KIM KARDASHIAN, KANYE WEST REUNITE IN NEW YORK
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Kim Kardashian and her new beau Kanye West made their second appearance as a couple during a another shopping trip in New York Saturday.
PHOTOS: Why West and Kardashian are the perfect match
Decked out in leather pants and heels, the reality star, 31, and the rapper, 34, browsed the racks at Balenciaga and made a stop at the popular Van Leeuwenhoek ice cream truck.
“Hi dolls! I’m so happy to be in NYC with the whole fam! Fun week! Have a good weekend guys!” she tweeted that afternoon.
PHOTOS: Kim flaunts bikini bod on Kardashian family vacation
The longtime pals took their romance public in the Big Apple April 5 — where they grabbed lunch at Serafina’s, shopped at FAO Schwarz and luxe department store Jeffrey’s, among other excursions.
Though she’s downplayed romance rumors before, Kardashian has always been close with West; in February, she flew to Paris to sit front row at his fashion show.
The rapper, on the other hand, is open about his feelings for Kardashian. He seemed to reference Kardashian in his new song “Way Too Cold,” (originally entitled “Theraflu”). Rapping about ex-girlfriend Amber Rose’s relationship with fiance Wiz Khalifa, West says, “I fell in love with Kim around the same time she fell in love with him.”
Indeed, a pal tells Us Weekly that West “has been genuinely head over heels for [Kim] for a while.
What exactly is ‘Hand Shredded A$$ Meat’? A new dictionary for Chinese restaurants may tell you
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BEIJING – Overseas tourists often find the menus here befuddling, for good reason.
After all, what Westerner has experience with foods like these? “Cowboy leg,” “Hand-shredded ass meat,” “Red-burned lion head,” “Strange flavor noodles,” “Blow-up flatfish with no result,” or “Tofu made by woman with freckles.”
As proud as the Chinese people are of their thousands of years of gastronomic culture, even a Chinese native can feel disoriented when going to another province, given all the different styles of cooking. Many of the food names, often unique to different provinces, get lost in translation, especially in booming cities starting to embrace overseas tourists.
But the Beijing Municipal government hopes to end such unintended jokes with its new guidebook intended for the public and restaurants alike, “Enjoy Culinary Delights: The English Translation of Chinese Menus.”
The effort began in 2006 with a “Beijing speaks English” campaign. By the 2008 Summer Olympics, officials had created a draft guide with translations for major restaurants to meet the demand for arriving athletes and tourists.
“After 2008, we felt like the book was in a good demand, so we kept working on it and collected more menus. Finally we translated over 2,000 Chinese dish names,” said Xiang Ping, deputy chief of the “Beijing speaks English” committee, in an interview with NBC News.
The cover of the new guidebook, “Enjoy culinary delights: the English translation of Chinese menus,” that hopes to make it easier for foreigners to make sense of restaurant menus in Beijing.
Some of the dishes kept their original names, which people familiar with Chinese food may understand: jiaozi, baozi, mantou, tofu or wonton.
Some more complicated dishes come with both Chinese pronunciations and explanations: “fotiaoqiang” (steamed abalone with shark’s fin and fish maw in broth); “youtiao” (deep-fried dough sticks); “lvdagunr” (glutinous rice rolls stuffed with red bean paste),
and “aiwowo” (steamed rice cakes with sweet stuffing).
Chen Lin, a 90-year-old retired English professor from Beijing Foreign Language University, was the chief consultant for the book.
He told NBC News that about 20 other experts – like English teachers and professors, translators, expats who have lived in China for a long time, culinary experts and people from the media – helped develop the final version.
So next time you’re in Beijing and you are confronted with a menu item like “hand shredded ass meat,” hopefully you can crack open the book to get some guidance. It means “hand shredded donkey meat.”
EXCLUSIVE: What local cops learn, and carriers earn, from cellphone records
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The war on drugs has gone digital; but is it also a war on cellphone users?
That’s just one of the questions raised by an msnbc.com investigation into use of cellphone tracking data by local police departments across the nation. Msnbc.com built a database of thousands of invoices issued by cellphone network providers to cities after cops asked for caller location and other personal information between 2009-2011. The invoices were first obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union and released to the public earlier this month.
While 200 cities responded to the ACLU, three cities — Tacoma, Wash., Oklahoma City, and Raleigh N.C. – provided enough detail to paint a picture of how cellphone tracking data is being used in mid-sized police departments around the nation. Categorizing the thousands of pages of invoices supplied by the three municipalities provided some insight into why cops use cellphone locations and call records to investigate crimes and how much the carriers earn responding to these requests.
The tension between the war on drugs and privacy is most readily apparent in Tacoma, Wash., where the most frequent reason that police requested cellphone data over a two-year period was to investigate drug dealing, the analysis indicates.
In Tacoma, while many of the 139 requests for cellphone data from Jan. 1, 2009 through June 30, 2011 involved serious crimes – including 37 murder investigations – the most frequent charge listed as the reason for the request is “UDCS,” or unlawful distribution of a controlled substance. No additional details about those 51 requests, or the crimes behind them, were available. Police officials from Tacoma did not respond to requests for comment.
