reality, there are completely different rules that apply, completely shocking rules."

Legal battle brews over Detroit bankruptcy filing

The city's emergency manager says that pension and health care benefits are safe for at least the next six months.

The city's emergency manager says that pension and health care benefits are safe for at least the next six months.

DETROIT -- While Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr on Friday was offering short-term reassurances to thousands of city pensioners whose benefits are in jeopardy, his lawyers were waging a whirlwind legal battle over the constitutionality of the bankruptcy filing that could land both sides before a federal judge early next week.

On Friday, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette said he will appeal an Ingham County judge's ruling that Detroit's bankruptcy filing must be withdrawn because it violates the Michigan Constitution and state law.

However, the order from Ingham County Circuit Judge Rosemarie Aquilina ultimately could have little effect because the bankruptcy case already was filed in federal court, and federal law generally trumps state law. The city filed a motion requesting to include the state as a party in the bankruptcy code's provisions that put on hold all lawsuits against the city, a clear attempt to fight the Ingham County ruling by preventing the state from being sued in similar fashion. The city is asking U.S. District Judge Steven Rhodes to hold a hearing on Tuesday, or earlier, to decide this and other matters.

Friday's legal wrangling marks the beginning of what is expected to be a lengthy bankruptcy process that will involve more than 100,000 creditors, which include the Police and Fire Retirement System and the General Retirement System and its 20,000 retirees.

Orr provided retirees some temporary relief Friday, telling the Detroit Free Press that pension and health care benefits are safe for at least the next six months.

"We have made a decision that for the balance of this year, the next six months, we're not touching pension or health care," Orr said in an interview with Free Press editors and reporters. "So all pensioners, all employees you should understand: It's status quo for the next six months."

The announcement was welcome news to Thomas Berry of Livonia, who retired from the Detroit Police Department six years ago after more than 34 years on the job.

"I think that's huge," Berry said. "You've given me five months to evaluate. We're going to sock away more and maybe spend a lot less."

Orr has not yet specified the cuts to pensions he will seek through the bankruptcy process. He has proposed freezing pensions and moving workers to a 401(k)-style plan to help alleviate the pension systems' unfunded liabilities of $3.5 billion. He also wants to move retirees to Medicare or health care exchanges being set up through the Affordable Care Act.

Orr, alongside Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, spent Friday in a series of public appearances and meetings explaining why it was necessary for Detroit to file for bankruptcy protection and how the lengthy process is likely to affect the city's residents, workers and retirees. The duo stressed bankruptcy was long overdue, and is the best path to resolve the city's liabilities of about $18.5 billion. They said services to residents will improve.

Orr said the lawsuits from pension boards and others didn't spur the filing. He said he was simply running out of time.

"We're dealing with 60 years of deferred maintenance in 18 months," Orr said during a news conference at Wayne State University, referring to the length of time in which he'll oversee the city.

Still, Orr singled out retirees and pension fund lawsuits filed in recent days to try to stop the state-approved bankruptcy filing, based on the argument that the state's constitution prevents the city or state from cutting protected pension benefits for retirees. Orr deflected criticism from union leaders and pension officials that he wasn't bargaining in good faith in recent weeks, citing lawsuits opponents filed.

"That's the very thing I had pleaded for not to happen," said Orr, standing next to Snyder. "Anyone who thinks I wasn't negotiating in good faith, when they're suing me, look at that context."

In a spate of orders out of Ingham County Circuit Court arising from three separate lawsuits, Aquilina said Snyder and Orr must take no further actions that threaten to diminish the pension benefits of city of Detroit retirees.

"I have some very serious concerns because there was this rush to bankruptcy court that didn't have to occur and shouldn't have occurred," Aquilina said.

Lawyers representing pensioners and two city pension funds got an emergency hearing with Aquilina on Thursday at which she said she planned to issue an order to block the bankruptcy filing. But lawyers and the judge learned Orr filed the bankruptcy petition in Detroit five minutes before the hearing began.

Aquilina said the Michigan Constitution prohibits actions that will lessen the pension benefits of public employees, including those in the city of Detroit. Snyder and Orr violated the constitution by going ahead with the bankruptcy filing, because they know reductions in those benefits will result, Aquilina said.

"We can't speculate what the bankruptcy court might order," said Assistant Attorney General Brian Devlin, representing the governor and other state defendants.

"It's a certainty, sir," Aquilina replied. "That's why you filed for bankruptcy."

Devlin said Snyder has to follow both the Michigan Constitution and the U.S. Constitution.

Report: Statistician, blogger Nate Silver to join ESPN

The Times is reporting Silver is taking his FiveThirtyEight franchise to ESPN.

The New York Times is reporting that Nate Silver is leaving The Times to join ESPN.

Silver, 35, is the statistician who gained notoriety for devising algorithms which accurately predicted the 2008 and 2012 presidential races. Silver is taking his FiveThirtyEight franchise to ESPN, where he will have a prominent role on the new Keith Olbermann show. Silver will also appear on ABC News during election cycles, according to Brian Stelter at the New York Times.

The Times brought in Silver and FiveThirtyEight in August 2010, but that contract is expiring, allowing ESPN to pick up the franchise and giving Silver an on-air platform in addition to his popular blog. There are reports that Silver may also have a role with ABC News during election years.

Silver's blog was a big traffic driver for The Times. New Republic reported in November that just before the 2012 presidential election FiveThirtyEight accounted for about 20% of the overall visits to the New York Times website.

Silver made his mark as a baseball statistician before joining The Times.

Indiana halts vanity license program

A lawsuit challenged the program after the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles rejected a police officer's request to renew his plate that read "0INK."

INDIANAPOLIS -- Indiana motorists who want a vanity plate will have to put their plans on idle until a lawsuit over an "0INK" plate is settled.

State Bureau of Motor Vehicles Commissioner Scott Waddell said late Friday that the personalized license plate program will be temporarily suspended, pending the outcome of the legal case.

Those who already have personalized plates can keep them, and even renew them. But anyone else who fancies a plate that tells the world "IMGR8" or "UR2CLOS" will just have to "W8."

Waddell, in a statement, blamed the suspension of the plate program on the legal challenge, saying it is necessary "in order to protect Hoosier taxpayers from the considerable expense that these types of lawsuits bring."

It's the latest in a series of legal complications for the BMV. Earlier this month, it had to agree to repay Hoosiers after overcharging for driver's licenses. Last month, after an extended legal battle, it agreed to restore the specialty plate for the Indiana Youth Group, which supports gay, bisexual, transgender and sexually questioning youth.

The lawsuit that prompted the BMV to park the vanity plate program was filed in Marion County Superior Court in May by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana on behalf of a Greenfield policeman, Rodney Vawter.

For three years, Vawter had a license plate that read "0INK" — with a zero in place of the O — but when he tried to renew it in March, it was rejected.

The lawsuit says Vawter considers the plate's verbal pig snort "an ironic statement of pride in his profession."

"Corporal Vawter selected the phrase 'oink' for his license plate because, as a police officer who has been called 'pig' by arrestees, he thought it was both humorous and also a label that he wears with some degree of pride," the lawsuit states.

The BMV this year told Vawter the plate was inappropriate, and cited a state statute that allows the BMV to refuse to issue a plate that officials believe carries "a connotation offensive to good taste and decency" or "would be misleading."

Ken Falk, legal director for the ACLU, said that statute should be deemed an unconstitutionally vague infringement on free speech. And he called Friday's suspension of the BMV program "curious."

"I don't understand that," Falk said. "This (suspension) in no way affects the lawsuit, so I'm not sure what the BMV is saving in expenses. The lawsuit that we have challenges not the PLP program; it challenges the standards by which plates are assessed and the fact that apparently the BMV is using standards" which are not spelled out in law or code.

Waddell, in his statement, said the personalized plate program is one of the BMV's oldest.

"Indiana is not the first state to see its PLP statutes challenged, as this has become a widespread topic of debate across the nation," he said.

