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 EX-EastEnder Paul Nicholls was in hospital last night after plummeting from a jungle waterfall and spending three days trapped in a rock pool with a smashed leg.

 The star, 38 — who played Joe Wicks in the BBC soap and also appeared in ITV’s Law & Order: UK — only survived thanks to a sharp-eyed Thai local.

 Emergency services rescue Paul Nicholls after he was trapped for three days in a Thai jungle

 When Paul was found he was semi-conscious and had hypothermia

 The villager spotted a seemingly abandoned motorbike the actor had used to travel to the remote beauty spot on the island of Koh Samui.

 Cops were alerted and a huge search launched after they discovered the Brit had hired the bike and gone missing.

 Rescue teams spent hours hacking through undergrowth before finding him.

 He was semi-conscious and had hypothermia after three days in agony at the foot of the Khun Si falls.

 He was unable to climb out of the water because of a busted right leg.

 The jungle there is infested with snakes, mosquitoes, spiders and leeches.

 MOST READ IN TV & SHOWBIZ GEMMA PULLS A GORKA Strictly fury as Gemma Atkinson dates rival Alexandra Burke's partner mum's the word EastEnders' Luke Browning FINALLY learns that Kathy is Ben Mitchell's mum Glee star guilty Glee actor Mark Salling pleads guilty to possession of child pornography LOVE THY NEIGHBOUR Neighbours' Olympia Valance CONFIRMS secret dates with 1D's Niall Horan 'I'm happy again' Rio Ferdinand opens up on new love Kate as he's seen without wedding ring IT’S OVER (AGAIN) Towie’s Megan McKenna and Pete Wicks SPLIT as her music career takes off

 Nicholls made his EastEnders debut in 1996 as character Joe Wicks

 Not known refer to copyright holder Paul has most recently appeared in the Channel 4 TV show - Ackley Bridge

 Hospital medics on the island last night described the actor as seriously ill after he contracted a bug during his hell.

 Nicholls was able to tell The Sun: “I am lucky to be alive.

 “I had a phone with me but I fell from such a height into the water it was unretrievable.

 “It took such a long time to find me. It’s an understatement to say it wasn’t a great situation. It wasn’t that I was lost.

 “The problem was I couldn’t move to get out of there.

 “I’ve got a broken leg and I’m missing a kneecap. It needs complete reconstruction.”

 Ex-EastEnder Paul Nicholls is rescued in Thailand after falling off a waterfall

 Paul had been was unable to climb out of the water because of a busted right leg

 Hospital medics on the island last night described the actor as seriously ill following him contracting a bug

 It took the crew two hours to haul Paul up a steep path to the nearest village

 Dramatic video of the star’s rescue, obtained exclusively by The Sun, shows him apparently delirious and crying out in pain.

 Emergency teams are seen stretchering him to safety after applying a crude tourniquet to his leg.

 It was unclear why he fell. Local sources fear he was trying to take a selfie.

 He had hired the motorbike under his real name Gerrard Paul Greenhalgh and rode alone to the falls rarely visited by locals.

 The emergency team had to apply a crude tourniquet to Paul's leg before they moved him

 Luckily a villager spotted the motorbike the actor had used to travel to the remote beauty spot on the island of Koh Samui

 The bike was spotted by someone from the nearby village of Mae Nam. It was on a track leading to the falls.

 Last month American tourist Geoffrey Maui, 28, died after falling at the same revered site.

 Locals said he had been punished for insulting spirits by urinating there.

 Starving Nicholls had eaten nothing for three days when rescuers found him.

 Just last month American tourist Geoffrey Maui died after falling at the same revered site

 Paul was found at the foot of the Khun Si falls

 He was hooked to a drip before being hauled up a steep path to the nearest village. It took two more hours for him to reach International Koh Samui Hospital.

 Last night his nightmare was compounded by medics there having demanded £13,000 a night to treat him — forcing him to transfer to another hospital.

 The actor had flown to Thailand a week ago.

 A source close to him confirmed: “He was out there by himself because he was between filming.

 “He needs surgery. But it’s going to cost £90,000 for him to have it in Thailand.

 Paul was originally taken to the International Koh Samui Hospital

 “The British Embassy want to fly him back here. They need to fly him to the mainland first to a proper hospital and then decide whether to bring him back to the UK or do the surgery there.”

 Nicholls made his EastEnders debut in 1996.

 His character Joe Wicks suffered from schizophrenia.

 During his time on the soap the actor dated co-stars Martine McCutcheon and Danniella Westbrook.

 He also had high-profile battles with booze and drugs.

 He quit the soap in 1997 and went on to appear in films including Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason.

 PA:Press Association One of Paul’s biggest story lines in Eastenders was when he was diagnosed with schizophrenia

 In 2015, after splitting from his model wife Chantal Brown, he was photographed smoking a crack pipe on a friend’s sofa.

 Pals say he has since managed to get his life back on track. ||||| This article is over 1 year old

 Ex-EastEnders and Bridget Jones actor found semi-conscious after fall at Khun Si left him stuck in a rock pool with a damaged leg

 Actor Paul Nicholls rescued after three days trapped at foot of Thai waterfall

 A British actor who worked on EastEnders and Channel 4 drama Ackley Bridge has been rescued three days after falling from the top of a jungle waterfall and smashing his leg on the Thai island of Koh Samui.

 Paul Nicholls, 38, was found in agony at the base of Khun Si falls after a local spotted his abandoned rental motorbike, which police traced to his real name – Gerrard Paul Greenhalgh – prompting a search.

 He was found partially submerged in a rock pool, semi-conscious and with hypothermia, unable to move to safety or find food.

 “I am lucky to be alive,” Nicholls said, according to the Sun. “It took such a long time to find me. It’s an understatement to say it wasn’t a great situation … The problem was I couldn’t move to get out of there.

 “I had a phone with me but I fell from such a height into the water it was unretrievable.”

 Nicholls said his kneecap was destroyed in the fall and would need a complete reconstruction.

 It took two hours for emergency services to get him to International Koh Samui hospital, the Sun reported, adding that Nicholls’ medical bills will run into tens of thousands of pounds.

 Last month American tourist Geoffrey Maui, 28, died after falling at the same waterfall.

 Nicholls debuted in EastEnders in 1996 as Joe Wicks. He quit the soap a year later and has since worked on City Central, Holby City, Secret Diary of a Call Girl and Law & Order. He also acted in the 2004 film, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– British actor Paul Nicholls spent a decidedly unglamorous three days at the bottom of a Thai waterfall before being rescued this week, the Guardian reports. Nicholls, former star of British soap opera EastEnders who went on to star in a Bridget Jones film among other things, fell from the top of the remote Khun Si falls on the island of Koh Samui, reports the Sun, which has photos and videos of his rescue. He ended up in a rock pool, unable to move because he'd hurt his leg. He was semi-conscious and had hypothermia when rescuers found him, having been alerted to the fact that he rented a motorbike and then went missing. He also contracted some sort of illness during his time in the jungle and was said to be sick in the hospital, but was able to tell the Sun he is "lucky to be alive." He says he broke his leg and will need a complete knee reconstruction.


Article:
October 13, 2011 at 2:58 pm by

 Google engineer Steve Yegge may think some things are messed up at Google. But the search giant continues to deliver, with the company announcing today that net income for the third quarter blew by analysts estimates to $2.73 billion on net revenue of $7.51 billion. The stock is surging in after hours trading as a result, jumping more than six percent to $595.

 CEO Larry Page said in a release that it was a “great quarter,” and stock analyst Colin Gillis told CNBC that “Christmas came early for Google shareholders.”

 Page also touted the growth of Google +, the new social networking service that was the partial subject of Yegge’s widely-read rant. There are now more than 40 million people on Google+, with Page saying the numbers are growing rapidly.

 The report comes amid big changes at Google, including its plan to gobble up Motorola Mobility.

 But, despite the changes and big moves in mobile, Google is still very much a search advertising-based business. The company reported a 33 percent year-over-year revenue increase to $9.72 billion, largely on back of its advertising revenues.

 At the end of September, Google — which employs about 1,000 people in the Seattle area — employed 31,353 wordlwide. That was up from 28,768 at the end of June. No wonder the company is expanding its real estate in the Seattle area.

 Full earnings release can be found here.

 And here’s a look at the slide deck that Google shared with investors today.

 google_earnings_slides

  ||||| Image caption Google boss Larry Page said the company had "a great quarter"

 Internet giant Google has reported a large rise in profits in the three months to September.

 The search engine said net income in the third quarter surged 26% to $2.73bn (£1.74bn), up from $2.17bn in the same period last year.

 Earlier this year, Google launched Google+, a social network to take on Facebook.

 "People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate," said Google head Larry Page.

 The profits were well ahead of market expectations, and shares in the company rose 6% in trading after the market closed.

 "The real interesting thing here is the expenses weren't as high as the Street was anticipating," said UBS analyst Brian Pitz. "This is the fourth quarter in a row the company has accelerated their revenue on top line."

 Revenue rose 33% to $9.72bn - just shy of having a quarterly turnover of $10bn.

 Mr Page, a co-founder of the company, replaced Eric Schmidt as CEO in April.

 "We had a great quarter," he said. "Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million-user mark."

 Facebook, around since 2004, has around 800 million users.

 As well as generating money through advertising based on search, Google also makes the popular Android mobile phone operating system. ||||| Bloomberg News

 Oct. 13 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is auditing how Google Inc. avoided federal income taxes by shifting profit into offshore subsidiaries, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

 The agency is bringing more than typical scrutiny to how the company valued software rights and other intellectual property it licensed abroad, said the person, who requested anonymity because the audit isn’t public. The IRS has requested information from Google about its offshore deals after three acquisitions, including its $1.65 billion purchase of YouTube, the person said. The transfer overseas of these kinds of rights rights has enabled Google to attribute earnings to foreign units that pay lower taxes, Bloomberg News reported a year ago.

