How Not To Fly (about)

Judge Won't Let Woman Divorce While She's Pregnant

A Spokane woman trying to divorce her estranged husband two years after he was jailed for beating her has been told by a judge she can't get out of the marriage while she's pregnant.... Further complicating things, Shawnna Hughes claims her husband is not the child's father.

The bottom line, says Hughes' attorney, Terri Sloyer, is that there's nothing in state law that says a mother can't get a divorce if she's pregnant.

"It's not the child's fault that mom got pregnant," [Judge] Bastine said. "The answer is, you don't go around doing that when you're not divorced...."

[Hughes replied,] "If the court vacates my divorce and stays it until the birth of my child, it will prevent me from marrying the father of my child prior to her birth."

U.S. To Pledge $350 Million For Tsunami Aid

Critics had noted that the U.S. aid was about the equivalent of what the United States spends in seven hours for its military operations in Iraq. "We spend $35 million before breakfast every day in Iraq," Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, had said.

Anna Nicole Smith Loses $88.5 Million Ruling

A federal appeals court Thursday threw out a judge's ruling that awarded $88.5 million to former Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith from the estate of her late husband, an oil tycoon who died at age 90 just over a year after they wed. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Texas probate court's decision that the oilman's son was his sole heir should stand.

Donations To Tsunami Relief 'Generous,' U.N. Says

The United Nations' emergency relief coordinator said Tuesday that the international response to the tsunami catastrophe in southern Asia has been "very generous" despite earlier comments in which he called some nations "stingy...."

"If, actually, the foreign assistance of many countries now is 0.1 or 0.2 percent of the gross national income, I think that is stingy, really," he said [Monday.] "I don't think that is very generous...."

"The United States is not stingy. We are the greatest contributor to international relief efforts in the world," [Colin Powell] said....

He said the United States had responded to an appeal by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent by providing $4 million of the $7 million it initially requested worldwide.

The U.S. State Department said an additional $20 million in aid will be added to the $15 million the United States has already pledged for nations hit by the tsunamis.

'Phantom' Film Puts Stage Musical In New Spotlight

The movie "Phantom" goes by the formal name of "Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera," and is based on Lloyd Webber's stage musical that has so far grossed more than $3 billion and was, in turn, based on Gaston Leroux's 1911 book about a haunted figure lording over the Paris opera.

Arafat, The Bowling Alley Investor / Records Show Former Palestinian Leader Had $1M In Firm That Runs Bowling Alley In New Hyde Park; Owners Say They Didn't Know

"Really? Wow!" said Jacob Shapiro, who had two children he baby-sits in tow. "I had no idea...."

"We have instructed our attorneys to sever the relationship with [Arafat-partnered] SilverHaze immediately," the [bowling alley] owners said.

Annan Accepts Top Aide's Request To Retire

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Wednesday approved the request of Iqbal Riza, chief of his executive office, to retire after nearly 30 years of service to the United Nations. In a statement released in New York, Annan said "it is with very mixed emotions that I have accepted the long-standing request" of Riza, 70, to retire on Jan. 15.

Sex-Case Delhi Schoolboy Bailed

An Indian court has granted bail to a schoolboy who allegedly recorded a sexual act between himself and a 16-year-old girl on his mobile phone.

The clip was later sold on video CDs via [eBay-owned] auction site Baazee.com, sparking the arrest of its manager for India.... The alleged seller of the two minutes and 37 seconds clip, an engineering student, has also been arrested.

Garfield Wins Chinese Piracy Case

Hope published 11 different Garfield books in Chinese in 1999. It said it had signed an agreement with Paws [Inc] through its agent in 1998, but Paws categorically denied this and the court agreed.

Bush: Our Duties Continue In The New Year

Question: You spent a good deal of time before the Iraq war... explaining to us why the combination of Saddam Hussein as a dictator and the weapons that you thought at the time he had assembled made a case for regime change.

In the case of North Korea and Iran, you have not declared yourself on the question of regime change. Though North Korea, your intelligence agencies believe, may have added six or seven nuclear weapons in the past two years, and Iran seems to have a covert program, or at least your government believes it does.

Where do you stand on regime change? And how would it be accomplished?

President Bush: ...diplomacy must be the first choice, always the first choice of an administration trying to solve an issue of... nuclear armament.

Remarks By President Bush And Panel Members At The White House Economic Summit: Financial Challenges For Today and Tomorrow

President Bush: I've got some principles that I've laid out. And, first, on Social Security... I believe younger workers ought to be able to take some of their own payroll taxes and set them up in a personal savings account, which will earn a better rate of return, encourage ownership and savings, and provide a new way of -- let me just say, reforming -- modernizing the system to reflect what many workers are already experiencing in America, the capacity to manage your own asset base that government cannot take away....

Anyway, thank you all for coming. I'm looking forward to the discussion.