 

NTSB looks at Asiana pilot's lack of 777 experience

The experience of the pilot at the controls of Asiana Airlines Flight 214 could be a factor in the investigation of Saturday's crash of the Boeing 777, according to federal crash investigators.

Lee Gang Guk had spent just 43 hours flying the 777, and was accompanied by a deputy pilot more familiar with the jet to assist him, according toAsiana Airlines.

By U.S. standards, Lee's limited time flying a 777 would have also likely required him to have a more experienced peer in the cockpit. Generally, when a pilot has been flying a new jet for roughly 100 hours or less, they must have either a more experienced captain or co-pilot present to observe, guide, or help them, said Kit Darby, a former United Airlines pilot who now provides simulator training.

There were three other pilots on board Asiana Airlines Flight 214, including the deputy pilot Lee Jeong Min, who had spent 3,220 hours flying 777s, according to the Associated Press, quoting the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport in South Korea.

Although Lee was a newcomer to the 777, he had clocked nearly 10,000 hours piloting a variety of other jets.

"He wasn't a novice,'' said Les Westbrooks, a former commercial airline pilot who is an associate professor of aeronautical science at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Fla. "He was new to this particular plane, but he was a very experienced pilot.''

Federal crash investigators were to speak to the pilots Monday as part of the inquiry into why the Asiana crash occurred, leaving two dead and scores injured.

Deborah Hersman, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, was asked about the pilot's experience on different aircraft and his transition to the 777, but she said she didn't want to influence the interviews with the flight crew.

"We don't want to influence the responses," she said at a news briefing Monday. Those interviews are expected to give investigators a clearer picture of what was going on inside the cockpit and how they were reacting.

NTSB officials said that the ill-fated flight slowed far more than the pilot intended before crashing, but it's not clear yet from the flight-data recorder how the speed affected the plane's descent into San Francisco International Airport.

Pilots disengaged the autopilot when the Boeing 777 was 1,600 feet in the air, about 82 seconds before the crash Saturday, according to Hersman.

The targeted speed for landing was 137 knots, Hersman said.

At 125 feet above ground, eight seconds before impact, the plane's throttle began moving forward, Hersman said.

She had previously indicated from the cockpit voice recording that at seven seconds from impact, the crew recognized their speed was slow; at four seconds, equipment sounded an alarm warning of the potential to stall; and at 1.5 seconds, a crewmember said to abort the landing and circle the airport for another try.

At three seconds before impact, the plane reached its lowest speed of 103 knots, with engine power increasing, and it crashed at 106 knots, Hersman said.

"This aircraft was significantly slower than their target approach speed of 137 knots," which is the speed they wanted to reach the end of the runway, Hersman said.

Westbrooks said that landing too slow is an error that pilots learn from their first flying lesson to try to avoid.

"It is the most fundamental thing that you learn in flying . . . to not get slow like this,'' Westbrooks said. "Once we get real slow, the flow of the air over the wings starts to break apart, and it doesn't flow over smoothly, and we start losing our lift.''

Darby said that the dramatic slowdown may have resulted from the pilot trying to correct himself.

"He probably started high and fast and ended up . . too low and slow,'' Darby said.

Saturday's accident occurred during Lee Gang Guk's first time landing a 777 at San Francisco International Airport, according to Asiana Airlines.

Darby said that some airports require special training, for instance if the pilot has to navigate mountainous terrain. Although San Francisco doesn't fall into that category, Darby said there were some characteristics and circumstances that might have made landing more difficult.

"There are some things about San Francisco that make it demanding,'' Darby said. Flying over water as you approach can make it harder for pilots to get a feel for how fast they're going, he said.

Also, on Saturday, the "glide slope" or radio beam that electronically helps an airplane descend at the proper angle wasn't available. Incoming planes would have been made aware of that, Darby said, and an alternate guide visible through the cockpit window would have sufficed.

Nevertheless, he said, "the combination of that missing beam and coming in over the water is a real risky combination.''

As the investigation continues, Westbrooks cautioned that there is seldom a single misstep or malfunction that causes a plane crash.

"Not just one thing happens,'' he said. "It's a chain of events that build up to it.''

Asiana pilot was on a training flight

The pilot tried to abort the landing 1.5 seconds before crash.

SAN FRANCISCO — Asiana Airlines says the pilot of the ill-fated Boeing 777 that crashed Saturday had little experience flying the aircraft and was landing one for the first time at San Francisco International when it slammed into the runway, killing two teenage passengers and injuring more than half the 307 passengers and crew.

Airline spokeswoman Lee Hyomin said Monday that Lee Gang Guk, who was at the controls of Saturday's nearly 10 1/2 hour flight from Seoul as it arrived at SFO, was a veteran pilot with nearly 10,000 hours flying other planes. But he had only 43 in the 777, a jet she said he still was getting used to flying.

Lee had flown Boeing 747 jets into San Francisco International previously and was assisted on this flight by deputy pilot Lee Jeong Min. The deputy had about 12,390 hours of flying experience, including 3,220 on the 777.

National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman said Lee Gang Guk was flying with a supervisory training captain, another captain and a first officer. It was his ninth training flight on a 777, she said.

The revelations came on a day San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White said it was "a possibility" that one of the teens survived the crash but was killed on the tarmac by an emergency vehicle driven by one of the first responders at the scene.

"One of our fire apparatus may have come into contact with one of our two victims who was at the scene," Hayes-White said. "I assure you we are looking closely at this."

San Mateo County Coroner Robert Foucrault said that while autopsies of the two Chinese girls have been completed, he doesn't plan to release his findings on cause of death for another two or three weeks, after completion of tests.

"This is a very high-profile case and has obviously generated a lot of attention," Foucrault said. "I want to make absolutely sure my conclusions are correct."

The two teens, Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia, were from China's eastern Zhejiang province and were among 29 middle-school students and five teachers heading for a three-week church summer camp in Los Angeles. Both were declared dead at the accident scene. The body of the one who may have been struck by the emergency vehicle was found about 30 feet from the aircraft.

The fatalities are the first of a commercial airliner in the USA since February 2009. Remarkably, all but two of the 291 passengers and 16 crew survived. At least 168 people were treated for injuries. Eight remained in critical condition Monday.

At a news briefing Monday morning, firefighters described descending upon a harrowing scene Saturday morning and a swift, heroic rescue operation.

Tom Siragusa, an assistant San Francisco Fire Department chief, said rescuers twice entered the smoke-filled, burning aircraft to search for survivors while navigating crash debris and leaking jet fuel. The top priority was getting people off the jet, Siragusa said. "Everyone rose to the occasion, and I couldn't be prouder of everyone in my department,'' Siragusa said.

Other fire department officials say Asiana crewmembers pleaded for knives to help free trapped passengers.

"It just seemed to be surreal, like it wasn't happening," Lt. Dave Monteverdia said. Rescuers' "only way up" to reach the victims was via the plane's emergency chutes deployed after the crash, he said. Lt. Christine Emmons said that after she and a partner ran up the chute, they pulled out four passengers trapped in the back.

Hersman said earlier that Flight 214 was traveling far below its target speed for landing when it crashed short of the runway Saturday. "The speed was significantly below 137 knots, and we're not talking a few knots," she said.

The flight originated in Shanghai before stopping in Seoul en route to San Francisco. It carried 61 U.S. citizens, 77 South Koreans and 141 Chinese.

South Korean officials say pinpointing an exact cause of the crash may take months or years. "We cannot conclude the accident was caused by a pilot mistake. Whether there was a pilot mistake can be confirmed after all related data are analyzed and inspected," said Choi Jeong Ho, the head of South Korea's Transport Ministry Aviation Policy Bureau.

Hersman said investigators will look at all possibilities for the cause of the crash, including pilot error. "Everything is on the table," she said. Flight data and recorders have been recovered and will be examined by investigators, she said.

She provided details of what investigators found in their initial review of the jet's flight data and cockpit voice recorders: "The approach proceeds normally as they descend. There is no discussion of any aircraft anomalies or concerns with the approach. A call from one of the crewmembers to increase speed was made approximately seven seconds prior to impact."