The bills run up by local detectives requesting cellphone data aren’t small. Tacoma spent $17,496 checking cellphone records during that time span or nearly $1 for every 10 residents. Police in Oklahoma City spent $9,033 on cellphone records checks during one three-month stretch last year, according to the data compiled by msnbc.com. In Raleigh, officials made an average of one location “ping” request from just one carrier — Sprint — every three days during the second half of 2011.
“Location data for cops is like a kid in a candy store,” said Mark Rasch, former head of the Justice Department’s Computer Crime Unit. “It’s a wonderful investigative tool which is highly intrusive of personal liberty and our rules on privacy, and rules governing access to this are not only antiquated but confusing and conflicting. Add to that a profit motive by carriers, and lack of sufficient oversight on law enforcement access to the records, and you have a prescription for, at a minimum, violations of civil liberties.” Rasch is now a consultant with Virginia-based cyber security firm CSC.
The ACLU notes that much of the cellphone location data is obtained without a warrant, meaning no probable cause hearing before a judge is required. Many cops counter that subpoenas are always issued – and sometimes refer to these as court orders — but Rasch said that’s a misnomer. They are often little more than a request form.
“Cops can have a pile of blank subpoenas in their desk drawer,” he said. Carriers normally consent to subpoena requests, but legally they don’t have to. If they refuse, a law enforcement agency is then required get a judge’s order to enforce the subpoena, a step that’s rarely taken, he said.
The study involves only local cops; federal authorities file their own cellphone location requests and wiretaps, which were not considered in this report.
It’s important to note that many invoices did not include an amount. In Tacoma, about half the amount entries for the 139 requests were left blank. It’s unclear if that means the request was filled for free or if the data entry was incomplete. That means the dollar totals published here could be far lower than the actual amount paid by the city.
If Tacoma’s experience is typical – which isn’t clear – cellphone companies are earning millions of dollars fulfilling local law enforcement’s cellphone records requests. If Tacoma’s rate of nearly $1 per 10 citizens were extrapolated nationwide, cellphone companies would have billed local cops roughly $30 million from mid-2009 to mid-2011.
There are about 25,000 municipalities in the United States. Most have their own police force, and that total wouldn’t include county and state law enforcement agencies. If each one averaged $1,000 in requests – far less than Tacoma’s $17,496 – that would total $25 million. Cellphone companies, as we’ll see below, have real expenses associated with data lookups, and they often fulfill life-or-death requests for free. Still, with $2,500 invoices being sent to towns across the country, it’s clear there is real money being made.
“I think that this data confirms that cellphone trapping is a routine law enforcement practice, not only for serious crimes but for more routine crimes ,” said Catherine Crump, the ACLU lawyer who ran its investigation. “It is integrated into the law enforcement’s everyday arsenal, and that makes understanding what data law enforcement uses, and making sure that this complies with the Constitution, all the more important. … This is first look we have to see how pervasive this practice is.”
Raleigh, Oklahoma City details
Raleigh and Oklahoma City offered less complete data, but enough information to provide a glimpse of the kind of requests being made.
In Raleigh, we narrowed the study to one carrier – Sprint – for the last six months of 2010. Here’s what we found: Police made 59 requests, or about one every three days, and spent $2,300 over the six-month period, according to the data. Activity was most intense in the summer, with 17 requests in July costing $660. The vast majority of these requests were simple location “pings,” that cost $30 each, but there were some requests for voice mail and “picture mail” retrieval, which also cost $30. The Raleigh invoices included scant detail, with only one bill including a hand-written note that said, “att. Murder.”
Oklahoma City police took the opposite approach, spending a lot on only a few requests. From April to June, 2011, the city received $9,033 in bills for data requests that went far beyond Raleigh’s location pings. One bill Oklahoma City received from Cox Communication totaled $2,500 for 60 days of “pen register/trap and trace” activity, which would ordinarily indicate police learned call details (but not call content) for every call placed to or from a target phone. That invoice, by the way, indicates a full wiretap costs $3,500 from Cox.
During this three-month span, the city made nine other requests for 24 days or longer of pen register/trap and trace data, including four additional requests for 60 days of data. Verizon billed the city $2,446 for five separate invoices dated May 13.
Capt. Dexter Nelson, spokesperson for Oklahoma City, said his department had gone to court and obtained permission for every cellphone records request invoice viewed by msnbc.com.
“In each of the cases in that document those were criminal investigation in which someone went before either a state or a federal judge to explain that case and the need to obtain that information … (and) to provide probable cause or reasonable suspicion,” he said.
The invoices indicate they are for subpoena compliance, but Nelson said carriers require a judge’s order to perform the more invasive pen register/trap and trace operation.
Nelson said he did not know if the invoices related to a single police investigation, or multiple investigations.
“Typically those are narcotics cases, or it could be robbery, or it could be homicide. It could be any number of different types of investigations,” he said.