 While Google’s potential liability isn’t clear, similar deals between companies and offshore arms are often the subject of disputes over hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes, said Daniel Frisch, an economist at Horst Frisch Inc. which advises businesses on transfer pricing -- the allocation of income between units in different countries. In 2006, the IRS settled a case with drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline Plc for $3.4 billion.

 “The very biggest transfer-pricing tax disputes are over transfers of intangibles to offshore subsidiaries,” said Frisch, whose firm is based in Washington.

 Google, owner of the world’s most popular search engine, has cut its worldwide tax bill by about $1 billion a year using a pair of strategies called the “Double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich,” which move profits through units in Ireland, the Netherlands and Bermuda. Google reported an effective tax rate of 18.8 percent in the second quarter, less than half the average combined U.S. and state statutory rate of 39.2 percent.

 Tax Holiday

 “This is a routine inquiry,” said Jim Prosser, a spokesman for Mountain View, California-based Google. He declined to comment further.

 Dean Patterson, a spokesman for the IRS in Washington, said federal law prohibits the agency from discussing specific taxpayers.

 U.S. companies are sitting on at least $1.375 trillion in earnings in their foreign subsidiaries on which they have paid no federal income taxes, according to a May report by JPMorgan Chase & Co. Companies including Google, Cisco Systems Inc., Pfizer Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are lobbying Congress for a tax holiday on bringing home those profits, which would otherwise be subject to U.S. income tax at the 35 percent corporate rate with a credit for foreign taxes already paid.

 The Obama administration is opposed to that tax break and has been stepping up criticism of tax preferences for various industries and millionaires. Last week, Senate Democrats proposed a new surtax on people earning at least $1 million a year, a move that would generate an estimated $453 billion over the coming decade.

 France Probe

 The French tax authority also began reviewing Google’s income shifting in December, examining transactions between the company’s French and Irish subsidiaries, according to two people with knowledge of the probe. The French inquiry was prompted by the October 2010 Bloomberg article on the company’s tax-cutting strategy, the people said.

 A spokesman for the French budget ministry, which oversees the tax authority, declined to comment, saying the agency cannot discuss individual cases.

 Multinational companies cut their tax bills by shifting earnings into subsidiaries in offshore tax havens, a strategy that is drawing increased scrutiny from the IRS.

 In May, the IRS appointed its first transfer-pricing director, Samuel Maruca. Last year, it announced the assignment of additional agents and attorneys to examine a few large companies as part of a pilot program. The IRS wouldn’t discuss whether Google is one of those companies.

 Valuable Patents

 Moving profit abroad is particularly important for cutting the tax bills of technology and pharmaceutical companies because of their valuable and easily transportable collection of patents and copyrights. Google, Cisco, Facebook Inc., Microsoft and Forest Laboratories Inc., maker of the blockbuster antidepressant Lexapro, have used tax-cutting strategies that move profits into units -- often with no employees or offices -- in havens such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Switzerland, Bloomberg has reported.

 In recent years, the IRS has engaged in a number of high profile disagreements with multinational companies over their transfer pricing. In 2006, the agency announced it was settling its dispute with GlaxoSmithKline.

 In 2009, the IRS lost a closely watched U.S. Tax Court case with Veritas, now a part of computer-security software maker Symantec Corp. In that dispute, over intellectual property rights moved to an offshore subsidiary, the IRS sought $545 million.

 Enforcement Setback

 The win for Veritas was a major setback for the IRS’s ability to enforce transfer-pricing rules, according to H. David Rosenbloom, an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington, and director of the International Tax program at New York University School of Law.

 Income shifting by multinational companies cost the U.S. $90 billion in federal tax revenue during 2008, according to a March article in the trade journal Tax Notes by Kimberly Clausing, an economics professor at Reed College in Portland, Oregon.

 Google cuts its tax bill by about $1 billion a year using a technique that allocates profits to a unit managed out of a law firm in Bermuda, where there is no corporate income tax. In 2009, the most recent year for which records are available, this subsidiary collected 4.34 billion euros (about $6.1 billion) in royalties from a Google unit in the Netherlands, according to a Dutch corporate filing.

 As of June 30, Google held $18.8 billion in cash in its foreign subsidiaries, almost half its total $39.1 billion in cash and marketable securities.

 ‘Buy In’

 The IRS has already approved a major part of Google’s strategy. In 2006, the agency signed off on a 2003 intracompany transaction that moved foreign rights to its search technology to an Irish subsidiary managed in Bermuda called Google Ireland Holdings. That deal -- known as a “buy in” in tax parlance -- meant subsequent profit overseas based on those copyrights has been attributed to foreign subsidiaries rather than to Google in the U.S. where the technology was developed.

 The IRS approval came in an accord known as an advance pricing agreement. Those arrangements are part of an agency program intended to forestall disputes with companies, including disagreements over the price paid by offshore units for patent and other intellectual property rights.

 Google Acquisitions

 That deal between the IRS and Google only covered rights the company held as of the 2003 licensing deal with its Irish unit. It didn’t cover copyrights subsequently acquired by the U.S. parent and then moved abroad.

 Following that 2003 transaction, Google made several acquisitions, spending $1.65 billion for online-video site YouTube in 2006; $625 million for e-mail security service Postini in 2007; and $3.2 billion for web-advertising company DoubleClick Inc. in 2008. The IRS now is examining the prices paid by the foreign subsidiaries for the rights to software and other intangibles moved offshore that formerly belonged to those three companies.

 According to U.S. Treasury Department rules, foreign units licensing rights from their U.S. parents are supposed to pay an “arm’s length” price, or the amount that would be paid by an unrelated company. If the offshore subsidiary pays too little, that has the effect of shifting income overseas, thus helping the parent avoid U.S. income taxes.

 SEC Review

 Google’s taxes have also drawn government scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Last December, the SEC asked the company for “greater detail” about the profit it said it had earned in countries with lower tax rates and the impact on its effective tax rate, according to correspondence released by the agency in March. The SEC said in a February letter that it had completed its review of Google’s filings. It is unclear what action, if any, the agency took.

 In August, Google announced it was spending $12.5 billion to acquire Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc., the Libertyville, Illinois telecom-equipment and mobile-phone maker. Google said it was doing the deal primarily for Motorola’s collection of valuable patents. Prosser didn’t respond to a question about whether Google would be moving any of those patent rights offshore.

 --With assistance from Mark Deen in Paris. Editors: Jonathan Kaufman, Lisa Wolfson

 To contact the reporter on this story: Jesse Drucker in New York at jdrucker4@bloomberg.net

 To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Kaufman at jkaufman17@bloomberg.net |||||Summary:

– Hard times elsewhere haven't done any damage to Google's bottom line. The company has announced a whopping 26% year-on-year jump in profits for the third quarter of this year, with net income of $2.73 billion on nearly $10 billion revenue, most of it from advertising, the BBC reports. "The word that springs to mind is 'gangbusters,'" CEO Larry Page boasted, hailing Google+ as a success—although one senior engineer has a different opinion. Google now employs over 2,500 more people than it did three months ago, with a total head count of 31,353 worldwide, GeekWire notes. The news isn't all good for Google, however: The IRS is auditing how the company dodged federal taxes by shifting profits offshore, sources tell Bloomberg. Google is believed to have avoided some $1 billion in taxes worldwide by using a pair of strategies called the “Double Irish” and “Dutch Sandwich."


Summarize this article:

Carrie Underwood and Stephen Moyer toplined the three-hour NBC production, which featured a cavernous set and familiar songs.

 It's easy to remember a musical for its songs. That is, after all, what makes a musical different from every other kind of narrative: The characters will shout to the rafters in full throat, revealing things they just can't speak, because the music gives them leave to lay themselves bare.

 And the songs in The Sound of Music are sublime. Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II knew their way around a tune and these numbers -- from "My Favorite Things" to "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" to the indefatigable "Do-Re-Mi" -- have endured since the Broadway production bowed in 1959 for good reason. But the story lives in the hearts of audiences because of Robert Wise's 1965 film adaptation starring Julie Andrews as Maria, the would-be nun trying to quench her yearning heart, and Christopher Plummer as Captain Von Trapp, the stoic Austrian unwilling to reignite his. Andrews' undeniable empathy and Plummer's prickly sensuality sold that love story to a generation, who've since passed it down to every other.

 RELATED: 'Sound of Music' Live: The Best Twitter Reactions

 With their live adaptation of the Broadway musical, NBC took a big swing for the fences. They spent a reported $9 million on the production and its cavernous set, which had to house the Austrian countryside, the interior of the Nonnberg Abbey, the Von Trapp estate and the arena where the Von Trapp Family Singers stage their final performance (draped in probably one too many Nazi flags). They engaged Craig Zadan and Neil Meron -- of NBC's calamitous Smash -- to produce. They got Audra McDonald to bring her pipes. They found a clutch of children who didn't have (too much) of that child-performer pomp. And they got Carrie Underwood and Stephen Moyer to play the lovers. And, well, whoops.

 Because while Underwood can deliver the songs -- I'm sure that anyone with the desire to plunge themselves into the American Idol ringer has been singing those songs for most of her life -- she doesn't acquit herself so well when it comes to carrying the emotional weight of the production. And perhaps it was unfair to ask so much of Underwood, to have to make Maria's journey in three scant hours -- whereas Andrews had weeks of production -- while enduring costume changes and remembering choreography and trying not to look at the prompter and not step on anyone's lines or feet. Underwood nails the look of a virginal almost-nun, but goes no deeper than that. Blank stares and placid smiles.

 STORY: 'Sound of Music' Live: 5 Standout Moments

 Moyer is a better singer than Russell Crowe, I'll give him that. But he's no Hugh Jackman. Or Neil Patrick Harris. Or Taye Diggs. Or even Nathan Fillion. His attempt at conveying an emotional hollowness just reads as mild constipation, his furrowed eyes and pursed lips doing all the work. He doesn't look stoic, he just looks clenched.