The "stick shaker," which gives an audible and motion signal warning that the jet is flying too slowly and is about to stall, sounds "approximately four seconds prior to impact."

The pilot requested a "go-around" — to abort the landing, fly around the airport and try again, Hersman said.

"A call to initiate a go-around occurred 1.5 seconds before impact," she said.

Cabin manager Lee Yoon Hye, 40, said she has nearly 20 years' experience with Asiana and knew seconds before impact that something was wrong.

"Right before touchdown, I felt like the plane was trying to take off. I was thinking, 'What's happening?' and then I felt a bang," Lee said. "That bang felt harder than a normal landing. It was a very big shock. Afterward, there was another shock, and the plane swayed to the right and to the left."

Lee said crewmembers deflated the emergency slides with axes to rescue a colleague who seemed to be choking beneath the weight of a slide.

One flight attendant put a scared elementary schoolboy on her back and slid down a slide, Lee said. A pilot helped another injured flight attendant off the jet after passengers escaped.

Lee, who suffered a broken tailbone, said she worked to put out fires and usher passengers to safety in the harrowing moments after the jet went down.

Lee said she tried to approach the back of the aircraft before she left to double-check that no one was left inside. A cloud of black, toxic smoke made it impossible. "It looked like the ceiling had fallen down," she said.

Vedpal Singh, who was sitting in the middle of the aircraft and survived the crash with his family, said there was no warning from the pilot or any crewmembers before the jet touched down hard and he heard a loud sound.

"We knew something was horrible wrong," said Singh, who suffered a fractured collarbone and had his arm in a sling. "It's miraculous we survived."

Passenger Benjamin Levy, 39, said it looked to him as though the jet was flying too low and too close to the bay as it approached the runway. Levy, who was sitting in an emergency exit row, said he felt the pilot try to lift the jet up before it crashed and thinks the maneuver might have saved some lives.

"Everybody was screaming. I was trying to usher them out," he recalled of the first seconds after the landing. "I said, 'Stay calm, stop screaming, help each other out, don't push.' "

At least 51 killed in Egyptian clashes

Pro-Morsi supporters say security forces fired on them; the army claims people stormed a military building in Cairo.

CAIRO — At least 51 people were killed and more than 300 injured when Egyptian soldiers and police clashed with Islamists early Monday at a sit-in by supporters of former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi, raising the specter of civil war.

Interim leader Adly Mansour issued a statement Monday expressing "deep sorrow" over the deaths and calling for self-restraint in the interest of the nation.

Significantly, the statement from his office echoed the military's version of events, noting that the killings followed an attempt to storm the Republican Guard's headquarters.

Mansour, who was named to the interim post by the Egyptian military after Morsi's ouster last week, said in the statement read on national TV, that he had ordered an investigation into the deaths.

The head of Egypt's emergency services announced the new death toll Monday from the confrontation outside a military building in Cairo.

A government spokesman said two police and one army officer were killed in attacks by supporters of the deposed president.

The Muslim Brotherhood said that the death toll included five children.

Egyptian army soldiers take their positions near armored vehicles to guard the entrances of Tahrir square, in Cairo, Egypt, on July 8, 2013.

Morsi supporters said the security forces fired on hundreds of demonstrators, including women and children, at their sit-in encampment outside a Republican Guard building as they performed early morning prayers.

"They opened fire with live ammunition and lobbed tear gas," said Al-Shaimaa Younes, who was at the sit-in. "There was panic and people started running. I saw people fall."

The military said people tried to storm the building in Cairo's Nasr City. But Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad, who was at a sit-in with his family near the violence, said security forces fired on peaceful demonstrators.

The exact course of events Monday remains unclear, but the Brotherhood's political arm has called on Egyptians to rise up against the army, a move that threatens to divide further a country that is already deep in crisis.

As tensions rose, Egypt's top Muslim cleric warned of civil war and said he will go into seclusion at his home until the bloodshed ends as a show of protest.

Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb also called for the transitional period that began following last week's ouster of the president to be limited to six months.

In a statement he said he will go into seclusion until "everyone shoulders his responsibility to stop the bloodshed, instead of dragging the country into civil war," the Associated Press reports.

El-Tayeb is the grand imam of the Al-Azhar Mosque, the world's primary seat of learning for Sunni Muslims, the vast majority of the world's Muslims.

Police and military attacked people outside the Republican Guard facility as people were praying, firing rounds of live ammunition and shotgun pellets, El-Haddad said on his Twitter account. Many shots were aimed at the feet, resulting in a lot of leg wounds, he said, and security forces fired tear gas into the crowd in an attempt to disperse protesters.

Military spokesman Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said initial information indicates that gunmen affiliated with the Brotherhood tried to storm the Republican Guard building shortly after dawn, firing live ammunition and throwing firebombs from a nearby mosque and rooftops.

A statement by the armed forces carried by the state news agency said "an armed terrorist group" tried to storm the building, killing one officer and seriously wounding six. The statement said the forces arrested 200 attackers, armed with guns and ammunition.

The wounded were taken to a field hospital set up in the area.

"This is a crime against humanity," said Hesham Al Ashry, an ultraconservative Islamist who was protesting but left the area before violence broke out.

Pro-reform leader Mohamed ElBaradei condemned the violence and also called for an investigation.

"Peaceful transition is (the) only way," he wrote on his Twitter account.

Last week, military officers killed four Brotherhood demonstrators, who were unarmed, in the same location as Monday's violence.

The military has a history of using excessive force to quell demonstrations. One of the most brutal cases took place in October 2011 in an area of Cairo called Maspero. The military ran over some demonstrators with military vehicles at a mainly Coptic Christian rally. Twenty-seven people were killed, including a military officer.

Monday's violence heightens the conflict between the military and Morsi supporters, who call the military's move to oust Morsi a "military coup." They have refused to stop protesting until Morsi is released from detention and reinstated as president.

Egypt's opposition believes the army's move to set the nation on a new transitional path — suspending the constitution, dissolving the legislature and appointing a new interim president and government — was justified and backed by popular support.

But many in the pro-Morsi political camp believe all the votes they cast over the past two-and-a-half years have been stolen. They have been staging a sit-in since last week.

"We only came here to defend our vote," said Nassser Ibrahim, a teacher, at a pro-Morsi rally Sunday afternoon not far from where Monday's violence erupted.

The shootings come at a fragile time in Egypt's transition after Morsi was ousted from power last Wednesday and threaten to unhinge a delicate political system.

Egypt's Nour Party — a hard-line Islamist group — said Monday that it was withdrawing from negotiations over who will be named to the new government in response to the "massacre."

Prior to Monday's violence, the party recently rejected the appointment of liberal figure ElBaradei as prime minister. The group's recent withdrawal from talks threatens to further stall, or even paralyze, the new transition.

As tension between opposing political camps rose over the last week, dozens have been killed in clashes. One of the highest death tolls came after clashes broke out last Friday nationwide without much interference from security forces.

"Neither the police nor the military effectively intervened in deadly clashes between pro- and anti-Muslim Brotherhood supporters that left 36 people dead on July 5, 2013," Human Rights Watch said.

Google Glass tech offers vision of the future

The wearable internet-connected gadget, not expected to hit the market until 2014, will retail for under $1,500.

A new promo video for its internet-connected glasses technology known as Google Glass has given potential early adopters a chance to buy the as yet unreleased product.

The video, posted on Wednesday, touted the wearable technology as one of the biggest advancements in personal computing in many years.

In the video, people wore the glasses while skydiving, riding a rollercoaster, skiing, and swinging on a trapeze, but Tom Royal, editor of the London-based magazine Popular Science UK, cautioned that the product will require a great deal of investment and infrastructure.

"It's going to require a huge investment around the world to make these things work" anytime and anywhere as the video purports, Royal told Al Jazeera.

Though he says the glasses come in "a clever looking, quite attractive package", Royal, like other analysts, said consumers should temper their expectations.