One back-and-forth e-mail discussion found within the city’s invoices between T-Mobile and police officials over pricing for the records requests offers insight into the kind of negotiations that occur between cops and carriers over data cost.
“The fees set are $100 per day for this tracking tool, capped at 10 days charge, or $1,000 per month. This is substantially less that our competition charges for their ‘per-ping’ GPS-base system, and again, there is no charge for non-criminaI/E-911 emergency support,” Michael McAdoo, T-Mobile’s director of law enforcement relations, wrote to city officials on June 6, 2008.
When city officials complained that some emergency requests – such as a life-or-death request to find a lost hiker or a missing child – and other communications should be free, then city Communications Technology Manager Lucien Jones made his case with sarcasm in a June 8, 2009, email.
“Let me see if I understand this: If a guy has an argument with his wife, pushes her down and runs off with her cellphone, we can track that phone free,” he wrote. “But if an armed robber kills his victim and takes their cellphone, and continues to commit a string a robberies, then the attempt by dispatchers and patrol officers to correlate 911 data of the next robbery with cellphone location data constitutes an “investigation,” and we gotta pay $100 bucks a day …. Oh, but if the killer develops shame and depression and threatens suicide, then it’s free.”
“In the first scenario with the guy who pushes his wife and takes her cellphone, we would only assist in tracking this person if served with a valid … ‘reasonable and articulate facts’-type court order to do so,” he wrote. “We would have no “reasonable belief of a threat to life or serious bodily injury” to allow us to legally locate this person as an emergency exception. In your court order, the judge would likely order reasonable compensation and our charge would be $100/day. In the second scenario, we would immediately respond without an order as we would have a belief that, if left unchecked, this series of crimes might escalate into another killing, and yes we would charge $100/day for that response. In the third scenario–or in any suicide-prevention call from a PSAP — we would (and do many times each night) attempt to locate the person immediately and do so free of charge. And in any other lost hiker/missing motorist/missing juvenile/wandering Alzheimer’s/Iost medivac helicopter/capsized boater/stranded mountain climber/etc. event, we would immediately assist at no charge (and do so probably hundreds of times each week), unlike some other national carriers which charge $100 per ‘ping.’”
Request by carrier, other data from Tacoma
The clearest picture of what goes on in medium-sized U.S. cities comes from Tacoma, however.
While there are a couple of big-ticket requests, many are for around $30. For example, in 2010, 10 of the 38 requests were for quick-hit, single $30 location “pings.”
AT&T fulfilled the most requests – 45 – while Sprint and T-Mobile each filled 36, and Verizon 15. There were also single requests filled by Facebook and MySpace.
After drug crimes and murders, there were 16 assault-related requests, seven robbery-related requests, five rape-related requests, four involving an endangered child and two related to finding a material witness.
There was also one invoice filed regarding a crime labeled “theft of a city laptop.” No additional information was available.
Other information in the Tacoma data:
There is $850 bill from AT&T for a robbery/rape investigation in late 2009. That’s $100 for “location activation” and 30 days of daily tracking at $25 each. Just like consumers, law enforcement agencies get hit with setup fees.
The biggest single bill in Tacoma is for $1,300: 13 days of “E911 locator” at a flat $100 per day in mid-2010. The listed crime is UDCS, or “unauthorized distribution of a controlled substance.”
Rasch said he wasn’t surprised by the volume of requests. If anything, he thought the numbers were low.
“I can’t imagine any case where location data wouldn’t be important. The temptation to use and overuse this data is very strong,” he said.
He also said he’s not opposed to its use.
“It’s not that (I) don’t want them to have the data. In some cases, we want them to have it faster,” he said. “But we want it to be accountable. We want legal standards, procedural standards, and we want more openness about what they are doing.”
Both Rasch and Crump, the ACLU attorney, expressed mixed feelings about the carriers’ earnings from law enforcement request, which are clearly substantial but might not be profitable. Both said they wouldn’t want carriers to charge any less, because the fees act as a natural barrier to abusive data gathering.
“The amounts give a good sense of how massive (the carriers’) facilities are for processing and handing over this customer data,” Crump said. “But it is good that carriers charge. If this were free, there would be a lot more of it.”
Rasch pointed out that U.S. officials and citizens haven’t yet settled on the debate about whether location data is private or public information, further confounding the constitutional issues raised by police cellphone tracing requests.
“FourSquare is doing this 50,000 times a day,” he said. “This data just involves cellphone carriers – there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other people know where you are – EZ Pass, Google, and so on. There are plenty of other ways for authorities to find you.”
He favors a system that would require cellphone carriers to inform customers – even after the fact – that law enforcement has obtained their location or cellphone call data. And while he’s in favor of its use for investigating serious crimes, he said routine use of cellphone data to enforce the law could lead down a slippery path.
“Once you say that criminals have no rights, where do you stop?” he said. “For example: You claim your car as a deduction on your federal taxes. Would it be OK for the IRS to subpoena cellphone records to see if you are correctly logging your miles?”