 The production itself came off without a hitch -- no easy feat with so many moving parts and opportunities for blown lines or stumble down staircases (oh, how I wished for a staircase stumble to lighten the three hours). The supporting cast was strong: Laura Benanti was appropriately sultry as Elsa Von Hottie, while Christian Borle was appropriately hammy as Max Detweiler and someone should find a way to have McDonald sing audiences into every commercial break. And while the camerawork -- by directors Rob Ashford and Beth McCarthy-Miller (who directed 30 Rock's live episodes) -- made everything still feel a little stagebound, the storytelling was clear.

 And yet, without Underwood and Moyer selling us on this legendary love story, The Sound of Music Live plays like very expensive karaoke. ||||| Joining all the other things to make one's spirits sink at this time of year – dark mornings, low temperatures, Susan Boyle's inevitable Christmas album – is Thursday night's live NBC production of the Sound of Music starring Carrie Underwood. In Times Square, there's a huge poster of her in Austrian drag, teeth blazing like strip lighting, a look on her face that seems to say, "Hey! Come join me in the casual destruction of a staple of the American songbook!" As if that corner of New York couldn't get more depressing.

 Well, kind of. As we know in our hearts – come on, dig deep – the Sound of Music is basically terrible: too long, too pious, too laboured in its point-making. Julie Andrews rescued the movie with a sort of weapons-grade gladness , her performance turning on that rare ability to present risible material with absolute conviction. Underwood will, no doubt, sell it for all that she's worth, but there are certain things one doesn't look to winners of American Idol to deliver and guilelessness is one of them.

 Neither is acting. Being in a musical isn't just a singing job, which is how Christopher Plummer, a veteran stage actor who started his career in productions of Ibsen, Shakespeare and Euripides, found himself cast as Captain von Trapp, something he has grumbled about ever since. He called it the "Sound of Mucus" and delivered his lines in a tone so sardonic, only Andrews' superior fire power could neutralize them. The clash of her absolute sincerity with his sly knowing style is part of what converted the show into kitsch, wherein lies its real worth.

 The other part, of course, is the songs, so slick and convincing that large numbers of people still think Edelweiss is the Austrian national anthem. Poor Austrians. (Up to a point). I went on the native-baiting Sound of Music tour in Salzburg, once, and watched as the baffled and mildly hostile locals strained to look away as hordes of British, American and Australian visitors trudged around town, re-enacting key scenes from the film while screaming.

 This kind of fanaticism is inspired as much by indoctrination as by any real value in the show. For most of us, repeated forced viewing since childhood has made the Sound of Music as familiar as a comfort blanket, a constant against which to measure our own progress. As I get older, for example, I find myself increasingly sympathising with the Baroness. Who hasn't been there? Labouring to impress in a power suit when the guy's undeclared taste is for novitiates?

 Part of the comfort of the show is its naked didacticism: the nuns' moral surety; the lessons in European history. Who can resist Liesl's executive summary of Lebensraum:

 Some people think we ought to be German. They're very mad at those who don't think so.

 Or the mythology that now surrounds the production? That day in Salzburg, our tour guide, who had been doing the tour twice-daily for eight years, presented the material with the detachment of one who has long ago retreated to a place where no one can reach her. Until a few years ago, she explained, you could go inside the actual gazebo where Liesl and Rolf frolicked, until an 80-year-old woman jumped off the bench while re-enacting I Am 16 Going On 17 and broke her hip. A lawsuit ensued. Now you could only view it from the outside. At the time, this struck us with the force of a genuine sadness.

 However much one mocks it, there is something enduringly and weirdly irresistible about the Sound of Music, although if I watch NBC on Thursday night, it won't be because of that. Where Andrews found a little quietness and subtlety in the score, Underwood, judging by the teasers, will go at it with the pop-eyed mania of someone performing for Simon Cowell. No, I'll be watching because it's live; something will go wrong. ||||| Broadway on TV

 Was Carrie Underwood a good Maria? No. Was NBC’s decision to do a live staging of ‘The Sound of Music’ a good one? Maybe not. Was it fun anyway? Actually, kinda.

 The poor hills. They finally come alive, only to experience a rotating flurry of emotions so dizzying it's as if the indefatigable Carrie Underwood started spinning on them at the beginning of NBC's The Sound of Music Live! and didn't stop for the entire three-hour broadcast. And, honestly, the country singer tackled her turn as Maria with such grating gusto she'd probably had done just that if she was asked to.

 The experience of watching The Sound of Music Live! was a bit of an exhausting one. Not a bad one. Not a good one. But one that took energy.

 There was weathering the crippling outrage over the project's mere existence—the nerve of staging a production without Julie Andrews in the lead!—that could very well have grounded the whole affair had NBC not been so bullish on it. Then came the hopefulness, a quick prayer to worn-out Sound of Music VHS tapes we all watched growing up that the production wouldn't be a train wreck. The quick sigh of relief came at the sound of the nuns prettily singing the opening song, only to be followed by the gut-punch suffocation of every breath when, all-of-a-sudden, Carrie Underwood was frolicking manically in a fake forest wearing Austrian drag. Nothing, really, can prepare one for that.

 The roller coaster of emotions never really ceased. Are your eyes tired? It's from a combination of excessive cringing and sustained weeping. So much of the broadcast was hard to watch, not so much the fault of the actors as the actually quite subpar show being performed and the whole idea of the live telecast itself. And just as much of it was shockingly moving, thanks in Alps-sized part to the glorious talents of Tony-winners Audra MacDonald and Laura Benanti in scene-stealing supporting roles.

 Listen, it takes a lot of effort to twirl energetically on a mountaintop and make it look good. The effort it took to put on The Sound of Music Live! radiated off the screen, draining the energy of the viewers who watched. But, occasionally, it even turned into, as Maria would sing, something good.

 Sadly, it wasn't until she sang "Something Good" that Underwood's tireless guile finally succeeded in winning over the audience. Her performance of the song had confidence (now's a good time to lament that "I Have Confidence," a song added just to the film version of The Sound of Music, was not featured in this production) that took the American Idol winner nearly the entire show to properly build. Naturally, Underwood sounded astounding, as alive as those damned hills, every time she was asked to stand on top of things and belt. But whether it was because of nerves or lack of experience, her acting was painfully lifeless and amateur throughout the first two thirds of the lengthy ordeal. The singer, it seems, is a proud graduate of the school of "If I don't blink, they'll think I'm acting!"

 To say that Underwood was no Julie Andrews is one of life's greatest certainties, and maybe it's not fair to compare the two stars. But the truth is that millions of people tuned in Thursday night to do just that, compare Underwood to Andrews… and then throw her off an Alps cliff when she didn't measure up. Underwood's performance, however, really just underlined what a tricky role Maria is to pull off, and how astounding it is that Andrews managed to do it. Andrews skipped through the role with the ceaseless ebullience of a baby deer in spring, imbuing that effervescence in everything from a mountaintop spin to yodeling with wooden puppets to a romance with grouchy Christopher Plummer. Girl was brave. Remember that boyish bob?

 Underwood was like a deer, too. But one in headlights.

 Because of that, one can't really tell if it was a brilliant or boneheaded idea to surround her with a supporting cast of such talented actors. First of all, this telecast featured some of the best singing nuns since Whoopi Goldberg was Back in the Habit. That roller coaster of emotions we were talking about earlier? We were rocketed through some prolific loop-de-loops just two bars into Audra MacDonald's rendition of "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" as Mother Abbess. If you didn't shed a tear during that epic performance, you might be an Underwood. I mean a robot. Heck, even Underwood was full-on ugly crying during the performance, likely betraying the inner monologue: "Audra MacDonald is belting this song in my ear and I will never find such happiness again."

 Then there's the radiant Laura Benanti as Captain Von Trapp's (Vampire Bill himself, Stephen Moyer) hope-to-be fiancé, Elsa Schraeder. Along with Smash and Broadway alum Christian Borle, she can now be certified as an expert spelunker, for the feats of mining she did to surface errant bits of comedy from the overly earnest script the cast was working with. When Elsa breaks up with Von Trapp and sulks off stage near the end, you hate to see her go. Though Benanti looks good while she leaves. Her costuming was flawless.

 (Sidebar conspiracy theory: the wardrobe department was out to sabotage Underwood. Take the party scene. Every guest is outfitted in exquisite ball gowns and tuxedos. Underwood is wearing an oversized milkmaid's dress, frumpier than the milkmaid's dress she wore in the previous scene… but not as frumpy as the one she put on for the next one. So much frump!)

 So, yes, the cast did work exceptionally hard, none more than Underwood, to give her the credit she truly deserves, to sell the material. The material, however, is The Sound of Music. And it's not even The Sound of the Music movie, it's the stage show. And The Sound of Music stage show is a bit whack.

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 It's a musical where, essentially, three songs are sung six times each at various points throughout the show and you're expected not to get bored of them. It's a show with two major conflicts. In one, a father is upset that his children's clothes are made out of curtains. In the other, the Nazis are invading Austria. They are given the same weight. It's a show where a Mother Superior at an abbey sings an epically moving ballad to a scared young nun, and you later realize that she was just telling the nun to go out there, sex herself up a little, and break up a pending marriage. The Sound of Music: The Story of Maria, the Hussy Nun.

 Worse for fans of the movie who may not have even realized that it was also a stage production, there are loads of differences between the stage show and the film, especially in what are now iconic scenes. Maria sings "My Favorite Things" in the abbey to Mother Abbess, not to the children. Love the yodeling puppets from the "Lonely Goatherd" scene? They're not there, because Maria now sings it with the children in her bedroom, sans props. And there's no synchronized bench hopping at all in the choreography of "I Am Sixteen (Going on Seventeen)." It's a tragedy.