"The danger of hyping something this much is that clearly the technology is far behind where the hype is right now," Rocky Agrawal of reDesign Mobile, said, adding, "there's a real danger of setting the expectations bar too high".

The glasses will handle most of the same tasks as smartphones, but respond to voice commands instead of fingers touching a screen.

The glasses include a tiny display screen attached to a rim above the right eye and run on Google's Android operating system for mobile devices.

Google has said the mass-market version of Google Glass will cost less than $1,500 - the price paid by an exclusive number of computer programmers last June - but more than a smart phone.

The California-based company does not plan to start selling "Google Glass" in the mass market until 2014.

PS4: 10 things you need to know about Sony’s new console

PS4 is finally here. Sony delivered its next-generation console plans to the world Wednesday, debuting the PlayStation 4 during an event in New York City.

Broadcast worldwide, with an admittedly shaky feed, Sony spoke about its new hardware, new games and new plans for the future. The event ultimately lasted about two hours, and there remains much to dissect.

So let’s run through the biggest announcements, and absences, from Sony’s major conference.

Release date: At the very end of the event, Sony revealed a vague launch window for the console — “Holiday 2013.” Whether that means October or December remains to be seen, but at least there’s confirmation that the PS4 will launch this year.

Controllers: Remarkably similar to the leaked prototypes reported on by The Times last week, the new Dualshock 4 controllers have a touchscreen in the center, a share button and feature color-coded sensory bars, which will interact with a light bar to determine depth, location and more.

Social as a priority: There were rumors that Sony would pursue a significant social infrastructure in the PS4, and they were right. It appears to have been built from the ground up with social in mind, integrating real-world identification, Facebook and dynamic real-time sharing. Players will be able to not just quickly cut clips of recent gameplay footage, but stream live game sessions to friends, thanks to Sony’s dealings with Ustream.

PHOTOS: A look back on the PlayStation

Blizzard!: It’s been forever since Blizzard, the company that has dominated PCs with “World of Warcraft,” “Starcraft” and “Diablo,” has released a game for consoles. But that’s all changing with the release of “Diablo III,” not just on PS3, but on the PS4 as well. What the game looks like on console hardware, and what the reconfigured interface looks like will be unveiled next month at PAX East.

No backward capability…yet: The PS4 won’t be able to play PS2 or PS3 games, it’s true. But Sony’s stated hope is that eventually, by utilizing the cloud and the PS4′s existing streaming abilities, that emulation of the entire PlayStation line’s library of games will be possible at some point.

Remote play: What’s good for Nintendo is apparently good for Sony. Announcing remote play between the PS4 and PlayStation Vita, Sony leapfrogged one of the competing Wii U’s selling points: the ability to take a full-fledged console game off the television and onto a mobile device. Utilizing Gaikai’s streaming software, the PS4 will act as a server, and the Vita as a client.

The ultimate goal, according to Gaikai Chief Executive David Perry, is to make “every PS4 game playable on the PlayStation Vita.” How PS4 games, which use a controller with more buttons than the Vita has, will work with such a transition remains unknown.

More from the PS3 stalwarts: “Killzone” and “Infamous,” two series that released a couple of titles apiece on the PS3, return for new installments on the PS4. “Killzone Shadow Fall” was displayed with more than seven minutes of real-time gameplay demonstration, looking to maintain the series’ FPS fundamentals. “Infamous: Second Son,” teased a storyline apart from the first two games, featuring what may have been a new protagonist with the same projectile and mobility-based superpowers.

The hardware specs: The PS4 will feature an X86 CPU, enhanced PC GPU, 8GB unified memory, local HD and GDDR 5 system memory. What that means in layman’s terms is that the PS4 will be significantly more powerful than the PS3, but don’t expect the same graphical leap as was experienced between the PS2 and PS3. Given the demos on display during Sony’s debut, it’s likely that all but the most hardcore PC gamers will be impressed by the console’s initial graphical displays.

Online purchasing: Sony promised that downloadable games would be playable the moment they begin downloading, with the game forcing the downloads into the background initially. What wasn’t mentioned in the event was whether Sony would continue its current PlayStation Plus system, which provides basic online gameplay and functions for free while putting a cost premium on additional features, or if it would move toward something like Xbox Live, which puts a paywall on pretty much anything worthwhile.

But where’s the console? And the price?: Two crucial questions remain in the wake of Sony’s PS4 announcement. What does the console actually look like? And how much will it be? Perhaps Sony learned from its PS3 announcement, which featured fans recoiling from its $599 price point, but if Sony can’t bring the price down to something manageable, E3 or another press event will bring more of the same.

Puppy love: Over $53 billion spent on pets in 2012

Puppy love: Over $53 billion spent on pets in 2012

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. economy may have remained sluggish last year but Americans refused to scrimp on their pets, with animal lovers spending upwards of $53 billion on food, veterinary care, kennels and other services in 2012.

That's up 5% from 2011, when spending first broke the $50 billion barrier, says the American Pet Products Association, a trade group. APPA President and CEO Bob Vetere predicts another 4% gain this year.

At about $34.3 billion, food and vet care represented about two-thirds of total spending, with money spent on supplies and over-the-counter medications rising by more than 7%. Spending on the growing market of alternative vet care, such as acupuncture, totaled about $12.5 billion.

Vetere says spending on services like grooming, boarding, hotels and pet-sitting grew nearly 10 percent during 2012 to almost $4.4 billion.

Lindsey Vonn rips officials over crash

Lindsey Vonn said Friday her rehab from knee surgery is going well and she hopes to be stronger than ever when she tries to defend her Olympic downhill title a year from now in Sochi, Russia.

She also said she hopes future race juries at major championships will be more mindful of athletes' safety than the one that officiated over the women's super-G at the world alpine championships in Schladming, Austria on Feb. 5.

PREVIOUSLY: Vonn hurts knee after bad crash

"I don't think the jury made the right call," Vonn said to journalists on a teleconference, 17 days after she crashed landing a jump in the world championships super-G, tearing the anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in her right knee and fracturing the tibia bone in her right leg.

"The fog came in and delayed the start of the race. We were waiting on the edge of our seats for hours. I had no chance to go back to my bus and relax. When I was at the start, I was ready to go, but I had no idea what the course conditions were. I inspected the course at 8 a.m. and I ran the course at about 3:15.

MORE: What does Vonn injury mean for Sochi Olympics?

"I skied aggressively, but when I was skiing, I couldn't believe the conditions. The snow was too soft. It had broken down. I didn't think it was safe."

Danger lurked for Vonn off a big jump that she took fast and flew farther than the rest of the skiers that day. Her right ski landed in a pile of soft snow.

"My right knee completely stopped," she said. "That's when my knee buckled, and I flipped over the tip.

When she came to a stop, while lying on the snow she actually called her coach, Alex Hoedlmoser, who was one of the race jury members.

"I told Alex, 'They should stop the race. It's not safe to run,' " Vonn said. "Apparently they didn't do that. I just hope in the future they really think hard about what the conditions are like, because athlete safety should come first and foremost."

Vonn, 28, said the surgery, performed Feb. 10 by Bill Sterett of Vail-Summit Orthopaedics, the head physician for the U.S. women's alpine team, went well.

"There was nothing unexpected," she said. "Nothing that will take longer than expected.

"I have no doubt that I will be able to ski as well or better."

She hopes to be on skis in November and fully ready to defend her Olympic title in February.

She also hopes to resume her records chase. She has 59 career World Cup victories, three shy of the all-time women's mark held by Austria's legendary Annemarie Moser-Proell.

PHOTOS: LINDSEY VONN'S CRASH

Even before the injury and surgery, this season had been one of ups and downs for Vonn. She was hospitalized before the season for an intestinal ailment. Although she won races early in the season, she took an unscheduled, month-long break in late December-early January that she said was because of fatigue related to the earlier intestinal issues.

Vonn also revealed in an interview with People magazine done before the season that she had battled depression through the years and treated the condition with antidepressants.

