Phillies swept by Mets

5/10/2012 BY ROB MAADDI

AP Sports Writer

PHILADELPHIA -- Charlie Manuel ran out of patience, so he gave his players an earful after their latest "ugly" loss.

Ike Davis hit a three-run homer, Andres Torres also connected and the New York Mets beat the Phillies 10-6 Wednesday night to complete their first three-game sweep in Philadelphia in six years.

The Mets rallied to win all three against slumping Philadelphia. They trailed after five innings against Roy Halladay on Monday, after six against Joe Blanton on Tuesday and after six against Cliff Lee in the series finale.

"We have to wake up and play better," Manuel said. "We don't like what we've been doing. If we want to win, and be able to go where we want to go, we better start playing better."

The five-time defending NL East champions are a season-worst four games under .500 at 14-18. The Mets (18-13) are five games above .500 for the first time since July 19, 2010.

mission

Liberty rocket aims for 2015 manned mission

Shane McGlaun 5/10/2012

With the space shuttle fleet retired, there’s a scramble in the United States for the next-generation rocket to take astronauts and cargo into space. There are several private companies hard at work creating rockets such as SpaceX. Another team is working on a rocket called the Liberty that uses parts from the US space shuttle program and Europe’s Ariane rocket.

The company working on Liberty hopes to sell the rockets to NASA to take crewmembers to the ISS and is

NBA's dirtiest player

Hawks owner calls Kevin Garnett the NBA's dirtiest player

By Reid Cherner, USA 5/10/2012

Every player and coach works the officials before, during and after games. Why should owners be different?

Atlanta Hawks co-ownerMichael Gearon Jr., was a guest speaker at the W.E.B. Du Bois Society andD. Orlando Ledbetter of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports he made a plea for the NBA to even up the fouls in the Boston-Atlanta series.

"...we don't get any calls, which I know everybody always hears. But I'll give you a stat. (Tuesday) night, we are playing this old physical team. They are old. I know what happens when you play basketball, old guys foul. (Kevin) Garnett is the dirtiest guy in the league. We are playing Boston last night and they had two fouls the whole first half. We had five times that and we're athletic."

The two teams play tonight in Boston with the Celtics holding a 3-2 series lead.

Syria says...

Syria says 40 dead in Damascus blasts

By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press5/10/2012

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Two strong explosions ripped through the Syrian capital Thursday, killing more than 40 people and leaving scenes of carnage in the streets in an assault against a center of government power, officials said.

Syria's state-run TV said 170 people were wounded in what one official said may have been the most powerful of a series of blasts that have hit the capital this year.

There was no claim of responsibility for Thursday's attack on a military intelligence headquarters. But an al-Qaida-inspired group has claimed responsibility for several large explosions targeting mostly security facilities since December, raising fears that extremist groups are entering Syria's conflict and exploiting

No survivors

No survivors found after Russian plane crashes in Indonesia

5/10/2012 

By Olivia Rondonuwu

May 10 (Reuters) - A rescue team found no survivors but several bodies on Thursday when it arrived at the wreckage of a Russian plane that crashed into an Indonesian mountain during an exhibition flight with 45 people on board.

Russia's first all-new passenger jet since the fall of the Soviet Union, a Superjet 100 aircraft, went missing on Wednesday about 40 miles (64 km) south of Jakarta.

Wall Street open

Wall Street slides 1 percent at open

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. stocks fell sharply at the open on Wednesday as political uncertainty hung over Greece and concerns arose over the frail state of Spanish banks.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 113.87 points, or 0.88 percent, to 12,818.22. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index dropped 13.77 points, or 1.01 percent, to 1,349.95. The Nasdaq Composite Index dropped 32.32 points, or 1.10 percent, to 2,913.95.
5/9/2012

(Reporting By Edward Krudy; editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

Tymoshenko

Ukraine's jailed Tymoshenko moves to hospital

5/9/2012 By Richard Balmforth

(Reuters) - Ukraine's jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, whose plight in prison has soured relations between the country's leadership and the West, was moved to a local hospital on Wednesday in a high-security police convoy.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich has faced growing criticism over the conviction of Tymoshenko - and the authorities' refusal to let her travel abroad for treatment for chronic back pain.

Her transfer from prison in the eastern city of Kharkiv to a nearby hospital for treatment under the

Travolta

Travolta facing assault claims

5/9/2012

John Travolta's lawyer has denied claims that the Hollywood star sexually assaulted two male masseurs.

The A-list actor, who is married to actress Kelly Preston, initially faced a lawsuit accusing him of sexually assaulting a masseur at the Beverly Hills Hotel in LA on January 16.

A second unidentified man has now joined the legal action against him, claiming Travolta sexually harassed and assaulted him on January 28.

The Grease star's representatives have dismissed both lawsuits - which were filed by the same attorney - as false.

His lawyer Martin Singer said: "This second 'anonymous' claim is just as absurd and ridiculous as the first one."

Travolta's spokesman said the 58-year-old actor will sue the attorney involved for malicious prosecution.

Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

The Voice

‘The Voice’: On the scene for the season 2 finale

by EW staff 5/9/2012

By Whitney Pastorek

Stuck in traffic on the way to the finale of The Voice tonight, I felt a palpable excitement, PopWatchers. Last night’s epic battle of Jermaine Paul, Chris Mann, Juliet Simms, and Tony Lucca had featured such fireworks – both literal and (yes, Adam) metaphorical – I felt certain that I was about to bear witness to a dramatic spectacle! Would Christina punch Adam in the face? Would Tony Lucca’s wife rip out Christina’s weave? Would audience members spontaneously combust in the heat? I did not know, but I was prepared for anything.

Sadly, the answer turned out to be: none of the above. It was a somewhat languid finale for those of us there in person, as the heat in the soundstage led not to combustion, but

Sun spot

Sun spot AR1476 setting sights on Earth, solar flares and aurora borealis possible this week

• Mark Johnson, newsnet5.com 5/9/2012

The sun is active again. A very large sun spot has rotated around the sun and is now about to face directly toward the Earth.

This sun spot, known as AR1476, burped out a pair of solar eruptions on May 7 and hurled coronal mass ejections (CMEs) toward Earth.

CMEs are massive bursts of solar wind and magnetic fields. Coronal mass ejections release huge quantities of matter and electromagnetic radiation into space. The ejected material is a plasma, consisting mainly of protons and electrons. They also contain small quantities of helium, oxygen and even iron. These bursts of energy strike the Earth's magnetic field, causing colorful auroras or, worse, major disruptions to the world's electrical grid.

Forecast tracks prepared by analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab suggests that clouds will

Hamilton hits four homers

Hamilton hits four homers in Rangers' win

Associated Press May 9, 2012

Josh Hamilton became the 16th player to hit four home runs in a game, launching a quartet of two-run drives against three different pitchers in a history-making performance that carried the Texas Rangers to a 10-3 victory over the Baltimore Orioles on Tuesday.

Hamilton homered off Jake Arrieta in the first and third innings, added another off Zach Phillips in the seventh and topped it off with a shot against Darren O'Day in the eighth. During the last at-bat, Hamilton took a hack and missed, lined a foul into right-field seats and then sent the 0-2 pitch over the center-field wall.

Hamilton also doubled in the fifth inning. His 18 total bases is a new single-game American League record, and his eight RBIs are a career high.

The last player to hit four home runs in a game was Carlos Delgado on Sept. 25, 2003, for Toronto against Tampa Bay. Two of the 16 players to hit four homers in a game did it before 1900. Hamilton is the sixth AL

Nuggets avoid elimination, hold off Lakers 102-99

From cbs news

5/9/2012

LOS ANGELES — JaVale McGee went out with the attitude that Game 5 was the last game of his life. The other Denver Nuggets played their own mental games, some drawing inspiration from Lakers center Andrew Bynum's comment about how closeout playoff games can sometimes be easy.

The Nuggets went deep into their motivational wells for an impressive win at Staples Center, and not even Kobe Bryant could prevent the Lakers from getting on a plane back to Denver.

Andre Miller scored 24 points, including two free throws with 12.8 seconds left, and Denver survived Bryant's late scoring barrage in a 43-point performance, avoiding playoff elimination with a 102-99 victory over Los Angeles on Tuesday night and trimming the Lakers' series lead to 3-2.

Twitter news

Twitter says accounts hackers posted were mostly banned spammers

Shane McGlaun, May 9th 2012 

This week hackers claiming to be affiliated with Anonymous posted details from about 55,000 twitter accounts. The hackers claim to have broken into twitter servers to steal the data. Twitter is now claiming that most of those 55,000 accounts are bogus. In fact, twitter says that most of those accounts that were published were for accounts that are banned for spamming.

The details published by the hackers on Pastebin included five pages of twitter usernames and passwords.

Against Obama, even a jailbird gets some votes

By LAWRENCE MESSINA, Associated Press

5/9/2012

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Just how unpopular is President Barack Obama in some parts of the country? Enough that a man in prison in Texas got 4 out of 10 votes in West Virginia's Democratic presidential primary.

The inmate, Keith Judd, is serving time at the Beaumont Federal Correctional Institution in Texas for making threats at the University of New Mexico in 1999. Obama received 59 percent of the vote to Judd's 41 percent.

For some West Virginia Democrats, simply running against Obama is enough to get Judd votes.

"I voted against Obama," said Ronnie Brown, a 43-year-old electrician from Cross Lanes who called himself a conservative Democrat. "I don't like him. He didn't carry the state before and I'm not going to let him carry it again."

Republican Party's

Republican Party's Latino outreach off to a stumbling start

By Paul WestTribune Washington Bureau

 May 9, 2012

WASHINGTON _ A top staffer for the Republican National Committee got the party's election-year outreach to Latino voters off to a disastrous public start Monday when she told a roomful of reporters that likely GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a hard-liner on immigration, was still formulating his position on the issue.