 The mood of the whole piece was weird, too. Though it was performed live, it was shot as if it was a movie, on what must be the biggest soundstage of all time—the set was massive. So you never saw a proscenium, stage curtains, or an audience. Laugh lines didn't receive laughter. Vamping for applause after a song never actually had applause to vamp to. The hybrid nature of the project ended up zapping the energy from both worlds—film and live theater—rather than combining them. |||||

– Before last night's live production of The Sound of Music on NBC, Emma Brockes summed up everything that was certainly going to be wrong with it in the Guardian: The original, beloved though it may be, "is basically terrible: too long, too pious, too labored in its point-making." But Julie Andrews managed to find "a little quietness and subtlety in the score," whereas "Underwood, judging by the teasers, will go at it with the pop-eyed mania of someone performing for Simon Cowell," Brockes writes. "There are certain things one doesn't look to winners of American Idol to deliver and guilelessness is one of them." So how did it actually end up? Most reviewers seem to agree Brockes was right: In Time, Charlotte Alter sums things up with her headline: "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Carrie Underwood?" She deems the show "so cringe-worthy that it was at least fun to watch" and rounds up nine things that went wrong, including Stephen Moyer, who played Captain Von Trapp: His "accent was sometimes German and sometimes English, which was weird because Underwood’s accent was always Southern." She also offers up suggestions for actors who would have done a better job than Underwood, including Morgan Freeman. On the Daily Beast, Kevin Fallon feels basically the same way: "Was Carrie Underwood a good Maria? No. Was NBC's decision to do a live staging of The Sound of Music a good one? Maybe not. Was it fun anyway? Actually, kinda," he writes. "To say that Underwood was no Julie Andrews is one of life's greatest certainties, and maybe it's not fair to compare the two stars. But the truth is that millions of people tuned in Thursday night to do just that, compare Underwood to Andrews ... and then throw her off an Alps cliff when she didn't measure up." As for the production itself, it "came off without a hitch," writes Marc Bernardin at the Hollywood Reporter. That's "no easy feat with so many moving parts and opportunities for blown lines or staircase stumbles (oh, how I wished for a staircase stumble to lighten the three hours)." And the non-Underwood cast, with the exception of a constipated-looking Moyer, was very strong.


Article:
Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| JORGE Mario Bergoglio, the man this week elected as the first Latin American pope, reportedly turned to religion after he was spurned by his childhood sweetheart when they were both just 12 years old.

 According to 76-year-old Amalia Damonte, Pope Francis once declared "If I can't marry you, I'll become a priest" after she rejected him during their childhood in Buenos Aires. "Luckily for him, I said no", she joked.

 Speaking from her home, four doors down from where Francis grew up in Flores, Argentina, Damonte revealed her parents had kept the two apart because they disapproved of their budding romance.

 "When we were young, he wrote me a letter and I didn't reply to him," she told the Argentinean press. "My father had hit me because I had dared to write a note to a boy."

 Damonte's revelation came as the sister of the 266th pontiff, María Elena Bergoglio, said she was concerned her brother would face "infinite loneliness" in his new role.

 She told the Daily Telegraph Francis had jokingly said "no, please no" at the prospect of being the next Pope. "I didn't want him to become Pope because he's going to be very far away and second because it is such a large responsibility. But I am also totally proud that he is the new Pope - because he's the first from outside Europe, because he's Latin American, he's Argentine and he's my brother," she said.

 Despite his apparent reluctance, Francis, 76, was elected the Catholic Church's leader on Wednesday, replacing 85-year-old Benedict, who stepped down last month. Bergoglio inherits a church wrestling with an array of challenges that intensified during Pope Benedict's tenure - from growing competition from evangelical churches in the Southern Hemisphere to a priest shortage and a sexual abuse crisis. · |||||Summary:

– Apparently you can credit Amalia Damonte for Jorge Bergoglio becoming Pope Francis—or perhaps her father, reports the Week. When Bergoglio was just 12, he had a young "romance" with Damonte, writing a letter saying they would be married and drawing a picture of the house they would live in. She said he vowed to become a priest if Amalia, who lived near him in a Buenos Aires suburb, rejected the offer. However, Damonte's father wasn't about to stand for his 12-year-old daughter talking to boys, and slapped her for starting to write back. "I never saw him after that—my parents kept me away from him and did everything possible to separate us," says Damonte, adding that "it was a thing between children and totally pure." The Telegraph, meanwhile, catches up with the pope's sister, Maria Elena Bergoglio, who says her brother was never jazzed about the prospect of leading the church. "He didn't want to be pope and when we chatted privately about it, we joked at the prospect and he would say, 'No, please no.'"


Write an article based on this summary:

– Luxury fashion label Burberry is conceding to environmental activists: The brand will stop using fur in its products, phase out existing fur items, and put an immediate end to its practice of destroying unsold items. It was that practice that drew attention in July, as an earnings report revealed that $37 million in Burberry clothes, accessories, and perfume were burned in 2017 to prevent them being stolen or sold at a discount, per the BBC. "Modern luxury means being socially and environmentally responsible," CEO Marco Gobbetti says in a release, which cites a new strategy of "helping tackle the causes of waste," per CNN.

Burberry announces it will stop the practice of destroying unsaleable products, with immediate effect.

 This commitment builds on the goals that we set last year as part of our five-year responsibility agenda and is supported by our new strategy, which is helping tackle the causes of waste. We already reuse, repair, donate or recycle unsaleable products and we will continue to expand these efforts.

 At Burberry, we are passionate about driving positive change. Our responsibility goals cover the entire footprint of our operations and extend to the communities around us. In May 2018, we became a core partner of the Make Fashion Circular Initiative convened by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. In the past year, we have created a unique partnership with sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform 120 tonnes of leather offcuts into new products over the next five years. We have also supported the Burberry Foundation in establishing the Burberry Material Futures Research Group with the Royal College of Art to invent new sustainable materials. We continue to invest in communities, from supporting young people in disadvantaged areas of London and Yorkshire, to developing a more inclusive and sustainable cashmere industry in Afghanistan. These efforts have been recognised by Burberry’s inclusion in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the third consecutive year.

 Burberry also confirms it will no longer use real fur. There will be no real fur in Riccardo Tisci’s debut collection for Burberry later this month, and we will phase out existing real fur products.

 Marco Gobbetti, Chief Executive Officer, commented:

 “Modern luxury means being socially and environmentally responsible. This belief is core to us at Burberry and key to our long-term success. We are committed to applying the same creativity to all parts of Burberry as we do to our products.”

 Contacts:

 Media

 Andrew Roberts, VP Corporate Relations +44(0)7976971881

 Investor Relations

 Charlotte Cowley, VP Investor Relations +44(0)2033673234

 Notes to editors:

 To respect regulatory constraints, in exceptional circumstances, we may dispose of damaged, defective or expired beauty products where recycling is not an option. We will continue to explore methods of recycling or reusing such products within the regulatory constraints.

 The use of real fur by Burberry has been restricted for many years to rabbit, fox, mink and Asiatic racoon. Going forward, these and Angora will be banned.

 Launched in 2017, Burberry’s Responsibility agenda to 2022, focuses on three goals:

 Drive positive change through 100% of Burberry’s products

 Become carbon neutral, revalue waste

 Positively impact one million people

 Burberry made progress against each of these in 2017/18, including:

 We procured 21 percent of our cotton through the Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), which focuses on reducing the environmental impact of cotton production and improving economic development in cotton producing areas. Our goal is to procure 100 percent of our cotton through the BCI by 2022

 We are more than a third of the way to our goal of becoming carbon neutral in our own operations. We are also helping our supply-chain partners cut their water and energy consumption, with a third of those participating in a programme we developed achieving a reduction in 2017

 Through the Burberry Foundation, we are working with Teach First and the Careers and Enterprise company to support young people in disadvantaged communities in London and Yorkshire

 The Foundation also partnered with Oxfam in Italy to support community cohesion and in Afghanistan to develop a more inclusive and sustainable cashmere industry

 Burberry has also established ground-breaking partnerships to support and accelerate innovation and sustainable business practices

 Through the Burberry Foundation, we are working with sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform at least 120 tonnes of leather off-cuts from the production of Burberry products into a range of accessories and homeware over the next five years. Half of the profits from this will be donated to charitable causes focused on renewable energy

 The Burberry Material Futures Research Group at the Royal College of Art is focused on inventing new sustainable materials, transforming the customer experience and advancing manufacturing

 We are a core partner of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation Make Fashion Circular Initiative to champion the vision for a circular economy and phase out negative impacts of the fashion and textile industry

 Find out more about our agenda at https://www.burberryplc.com/en/responsibility ||||| Written by Bard Wilkinson, CNN

 British fashion house Burberry said Thursday it will stop burning unsold goods and using real fur in response to criticism on social media and from environmental activists.

 The ban on burning unsold products comes into immediate effect, Burberry said in a statement.

 "This commitment builds on the goals that we set last year as part of our five-year responsibility agenda and is supported by our new strategy, which is helping tackle the causes of waste," the statement added.

 In July, it was revealed that Burberry destroyed clothes and perfume worth over $36 million in 2017. Fashion firms usually destroy unwanted goods to prevent them being sold cheaply.

 Models wear the the Spring/Summer 2018 collection for Burberry on the second day of The London Fashion Week, September 16, 2017. Credit: NIKLAS HALLE'N/AFP/AFP/Getty Images

 The luxury goods manufacturer also said it would start phasing out all real fur products. It said for many years it had restricted its use of fur to rabbit, fox, mink and Asiatic racoon.

 "Going forward, these and Angora will be banned," the statement said.

 The animal rights group behind a recent #FurFreeBritain social media campaign, Human Society International, welcomed the decision.

 "As fashion week kicks off today in New York, Burberry's compassionate stance couldn't have come at a better time," said the organization's director of international media, Wendy Higgins, in an email.

 Higgins added that the fashion house was "very wise" to end its association with fur, citing animal welfare concerns and describing brands who continue to use it as "isolated and outdated."

 Burberry chief executive Marco Gobbetti said the company was committed to applying its creative talent to finding positive solutions across the company.

 "Modern luxury means being socially and environmentally responsible," Gobbetti said. "This belief is core to us at Burberry and key to our long-term success."