And she has been fending off rumors in recent weeks about a romantic relationship with Tiger Woods.

"I'm only two weeks out of surgery at this point and I'm not going to talk about my personal life," she said Friday.

Whether all of these issues – the wear and tear on her body, the intestinal problem this year, the rehab, the depression – add up to a hurdle that is too large to overcome in 12 months is unknown.

Vonn said that she has dealt with depression with medication, and she was still winning.

Almost every Olympic or world champion skier has scars on his or her knees. That goes with the territory. Comebacks are common.

And her age – she'll be 29 next season – is on the high end for a World Cup winner, but there have been older winners.

Several women races in speed events (downhill and super-G) have won World Cups into their early 30s, particularly the great Austrians Michaela Dorfmeister and Renate Goetschl.

Vonn's idol, Picabo Street, who had the same will to fight back that Vonn has demonstrated, tore up her knee and required reconstructive surgery in December of 1996 – and, 14 months later, won a gold medal in the Olympic super-G in Nagano, Japan.

Vonn has been a fighter her whole career.

Among the young favorites to win a medal in the Torino Winter Olympics in 2006, Vonn, then known as Lindsey Kildow, crashed violently in a training run and suffered painful contusions on her pelvis and back. She was hospitalized overnight but returned to the mountain two days later and finished eighth in the downhill, then raced in three other events. The gutsy performance earned her the U.S. Olympic Spirit Award.

She came into the Vancouver Olympics in 2010 with a painful shin bruise that made just putting on her boot an excruciating experience. But she persevered and won her first event, the downhill, becoming the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill title.

This, however, is the first time she has had major surgery on one of her legs, and that will make her journey to the 2014 Olympics a major story.

"I'm definitely going to be coming back from a major injury," she said. "So it will definitely be a different position. I'll probably feel in some ways like I'm the underdog now. Maybe that will ease some of the pressure."

PHOTOS: LINDSEY VONN

Superhero window washers surprise sick children

They are squeegeeing out the smiles at hospitals nationwide.

From Tampa to Pittsburgh, Chicago to Memphis, comic superheroes are being spotted all over the country -- and they are fighting grime.

On windows, that is.

In their off-hours, Spider-Man, Captain America, and Batman, to name a few, are washing windows at children's hospitals. Their mission? To bring happiness to the youngest of patients.

"We donned the Spider-Man costumes and we rappelled down the side of the buildings," said Harold Connolly, president of Highrise Window Cleaning of Clearwater, Fla. "We knocked on the glass, waved hello – there were a lot of big smiles."

Connolly organized two superhero window-washing sessions at hospitals in Florida so far this year, and he isn't alone. Images of wide-eyed children in awe of their favorite superheroes washing windows have gone viral online, prompting hospitals and window washing companies nationwide to hop on board.

"Some of these poor kids, they don't get a lot of opportunities for anything fun there," Connolly says. "It cheered them up at least for the moment anyway."

Last week in Chicago, Captain America, Batman, and Spider-Man's mission for the day was surprising children into forgetting that they are in hospital beds at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago.

Mission: Complete.

Nolan Erickson, 6, has been spending a lot of time in the hospital with his 14-month-old brother Matthew.

Matthew was born with brain cancer and has undergone six surgeries and five rounds of chemotherapy; the family hasn't left his side.

"We have been in the hospital for 11 months out of the 14 that Matthew has been alive," mother Sue Erickson says. "Nolan has spent his last two birthdays here. Smiles come few and far between."

But on one day – for Nolan, Matthew and their 2-year-old sister Sophia, there was a break from all the sadness.

The three superheroes, window washers from Corporate Cleaning Services, were fighting grime as they rappelled down from the 23rd floor. The heroes circled all around the building, waving, giving a thumbs up and creating soap designs as they went.

"The superheroes' lines were hanging right in front of our window," Erickson says. "The kids just sat there waiting for 45 minutes to see which one it was. It was Spider-Man. When you see your kids excited and smiling – as a parent it was more than I could ever ask for."

Three employees of Corporate Cleaning Services prepare to wash windows dressed as Batman, Spider-Man and Captain America at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.

Hundreds of kids, staff and families were mesmerized by the superheroes swinging around the building for hours.

"I have been here a lot of years but I have never seen anything like it — nothing can brighten a day like a superhero," says Kathleen Keenan, hospital spokesperson. "These three men truly became real-life superheroes when they were on that building and their ropes became their webs. It was magical."

Keenan added: "It was like each kid had their own superhero for a moment, it was like there was no glass between them."

The superhuman trend is spreading all over the country:

Le Bonheur Children's Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., has had two visits, one in October from the American National Skyline's superheroes and one in December from elves, says spokesperson Sara Burnett.
The youngsters at Ministry St. Joseph's Children's Hospital in Marshfield, Wis., got a big surprise in December when Spider-Man, Batman, and Captain America left the place smiling and squeaky clean, says Geoffrey Huys, hospital spokesperson.
In St. Petersburg, Fla., at least 40 or 50 inpatient children at All Children's Hospital caught a glimpse of Spiderman last month, says hospital spokesperson Roy Adams.
"We try all the time here to make it as fun as possible," Adams says. "We are trying to make kids forget that they are in the hospital and are going through these tough medical issues. We have celebrities come in, but this was a different kind of VIP visit because, well, they were coming down the side of the building."

Last July, Michelle Matuizek, office manager of Allegheny Window Cleaning, Inc., saw pictures of window washers in London dressed as Spiderman.

From left, Erasmo Lara, Edgardo Mejia and Santiago Guzman dress as superheroes to wash windows at Levine Children's Hospital in Charlotte, N.C.

"I looked around and – at that point - no one had done it in the states," Matuizek says. "I thought why don't we do a character theme for our Children's hospital around Halloween."

So on October 22, the patients at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC had visit from Spider-Man, Batman, Captain American and Superman.

"The kids went wild. They were all over the windows, smiling and screaming – it was just magical," Matuizek says. "The nurses, the kids, the families it was a wonderful experience for everyone. We are going to do it again next October."

Both Allegheny Window Cleaning, Inc and Highrise Window Cleaning have plans to do more superhuman fly-bys in the future, and Connolly hopes the trend catches on.

"The kids—that the important thing," Connolly says. "We are hoping it spreads throughout the country and beyond. Other hospitals see this and then ask your window company if they will do it – I bet you they will. Who doesn't like making children happy?"

Leeville: A look at the real world beyond the levees

A Louisiana coastal town is a real-life example highlighting the problems of sea level rise and wetlands loss.

LEEVILLE, La. – At the 85th Academy Awards ceremony on Sunday, an independent Louisiana-shot film, Beasts of the Southern Wild will be up for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director, for its fictional account of a desolate band of folks living beyond the levees.

Nearly 2,000 miles away, this fishing community deep in the bayous of southern Louisiana is the real-life place beyond the levees, a place where residents eke out a living selling bait fish, brace for destruction each time a large storm looms and watch the Gulf of Mexico's steady march toward their front porches.

In a phenomenon recurring in coastal areas across the USA, wetlands loss and sea level rise are gnawing away at Leeville. Around 70% of the town's surrounding wetlands have vanished since 1932, leaving only the skinny community in the middle, according to studies by the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program.

Five major hurricanes in seven years and the 2010 BP oil spill have further battered the community and chased away residents by the trailer-full, said Juanita Bryan, 81, who moved to Leeville 25 years ago to open a charter fishing business and trailer park. The closest protective levee is 13 miles up the road. One more, well-positioned storm could wipe the town off the map for good.

"Leeville is washing away," Bryan said. "We're losing our marsh."

Leeville's plight underscores a national debate over how much to build near water and what to save once the land begins to disappear, said Robert Lempert, a senior scientist at Rand Corp. who studies how coastal communities respond to sea level rise.