GSA under threat as lawmakers look into ‘appalling’ spending
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Updated at 1:24 p.m. ET: At a congressional oversight hearing Tuesday, Rep. Jeff Denham, R-Calif., said he was prepared to systematically pull apart the General Services Administration to the point where “we will make it a question to the American public whether the GSA is needed at all.”
“I’m here to tell you the buck stops here,” said Denham, who heads the Transportation subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management. “Where crimes have been committed, people will go to jail.”
The hearing focused on the GSA’s use of taxpayer money after revelations of lavish spending for a Las Vegas conference in 2010 that cost $823,000. It was the second day of hearings in the matter.
Mica added that he and Denham have been discussing whether the GSA’s culture of squandering can be purged or whether the agency — “our government’s landlord” — should be replaced.
Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, a Democrat who represents the District of Columbia, disagreed with Denham and Mica, saying, “GSA serves an indispensable function.”
That’s what makes the investigation “such a difficult matter,” said Norton, who was lampooned in a widely circulated video the GSA made at the conference.
The GSA, which manages federal properties, is also being investigated for how resources were spent on other outings and conferences, including trips to Hawaii, Atlanta and Napa, Calif., and an interns’ conference in Palm Springs, Calif., attended by 150 people.
Ex-GSA head apologizes for $823,000 Las Vegas spending spree
In his opening statement, Bob Peck, former head of the agency’s public building department, said the Las Vegas conference was an “aberration” and that most conferences he attended weren’t lavish. He said he paid for some food out of his pocket in Las Vegas.
Peck also offered a personal apology and said he wouldn’t shirk responsibility.
Martha Johnson, who resigned this month as head of the GSA, apologized Monday in a different oversight hearing for the way the money was spent. Five other officials were placed on administrative leave after GSA Inspector General Brian Miller reported that lavish spending was an accepted part of the agency’s culture.
The official at the center of the scandal, Region 9 Public Building Regional Commissioner Jeffrey Neely, wasn’t present at Tuesday’s hearing. On Monday, Neely repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
“Mr. Neely is not with us today. … We had requested that he be with us,” Mica said. “I guess the only way we’ll get to see him is in a video in the hot tub” — referring to a photo showing Neely relaxing in his hotel room during the Las Vegas conference.
Subcommittee member Timothy Walz, D-Minn., later added: “This guy set up a fiefdom.”
Miller, the inspector general, told the subcommittee that the daily spending allowance per person in Las Vegas was $71 for meals, with $12 intended for breakfast. The report revealed that more than $40 per person was spent on breakfast, the subcommittee said. Employees got around spending limits by staging “fake awards,” for which costly foods were purchased, Miller said. These awards were a “running joke” in the agency, he added.
“We smelled a rat, and we asked for data,” Mica said, adding that the subcommittee’s previous attempts to investigate the GSA were delayed and “got stonewalled time and time again.”
The subcommittee commended GSA Deputy Administrator Susan Brita, who asked Miller to investigate the 2010 conference.
In an email to Peck last year, Brita said conference expenses for a clown suit, for bicycles used for a team-building exercise and for a mind-reader, among other things, weren’t justifiable.
Brita told the subcommittee it isn’t clear whether the excessive spending culture spread to the entire agency beyond Region 9. The GSA is made up of 11 regions.
Walz said: “The culture of an organization is where it all starts. That is the piece that needs to be changed. I think we’d be very naive not to see this in other regions,” Walz said.
The hearing revealed a lack of oversight for Neely, who also served as acting regional administrator. His only direct supervisor was Peck.
More than three hours into the hearing, Denham said investigations will continue into what he called a “culture of fraud, waste, corruption, cover-ups.”
NBC News’ Stacey Klein and msnbc.com’s M. Alex Johnson contributed to this report.
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Pippa Middleton under fire for ‘gun’ incident
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Pippa Middleton has found herself at the center of a scandal after photos taken over the weekend in Paris show the 27-year-old sitting in a car next to a driver as he points what looks like a gun at a photographer.
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Video: Pippa Middleton in photo with gun? (on this page)
Duchess Kate’s sister was with three male friends in an Audi convertible when the driver took out the object and pointed it straight down the lens at the photographer. According to a tabloid, the photographer is thinking about filing a formal complaint. It isn’t clear who the three men in the convertible are.
Click here to see the photo in British newspaper The Sun
“Perhaps they were being pursued, perhaps they were angry, perhaps they were just showing off, but it certainly doesn’t look good,” Royal Correspondent Camilla Tominey told TODAY Monday.
The incident has caught particular criticism, as France is reeling from the recent gun attacks that left seven people — four of them children — dead.
Middleton was in the French capital for parties this past weekend, which included costumes, aristocrats and more than a few eligible bachelors. She was attending birthday celebrations for her friend Viscount Arthur de Soultrait, an entrepreneur and owner of a popular fashion label. She was escorted by Antoine de Tavernost, son of a television mogul.
Story: Pippa kissed by Swedish fan following ski marathon
The Paris Judicial Police are poised to launch an investigation into the incident and the troublemakers could face prosecution. Brandishing a gun in public in France is punishable by up to seven years in jail, and flashing a fake weapon carries a maximum of two years.