 Burberry said it had gone into partnership with sustainable luxury company Elvis & Kresse to transform 120 tons of leather offcuts into new products over the next five years. |||||


Write a summary based on this article:

SANTA MARIA, Brazil A nightclub fire killed at least 233 people in southern Brazil early on Sunday when a band's pyrotechnics show set the building ablaze and fleeing partygoers stampeded toward blocked and overcrowded exits in the ensuing panic, officials said.

 The blaze in the university town of Santa Maria was ignited by sparks from pyrotechnics used by the band for visual effects. They set fire to soundproofing on the ceiling and the club rapidly filled with toxic smoke, local fire officials said.

 Most of those who died were suffocated by fumes, fire brigade Sergeant Robson Muller told Reuters. Others were crushed in the stampede.

 "Smoke filled the place instantly, the heat became unbearable," survivor Murilo Tiescher, a medical student, told GloboNews TV. "People could not find the only exit. They went to the toilet thinking it was the exit and many died there."

 Fire officials said at least one exit was locked and that club bouncers, who at first thought those fleeing were trying to skip out on bar tabs, initially blocked patrons from leaving. The security staff relented only when they saw flames engulfing the ceiling.

 The tragedy, in a packed venue in one of Brazil's most prosperous states, comes as the country scrambles to improve safety, security and logistical shortfalls ahead of the 2014 World Cup soccer tournament and the 2016 Olympics, both intended to showcase the economic advances and first-world ambitions of Latin America's largest nation.

 In Santa Maria, a city of more than 275,000 people, rescue workers and weary officials wept alongside family and friends of the victims at a local gymnasium being used as a makeshift morgue.

 "It's the saddest, saddest day of my life," said Neusa Soares, the mother of one of those killed, 22-year-old Viviane Tolio Soares. "I never thought I would have to live to see my girl go away."

 President Dilma Rousseff cut short an official visit to Chile and flew to Santa Maria, where she wept as she spoke to relatives of the victims at the gym.

 "All I can say at the moment is that my feelings are of deep sorrow," said Rousseff, who began her political career in Rio Grande do Sul, the state where the fire occurred.

 News of the fire broke on Sunday morning, when local news broadcast images of shocked people outside the nightclub called Boate Kiss. Gradually, grisly details emerged.

 "BARRIER OF THE DEAD"

 "We ran into a barrier of the dead at the exit," Colonel Guido Pedroso de Melo, commander of the fire brigade in Rio Grande do Sul, said of the scene that firefighters found on arrival. "We had to clear a path to get to the rest of those that were inside."

 Officials said more than 1,000 people may have been in the club, possibly exceeding its legal capacity. Though Internet postings about the venue suggested as many as 2,000 people at times have crammed into the club, Pedroso de Melo said no more than half that should have been inside.

 He said the club was authorized to be open but its permit was in the process of being renewed.

 However, Pedroso de Melo did point to several egregious safety violations - from the flare that went off during the show to the locked door that kept people from leaving.

 The club's management said in a statement that its staff was trained and prepared to deal with any emergency. It said it would help authorities with their investigation.

 When the fire began at about 2:30 a.m., many revelers were unable to find their way out in the chaos.

 "It all happened so fast," survivor Taynne Vendrusculo told GloboNews TV. "Both the panic and the fire spread rapidly, in seconds."

 Once security guards realized the building was on fire, they tried in vain to control the blaze with a fire extinguisher, according to a televised interview with one of the guards, Rodrigo Moura. He said patrons were getting trampled as they rushed for the doors, describing it as "a horror film."

 Band member Rodrigo Martins said the fire started after the fourth or fifth song and the extinguisher did not work.

 "It could have been a short circuit, there were many cables there," Martins told Porto Alegre's Radio Gaucha station. He said there was only one door and it was locked. A band member died in the fire.

 CLUB OWNER QUESTIONED

 One of the club's owners has surrendered to police for questioning, GloboNews reported.

 TV footage showed people sobbing outside the club before dawn, while shirtless firefighters used sledge hammers and axes to knock down an exterior wall to open up an exit.

 Rescue officials moved the bodies to the local gym and separated them by gender. Male victims were easier to identify because most had identification on them, unlike the women, whose purses were left scattered in the devastated nightclub. Local authorities said 120 men and 113 women died in the fire.

 Piles of shoes remained in the burnt out club, along with tufts of hair pulled out by people fleeing desperately. Firemen who removed bodies said victims' cell phones were still ringing.

 The disaster recalls other incidents including a 2003 fire at a nightclub in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people [ID:nL1N0AW2NR], and a Buenos Aires nightclub blaze in 2004 that killed nearly 200. In both incidents, a band or members of the audience ignited fires that set the establishment ablaze.

 The Rhode Island fire shocked local and federal officials because of the rarity of such incidents in the United States, where enforcement of safety codes is considered to be relatively strict. After the Buenos Aires blaze, Argentine officials closed many nightclubs and other venues and ultimately forced the city's mayor from office because of poor oversight of municipal codes.

 The fire early on Sunday occurred in one of the wealthiest, most industrious and culturally distinct regions of Brazil. Santa Maria is about 186 miles west of Porto Alegre, the capital of a state settled by Germans and other immigrants from northern Europe.

 Local clichés paint the region as stricter and more organized than the rest of Brazil, where most residents are a mix descended from native tribes, Portuguese colonists, African slaves, and later influxes of immigrants from southern Europe.

 Rio Grande do Sul state's health secretary, Ciro Simoni, said emergency medical supplies from all over the state were being sent to the scene. States from all over Brazil offered support, and messages of sympathy poured in from foreign leaders.

 (Additional reporting by Guillermo Parra-Bernal, Gustavo Bonato, Jeferson Ribeiro, Eduardo Simões, Brian Winter and Guido Nejamkis.; Writing by Paulo Prada and Anthony Boadle; Editing by Todd Benson, Kieran Murray and Christopher Wilson) ||||| A fire swept through a crowded nightclub in southern Brazil early Sunday, killing at least 245 people and leaving at least 200 injured, police and firefighters said.

 A man carries an injured victim of a fire at the Kiss club in Santa Maria city, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, early Sunday, Jan. 27, 2013. Firefighters say that the death toll from a fire that... (Associated Press)

 Police Maj. Cleberson Braida told local news media that the 245 bodies were brought for identification to a gymnasium in the city of Santa Maria.

 That toll would make it one of the deadliest nightclub fires more than a decade.

 The cause of the fire is not yet known, officials said. Officials earlier put the death toll at 180.

 Civil Police and regional government spokesman Marcelo Arigoni told Radio Gaucha earlier that the total number of victims is still unclear and there may be hundreds injured,

 The newspaper Diario de Santa Maria reported that the fire started at around 2 a.m. at the Kiss club in the city at the southern tip of Brazil, near the borders with Argentina and Uruguay.

 Rodrigo Moura, whom the paper identified as a security guard at the club, said it was at its maximum capacity of between 1,000 and 2,000, and partygoers were pushing and shoving to escape.

 Ezekiel Corte Real, 23, was quoted by the paper as saying that he helped people to escape. "I just got out because I'm very strong," he said.

 "Sad Sunday", tweeted Tarso Genro, the governor of the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul. He said all possible action was being taken and that he would be in the city later in the day.

 Santa Maria is a major university city with a population of around a quarter of a million.

 A welding accident reportedly set off a Dec. 25, 2000, fire at a club in Luoyang, China, killing 309.

 At least 194 people died at an overcrowded working-class nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004.

 A blaze at the Lame Horse nightclub in Perm, Russia, broke out on Dec. 5, 2009, when an indoor fireworks display ignited a plastic ceiling decorated with branches, killing 152

 A nightclub fire in the U.S. state of Rhode Island in 2003 killed 100 people after pyrotechnics used as a stage prop by the 1980s rock band Great White set ablaze cheap soundproofing foam on the walls and ceiling. |||||

– A fireworks display in a Brazilian nightclub went horribly awry last night, spawning a fire that police say killed upward of 233 people, reports CNN. Police on the scene at the Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria have already removed 159 bodies, reports Reuters, and rescuers are still looking for more. "People started panicking and ended up treading on each other," the local fire chief tells the BBC, which notes that there was apparently only one exit in the facility. The number of injured is also in the hundreds; local media report that the club had a capacity of 2,000 and was believed to be full on a Saturday night. "It was really fast. There was a lot of smoke, really dark smoke," says survivor Aline Santos Silva, 29. "We were only able to get out quickly because we were in a VIP area close to the door." The AP runs down a list of other deadly nightclub fires here.


Summarize this article:

The Lady Gaga residency is upon us. Or, rather, it will be in late 2018.

 Lady Gaga to open residency at The Park Theater in late-2018 (John Katsilometes/Las Vegas Review-Journal)

 Lady Gaga performs during her "Joanne" world tour at Rogers Arena on Aug. 1 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation)

 Lady Gaga performs during her "Joanne" world tour at Rogers Arena on Aug. 1 in Vancouver, Canada. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Live Nation)

 Lady Gaga attends a news conference for "Gaga: Five Foot Two" on Day 2 of the Toronto International Film Festival at the TIFF Bell Lightbox on Friday, Sept. 8, 2017, in Toronto. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

 The Lady Gaga residency is upon us.

 Or, rather, it will be in late 2018.

 Rumored for about a year and a half, Gaga is set to announce a series of 36 shows at The Park Theater at Monte Carlo. Those familiar with the terms of her agreement say the run launches in the fourth quarter of next year, running for one year, through 2019 and might extend into 2020.

 Gaga is to earn approximately $400,000 per performance. A source familiar with her contract says online reports of her signing a deal worth $100 million for 60 shows are “way, way, way, off.”

 Gaga is currently cast as Ally, opposite Bradley Cooper’s Jackson Maine, in the remake of “A Star is Born.” The film’s premiere has been moved up from September 28 to May 18 (she tweeted Tuesday that despite online reports, she is using her stage name and not her born name, Stefani Germanotta, in the film’s credits). The adjusted time line allows the stage and recording superstar time to assemble and rehearse her production show.

