Chicken Soup 4 The Damned

Lucky Escape For Mumbai Jumbo Jet

An Air India Boeing 747 carrying more than 300 passengers has skidded off the runway in the monsoon-hit Indian city of Mumbai (Bombay).

U.S. Evicted From Air Base In Uzbekistan

The [Uzbekistan eviction] message did not give a reason. Uzbekistan will give the United States 180 days to move aircraft, personnel and equipment, U.S. officials said.

Umpire Bans Youth Team From Speaking Spanish On Field

[Metheun, MA] National Little League spokesman Lance Van Auken said there's no rule against players speaking Spanish or any other language on the field. But he said it's too late to reverse the decision or the outcome of the game....

"It appears the umpire was concerned that the coach or manager may have been using a language other than English... to communicate potentially 'illegal' instructions to his players," Van Auken said in an e-mail to The Associated Press Friday. "The umpire simply overstepped his authority, and there was no malicious intent..."

An angry [assistant coach] left the field, which [head coach] Mosher said demoralized his pitcher and catcher, who speak little English. Methuen lost the game 10-6...

Blind Teen Amazes With Video Game Ability

[Lincoln, NE] Blind since birth when his optic nerve didn't connect because of Leber's disease, Mellen honed his video game skills over the years through patient and not-so-patient playing, memorizing key joystick operations and moves in certain games, asking lots of questions and paying particular attention to audio cues. He worked his way up from games such as "Space Invaders" and "Asteroid," onto the modern combat games....

"He enjoyed trying to play, but he wasn't very good at first," said his father, Larry Mellen. "But he just kept on trying.... He's broken a lot of controllers." When the question of broken controllers comes up, Mellen flashes a smile and just shrugs.

"I used to have quite a temper," he said. "Me and controllers didn't get along very well...."

"He just sat there and he tried and tried until he got it right," Larry Mellen said.

Amputee Happy To Be Reunited With Foot

Rubottom, a 21-year-old Lawrence resident, expressed relief Monday after police gave him back his left foot, which he began storing in a five-gallon bucket of formaldehyde on the porch at 627 Conn. after it was amputated... [Pathologist Karen Shumate] said people are allowed to keep body parts if they want them.

"They've had women that want their uterus. People take tonsils. They take appendixes," she said. "I think it's unusual that someone would want a foot, but it's within their rights because it's theirs."

Accord Reached In Maternity Lawsuit / Both Sides Settle On First Day Of Trial

[Boston, MA] Itzkowitz said Papageorge was an excellent employee, earning bonuses linked to the performance of her stores.... "She became a walking advertisement," Itzkowitz said, noting that she wore the company's clothing. "She had a rapport with the clients.... Everything seemed to be going swimmingly...."

[Papageorge's supervisor] Dowe contends in her lawsuit that Mullay directed her to "replace female District Managers who were on maternity leave," including Papageorge. When Dowe refused, even seeking advice from the company's human resources department, she was fired...

'Raging Grannies' Want To Enlist, Go To Iraq

[Tucson, AZ] "We went in asking to be sent to Iraq so our kids and grandchildren can be sent home, but rather than listening to us, they called the police," said 74-year-old Betty Schroeder. "It was their place to tell us the qualifications, but they wouldn't even speak to us. They should've said, 'You're too old.'"

Colin Farrell Tries To Stop Sex Tape

Farrell, 29, accuses Nicole Narain of trying to distribute the tape through an intermediary. The two had an intimate relationship 2 1/2 years ago and both agreed that the 15-minute tape that shows the couple having sex would be jointly owned by them and would remain private, according to the suit....

The lawsuit said the release of the videotape would irreparably harm Farrell's reputation and career. Farrell, who has starred in "S.W.A.T" and "Alexander," and is slated to appear in "The New World" and "Miami Vice," has been named one of the sexiest men alive by People magazine.

Bush 'Modifies' CIA Scandal Vow

US President George W Bush has said he will sack anyone in the White House who committed a crime in relation to the leaking of the identity of a CIA agent.... A Time magazine reporter said top presidential aide Karl Rove had been the first to hint at the identity....

Correspondents say Mr Bush's mention of crimes is a shift from his pledge to fire anyone involved in the leak.... The Democratic Party accused Mr Bush of lowering the "ethics bar."