Superstorm Sandy last fall rekindled the debate in the Northeast, as communities from Manhattan to the Jersey Shore ponder how to protect themselves from future storms and land loss, he said. But, as sea levels rise and more residents seek out oceanfront homes, areas from Alaska to Norfolk, Va., are facing the same dilemma, he said. Today, nearly 4 million Americans live in coastal communities less than 3 feet above sea level and are at risk of serious flooding.

"Leeville is the canary in the coal mine," Lempert said. "There are some places you clearly defend and build seawalls and levees. And there are other places you have to abandon."

Once a thriving orange orchard and oil-and-gas town, Leeville began to lose its marsh when energy companies carved transport canals through the area, weakening wetlands, said Kerry St. Pé,head of the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program. Building levees along the Mississippi to prevent floods in the early 1900s kept fresh water nutrients from reaching the surrounding marshes and further decimated them, he said.

Local levees were built – and later enhanced – to protect the nearby, more-populated towns of Golden Meadow and Galliano from storm surges, he said. But Leeville, with dwindling resources and population, was left on the outside. Today, fewer than 100 full-time residents live there.

Leeville today is a skinny spit of land cut by a two-lane hardtop that runs from Griffin's Station and Marina a mile down the road to Bryan's trailer park, where the road ends and the bayou begins. Along the way, there are crumpled mobile homes, destroyed by past storms and left to ruin, fishing docks, RV parks and Pappy's Place, the town's only bar.

A decade ago, Pappy's would fill with locals each day by 10 a.m. and stay open until the last patron left at 2 or 3 in the morning, owner Harris "Pappy" Ebanks said. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, the bar was empty.

"Since the hurricanes, we haven't had people in here," Ebanks, 74, said. "They just leave."

In the movie Beasts, a group of locals boil blue crabs in shanties, weather a battering storm and confront mystical rampaging beasts. In Leeville, residents sell lures at the town's two lure shops or meet for fried catfish at Griffin's Station. Owner Ben Griffin said hurricanes have repeatedly flooded his business in the three decades he's been open. Most alarming: the storms appear to be getting stronger – a result of less wetlands to slow them down, he said.

After Hurricane Gustav in 2008, Griffin raised his store 13-1/2 feet off the ground. But a direct hit by a large storm could wipe that out as well, he said. Still, he has no plans to move.

"This is paradise," Griffin, 57, said. "I could fish. I could hunt. Why go somewhere you don't know what's coming? When a storm comes, you have two weeks to get out."

Timmy Melancon,a commercial fishermen, leaves each time a major storm approaches. Each time, he comes back to a ruined, flooded home filled with mud and marsh grass. Each time, he rebuilds.

Born and raised in Leeville, Melancon, 56, said he follows the same routine each time a big storm approaches: He motors the Tee Tim, the 55-foot shrimping boat he hand-built with cypress planks 30 years ago, up Bayou Lafourche and moors it inside the levee system at Golden Meadow. Then he and his wife, Phyllis, head for higher ground.

Most of his family has left or died off. Melancon said he plans to stay but realizes one more muscular hurricane could end Leeville for good. "If a major storm comes up Bayou Lafourche, it's over for us," he said.

The view from Bryan's front porch once offered acres of marshland stretching to the horizon. Today, bodies of water like small lakes dot the scene. And as the land goes, so do the residents. Her trailer park clients have changed from nearly all full-time residents to mostly weekenders, she said. Her husband, Bobby, passed away last year, but she intends to stay. Her two grown sons live in town and help with the charter fishing business.

"People ask all the time, 'Why don't you leave?'" Bryan said. "But where are we going to go? There are disasters everywhere."

Edward Gorey birthday: E is for Edward, extremely eccentric

Gorey, who would have been 88, was known for his offbeat artistry  — he won a cult following with his eerie, yet droll pen-and-ink drawings, writing and illustrating dozens of his own books. Animation of his work introduced the PBS show “Mystery!” for decades, and he won a Tony for costume design in 1977 for a Broadway production of “Dracula.”

Gorey was also known for his eccentricities — which began at an early age.

As a 5-year-old, he read Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” he told author Ron Miller in 1996. As a youngster, he also taught himself how to draw.  From a young age, “his passion was creating his own bizarre stories and illustrating them.”

Gorey was an admitted fan of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “The X-Files,” among other shows. And he was known for his love of cats, sneakers and ballet.

As the Los Angeles Times wrote in Gorey’s obituary in 2000, for 35 years he attended every performance of the New York Ballet wearing his signature fur coat, ski scarf and high-topped tennis shoes.

Among Gorey’s best-known works was his rhyming alphabet book, “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” which featured a childhood death for each letter: “A is for Amy who fell down the stairs / B is for Basil assaulted by bears.”

Horror writer Clive Barker, of “Hellraiser” fame, has honored Gorey with his own take on “Gashlycrumb,” reportedly created in conjunction with artist Paulo Andreas Orca. Barker ratchets up the gruesome in his version.  “C is for Claus who was born with no bowels.”

Barker has unveiled the cartoons slowly, and from his Facebook account he appears to be up to “O.”  “O is for Otto, who had a thirst hard to slake, thus Otto got blotto and drowned in a lake.”

Gorey, when interviewed in 1998 by the Los Angeles Times, was asked why so many children met untimely ends in his works.

“Oh well,” he said, “children are the easiest targets.”

He also once said: “To take my work seriously would be the height of folly.”

His work lives on in such posthumous books as “Amphigorey Again” and “Thoughtful Alphabets: The Just Dessert and The Deadly Blotter.”

NASCAR meets with Keselowski after USA TODAY cover story

Brad Keselowski got the attention of NASCAR's executives after sharing his thoughts in an in-depth cover story Friday

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — NASCAR executives met Friday with Brad Keselowski after the defending Sprint Cup Series champion outlined the challenges facing the sport in a Sports cover story in Friday's USA TODAY.

NASCAR Chief Communications Officer Brett Jewkes said Keselowski wasn't penalized. Jewkes said the meeting wasn't directly a result of the USA TODAY story, but it was discussed. NASCAR generally had been seeking more dialogue with its champion, according to Jewkes, and Friday provided the opportunity.

KESELOWSKI: Shares vision for NASCAR's future

"Brad has opinions, some informed and some less informed," Jewkes said. "The meeting was to improve the latter."

The Penske Racing driver met with NASCAR chairman Brian France and International Speedway Corp. CEO Lesa France Kennedy.

Keselowski tweeted afterward, "Spent some time with the Lesa and Brian from the NASCAR team after yesterday's article, the passion we all share for our sport is amazing!"

OPPORTUNITY: Want your face on Brad Keselowski's car?

Keselowski told USA TODAY Sports that he believes there are multiple entities that have to work together for NASCAR to be successful.

"We have sponsors — partners, or whatever the hell you want to call them — tracks, the sanctioning body and the teams. Those are our four groups, and how well they cooperate dictates what we have as a product for our fans. And our fans create everything," Keselowski said.

Keselowski also noted how television has changed the landscape of all sports and how that's affected attendance — especially in NASCAR. Keselowski speculated on why NASCAR hadn't adapted to that, mentioning Brian France and Lesa France Kennedy, specifically:

When Bill France Jr. was in charge of NASCAR, he had control of all these pieces and wasn't at the mercy of the TV world. He had control of the tracks and NASCAR, which is now divided in two with Lesa (France Kennedy, president of International Speedway Corp. that controls 12 tracks) and (NASCAR Chairman) Brian (France). France Jr. had relationships with the sponsors, drivers and teams. Now we don't have that. Those three other pieces are segregated. Those three pieces need to get together. And until all three of those can unite, we're a house divided, and we're making bad decisions that are affecting how to generate revenue for the sport.
In today's sports world, you have to be very powerful in drawing people to TV, and we're not TV-friendly. That's one of the key areas for success. Part of that is we're not delivering a product. And we're fighting the tracks. We have to be up on the wheel a little more and looking for what's in front of us, and when we see it, we have to be able to react on it. And in order to be able to react on it, we need to be united.
It's not the first time the outspoken Keselowski's comments have drawn the focus of NASCAR. He was fined $50,000 for criticizing fuel injection in November 2011, the last in a policy of "secret fines" that NASCAR eliminated last year.