 The Park Theater opened last December with The Pretenders and Stevie Nicks. Cher, Bruno Mars and Ricky Martin are among the resident headliners in the venue, which can seat up to 6,300.

 Gaga played T-Mobile Arena on Saturday night, and also played the venue in August. A “pop-up” show on her “Bud Lite Dive Bar Tour” she had planned in Downtown Las Vegas days before the T-Mobile show was canceled (she stated she needed to rehearse for her world tour instead).

 Gaga was also forced to call off her six-week European leg of her “Joanne World Tour” in September, but has been in peak form since returning from her health struggles.

 Gaga was in the audience Friday night at Lionel Richie’s show at Axis theater at Planet Hollywood and has frequently teased about a series of shows in Las Vegas.

 “I’m excited someday to do that,” she told Mix 94.1-FM morning show hosts Mercedes Martinez and JC Fernandez in January, days before her Super Bowl LI halftime show performance. “I love Las Vegas and the people there, and I love show business. I’m a real old-fashioned girl.”

 Contact John Katsilometes at jkatsilometes@reviewjournal.com. Follow @johnnykats on Twitter, @JohnnyKats1 on Instagram. ||||| Lady Gaga is set to kick off a residency in Las Vegas at the MGM Park Theater. The deal closed over the weekend and will bring the pop star to the city starting in late 2018.

 According to a source, Gaga will perform 74 dates with the possibility of a longer run. The deal is said to be potentially valued at nearly $100 million, with the pop star clearing a million-plus dollars per show to lock in $75 million over two years. Comparatively, Britney Spears’ two-year re-up at Planet Hollywood was in the range of $30 million. That show, “Piece of Me,” has grossed more than $135 million since Dec. 2013.

 Gaga’s last touring run, of 37 shows, saw an average box office gross of $2.5 million, according to concert industry trade Pollstar.

 The deal was negotiated by CAA’s Christian Carino and attorney Kenny Meiselas of Grubman Shire Meiselas & Sacks with Sonya Guardo.

 Additional headliners at the MGM’s 5,200-seat Park Theater include Bruno Mars and Cher, both of whom are scheduled for multiple shows at the top of the year.

 An announcement of the residency was posted on Gaga’s social media channels, along with photos of the deal being signed and a toast with Bill Hornbuckle, president of MGM Resorts International (bottom left), as well as with Chris Baldizan SVP of entertainment booking and development MGM Resorts and Richard Sturm, president and COO of sports and entertainment (top right). ||||| The rumors are true! I will have my own residency at MGM’s Park Theater. Get ready for a brand new show!! It’s been my lifelong dream to be a Las Vegas girl, I’m so overjoyed! LOVE YOU LITTLE MONSTERS WE DID IT, MEET ME IN Las Vegas!! # LasVegasGoesGagapic.twitter.com/UhPdW5wgXu |||||

– Lady Gaga is following in the footsteps of Britney Spears, Celine Dion, and Cher. The singer is the latest to secure a Las Vegas residency, and will be belting out tunes at the 5,200-seat MGM Park Theater at the Monte Carlo Resort and Casino beginning in late 2018. She'll be making a ton of money, but exactly how much is unclear. A source tells Variety Gaga will take home more than $1 million for each of at least 74 performances over two years, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal has her doing 36 shows for $400,000 apiece. "It's been my lifelong dream to be a Las Vegas girl, I'm so overjoyed!," the singer tweeted Tuesday.


Here is a news article: HAYWARD -- A woman was arrested Saturday after allegedly jumping on stage at a music festival and attacking a legendary musician after he dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin, according to police and eyewitnesses.

 The woman, who police identified as 43-year-old Dinalynn Andrews Potter of Barstow, apparently yelled, "it's all your fault" before shoving 73-year-old Lester Chambers, his family said Sunday.

 "She had a crazed look in her eye," said Kurt Kangas, a friend of Chambers who ran to his aid. "I saw the devil there."

 Chambers was performing at the Hayward Russell City Blues Festival downtown when around 5:15 p.m. he dedicated Curtis Mayfield's hit "People Get Ready" to Martin, the 17-year-old shot and killed by George Zimmerman.

 A Florida jury acquitted Zimmerman on all charges Saturday.

 Chambers told the audience if Mayfield were around today, he'd change the lyrics "there's a train a comin'" to "there's a change a comin,'" his wife Lola Chambers told this newspaper Sunday.

 "She must have been an acrobat. She did it in one leap. He didn't see her coming," Lola Chambers said.

 Eyewitnesses and Hayward police said people on stage subdued Andrews Potter after she allegedly shoved Chambers. Though the police investigation into a motive continues, family members believe the attack was racially motivated and was a result of Chambers' mention of Martin. The family is pressing police to file hate crime charges. Andrews Potter is white, they said. Chambers is black.

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 Hayward police took Andrews Potter to the police station, where she was arrested on suspicion of battery. She was cited and released, and could face additional charges in the coming days, according to Hayward police Lt. Ruben Pola.

 Chambers, a Petaluma resident, was taken to the hospital but has since been released, and is using a cane to walk. A photo his son posted on Facebook shows a large welt on his backside. His son said Chambers had a "bruised rib muscle and nerve damage and he is sore all over."

 Chambers was a member of the 1960s soul group Chambers Brothers and has had a well-publicized fight with record executives over decades of royalty payments he said he has never received.

 The Chambers Brothers will be part of the inaugural class inducted into the R&B Hall of Fame later this year, Lola Chambers said.

 David DeBolt covers breaking news. Contact him in Richmond at 510-262-2728. Follow him at Twitter.com/daviddebolt. ||||| Lester Chambers, a seventy-three year-old musician known for his work as a member of The Chambers Brothers, was assaulted on stage at a blues festival last night after he dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin.

 Chambers’ son, Dylan, posted the following on Facebook last night: “Lester was just assaulted on stage at The Russell City Hayward Blues Festival by a crazed woman after dad dedicated People Get Ready to Trayvon Martin. He is on the way to the hospital now.”

 Kurt Crowbar Kangas, a musician and friend of Lester’s, later posted in the comments thread:

 Lester is fine, just a bit sore and he will feel it tomorrow, the woman who attacked him was white and yelled something like “it’s all your fault” before she hit him, he went down hard but was halfway caught by Barren, thank God, she was subdued by Police and taken away while the para-medics came and took him to a local Hospital where he went thru a series of cat scans, no broken bones, the only injury for now is a 8″ scratch in the kidney area of his back and it’s starting to swell. Thank you for all your well wishes, he will be up and running soon.

 Lester apparently dedicated the classic song, “People Get Ready,” by The Impressions to Martin. The woman heard the dedication and attacked him.

 His son posted a photo of Lester’s injury to Facebook. He said he had a “bruised rib and nerve damage” and was “sore all over.”

 There was a lot of talk, particularly by Zimmerman supporters, about how there would be riots if Zimmerman was acquitted. So far, all that we know happened that was violent was this attack and an attack on peaceful protesters by the Los Angeles police, who fired rubber bullets at them.

 Over fourteen months ago, Lester posted an “I Am the 99%” photo. The Occupy movement was still making headlines and a sign he held up read:

 I am the former lead singer of a 60′s band. I performed before thousands at Atlanta Pop 2, Miami Pop, Newport Pop, Atlantic Pop. I did not squander my money on drugs or a fancy home. I went from 1967-1994 before I saw my first royalty check. The music giants I recorded with only paid me for 7 of my albums. I have never seen a penny in royalties from my other 10 albums I recorded. Our hit song was licensed to over 100 films, TV and commercials without our permission. One major TV network used our song for a national commercial and my payment was $625 dollars. I am now 72, trying to live on $1200 a month. Sweet Relief, a music charity is taking donations for me. Only the 1% of Artist can afford to sue. I am the 99%.

 He told VICE in an interview in May 2012 other musicians were in “the same boat” as him.

 “There are so many. And so many different members of different bands. There are a lot of cases where two or three members did well and two or three didn’t. So many, I can’t begin to give you names,” Lester said.

 The good news is that Lester has recorded a new album after raising over $69,000 with a Kickstarter project. It is an opportunity for the “internet public” to right a wrong committed by the music industry.

 “People Get Ready” is a song that The Chambers Brothers recorded for their album “The Time Has Come” in 1967 (which included a version of the group’s most well-known song, “Time Has Come Today”).

 The song reflected the times. Written by the late great musician Curtis Mayfield, “People Get Ready” was written after Martin Luther King Jr. led the March on Washington, and it resonated with those fighting racial injustice and oppression because of the universal gospel message that, if people continued to persist in their struggle, they could prevail.

 As the song goes:

 People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’ You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’ Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

 It is an incredibly appropriate song to dedicate to Trayvon. There may be no punishment for what George Zimmerman did when he killed Trayvon, but don’t let this be demoralizing. Keep on fighting. Challenge the law that gives self-appointed vigilante neighborhood watchmen the cover to claim self-defense after profiling a young black teenager and escape having to serve serious time in jail.

 Here’s Lester Chambers performing “People Get Ready” earlier this year: |||||
A summary of this is?

– A 73-year-old black soul singer in California got roughed up Saturday by a woman in the audience who rushed the stage after he dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin, say police. Lester Chambers was talking about the George Zimmerman trial and about to play "People Get Ready" when a white woman leaped at him, shouting, "It's your fault," witnesses tell the San Jose Mercury News. Dinalynn Andrews Potter, 43, was arrested on suspicion of battery, and the Chambers family is pushing police to file hate-crime charges, too. "She had a crazed look in her eye," says one of the musician's friends who rushed to help him. Chambers suffered a bruised rib and nerve damage and is "sore all over," according to a Facebook post by his son. "People Get Ready" is a Curtis Mayfield song written after MLK's march on Washington, and Chambers' old group, the Chambers Brothers, recorded a version in 1967, notes Firedog Lake. In his dedication to Trayvon, Chambers had said Mayfield would have written the line "there's a train comin'" as "there's a change comin'" had he penned it today.