Story: Where to buy Kate and Pippa’s favorite jeans
Middleton has not commented on the controversy and the palace has not either, as it has said it does not speak for the Duchess of Cambridge’s sister.
Secret Service faces its ‘biggest scandal’ over prostitutes, expert says
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By NBC News and msnbc.com news services
Updated at 12:30 p.m. ET: At a Sunday press conference wrapping up his visit to Colombia, President Barack Obama was likely to be asked about 11 Secret Service agents placed on leave due to what one expert called the biggest scandal in the agency’s history.
The Secret Service put the 11 agents on administrative leave Saturday as a congressman briefed on the situation gave details of the presidential security group’s night with “presumed prostitutes” ahead of Obama’s trip to the Summit of the Americas.
The agency did not disclose the nature of the allegations but others confirmed that the behavior in question involved prostitutes.
Five military service members involved in the same incident were confined to quarters, officials said.
Morrissey said the Secret Service replaced the agents after allegations were made on Thursday, in line with the Secret Service’s “zero tolerance” policy on personal misconduct.
“This is standard procedure and allows us the opportunity to conduct a full, thorough and fair investigation into the allegations,” he said, adding: “These actions have had no impact on the Secret Service’s ability to execute a comprehensive security plan for the president’s visit to Cartagena.”
But Kessler said the agency does have deep-rooted issues.
“There’s a culture in the Secret Service that’s fostered by the management of just nodding, winking, favoritism,” he said. “What the agency needs is an outside director who can come in, clean house, change the standards.”
Obama arrived in Cartagena for the conference on Friday and was scheduled to stay until Sunday.
Secret Service agents, military personnel accused of hiring prostitutes
U.S. Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who was briefed Saturday on the investigation, told NBC that the women who stayed overnight in Colombia with the 11 Secret Service personnel were “presumed to be prostitutes.”
King said two of the Secret Service personnel were supervisors and the 11 involved comprised both agents and uniformed officers.
“Eleven Secret Service personnel, 11 of them brought women back with them to their hotel rooms on Wednesday evening into Thursday morning,” King said.
“As the women came to the hotel they had put their IDs at the front desk and you have to be out of the room by 7 o’clock in the morning next day,” King said briefers told him. “A guest of a guest has to leave the hotel by 7 o’clock; one of the women did not leave. Hotel management went up to the room and agents would not open the door so police came up.”
King said the issue was money.
“It was resolved quickly, the woman said she wanted to get paid, the agent said he didn’t have to pay her but he paid. There was no crime, no one was arrested.”
Prostitution is legal in “tolerance zones” in Colombia.
But the police, according to King, filed an incident report with the U.S. Embassy. When the Secret Service agents at the embassy saw the report they immediately started an investigation with the special agent in charge in the Miami field office.
King, who heads the House Homeland Security Committee said that “obviously conduct like this cannot be allowed. Iit compromised the agents themselves, it compromised America’s national security and it can put the president at risk. So this was wrong from the beginning to end.”
NBC’s Kristen Welker, as well as Reuters and The Associated Press, contributed to this report.
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Trayvon Martin’s mom says she thinks his killing was an ‘accident’
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Updated at 11:14 a.m. ET:Trayvon Martin’s mother said Thursday that she believes her son’s fatal shooting by George Zimmerman was an accident and that he should apologize if he’s truly remorseful.
“I would ask him, ‘Did he know that that was a minor, that that was a teenager and that he did not have a weapon?’” she added.
Special Prosecutor Angela Corey announced Wednesday at a news conference in Jacksonville, Fla., that Zimmerman would be charged with second-degree murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. The announcement came 44 days after Martin was killed.
Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother Hispanic, shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin, who was black, in the town of Sanford, Fla., on Feb. 26. The shooting sparked a nationwide debate about race, crime and the right to self-defense.
Zimmerman’s new attorney, Mark O’Mara, who took the case late Wednesday after Zimmerman’s previous attorneys withdrew, said his client would plead not guilty and would seek to be released on bond. Zimmerman, 28, was scheduled for an initial hearing Thursday at 1:30 p.m. ET, after spending the night in jail.
“He’s very stressed, very tired,’’ O’Mara told TODAY on Thursday. “It’s been a difficult several weeks for him. He wants to be out to help with his defense, but he’s doing OK.’’
O’Mara added: “He is concerned about getting a fair trial and a fair presentation. He is a client who has a lot of hatred focused on him. I’m hoping the hatred settles down … he has the right to his own safety and the case being tried before a judge and jury.”
O’Mara said he was surprised the prosecutor brought a second degree-murder charge — the most serious charge possible under the circumstances — against his client.
“I was. Again I’ve only seen the evidence that has been presented through the media. But I was surprised that they charged him at that level,” he said.
Prosecutors will have to prove that the shooting was rooted in hatred or ill will and counter Zimmerman’s claims that he shot Martin to protect himself while patrolling his gated community.