Keselowski became the first Sprint Cup driver to send a tweet during a race when last year's Daytona 500 was delayed by an inferno. He tweeted again in a November race at Phoenix International Raceway but was fined $25,000 and placed on probation.

Court Vision: Trade Deadline roundup

The NBA’s trade deadline passed on Thursday. Here’s The Point Forward’s roundup of all the moves and a rundown of the winners and losers.

Now, for the trade deadline reaction from around the Web.

•  Ken Berger of CBSSports.com offers an explanation for the quiet trade deadline.

There has been a cosmic shift among the parties who negotiated the new labor deal that ruined Thursday’s trade deadline. David Stern is retiring next February, long before the next deal will be negotiated in 2017, long before the next inevitable work stoppage. His bargaining adversary, Billy Hunter, has been ousted by the players and finds himself ensnared in a serious criminal investigation on three fronts.

In their wake, they left a completely different model for how players will change teams in the NBA, one that shrewd owners like Mark Cuban and general managers like Sam Presti anticipated months or even years ago. Everyone laughed when Cuban broke up a championship team by letting Tyson Chandler go to the Knicks. Everyone’s jaw dropped when Presti traded James Harden to the Rockets. But now Cuban’s team is one of a handful in the catbird’s seat, unconstrained by the tax penalties and other restrictions that will mercilessly be placed on teams who continue to do it the old way. Presti keeps gaming the system, like he did Thursday in acquiring a trade exception from Portland for Eric Maynor — a $2.4 million placeholder that effectively extends Maynor’s usefulness to the team long beyond his days in a Thunder uniform.

This is how business is done now in the NBA. No blockbuster trades in February.

•  The reaction of Yahoo! Sports’ Kelly Dwyer to the various minor trades is essential reading.

What we’re left with, in the absence of stars and with the crush of the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement sending the fear of the luxury tax into most team’s front offices, is a whole lot of tinkering. In all, the biggest name to be moved in the trade deadline was a backup shooting guard that has started 11 games this season for a 15-win team. That’s an unduly harsh description of Orlando Magic guard J.J. Redick, who is a fantastic player and worth all the attention he’s received from prospective trading partners, but Redick alone doesn’t provide the superstar cachet that other trade deadline movers have given us through the years.

It wasn’t an Anthony Johnson-styled Thursday, but it wasn’t far off.

…

The NBA, after trouncing the Players Association in the last round of labor talks, wants a league with fewer trades and fewer terrible contracts. They did well to protect the owners from themselves with the last collective bargaining agreement, and trade deadline Thursdays like these are going to become more and more commonplace. Roll over Anthony Johnson, tell John Crotty the news.

•  Tom Ziller of SB Nation has winners and losers, with J.J. Redick as a winner.

Redick goes from a team that was going to challenge for the NBA’s worst record to a team that looks increasingly like a playoff lock. (The only thing that can derail the Bucks now would be a triumphant Andrew Bynum return.) So J.J. will be able to pad his resumé with another playoff series, possibly one against a damaged team if Milwaukee lands the No. 7 spot. In addition to that, he goes to a team much more likely to use his Bird rights to sign him to a deal. The Magic are rebuilding, the Bucks are not. If this goes well, Redick could stick around as a free agent. He’s eligible for bigger raises and more years if he stays with his incumbent team.

•  Grantland’s Bill Simmons and Zach Lowe go back-and-forth in a two-part trade deadline reaction manifesto (part one is here; part two is here). Needless to say, they didn’t like Sacramento’s trade of Thomas Robinson to Houston.

Simmons: Here’s what NBA history has shown us — you always want to target a high lottery pick who’s available because he’s either underachieving or playing for a team that doesn’t know what it’s doing. It’s the best way to luck out with a potential All-Star if you never actually have the chance to pick high in the lottery. If you get them when they’re young, even better. Some of my favorite examples: Chris Webber, Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, Mike Bibby, Rip Hamilton, Joe Johnson, Rasheed Wallace, Marcus Camby … it’s just happened too many times. That’s why I would be targeting Minnesota’s Derrick Williams today. He’s available for 50 cents on the dollar, he’s playing out of position for a lottery team, and there’s a good chance that he might thrive in the right spot. Always bet on lottery talent. Well, unless it’s Jonny Flynn or Wesley Johnson.

Lowe: To be fair, the Rockets did give up a decent rotation guy in [Patrick] Patterson. But that’s all Patterson is. Houston watched him for three years and hoped at various times he’d augment his game by developing some low-post skills or morphing into a mobile defensive force. Neither happened. Patterson did develop a 3-point shot — he’s at a very nice 36.5 percent from deep this season — but he’s a liability on the glass, he gets to the line but once per game, and he’s not much of a passer. He’s a decent defender, but that’s it, and sometimes he’s not even that; he has a bad habit of biting on pump fakes. You don’t sell low on a potential talent like Robinson in order to get a nice player on the back end of his rookie deal, and you certainly don’t do it just because he’s college buddies with your out-of-control center.

•  Mark Haubner of The Painted Area writes that the Kings might have done all right trading Robinson for Patterson, despite all the criticism.

Patterson, meanwhile, has a career PER of 14.2, including 15.6 this season. Robinson is a far better rebounder, but Patterson is a far better shooter, and has been more productive overall. He’ll likely fit better next to DeMarcus Cousins on offense (though Patterson doesn’t help SAC’s dismal rebounding), and also certainly fit far better next to Omer Asik in Houston than Robinson will.

I’m not suggesting Patrick Patterson’s an All-Star, but I think he’s a better player than Robinson. I’ve seen some sentiment that Patterson may be better today, but Robinson surely has greater upside. I mean, first of all, Patterson’s only 23, just two years older than Robinson; he’s not necessarily a finished product in his own right. And again, I just don’t see the evidence of great Robinson upside. Just because he was the no. 5 pick in last year’s draft doesn’t make it so.

•  Kevin Pelton of ESPN.com (Insider) has trade grades, seeing the Sixers as a team that had a quietly successful Thursday.

The 76ers have shuffled through backup point guards all season long, trying out Maalik Wayns, Shelvin Mack and most recently Jeremy Pargo. Jenkins has somewhat more upside than those players. Powerfully built and quick, Jenkins showed the ability to get to the basket off the dribble when he started at point guard during Golden State’s Tankapalooza last spring. If he can develop his playmaking, Jenkins has a future in the league.

•  Tom Haberstroh of ESPN.com (Insider) has winners and losers with the Jazz in the latter category.

The Jazz didn’t upgrade their woeful backcourt and instead decided to keep [Paul] Millsap and [Al] Jefferson even though Derrick Favors and Enes Kanter deserve a shot. This gets us to an inevitable shortcoming of trade analysis: We’ll never know all the offers a team turned down. So perhaps Utah’s front office was smart to hold onto its overcrowded frontcourt rather than trade them for 40 cents on the dollar. But I’m skeptical. One thing we do know is that front offices tend to subjectively overvalue their own players, so I have a feeling that the Jazz may have received objectively fair offers for Millsap and Jefferson. We’ll never know. But don’t be stunned if they try to justify standing pat at the deadline by overpaying Millsap and/or Jefferson this summer.

•  D.J. Foster of Pro Basketball Talk has his winners and losers, with the Nets in the failure bin.

Not surprisingly, no team bit on the Kris Humphries/MarShon Brooks package. For a team clearly in win-now mode, accomplishing nothing at the deadline to try and shorten the gap hurts. Humphries was signed to that big 2-year, $24 million dollar contract to match salaries for a big move, but now it just looks kind of silly.

•A great concept post: Yahoo! Sports’ Eric Freeman ranks the dullest trade deadlines.

1987: 1. The Cleveland Cavaliers trade big man Ben Poquette to the Chicago Bulls for a future second-round draft pick.

