Ok here's the deal. Joe Budden was streaming live backstage at the 'Rock The Bells' concert. All of a sudden Raekwon bursts in with a few goons to confront Joe about something that was said in his apology video. The stream cuts off for a few minutes. When it comes back on Joe Budden is holding a cold compress to his eye after being punched by one of Raekwon's goons. The whole thing was caught on film by Rae's crew so the footage should be out real soon...Damn
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Times Online Reports
An armed gang who took a woman hostage as they stole £40 million worth of rings, necklaces and bracelets from an exclusive store are thought to have escaped with Britain’s biggest ever haul of jewellery.
Two smartly dressed men arrived by black taxi at Graff's jewellers in Bond Street, Central London last week and were buzzed through the airlock into the store, which caters for stars including Mike Tyson, the Beckhams and Naomi Campbell.
Once inside they both produced handguns and forced the staff onto the floor, apart from one woman who was told to open a display cabinet.
Within a matter of minutes they had grabbed 43 items and thrown them into a holdall before briefly taking the female worker hostage as they left the building.
Police believe this was to make sure they were not locked between the two security doors.
As they left they fired a warning shot into the ground before escaping in a blue BMW which was later abandoned nearby after crashing into a taxi.
A second shot was then fired into the ground as members of the public began to give chase to the gang who clambered into a silver Mercedes.
The men then got into a black car, described as a Ford Galaxy or VW Sharan.
The same store lost jewellery worth £23 million in a robbery in 2003 when two Serbians armed with a wig, a revolver and a scooter held up staff.
In 2007, jewellery worth several million pounds was stolen from a branch of Graff's Diamonds in London’s Sloane Street by two men posing as customers.
Detectives from the Flying Squad believe they are looking for at least five men, including a motorbike rider who was given a package by the two men when they were in the BMW.
Detective Chief Inspector Pam Mace from the Flying Squad said: "This was a well planned robbery with a number of vehicles used to help the robbers escape. These men are extremely dangerous and fired at least two shots in busy London streets as they made their getaway.
"As far as the UK is concerned we do not know of a bigger raid.
“Someone knows who these men are, they would undoubtedly have spoken about it beforehand or boasted about it afterwards. I would urge anyone who recognises them, knows the whereabouts of the jewellery or has any other information to contact us."
The first suspect is described as white, approximately 30 years old, with a slim build, dark hair with a well-combed side parting, light stubble on his face and is 5 ft 10 - 6 ft tall. He was wearing a grey suit, white shirt and tie.
His accomplice is black, described as being in his 30s, 6 ft tall, more well built than the first suspect, with very short Afro hair. He was also wearing a grey suit, white shirt and tie.
It is believed both men spoke with London accents
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NY Daily News Reports
Biloxi,Miss. - When Jeff Lacy was promoting his first boxing card in Tampa back in April, he invited Roy Jones Jr. to the show. Jones accepted the invitation, but he knew why Lacy wanted him ringside.
"I knew he was going to challenge me to a fight," Jones said. "I can't say no to a challenge."
The result is a 12-round light-heavyweight match between Jones and Lacy at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum tonight.
Lacy, the former IBF super middleweight champion, will be fighting at 175 pounds for the first time in his career.
"I actually feel my best at 172-173 pounds," said Lacy, who weighed in at 172 Thursday. "I'm stronger. I feel really good."
Lacy (25-2, 17 KOs) is co-promoting the show with Jones, though he isn't handling any of the nuts and bolts. His contribution has been minimal, but Lacy plans to close the show in spectacular fashion.
"This fight isn't going the distance, because I know that Roy is going to come to fight," Lacy said. "And when you come forward and stay in front of me, the fight won't go the distance."
Jones and Lacy are actually in the same boat as far as their careers are concerned. They are considered washed up as far as competing at the elite level. Both suffered lopsided losses to top opponents last November. Jones lost to Joe Calzaghe, Lacy to Jermain Taylor. The winner could remain relevant in the light-heavyweight division. The loser becomes an also-ran.
"My hands are still five times faster than Jeff Lacy's," Jones said. "And they're five times faster than everybody else on this card."
Lacy, 32, has just two losses in his career, but they have been devastating. He took a brutal beating at the hands of Calzaghe in 2006, which may have damaged his career beyond repair. He has not logged a single KO in the five fights since that loss. Part of that may have come from the fact that he had to have reconstructive surgery on his shoulder and missed a year in the ring. Lacy said that was not his problem against Taylor, his 2000 U.S. Olympic teammate.
"We were roommates in the Olympics," Lacy said. "I attended his wedding. The aggressive side of me didn't come out in the fight. I didn't feel like I was taking that many shots and I felt like I was landing a lot of my shots. But I lost the decision."
Lacy doesn't expect to have any motivational problems once he steps into the ring against Jones (53-5, 39 KOs). He has built-in motivation because he realizes that his career is on the line.
"When you're building up your career you're put in against guys who aren't that good and you know you can just go in and take care of them quickly," Lacy said. "But when you're fighting someone like Roy Jones you know he's coming to fight. ... I've been up for this fight from the day he said yes."