James Glassman, Sr US Economist at JP Morgan Chase:

• The first important observation: productivity. Productivity in the U.S. economy is growing almost three times as fast as the experts anticipated several years ago... most of us believe that what's driving this productivity is information technology.
• Second important aspect of what's going on in the U.S. economy -- everybody knows we faced an incredible number of shocks in the last several years. These shocks, which, by the way, destroyed almost half of the stock's market value in a short period of time, for a moment, were potentially as devastating as the shocks that triggered the Great Depression. And yet, the experts tell us the recession we just suffered in the last several years was the mildest recession in modern times. That tells you something about the resilience of the U.S. economy.
• ...if you think about it, we've been growing 3.5 percent to 4 percent per year since the Civil War. If we can match that performance in the next 50 years... then I think the fiscal challenge that we see in our mind's eye will be a lot less daunting than is commonly understood.

So, of course, I don't want to say that growth can solve all our problems.... And that's why it's right this forum should be focusing on Social Security reform...

Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist to Charles Schwab & Co:

• I do spend a lot of time out on the road talking to individual investors. And I will say that the deficit issue is probably, if not the number one, certainly in the top three questions I get.
• I think there is a terrific amount of misunderstanding, though, about the nature of deficits, how you get there, how do you get out of a deficit situation, the cause and effect aspects of it...
• And we know that higher deficits are a burden on future taxpayers, but I think what, in particular, the market would like to see is the process by which we go about fixing this problem.
• Typically, when you look back in history, and you look at processes by which we've improved a deficit situation, those that have been accompanied by better economic growth have typically been those where the focus has been on spending restraint...
• ...we can even go back to the late '90s -- the reason why we went from deficit to surplus was because the economy was so strong. Because the economy was strong, the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates, the reason why we went into deficit was because the economy got weak...

I'm a big believer in personal [investor] accounts...

Dr Bill Roper, Dean of the School of Medicine, UNC:

• This year the Medicare program is one-eighth of the entire federal budget. Ten years from now, that's projected to be one-fifth of the federal budget. And by 20 years from now, Medicare will be larger than Social Security, so it will be the largest federal entitlement, under current growth rates.
• This year, 2004, the trust fund that our payroll taxes go into that pays for hospital and related benefits in Medicare, more money is going out of that trust fund to pay for current needs right now for seniors and others in the Medicare program than payroll taxes are going into it.... it's projected to be entirely exhausted, under current spending patterns, by the year 2019.
• Projections about how much we're going to spend in Medicare is more difficult than the projections for Social Security. Everybody who is going to be a senior citizen 50 years from now has already been born. So we know how to project Social Security numbers. But we don't know what medical advances are going to occur, what new technologies, new treatments, new drugs.... the growth rate for Medicare is unsustainable.

In general, we need to see that the philosophy of private accounts applies to Medicare just as we've been talking about Social Security.

Al Gore's Mother Dies

Pauline Gore, whose son Al became vice president and nearly captured the presidency and whose husband served a lengthy and distinguished career in Congress, died Wednesday.

Fox Plans To Air 'Perverse' Adoption Game

The Fox network will air a special next month, "Who's Your Daddy?," in which a daughter given up for adoption as an infant attempts to guess the identity of her birth father for a $100,000 prize.

"This is really perverse," said Adam Pertman, executive director of the Evan P. Donaldson Adoption Institute, a research and policy organization.

Nude Statue Lamp A Vermont Debate

A group preparing to celebrate the life of a Vermont-born sculptor is petitioning Gov. James Douglas to leave a replica of Hiram Powers' most famous work -- which portrays a nude chained woman -- on his Statehouse desk....

Powers sculpted six versions of "The Greek Slave" between the early 1840s and the late 1860s. The work became a symbol of the abolitionist movement before the Civil War.

China Awaits Crowning Of 1st Miss Plastic Surgery

Organizers dreamed up the pageant after one woman who splashed 110,000 yuan [over $13,000 US] on improving her looks attempted to sue them for banning her from the finals of a traditional beauty contest in May.

White House Puts Blame On Kerik

Kerik, who withdrew his own nomination Friday and apologized yesterday for embarrassing Bush, was asked numerous times by White House lawyers if he had employed an illegal immigrant or failed to pay taxes on domestic help, the sources said....

In the vetting process, which was conducted by the office of White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, Kerik also never mentioned that a New Jersey judge had issued a warrant for his arrest in 1998 over a civil dispute over unpaid bills, the sources said. The existence of the dispute was first reported by Newsweek Friday night.

It is unclear why White House lawyers could not uncover a warrant that Newsweek discovered after a few days of research, although some are blaming Bush's insistence on speed and secrecy for failing to catch this and other potential red flags in Kerik's background.

New US Security Chief Pulls Out

The man chosen by George W Bush to take over as the new US homeland security secretary has withdrawn his nomination.... "I uncovered information that now leads me to question the immigration status of a person who had been in my employ as a housekeeper and nanny," he said in a statement.

Rumsfeld Under Fire For 'Hillbilly Armour' Used To Defend Army

"We don't have proper vehicles," said Thomas Wilson of the Tennessee Nation Guard, who claimed he and his men were forced to rummage in landfills for metal scrap and ballistic glass to use as makeshift shielding, known by soldiers in Iraq as "hillbilly armour."

Mr Rumsfeld, insisting everything possible was being done, and said: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want...."