Over 10 NBA seasons, Poquette developed a career as a capable shot blocker and interior defender. After this trade, he played only 21 games for the Bulls, averaging 8.0 minutes per game and contributing absolutely nothing in the team’s first-round sweep at the hands of the Boston Celtics. Poquette left for Italy the next offseason, thereby confirming the essential irrelevance of 1987′s lone deadline deal.

•  SB Nation’s Paul Flannery looks at Boston’s quiet deadline.

In the end, [Danny] Ainge did nothing more than replace [Leandro] Barbosa with Jordan Crawford, a younger, healthier, wilder version of the Brazilian Blur. Crawford doesn’t have Barbosa’s command or experience. He was squeezed out of the rotation in Washington and his shooting percentage hovers around 40 percent, which is a problem in that he shoots a lot. But he’s young, affordable and healthy, and that in and of itself is a minor upgrade over where they were the day before the deadline.

There were no big trades and no franchise-altering moves that would set the course for the next era of Celtics basketball. There was just Crawford, vagabond Terrence Williams on a 10-day contract and two open roster spots to sign whatever is left off the veteran scrapheap. It’s not that Ainge didn’t try but, as he always says, he values his own players more than other teams do and he wasn’t going to give them up cheap.

•  Kurt Helin of Pro Basketball Talk gives three reasons for the lack of big-time trades.

The Lakers were never going to trade Dwight Howard. Some people seemed to think the Lakers should trade Howard — from fans at the bar to breakdowns on SportsCenter. But if you asked the Lakers, or anyone around the Lakers, or any other team’s personnel that called the Lakers, the answer was always it was never going to happen. The Lakers did not waiver. Expectations always were way ahead of reality here.

It was the same with trading Kevin Garnett — he couldn’t have been more clear about not waiving his no trade clause. But nobody seemed to listen. And so it went on and on. Fans wanted to see the Bulls add talent when they would never take on more salary. We expected Josh Smith to get moved but Hawks GM Danny Ferry said all along he would hold on to Smith if no offer he really liked came along. And one didn’t.

We as basketball fans talked up expectations that got out of line with the reality of those trades happening.

•  Jeff Schultz of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on why Hawks forward Josh Smith wasn’t traded.

Because for general manager Danny Ferry, this season realistically isn’t about winning a championship, it’s about preserving the wonderful landscape without another volcanic eruption of red ink.

There were potential trade partners willing to send the Hawks players for Smith, possibly even name players. But after ridding the franchise of one debilitating financial virus (Joe Johnson’s contract), the last thing Ferry was willing to do was take on, say, Amar’e Stoudemire and an economic Bubonic plague (about $54 million for the next 2½ years).

It’s easy to understand the logic. Ferry is managing for July, when only three Hawks players will still have guaranteed contracts. He is embracing flexibility. It doesn’t matter that salary-cap space comes without guarantees. Cap space can’t pass, can’t shoot, can’t rebound. It can’t be slapped on an advertisement (“Come watch our cap space take on Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and the Oklahoma City Thunder!”). But it comes with hope.

•  Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel gets J.J. Redick’s reaction to his trade from the Magic to the Bucks.

“I think you can prepare yourself as much as you think you can,” Redick told the Orlando Sentinel in a phone interview after he received the news. “But when the moment comes, there’s certainly an initial shock, and I was shocked. The most difficult part was definitely saying bye to everybody, people that I’ve spent a lot of time with over the last seven years and built relationships with and built friendships with. That was difficult.

“There’s no really easy way to handle it,” he added later. “Trading is tough, tough. It’s my first time experiencing it: It’s tough.”

Autodesk's Software Has Starring Role In 2013 Oscar Nominees

Autodesk might have made a name for itself with the CAD software used by architects and engineers to design and model everything from buildings to machines, but the San Francisco-based company has also had a hand in helping bring many Hollywood blockbusters to the big screen.

The last 17 Academy Award winners for Best Visual Effects have used Autodesk’s 3D, animation and/or visual effects software, and this year the company says all five nominees in the Best Visual Effects category — “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” “Life of Pi,” “Marvel’s The Avengers,” “Prometheus,” and “Snow White and the Huntsman” — used its technology. The movies (selected from 282 eligible films) contain 7,754 visual effects shots worked on by 30 visual effects studios in more than 10 countries, Autodesk says.

All five nominees for best animation used Autodesk’s Maya, including 3-D features “Brave” and “Wreck-It Ralph” and three stop-motion movies: “Frankenweenie,” “ParaNorman,” and “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.” And Autodesk says its technology had a hand in a number of other movies this year, including “Argo,” “Flight,” “Les Miserables,” “Lincoln,” “Silver Linings Playbook,” and “Zero Dark Thirty.”

The 2013 Academy Awards will be broadcast Feb. 24. In the meantime, you can see how some of the visual effects came together for some of last year’s most notable flicks by clicking through the slideshow below.

How Mexican Drug Lord 'El Chapo' Guzmán Was Killed, and Then Wasn't

Soldiers patrol in San Valentin in Guatemala´s remote El Peten region, near the border with Mexico. A Guatemalan official said Friday there was no evidence that Mexico's most-wanted drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, had been killed in a shootout in this rural part of the country, calling such reports a misunderstanding.

It seems that Mexican drug boss Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán is alive and well, and probably laughing at those thousands of Twitter users, as well as some government officials, who suggested on Thursday that he was dead.

The rumors of his demise started slowly on Thursday afternoon, as journalists in Guatemala and Mexico exchanged emails about an incident in the remote jungle region of El Peten that might have involved Guzmán.

News of the supposed death of El Chapo, which means "Shorty" in Spanish, spread like wildfire Thursday evening when the Interior Minister of Guatemala told journalists in that country that a firefight between drug dealers and Guatemalan military personnel had resulted in the death of two suspected criminals. The conflict took place in San Francisco, a small town located in the El Peten region, the official said.

"There was a clash between Guatemalan security forces in San Francisco," Interior Minister Mauricio Lopez said on Thursday. "Two died. One of them is physically very similar to El Chapo."

"We are not sure, but it could be him, " Lopez added, according to Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre. The newspaper also said at that point of the night, the government was getting ready to conduct forensics tests that would help identify the two corpses.

Later on the same night, however, Guatemalan officials said they weren't even sure that a gunfight with drug dealers had occurred. Officials also said that military units were patrolling the area where the clash reportedly happened, to see if they could find any signs of a battle between the army and drug traffickers.

On Monday morning, after no Chapo had been found, Lopez apologized for the government's blunder on local radio station Emisoras Unidas.

"We have no reports so far of a clash between [drug traffickers and] the police or the army," Lopez said on Emisoras Unidas, adding that helicopters were still inspecting the areas where the clash had reportedly occurred.

"I am sorry if there was a misunderstanding," he said.

According to Lopez, confusion over the incident arose because the Interior Ministry relied excessively on the testimonies of local villagers, who said that they had seen a clash between the army and drug traffickers.

He said that too many "contradictory" pieces of information came to government officials at once from the remote region, which is mostly covered by dense tropical jungle and dotted by tiny settlements of cattle ranchers.

Ioan Grillo, a journalist and seasoned drug war analyst, had another theory for the Guatemalan blunder.

"My reading of Chapo Guzman drama: a snitch called up and said Chapo died in firefight, Grillo tweeted. "Guatemala pleased with news tells before confirming."

Such blunders have happened in the past. Just last year, on the eve of Mexico's presidential elections, officials in that country claimed that they had caught El Chapo's son, Jesus Alfredo. But less than a week later Mexican prosecutors announced that the man in their possession was in fact a car salesman from Guadalajara.

With regards to this most recent case, there is some reason though to believe that El Chapo is in Guatemala.

Wikileaks cables released to the press on Thursday suggest that El Chapo is hiding in El Peten, where Mexican cartels have managed to gain a stronghold over drug trafficking routes.

These cables consist of emails written by staffers of Stratfor, a security consulting agency, based in Texas. Previously officials from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration have suggested that El Chapo hides in a mountain range in western Mexico, that straddles the states of Durango and Sinaloa.