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Adult entertainment actress Savannah Stern, whose income has dropped because of the rapid decline in job opportunities in the porn business, is replacing her Mercedes-Benz with a used car from her parents.
LA Times Reports
On a recent Saturday night, Savannah Stern earned $300 to hang out for seven hours at a party in Santa Monica wearing nothing but a feather boa.
The veteran of more than 350 hard-core pornography productions took the job to earn extra cash and to network. But the word at the 35th anniversary party for Hustler magazine was not heartening, especially among the roughly 75 other women working there.
"At least five girls I haven't seen in a while came up to me and said, 'Savannah, are you working?' " said Stern, who started in the industry four years ago and, like most adult performers, uses a stage name. "I had to say, 'No, not really,' and they all said, 'Yeah, I'm not either.' "
The adult entertainment business, centered in the San Fernando Valley, has weathered several recessions since it took off with the advent of home video in the 1980s. But this time the industry is not dealing with just a weakened economy. A growing abundance of free content on the Internet is undercutting consumers' willingness to pay for porn, and with it the ability of many workers to earn a living in the business.
For Stern, 23, the rapid decline of job opportunities in the porn business over the last year has been dramatic. She has gone from working four or five days a week to one and now has employers pressuring her to do male-female sex scenes for $700, a 30% discount from the $1,000 fee that used to be the industry standard.
Less than two years ago, Stern earned close to $150,000 annually, sometimes turned down work and drove a Mercedes-Benz CLK 350. Now she's aggressively reaching out for jobs and making closer to $50,000 a year.
As for that Mercedes? She's replacing it with a used Chevy Trailblazer -- from her parents.
"The opportunities in this industry really are disappearing," Stern said. "It's extremely stressful."
Industry insiders estimate that since 2007, revenue for most adult production and distribution companies has declined 30% to 50% and the number of new films made has fallen sharply.
"We've gone through recessions before, but we've never been hit from every side like this," said Mark Spiegler, head of the Spiegler Girls talent agency, who has worked in porn since 1995.
"It's the free stuff that's killing us, and that's not going away," said Dion Jurasso, owner of porn production company Combat Zone, which has seen its business fall about 50% in the last three years.
Porn is hardly the only segment of the media industry struggling with these issues. But its problems appear to be more severe. Whereas online piracy has forced big changes in the music industry and is starting to affect movies and television, it has upended adult entertainment.
At least five of the 100 top websites in the U.S. are portals for free pornography, referred to in the industry as "tube sites," according to Internet traffic ranking service Alexa .com. Some of their content is amateur work uploaded by users and some is acquired from cheap back catalogs, but much of it is pirated.
Sites like Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube attract more users than TMZ and the Huffington Post. The porn sites are even bigger than Pirate Bay, the top portal for illegal downloads of movies, TV shows and music.
Frustratingly for porn producers and distributors in the Valley, none of these sites appears to be making much money. Suzann Knudsen, a marketing director for PornoTube, said the site's parent, Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network, uses it to attract customers for paid video on demand.
"PornoTube isn't a piggy bank," she said. "Its true value is in traffic."
The adult entertainment business, which was previously in the vanguard of home video, satellite and cable television and digital distribution, now finds itself leading the rest of the entertainment industry in losses from them.
"The death of the DVD business has been more accelerated in the adult business than mainstream," said Bill Asher, co-chairman of adult industry giant Vivid Entertainment, who estimates that his company's revenue is down more than 20% this year.
"We always said that once the Internet took off, we'd be OK," he added. "It never crossed our minds that we'd be competing with people who just give it away for free."
There are plenty of other signs of the porn industry's pain. Attendance at the Adult Entertainment Expo, an annual trade show in Las Vegas that's open some days to the public, was down 20% this year. Pay-per-view programming, a key revenue source for the industry, has fallen about 50% from its peak three or four years ago, according to a person familiar with the cable and satellite TV business.
Reliable revenue and employment figures for the adult industry don't exist, since no analysts or economists track it. Adult Video News estimated in 2006 that it was worth $13 billion, but Paul Fishbein, editor of the trade publication, said the number was "an educated guess."
"Almost all of the companies in our industry are privately held, and they keep the cards close to their chests," said Diane Duke, executive director of the Free Speech Coalition, an industry trade group.
The effects of the downturn have been felt most severely by the thousands of people who work in the adult entertainment business.
Kelly Labanco doesn't need industry estimates to know what's happening. The makeup artist, who has worked in porn for five years, is landing half as many jobs as she did a year ago and has seen her pay drop from a high of $250 an hour to less than $100.
"A lot of companies say they don't even need makeup artists now and the girls can do it themselves," said Labanco, who has returned to her previous job doing freelance music publicity to pay the bills.
Even the industry's biggest events aren't worth what they used to be for working people like Labanco. Last year, she and a friend did makeup for a week at the Adult Entertainment Expo and earned $8,000. This year: $1,200.
Caroline Pierce, an adult film performer who lives in Las Vegas but flies to Los Angeles for work, said many companies have pressured her to do more scenes for less money.
"Instead of paying you $800 to do one, they'll pay you $1,200 for both," she explained.