A spokesman for Armor Holdings, which makes the fully protected Humvees, said: "We have always said, 'Tell us how much you want and we'll build them....'" Armor Holdings makes 450 such vehicles a month, but the spokesman said they could easily turn out 550.

Treasury Secretary Will Keep His Post

President Bush invited Treasury Secretary John Snow yesterday to remain on the job after the White House withheld its endorsement for 10 days while aides hinted that he would be replaced....

Also yesterday, Veterans Affairs Secretary Anthony Principi... submitted his resignation letter. The administration has now announced the departure of nine of the 15 department secretaries.... [White House officials] noted that the administration also offered no timetable for how long Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would remain.

Celebrity Nativity Scene Upsets Britons

Christian leaders on Wednesday denounced a Nativity scene at [London's Madame Tussauds] wax museum featuring soccer star David Beckham and his wife Victoria, a former Spice Girl, as the parents of Jesus.

Cop's Sex Video Not Protected Speech

The Supreme Court ruled against him without even hearing arguments. In a 9-0 decision, it ruled that the government "may impose certain restraints on the speech of its employees... that would be unconstitutional if applied to the general public." The justices' unsigned opinion... found that the officer's speech "was detrimental to the mission and functions of the employer...."

Roe was fired in 2001 after his supervisor discovered the sex videos were being sold on eBay, the Internet auction site. The videos showed Roe, a seven-year veteran, removing his police uniform and then masturbating. In one video, he pretends to issue a traffic citation.

Army Spun Tale Around Ill-Fated Mission

The Army's public release [reporting at the end of April the death of NFL player turned Army Ranger Pat Tillman] made no mention of friendly fire, even though at the time it was issued, investigators in Afghanistan had already taken at least 14 sworn statements from Tillman's platoon members that made clear the true causes of his death. The statements included a searing account from the Ranger nearest Tillman during the firefight, who quoted him as shouting "Cease fire! Friendlies!" with his last breaths....

When she first learned that friendly fire had taken her son's life, "I was upset about it, but I thought, 'Well, accidents happen,'" Mary Tillman said in a telephone interview yesterday. "Then when I found out that it was because of huge negligence at places along the way -- you have time to process that and you really get annoyed."

Deputies Get Michael Jackson DNA Sample

Michael Jackson voluntarily gave a DNA sample to authorities, returning to his Neverland Ranch estate a day after he left during a search by sheriff's deputies, a source close to the case said Sunday.

French Fatigue Over Da Vinci Code

The announcement this week from Hollywood that Tom Hanks will star in the film adaptation of Dan Brown's thriller The Da Vinci Code may have excited the book's millions of fans around the world. But in France, there was a collective sinking of hearts....

Perhaps it was because Dan Brown was American, perhaps it was because his bestseller mixed fact and fiction so successfully that the Da Vinci tourists flocking to France took every word as Gospel truth -- their naive gullibility irritating the rational, logical French.

• ...Michel Rouge is a tour guide at the church that is used as the site of one of the key secrets of The Da Vinci Code, and one of its most brutal killings by Silas, the albino Opus Dei monk and murderer. Except that Opus Dei, the Catholic organisation, does not have monks. Nor is it a sect.
• St Sulpice undoubtedly exists. But it is not the site of a Roman temple. Nor, Michel Rouge says, does the obelisk there hide a secret cave. Nor, indeed, is the obelisk Egyptian.
• [Tourists] tell Michel Rouge that he is covering up for the Catholic Church but that now, thanks to Dan Brown, they know the truth -- that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had children whose descendants became French kings.

Bush Downplays Thompson's Terror Worries

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said in a speech Friday announcing his coming departure from the Bush Cabinet that he worries "every single night" about a possible terror attack on the food supply....

"For the life of me, I cannot understand why the terrorists have not attacked our food supply because it is so easy to do," Thompson said.

Panel Advises FDA Against Female-Arousal Patch

The 17-member advisory panel... unanimously agreed that the number of women in the initial study, 553, was not large enough to determine if the patch was safe... They also worried that many doctors would start prescribing it "off-label" to women who simply wanted to increase their sexual satisfaction...

"Whatever small population this is approved for, many, many women will use it," said Gerson Weiss, chief of obstetrics-gynecology and women's health at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, in Newark. "Viagra was originally put on the market for men who had erectile dysfunction, but many men said, 'If it's good, a little more is better.' This is not a complication-free drug."

Report: Giambi Testified He Used Steroids, Human Growth Hormone

Penalties for steroid use in baseball started in 2003, but testing with samples identified by player didn't start until 2004, making it unclear if Giambi could be retroactively disciplined for any admission. Human growth hormone, or hGH, is not specifically banned by the major leagues....

Giambi testified that he obtained several different steroids from Barry Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, one of four men indicted by the grand jury...

Giambi was among dozens of elite athletes -- including Bonds, Gary Sheffield and track stars Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones -- who testified before the grand jury last year under a promise of limited immunity from prosecution.

Ridge Quits Homeland Security Post

Perhaps [Tom] Ridge's most visible initiative, a color-coded threat advisory system, was widely criticized for offering vague warnings that forced municipalities to increase spending in response to threats they didn't understand.