Zimmerman’s first line of defense could be to invoke Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law – arguing that Zimmerman felt fear for his life and had every right to defend himself — to try to have the charge dismissed by a judge without a trial.
Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump told TODAY that evidence uncovered to date suggests Zimmerman pursued Martin. “We have always believed that for whatever reason he confronted Trayvon Martin when he had been told not to, and for those reasons Trayvon was killed when he was simply trying to get home to watch the basketball game.’’
Martin’s mother suggested Zimmerman should apologize if he is remorseful.
“One of the things that I still believe in: A person should apologize when they really — when they are actually remorseful for what they’ve done,” Fulton said.
Zimmerman to plead not guilty to second-degree murder
And she expressed sympathy for Zimmerman’s family, even as she continued to mourn the loss of her son.
“I understand his family is hurting, but think about our family that lost our teenage son. I mean, it’s just very difficult to live with day in and day out,” Fulton said. “I’m sure his parents can pick up the phone and call him, but we can’t pick up the phone and call Trayvon anymore.”
Fulton: The Zimmermans are hurting, but we lost our son
Mark O’Mara, the new attorney for George Zimmerman, tells TODAY’s Carl Quintanilla he was surprised his client was charged with second degree murder in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.
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Jessica Simpson Panned Over Pregnancy Weight
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When it comes to Jessica Simpson’s pregnancy weight, it seems everyone has an opinion.
Simpson, who is eight months pregnant with her first child, has been called “huge,” “a house,” and “an absolute porker,” the latter coming from a Florida OB/GYN. “The Hunger Shames,” Jezebel called it.
“I hate how judgmental people are about pregnant women,” said Dr. Marjorie Greenfield, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. “You have to have a thick skin and recognize that people don’t have the right to criticize you. No one’s closer to this pregnancy than you are.”
Doctors say putting on 25 to 35 pounds during pregnancy is healthiest. And while it’s unclear how much weight Simpson has gained, critics have accused her of “letting go” and being a bad role model for pregnant women.
“No one should ever look like Jessica Simpson,” Dr. Tara Solomon, a OB/GYN in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. told Slate. “She’s an absolute porker… I cannot believe how heavy she is.”
Simpson has taken flack over her figure before. The “Fashion Star” mentor’s weight has been tabloid fodder for years. But pregnancy weight is a touchy topic. Gaining too much or too little can harm both mom and baby.
“Early pregnancy weight gain is associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes during pregnancy,” said Greenfield. “Weight gain also tends to make bigger babies, which means a tighter fit through the birth canal.”
Gaining too little weight, on the other hand, can affect the baby’s growth, “and that’s really not a healthy situation,” said Greenfield. “Surprisingly, gaining too little weight actually increases the chance of the child being obese later in life.”
Gaining a healthy amount of weight during pregnancy doesn’t have to be hard, Greenfield said. Eating a balanced diet with plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean sources of protein is a smart way to stay within the recommended range.
“If we all had fantastic, healthy diets to begin with, we wouldn’t need to do anything differently during pregnancy. The only difference is you need 300 extra calories a day,” she said, “That’s an apple and a yogurt. You’re certainly not eating for two adults.”
Greenfield said moms-to-be should practice moderation and listen to their appetites.
“It’s a good chance to build habits for the rest of your life,” she said.
Simpson said she has “a lot of amniotic fluid,” which may be accounting for some of the weight.
“A significant portion of weight gain for some people is water retention, and you don’t have control over that,” said Greenfield. “People can look very puffy, and they’re just going to pee it out two weeks after the delivery.”
One of the biggest problems with gaining too much weight during pregnancy is the inability to lose it later.
“After six months, you may never get it off,” said Greenfield. “We say nine months to gain and six months to lose. Excess pregnancy weight gain is a big contributor to obesity.”
Eating a healthy diet and exercising can help women shed the post-pregnancy pounds. But Greenfield said it’s no easy feat.
“It’s hard because there are so many things you’re supposed to be doing: breastfeeding, maintaining your marriage, including your parents, writing thank-you notes for baby shower gifts, getting sleep,” she said. “You can’t do them all. We all have to just muddle through and do our best.”
Seventh graders save out-of-control bus as driver passes out
By Party Bus Seattle
This raw video, obtained by KING 5 News, an NBC affiliate, captures several tense minutes when a school bus driver lost consciousness Monday morning. The students rallied and managed to control the bus, which was careening out of control, headed for a church.
Within a minute, a student noticed, pointed at the driver and jumped up to grab the wheel. The student then started pushing on the driver’s chest in an attempt to resuscitate him.
KING 5: Kids take wheel after bus driver passes out
By this point, the bus was out of control, headed for a church, according to KIRO TV News.
“The bus driver is acting all funny, he’s shaking,” Jeremy told KIRO News. “He’s making weird rasping noises with his mouth.”
Jeremy grabbed the wheel, turned it right, let the bus slow and pulled the keys out of the ignition.
On the road, drivers noticed the bus was out of control.
“I was driving and saw the bus coming at me and the kids were trying to take control of the bus,” one caller told an emergency dispatcher, according to KING.