Olympics Bomber Gets Life In Jail

BOMBINGS BLAMED ON RUDOLPH:

• 1996: Atlanta Olympic games, 1 dead
• 1997: Atlanta gay nightclub
• 1997: Atlanta abortion clinic
• 1998: Birmingham abortion clinic, 1 dead

The widow of the police officer killed in the 1998 attack said that in her opinion "there is no punishment great enough" for Rudolph.... Rudolph is suspected of following a white supremacist sect that is against abortion....

The fatal attack during the 1996 Olympics marred the Games and led to fears of US domestic terrorism.

After being identified following the attacks, Rudolph spent more than five years on the run in the North Carolina wilderness.... Rudolph was captured in 2003 while scavenging for food behind a grocery store.

Breast-Feeding Mom Says She Was Booted From Starbucks

[New Orleans] "(A worker) was like, 'Oh, OK. No problem,'" Pearson said. "Then, about a minute later, a manager came out and said, 'I'm sorry, but you can't do this.' He said, 'Personally, I don't have a problem with it, but my customers will.' And then as we were packing up to leave, he offered me a free coffee."

Pearson said by then, she was angry.

"I told him I thought it was illegal, that he couldn't ask me to leave," she said. "And he said, 'Well, I don't know about that, but you can't do it here.'"

Under Louisiana law, it is discriminatory for a person to be denied the "full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services in a public place on the grounds that the individual is a mother breast-feeding her baby."

Baggage Screener Fired For Rapping About Terror

[Houston, TX] Khalaf, 21, was hired on January 16 and fired July 7, according to a TSA termination letter that cited his "authorship of songs which applaud the efforts of the terrorists on September 11th, encourage and warn of future acts of terrorism by you, discuss at length and in grave and alarming detail various criminal acts you intend to commit, state your belief that the U.S. government should be overthrown, and finally warn that others will die on September 11, 2005."

Slaughterhouse Dumbledore

This is a novel, and a fantasy at that. However many Harry Potters there are, none of them may be wizards. This story is not to be taken as a responsible guide to the Hogswarts School of Wizards and Witches, if there is such a place, or magic, of which I don't believe because I'm an atheist.

And I'm living to be the oldest man in America, which we stole from the Indians.

And you can count on me smoking at this very moment.

Listen:

I didn't know what magic was when I walked into the Hogswarts School of Wizards and Witches, but when I saw Albus Dumbledore I knew I wanted to leave it as his kind of wizard. Which isn't to say all of Albus Dumbldore's students aspired to be his kind of wizard. Take, for instance, the quarter of the school that graduated from the Slytherin house.

Which was why they killed him.

And so it goes.

Actor Urges Fans To Avoid 'Dukes' Movie

[Atlanta, GA] Ben Jones, a former Georgia congressman who played the wisecracking mechanic on the popular series from 1979-85, said profanity and sexual content in the film make a mockery of the family friendly show.

"...to take a classic family show and do that is like taking 'I Love Lucy' and making her a crackhead or something.

"...the 'Dukes' movie is a sleazy insult to all of us who have cared about the 'Dukes of Hazzard' for so long," Jones wrote.

'Little House's' Doc Baker Dead / Kevin Hagen, Veteran Of Westerns, Was 77

[Grants Pass, OR] Veteran television character actor Kevin Hagen, who left behind a string of Western bad guy roles to become the kindly Doc Baker in "Little House on the Prairie," died Saturday. He was 77.

Fans Urged To Buy Recycled Potter

Environmentalists are urging US Harry Potter fans to buy copies of book six from Canada, where it is being printed on recycled paper. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is published worldwide on 16 July, with a recycled version issued by Canadian publisher Raincoast Books. Vancouver conservation group Markets Initiative said US publisher Scholastic rejected a plea to use recycled paper.

Snow White And The Seven Kung Fu Monks: Disney Sets Sights On China

In a sign of the times, Walt Disney is behind the kung fu retelling of its 1937 animated classic, which is part of an intensifying strategy to make inroads into the Chinese cinema market ahead of Hollywood rivals....

Even a big budget Chinese epic can usually be filmed for less than $5m (£2.84m) -- a fraction of the $100m plus that Hollywood regularly blows.... In an interview with Forbes, [Robert Iger] noted that there are 290 million Chinese children under 14, more than the entire population of the US.

MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove As Source In Plame Case

Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source... Friday night, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name -- and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.... Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.