Jacob Alva holds a spot in line for his wife, Juanita Salas, and her friend Vicky Torres outside of Best Buy in Beaumont on Tuesday. Rick Sforza — staff photographer

 BEAUMONT >> Black Friday shoppers are already lining up outside Best Buy here to get the first crack at holiday specials.

 Shoppers Vicky Torres of Cabazon and Juanita Salas of Beaumont said they have been camped out since last Wednesday in front of the store at 1650 Second St. The pair camped out together at the store last year as well.

 “It’s cold, but it’s fun,” they said, wrapped in blankets Tuesday morning.

 Each year store manager Eric Tschudy said the number of “campers” increases. “We love Vicky here,” he said.

 “On a fixed income, this is a great way to buy Christmas presents,” said Jacob Alva, who was holding his wife Juanita Salas’ spot on Wednesday in front of the electronics retailer when she stepped away.

 Alva said he doesn’t camp but he does offer support for his wife.

 “I just provide support. Things like food, charge cell phones, bathroom breaks,” he said.

 Alva also said he’s not concerned about safety, “the cops and security out here are really good.”

 Each year, retail stores draw shoppers with Black Friday deals of deeply discounted merchandise the day after Thanksgiving. Some stores have even begun opening their doors on the evening of Thanksgiving Day. ||||| Black Friday is still about three weeks away, but two friends in Beaumont are already camping out, ready to cash in on holiday deals.Vicky Torres and her friend Juanita Alva picked out their spots in front of the Best Buy in Beaumont last Wednesday.They're ready for the long haul, stocked with mittens, snacks and hot coffee."We're good to go," Torres said.Alva and Torres switch off sleeping at the store overnight, saving each other's spot. Alva's husband takes part if for some reason, they both need to leave."The point is to get the sales, because everybody is on a fixed income and we don't have that kind of money to splurge," Alva's husband said.When stores open for Black Friday, Alva and Torres are hoping to get a 50-inch, high-definition TV for $199.They say they get to talk to a lot of people while waiting out here. People say a lot of different things."They say you're dedicated. That's cool. Some say you're stupid," Torres said."They say they're crazy, but then they come and ask us can you save a spot in line, or can you do this for us? We're not here for that. We're just here to get our stuff and that's it," Alva's husband said. |||||

Write a summary.

– Some stores are trying to resist Black Friday madness by refusing to open on Thanksgiving, but for die-hard shoppers, it's never too early to get ready for the mega-sales. Take Vicky Torres and Juanita Salas, who were already bundled up and camped out in front of the Beaumont, Calif., Best Buy weeks before everyone starts defrosting their turkeys. They've been there since last Wednesday, ABC 7 reports, and they're "good to go" for the duration, Torres says, with warm clothing, hot coffee, and food. "The point is to get the sales, because everybody is on a fixed income and we don't have that kind of money to splurge," says Salas' husband, Jacob Alva. The two women alternate who stays overnight to save their places in line, though there's no indication from reports that anyone else is actually in said line yet. If both women have to leave for a bathroom break or for any other reason, Alva takes over, he tells the San Bernardino County Sun; he also charges their phones and brings them sustenance. He's not particularly worried about his wife's safety, claiming "the cops and security out here are really good." Torres and Salas did the same "fun" thing last year—Best Buy's Beaumont manager tells the Sun "we love Vicky here." So what's their holiday must-have this time around? A 50-inch high-def TV for $199, they tell ABC. (Cyber Monday might be even bigger than Black Friday.)


Article:

These crawls are part of an effort to archive pages as they are created and archive the pages that they refer to. That way, as the pages that are referenced are changed or taken from the web, a link to the version that was live when the page was written will be preserved.Then the Internet Archive hopes that references to these archived pages will be put in place of a link that would be otherwise be broken, or a companion link to allow people to see what was originally intended by a page's authors.The goal is to fix all broken links on the web . Crawls of supported "No More 404" sites. ||||| Los Angeles (CNN) Lonnie David Franklin, Jr., a one-time garbage truck driver and LAPD garage attendant, was found guilty Thursday of murdering nine women and one girl over a span of three decades, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in California history.

 Jurors took less than two days to convict Franklin of all charges against him, including the attempted murder of a woman who survived a 1988 attack. He was dubbed "The Grim Sleeper" because of a 13-year gap between slayings attributed to him.

 Franklin, who has close-cropped hair and wears glasses, stared straight ahead and remained silent during the several minutes it took the court clerk to read the verdicts.

 Family members of the victims, who had been cautioned by the judge to refrain from displays of emotion, quietly comforted and congratulated one another with each passing "guilty." Some nodded their heads in approval.

 The trial in Los Angeles County Superior Court will now go to the penalty phase, beginning May 11, in which jurors will be asked to decide whether Franklin, 63, should be put to death for his crimes. Prosecutors disclosed Wednesday that two more women — one he was convicted of raping and another he attempted to kidnap and rape in Germany while in the U.S. Army in the 1970s -- may testify during the penalty phase of his trial.

 Outside the courtroom after the verdicts were read, Samara Herard, sister to Franklin's youngest victim, 15-year-old Princess Berthomieux, said she was not surprised at the killer's lack of reaction.

 "He doesn't value life," Herard said. "He doesn't care."

 Herard said she was grateful for the jury's decision. But she prefers to think of her sister not as a victim, but as the person she was before she encountered Franklin.

 "I want to remember the sweet little girl who had her whole life in front of her," she said.

 'They are all premeditated'

 The verdict follows a three-month trial featuring the testimony of 61 witnesses. Prosecutors portrayed Franklin as a sexual predator who killed his victims, then dumped their bodies like the trash he was paid to collect.

 "He did it over, and over, and over, and over and over, and over," Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors during closing arguments. "All of the murders in this case are first degree. They are all willful. They are all deliberate. They are all premeditated."

 Lonnie David Franklin Jr., the accused "Grim Sleeper."

 Franklin's defense attorney, Seymour Amster, told jurors during his closing that the government's case was "circumstantial" and lacked the evidence required for a conviction. He suggested that an unnamed relative of Franklin's committed the killings, but offered no proof.

 "The lack of evidence in this case compels you to find Mr. Franklin not guilty," he told jurors.

 The lawyer also issued an apology for his own behavior during the trial, which was marked by moments of visible frustration and terse exchanges with the judge and prosecutor. He at one point said, "We now have no defense," following an unfavorable ruling by Judge Kathleen Kennedy.

 "Just do your job," Kennedy told him.

 'Body dumps'

 Jurors clearly were not swayed by the defense Amster ultimately put on.

 Police linked Franklin to the crimes in 2010 using DNA technology that did not exist when the initial killing spree occurred in the 1980s, according to prosecutors. Their case was built on that DNA evidence, including Franklin's saliva on many of his victims' breasts, along with ballistic evidence and the testimony of a surviving victim.

 Silverman spent much of her closing arguments walking jurors through evidence in the case, including DNA, which she acknowledged can be "very tedious."

 She spoke of astronomical odds — in the quadrillions and quintillions — that DNA collected from victims and crime scenes belonged to someone other than Franklin.

 She noted the common characteristics between many of the crime scenes in which victims were found in alleys and dumpsters in South Los Angeles, all of them within a few miles of Franklin's home. Most wore disheveled clothing suggesting they'd been re-dressed and moved. They carried no identification.

 Each of the crime scenes bore one or more characteristics of a "body dump," in which a victim is killed in one location and discarded in another, Silverman told jurors.

 A surviving victim

 The prosecutor also cited the testimony of a surviving victim who she said "provides a blueprint for the murdered women who cannot speak and can't tell you what happened."

 That victim, Enietra Washington, testified that Franklin coaxed her into his orange Pinto in 1988 and, without warning, pulled out a handgun and shot her in the chest. She remembered Franklin climbing on top of her and a camera flashing as she lost consciousness.

 He pushed her out of the moving car, assuming she was dead, Silverman said.

 When detectives searched Franklin's house two decades later they found pictures of Washington hidden behind a wall, Silverman told the jury.

 The prosecutor also reminded jurors of a videotaped police interrogation of Franklin, played during the trial, in which she said the accused killer did not appear surprised about the allegations against him. He laughed at times and called one victim "fat" and another "butt ugly" as detectives showed him photos.

 "They're staring up at him — and he's laughing in their faces," Silverman said of the defendant.

 DNA evidence to the rescue

 Franklin had been charged with killing 10 victims, ranging in age from 15 to 35, from 1988 to 2007. He was also charged with the attempted murder of Washington.

 The first spree began in the summer of 1985 and seemingly ended three years later. Police did not know his identity at the time but had linked seven slayings to the same .25-caliber handgun.

 The then-unknown killer apparently fell dormant for years. Decades later, in 2007, LAPD homicide detectives got word from the department's forensic lab of "case to case hits" linking one person's DNA to unsolved slayings in 2002, 2003 and 2007, according to Detective Dennis Kilcoyne.

 Detectives were unable to match the killer's DNA to any known samples contained in databanks. The department formed a task force that soon discovered the killings in the 2000s were connected to the unsolved spree in the 1980s, Kilcoyne wrote in a statement submitted to a congressional subcommittee investigating the use of DNA in so-called cold cases.

 In 2008, detectives submitted crime scene DNA from both sprees to the California Department of Justice, asking them to conduct a "familia search" to determine if a close relative of the unknown killer was in a state databank of convicted felons' DNA.

 The search came back negative.

 But a second attempt, conducted two years later, yielded a hit, Kilcoyne wrote. It matched the DNA to a recently convicted felon.

 The criminal's father turned out to be Franklin, according to authorities.

 The pizza plan

 Detectives placed Franklin under 24-hour surveillance and came up with a plan to obtain a sample of his DNA.

 An undercover officer posed as a waiter at a local restaurant and collected a pizza crust left behind by the suspect. DNA taken from the crust matched DNA left by the suspect in multiple murders, Kilcoyne wrote.

 Franklin was arrested in July 2010.