Back on the bus, student Johnny Wood, trained in CPR, rushed forward to help Jeremy.
“I ran up and tried doing chest compressions, but his eyes were rolling back and I could tell it was getting harder for him to breathe,” Johnny told KIRO.
The driver, a substitute, was taken to a nearby hospital. His condition is unknown.
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Mike Wallace, `60 Minutes’ star interviewer, dies
NEW YORK (AP) — CBS newsman Mike Wallace, the dogged, merciless reporter and interviewer who took on politicians, celebrities and other public figures in a 60-year career highlighted by the on-air confrontations that helped make “60 Minutes” the most successful primetime television news program ever, has died. He was 93.
Wallace died Saturday night, CBS spokesman Kevin Tedesco said.
Bing: Watch clips of Mike Wallace’s ’60 Minutes’ interviews
Until he was slowed by heart surgery as he neared his 90th birthday in 2008, Wallace continued making news, doing “60 Minutes” interviews with such subjects as Jack Kevorkian and Roger Clemens. He had promised to still do occasional reports when he announced his retirement as a regular correspondent in March 2006.
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Wallace said then that he had long vowed to retire “when my toes turn up” and “they’re just beginning to curl a trifle. … It’s become apparent to me that my eyes and ears, among other appurtenances, aren’t quite what they used to be.”
Among his later contributions, after bowing out as a regular, was a May 2007 profile of GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, and an interview with Kevorkian, the assisted suicide doctor released from prison in June 2007 who died June 3, 2011, at age 83.
In December 2007, Wallace landed the first interview with Clemens after the star pitcher was implicated in the Mitchell report on performance enhancing drugs in baseball. The interview, in which Clemens maintained his innocence, was broadcast in early January 2008.
Wallace was the first man hired when late CBS news producer Don Hewitt put together the staff of “60 Minutes” at its inception in 1968. The show wasn’t a hit at first, but it worked its way up to the top 10 in the 1977-78 season and remained there, season after season, with Wallace as one of its mainstays. Among other things, it proved there could be big profits in TV journalism.
The top 10 streak was broken in 2001, in part due to the onset of huge-drawing rated reality shows. But “60 Minutes” remained in the top 25 in recent years, ranking 15th in viewers in the 2010-11 season.
The show pioneered the use of “ambush interviews,” with reporter and camera crew corralling alleged wrongdoers in parking lots, hallways, wherever a comment — or at least a stricken expression — might be harvested from someone dodging the reporters’ phone calls.
Such tactics were phased out over time — Wallace said they provided drama but not much good information.
And his style never was all about surprise, anyway. Wallace was a master of the skeptical follow-up question, coaxing his prey with a “forgive me, but …” or a simple, “come on.” He was known as one who did his homework, spending hours preparing for interviews, and alongside the exposes, “60 Minutes” featured insightful talks with celebrities and world leaders.
He was equally tough on public and private behavior. In 1973, with the Watergate scandal growing, he sat with top Nixon aide John Ehrlichman and read a long list of alleged crimes, from money laundering to obstructing justice. “All of this, Wallace noted, “by the law and order administration of Richard Nixon.”
The surly Ehrlichman could only respond: “Is there a question in there somewhere?”
In the early 1990s, Wallace reduced Barbra Streisand to tears as he scolded her for being “totally self-absorbed” when she was young and mocked her decades of psychoanalysis. “What is it she is trying to find out that takes 20 years?” Wallace said he wondered.
“I’m a slow learner,” Streisand told him.
His late colleague Harry Reasoner once said, “There is one thing that Mike can do better than anybody else: With an angelic smile, he can ask a question that would get anyone else smashed in the face.”
Wallace said he didn’t think he had an unfair advantage over his interview subjects: “The person I’m interviewing has not been subpoenaed. He’s in charge of himself, and he lives with his subject matter every day. All I’m armed with is research.”
Wallace himself became a dramatic character in several projects, from the stage version of “Frost/Nixon,” when he was played by Stephen Rowe, to the 1999 film “The Insider,” based in part on a 1995 “60 Minutes” story about tobacco industry whistle-blower Jeffrey Wigand, who accused Brown & Williamson of intentionally adding nicotine to cigarettes. Christopher Plummer starred as Wallace and Russell Crowe as Wigand. Wallace was unhappy with the film, in which he was portrayed as caving to pressure to kill a story about Wigand.
Operating on a tip, The New York Times reported that “60 Minutes” planned to excise Wigand’s interview from its tobacco expose. CBS said Wigand had signed a nondisclosure agreement with his former company, and the network feared that by airing what he had to say, “60 Minutes” could be sued along with him.
The day the Times story appeared, Wallace downplayed the gutted story as “a momentary setback.” He soon sharpened his tone. Leading into the revised report when it aired, he made no bones that “we cannot broadcast what critical information about tobacco, addiction and public health (Wigand) might be able to offer.” Then, in a “personal note,” he told viewers that he and his “60 Minutes” colleagues were “dismayed that the management at CBS had seen fit to give in to perceived threats of legal action.”