"As a candidate, to my understanding, that he's still deciding what his position on immigration is," said Bettina Inclan, who became the RNC's director of Hispanic Outreach in January. "I can't talk about something that I don't know what the position is."

Inclan, a former executive director of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly who worked

Two arrested in case of missing Tennessee family

Emily Le CozReuters

 May 8, 2012

TUPELO, Mississippi (Reuters) - The mother and wife of the prime suspect in the kidnapping of a Tennessee family have been also been arrested on suspicion of kidnapping, officials said on Tuesday.

Two members of the Tennessee family - the mother and one daughter - have been found dead and two other daughters were missing and presumed held by Adam Mayes, who remained at large and was considered by theFederal Bureau of Investigation to be armed and dangerous.

Adam Mayes' wife, Teresa Mayes, and mother, Mary Mayes, were jailed at Hardeman County

Found Gun parts

Gun parts found in boy's stuffed animals at Rhode Island airport

By Jim Barnett, CNN

 Wed May 9, 2012

Washington (CNN) -- A man traveling with his 4-year-old son claims he didn't know that the three stuffed animals his little boy put on a conveyor belt at T. F. Green International Airport in Warwick, Rhode Island, contained parts that could be assembled into a loaded handgun, the Transportation Security

Millions of Europeans

Posen: Millions of Europeans face long slog

By Kim Clark @Money May 9, 2012

(MONEY Magazine) -- These are migraine-inducing times for anyone trying to set aside a little money for the future. If you're investing, you worry that Europe's game of debt-default chicken will wreck your portfolio. Yet you also can't get a decent yield if you try to keep your money completely safe.

All of which makes Adam S. Posen a very interesting man to talk to right now. He's an American economist -- his résumé includes a Harvard Ph.D. and a book on Japan's slump -- but since 2009 he has served at the Bank of England, where he is a member of the Monetary Policy Committee, which sets Britain's interest rates and money supply. That committee's next meeting is slated for Thursday.

Posen's post at the Bank of England has given him a close-up view of the crisis in Europe (although

Double agent ...

Double agent hands al-Qaida its 3rd failed bombing

By ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press

5/9/2012

WASHINGTON (AP) — Over the past three years, al-Qaida bomb makers in Yemen have developed three fiendishly clever devices in hopes of attacking airplanes in the skies above the United States.

First, there was the underwear bomb that fizzled over Detroit on Christmas 2009. Next, terrorists hid bombs inside printer cartridges and got them on board cargo planes in 2010, only to watch authorities find and defuse them in the nick of time.

Then last month, officials say, al-Qaida completed a sophisticated new, nonmetallic underwear bomb — and unwittingly handed it over to the CIA.

Julia Orayen

Julia Orayen, former Playboy Playmate, steals the show at Mexican debate

By Claudine Zap | The Upshot  5/8/2012

The buzziest moment during the first debate among Mexico's four candidates for president this Sunday happened before anyone had said a word.

At the debate's start, a curvy model wearing a form-fitting white dress with a revealing cutout showing off her generous cleavage, presented a box for candidates to draw papers that would determine who would go first.

Yahoo CEO ...

Yahoo CEO apologizes for bogus college degree

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE | Associated Pres

5/8/2012

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson is sorry for allowing an inaccuracy about his education to appear in his official bio, but not remorseful enough to heed calls for him to resign.

Thompson apologized for the uproar caused by the misinformation in a memo sent Monday to the troubled Internet company's employees. Yahoo Inc. provided a copy of the memo to The Associated Press.

The memo didn't offer any explanation why Thompson's bio has periodically listed a bachelor's degree in computer science that he never received. The exaggeration was most recently repeated in documents that 

warmed the Earth

Dinosaur gases 'warmed the Earth'

By Ella DaviesReporter, BBC Nature5/8/2012

Giant dinosaurs could have warmed the planet with their flatulence, say researchers.

British scientists have calculated the methane output of sauropods, including the species known as Brontosaurus.

By scaling up the digestive wind of cows, they estimate that the population of dinosaurs - as a whole - produced 520 million tonnes of gas annually.

They suggest the gas could have been a key factor in the warm climate 150 million years ago.

David Wilkinson from Liverpool John Moore's University, and colleagues from the University of London and the University of Glasgow published their results in the journal Current Biology.

Sauropods, such as Apatosaurus louise(formerly known as Brontosaurus), were super-sized land animals that grazed on vegetation during the Mesozoic Era.

obesity epidemic may be slowing

No end to obesity’s rise, forecast shows

By LAURAN NEERGAARD - The Associated Press

 Tuesday, May 8, 201

WASHINGTON – The obesity epidemic may be slowing, but don’t take in those pants yet.

Today, just over a third of U.S. adults are obese. By 2030, 42 percent will be, says a forecast released Monday.

That’s not nearly as many as experts had predicted before the once-rapid rises in obesity rates began leveling off. But the new forecast suggests even small continuing increases will add up.

“We still have a very serious problem,” said obesity specialist Dr. William Dietz of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Worse, the already obese are getting fatter. Severe obesity will double by 2030, when 11 percent of