 When police raided his South Los Angeles home, they discovered photos and videos of dozens of unidentified women. Police have since accounted for the identities and whereabouts of some of the women, but others remain unknown.

 Silverman called Franklin a "serial killer who was hiding in plain sight."

 "Science in 2010 finally caught up with the defendant for the crimes he committed since the 1980s," she said shortly before the case went to the jury. "All of the evidence in this case proves the defendant is guilty beyond any reasonable doubt. There is no other plausible explanation."

 Police Chief Charlie Beck, in a statement, said he hoped the verdict would bring "some closure for these families."

 After Thursday's verdict, reporters crowded around relatives of the victims. Herard, Berthomieux's sister, kept her composure as she spoke about Princess in front of a throng of TV cameras.

 Moments later she embraced Kilcoyne, the LAPD detective who played a pivotal role in the investigation.

 "Thank you so much," she whispered again and again to him, tears welling in her eyes. |||||
What is a summary?

– With a guilty verdict Thursday, the Grim Sleeper officially became one of the "most prolific and enduring serial killers" in California history, the Los Angeles Times reports. Lonnie Franklin Jr., 63, was convicted of murdering 10 women, one only 15 years old, between 1985 and 2007 in South Los Angeles. A jury will now decide whether Franklin receives life in prison or the death penalty. Franklin, a former garbage collector and police garage attendant, would kill his victims and leave them partially clothed or naked in alleys and dumpsters near his home, according to CNN. He was tied to killings in 2010 using new DNA technology. The AP reports a cop posing as a busboy got Franklin's DNA off pizza crusts and napkins following a birthday celebration. It matched saliva found on the breasts of many of the victims. More than 60 witnesses testified during the three-month trial. A surviving victim (Franklin was also found guilty of attempted murder) recalled Franklin luring her into his car, abruptly shooting her in the chest, then getting on top of her. The last thing she remembered before passing out was a camera flash. She said he pushed her out of the car when he thought she was dead. A number of Franklin's victims were prostitutes or drug addicts; all of them were black. The murders never gained the attention received by other slayings in California, and many blamed police indifference for them going unsolved. Families of the victims, many in tears, were present when the verdict was read. "He doesn't value life," CNN quotes the sister of Franklin's 15-year-old victim as saying. "He doesn't care." Prosecutors believe they have evidence of at least five more victims.


News article:

George Zimmerman reacts after a not guilty verdict was handed down in his trial. (Photo: AP) Story Highlights Zimmerman also tried to order an infrared home-security device

 He told deputies he needed the items for his protection

 The records show Zimmerman regularly left the county to visit lawyer in Orlando

 George Zimmerman, the former neighborhood watch volunteer acquitted in the murder of unarmed black Florida teen Trayvon Martin, sought to buy a bulletproof vest and a home-security system while out on $1 million bond, according to records released Thursday.

 The Seminole County, Fla., Sheriff's Office released a 57-page log obtained by USA TODAY that recorded Zimmerman's activity last year and this year while he was connected to a GPS system via ankle monitor.

 Zimmerman was court-ordered to GPS monitoring as a condition of his pre-trial release, said Kim Cannaday, public information officer of the Seminole County Sheriff's Office. The log let authorities know if Zimmerman entered the forbidden zones of the Orlando Sanford International Airport and anywhere outside of Seminole County. The log was active from July 6, 2012, through July 13 of this year.

 Zimmerman was acquitted last month in the fatal 2012 shooting of Trayvon, 17, in the case that whipped up emotions among civil rights advocates who said the teen was a victim of racial profiling. Civil rights organizations and members of the public have been pushing for Attorney General Eric Holder to pursue civil rights violations.

 For the most part, the recordings of Zimmerman's log are uneventful. They indicate Zimmerman called in every other day to check in between 10 a.m. and noon, as instructed by authorities. They also indicate that he left the county every few days to see his lawyer in Orlando, and more often as his trial date approached.

 The log says that on July 14, 2012, Zimmerman telephoned the sheriff's office and said he and his wife, Shellie Zimmerman, were getting new cellphone numbers because the media had obtained the cellphone number of his wife.

 On Aug. 8, 2012, according to the log, a sales representative for a police supply store contacted the agency to say Zimmerman wanted to buy a bulletproof vest and infrared security device. The log says Zimmerman indicated the infrared device "was an extra layer of security at the point of entry at his residence."

 The log later indicates that Zimmerman confirmed to authorities he was trying to buy the vest and the security device.

 The log also says that Zimmerman regularly had complaints about the discomfort of the device, which authorities would then adjust. ||||| George Zimmerman ordered a bulletproof vest and an infrared home security device last year while he was out on bond awaiting his murder trial in the fatal shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin, according to records released Thursday.

 Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman, was acquitted of any crime last month for killing 17-year-old Martin last year in Sanford, Florida. The case set off racial tensions in the U.S.

 The records logged by Seminole County police monitoring Zimmerman during his release show that he checked in with deputies by telephone every two days and that he and his wife, Shellie, moved at least three times last year.

 Under the terms of his release on $1 million bond, Zimmerman was required to stay in Seminole County except to visit his attorneys in a neighboring county. He also was required to wear a GPS device, which was monitored by deputies.

 Deputies were notified about the bulletproof vest and home security device from a sales representative from a police supply business. When asked about them, Zimmerman said he had ordered the items for his protection.

 Zimmerman's visit to a sporting goods store also piqued deputies' interest last August. They reviewed the store's security tape to make sure Zimmerman hadn't stepped foot in an area where the store sells firearms. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Police records released yesterday are painting a picture of George Zimmerman's period on bond, and they contain some interesting details. The neighborhood watchman ordered a bulletproof vest and an infrared home security system, the AP reports. A police supply sales representative told officials about the order; Zimmerman told them the gear was for his own safety. He called the infrared device "an extra layer of security at the point of entry at his residence," the records say, via USA Today. Zimmerman wore a GPS ankle device during the period, which he often complained was uncomfortable, prompting authorities to adjust it. He and his wife moved at least three times last year, the records indicate, and he told police the couple would be changing their phone numbers after the media got hold of hers. Meanwhile, in accordance with directions, he phoned police every other day between 10am and noon to check in. At one point, deputies noted a trip to a sporting goods store and checked the store's surveillance video to ensure he hadn't entered the gun section.


Here is a news article: Focused crawls are collections of frequently-updated webcrawl data from narrow (as opposed to broad or wide) web crawls, often focused on a single domain or subdomain. ||||| Robyn Beck / AFP / Getty Images

 LOSERS

 Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum

 Emir of Dubai

 Oh, it's got to hurt to go begging for money from Abu Dhabi. Abu Dhabi! That's like Trump asking for money from his uncle who put his salary in Vanguard index funds. It's like U.A.E. SmackDown.

 Google Buzz

 Some kind of thing on your computer

 Remember when Gmail invited you  just you!  to join Google Buzz, where you could connect all your social networks with your e-mail? Or maybe it was something totally different. All I know is that I already had more things that did that crap than I wanted.

 Leonid Tyagachev

 Ex-head of the Russian Olympic Committee

 Eleventh in gold medals and none in hockey  despite having Alexander Ovechkin on your team? In the past, someone who performed like this would be banished to Siberia. But they have a pretty good hockey team there right now. So I don't know where they send you now that you quit.

 Tom Tom

 Car GPS device

 Six years ago, these were from the future. Now they come with your phone. I think they sell them in the discount bins they used to use for Yngwie Malmsteen cassettes.

 Space Shuttle

 Formerly cool vehicle

 You know how all these other countries built space shuttles after we did? Well, that's because they didn't. Everyone stuck with rocket ships because rocket ships are cool. Space shuttles are airplanes that don't even go to other countries. Have you ever seen a comic book or a sci-fi movie where the hero goes up in something that looks like a space shuttle? Finally, we're going back to rocket ships.

 Kurmanbek Bakiyev

 Ex-President of Kyrgyzstan

 Bakiyev was barely influential when he was President of Kyrgyzstan, because it's Kyrgyzstan. But when massive corruption got him tossed out, he couldn't even get his brother and son out of the country. He gave both the U.S. and Russia bases in his country, and even they didn't have his back.

 Mamadou Tandja

 Ex-President of Niger

 Even Bakiyev was able to get out of his country when he got coup d'étated. But Tandja was stuck and arrested in Niger. The best way of telling that you have no influence: you can't even get someone to post a better photo on your Wikipedia page. Not flattering.

 Rue McClanahan

 Actress

 Betty White has usurped all the power from the remaining Golden Girls.

 Lorelle Young

 President of the U.S. Metric Association

 She's about 99 kilometers from being influential. Or 99 metrometers. I have no idea how that works.

 Manuel Zelaya

 Ex-President of Honduras

 Another guy who got coup d'étated. He wound up in the Dominican Republic. And, as every baseball fan knows, you don't walk off the Dominican Republic.

 Palm Inc.

 Maker of the Pre phone

 Remember when it was cool to have a Treo? And then Palm came out with this well-reviewed, awesome new smart phone? Thing is, that was a few years after the iPhone came out.

 Gourmet magazine

 Ex-magazine

 The country is obsessed with food, and Gourmet folds after 68 years. Condé Nast would rather keep Bon Appétit, which is a magazine called Bon Appétit.

 Next Under the Influence |||||
A summary of this is?

– The Time 100—Time magazine's annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world—has just hit the interwebs, and as usual, the names range from obvious to head scratching. The names you expect are there—Barack Obama, Oprah, Steve Jobs—as are some you might not, or that seem to be in an odd category. Glenn Beck, for example, makes the list as a “Leader.” The “Heroes” category, meanwhile, contains a bunch of sports stars and entertainers—Phil Mickelson, Ben Stiller, and Serena Williams—alongside the likes of Bill Clinton or Mir Hossein Mousavi, the winner of Time's reader poll. Ashton Kutcher makes the “Artists” list, presumably because he has a Twitter account, as does Conan O'Brien, presumably for being fired. You can see the whole list here, or, for extra fun, check out Joel Stein's Least Influential list.