The full report eventually was broadcast.
Wallace maintained a hectic pace after CBS waived its long-standing rule requiring broadcasters to retire at 65. In early 1999, at age 80, he added another line to his resume by appearing on the network’s spinoff, “60 Minutes II.” (A similar concession was granted Wallace’s longtime colleague, Don Hewitt, who in 2004, at age 81, relinquished his reins as executive producer; he died in 2009.)
Wallace amassed 21 Emmy awards during his career, as well as five DuPont-Columbia journalism and five Peabody awards.
In all, his television career spanned six decades, much of it spent at CBS. In 1949, he appeared as Myron Wallace in a show called “Majority Rules.” In the early 1950s, he was an announcer and game show host for programs such as “What’s in a Word?” He also found time to act in a 1954 Broadway play, “Reclining Figure,” directed by Abe Burrows.
In the mid-1950s came his smoke-wreathed “Night Beat,” a series of one-on-one interviews with everyone from an elderly Frank Lloyd Wright to a young Henry Kissinger that began on local TV in New York and then appeared on the ABC network. It was the show that first brought Wallace fame as a hard-boiled interviewer, a “Mike Malice” who rarely gave his subjects any slack.
Wrote Coronet magazine in 1957: “Wallace’s interrogation had the intensity of a third degree, often the candor of a psychoanalytic session. Nothing like it had ever been known on TV. … To Wallace, no guest is sacred, and he frankly dotes on controversy.”
Sample “Night Beat” exchange, with colorful restaurateur Toots Shor. Wallace: “Toots, why do people call you a slob?” Shor: “Me? Jiminy crickets, they `musta’ been talking about Jackie Gleason.”
In those days, Wallace said, “interviews by and large were virtual minuets. … Nobody dogged, nobody pushed.” He said that was why “Night Beat” “got attention that hadn’t been given to interview broadcasts before.”
It was also around then that Wallace did a bit as a TV newsman in the 1957 Hollywood drama “A Face in the Crowd,” which starred Andy Griffith as a small-town Southerner who becomes a political phenomenon through his folksy television appearances. Two years later, Wallace helped create “The Hate That Hate Produced,” a highly charged program about the Nation of Islam that helped make a national celebrity out of Malcolm X and was later criticized as biased and inflammatory.
After holding a variety of other news and entertainment jobs, including serving as advertising pitchman for a cigarette brand, Wallace became a full-time newsman for CBS in 1963.
He said it was the death of his 19-year-old son, Peter, in an accident in 1962 that made him decide to stick to serious journalism from then on. (Another son, Chris, followed his father and became a broadcast journalist, most recently as a Fox News Channel anchor.)
Wallace had a short stint reporting from Vietnam, and took a sock in the jaw while covering the tumultuous 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. But he didn’t fit the stereotype of the Eastern liberal journalist. He was a close friend of the Reagans and was once offered the job of Richard Nixon’s press secretary. He called his politics moderate.
One “Night Beat” interview resulted in a libel suit, filed by a police official angry over remarks about him by mobster Mickey Cohen. Wallace said ABC settled the lawsuit for $44,000, and called it the only time money had been paid to a plaintiff in a suit in which he was involved.
The most publicized lawsuit against him was by retired Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who sought $120 million for a 1982 “CBS Reports” documentary, “The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception.” Westmoreland dropped the libel suit in February 1985 after a long trial. Lawyers for each side later said legal costs of the suit totaled $12 million, of which $9 million was paid by CBS.
Wallace once said the case brought on depression that put him in the hospital for more than a week. “Imagine sitting day after day in the courtroom hearing yourself called every vile name imaginable,” he said.
In 1996, he appeared before the Senate’s Special Committee on Aging to urge more federal funds for depression research, saying that he had felt “lower, lower, lower than a snake’s belly” but had recovered through psychiatry and antidepressant drugs. He later disclosed that he once tried to commit suicide during that dark period. Wallace, columnist Art Buchwald and author William Styron were friends who commiserated often enough about depression to call themselves “The Blues Brothers,” according to a 2011 memoir by Styron’s daughter, Alexandra.
Wallace called his 1984 book, written with Gary Paul Gates, “Close Encounters.” He described it as “one mostly lucky man’s encounters with growing up professionally.”
In 2005, he brought out his memoir, “Between You and Me.”
Among those interviewing him about the book was son Chris, for “Fox News Sunday.” His son asked: Does he understand why people feel a disaffection from the mainstream media?
“They think they’re wide-eyed commies. Liberals,” the elder Wallace replied, a notion he dismissed as “damned foolishness.”
Wallace was born Myron Wallace on May 9, 1918, in Brookline, Mass. He began his news career in Chicago in the 1940s, first as radio news writer for the Chicago Sun and then as reporter for WMAQ. He started at CBS in 1951.
He was married four times. In 1986, he wed Mary Yates Wallace, the widow of his close friend and colleague, Ted Yates, who had died in 1967. Besides his wife, Wallace is survived by his son, Chris, a stepdaughter, Pauline Dora, and stepson Eames Yates.