As economic pressures increase, many performers have also changed their minds about what they are willing do on-screen. Previously, women earned hefty bonuses for unusual sex scenes. That's often no longer the case.
"A few years ago the girls we got were OK, but not stellar models, and we were sometimes paying $2,500," said porn director Matt Morningwood, referring to a website he shoots for that features one woman and multiple male partners.
"Nowadays some of the top-tier models will do that scene for us and you're looking at maybe $1,800. I'm happy for the production, but I feel bad for exploiting the girls' situation."
The only growth market most executives see is mobile devices, since they let consumers watch porn anywhere and in relative privacy.
Major companies that serve as a gateway to content on cellphones in the U.S. such as Verizon don't allow explicit adult content. But like cable and satellite companies in the 1990s, they may change their minds when they see the potential profit.
"Anyone betting against porn being a meaningful driver of traffic and revenue on mobile networks would be making a bad choice based on history," said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research.
Adult performers with big followings probably will continue to prosper, since they often work under a guaranteed contract and have loyal fans who buy all their work. Business managers for Belladonna and Tera Patrick, two of the industry's biggest stars, said their clients were using their celebrity to make money in other ways, like dancing in exotic clubs and licensing their name to sex toys and lingerie.
"The economy has forced us to look in other directions such as tangible goods," said Evan Seinfeld, who co-manages Patrick, his wife, and runs her production company, Teravision.
But for the "middle class" of the industry, those opportunities don't exist.
"It seems at this point that if you haven't established a well-known name, it's really hard to keep working," performer Alexa Jordan said.
Savannah Stern is adjusting to that reality. She's shooting scenes for her own subscription website and planning a tour of exotic dance clubs to earn money from her name while she can. After that, she hopes to go to college for an interior design degree and work in her family's real estate development and contracting business.
"I wish I would have never gotten into it," Stern said of her career in porn. "When you get used to a certain lifestyle, it's really hard to cut back and realize this may not be forever."
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The recent spate of violence was sparked by the arrest of high-ranking drug cartel member Arnoldo Rueda Medina.
CNN Reports
A federal judge ordered 10 municipal police officers arrested Saturday in connection with the slayings of 12 off-duty federal agents in southwestern Mexico, the attorney general's office said.
The federal officers' bodies were found Tuesday on a remote highway in Michoacan state, where at least 18 federal agents and two soldiers have been killed since July 11 due to drug-related violence.
Video from the scene showed three signs, known as narcomensajes, or narcomessages, left by the killers. They all stated the same thing: "So that you come for another. We will be waiting for you here."
The officers arrested Saturday are on the police force in the city of Arteaga.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, whose home state is Michoacan, responded to the violence by dispatching 1,000 federal police officers to the area. The infusion, which more than tripled the number of federal police officers patrolling Michoacan, angered Michoacan Gov. Leonel Godoy Rangel. He called it an occupation and said he had not been consulted.
Authorities said Wednesday they were searching for the governor's half-brother, who they say is a top-ranking member of La Familia Michoacana drug cartel. The cartel is blamed for most of the recent violence in the state. The governor's brother, Julio Cesar Godoy Toscano, was elected July 5 to the lower house of Congress.
The governor has publicly urged his brother to surrender. There were no reports of his apprehension as of late Saturday.
The sudden spike in violence followed the arrest July 11 of Arnoldo Rueda Medina, described as a high-ranking member of La Familia.
La Familia members attacked the federal police station in Morelia to try to gain freedom for Rueda shortly after his arrest, authorities said. When that failed, cartel members attacked federal police installations in at least a half-dozen Michoacan cities.
Under Mexican law, the officers arrested Saturday will be held for 40 days while officials determine whether to formally charge them.
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PerezHilton.Com Reports
The director of the now infamous "banned" Sprite commercial is speaking exclusively to PerezHilton.com!
Apparently, the backlash from releasing the spec commercial has resulted in some other works being taken down off the internet as well. The director, Max Isaacson, wanted to say his peace about his piece and we found it to be very interesting.
He says:
"At the heart of it all these spots were meant to exist as something of a social experiment. It went much better than I had expected. I wanted to do two things: first to make the spots, which I thought were pretty entertaining ideas; and second to release it to the world and see how many people would believe that it was real. I made sure to put under the description that they were spec commercials, but that seemed to have little import.
To be honest I just wanted to get a rise out of everyone. I was kind of knocked off my ass when I spent an hour reading on the Huffington Post about whether or not the ads were pulled because it was an interracial couple. I mean that's about five seconds of spray! How could it be real let alone banned for racial issues. One commenter said that they knew someone on the censorship board, and I didn't even plant that one.
We shot those spots for no more than three thousand dollars, total. The only thing we had to shell out for was the five foot tall Sprite can. The kitchen is my kitchen and the bedroom is my roommates. Everyone donated their services, and were awesome I must add, but this was as by the seat of my pants as it could be, but I guess if you tell a big lie long enough etc. etc.
I'm not really sure what else to say. I'm sad that the videos have been pulled so quickly, it's been something of a roller coaster day. I wish that everyone involved could have come to some kind of an accord, especially since there was no offense meant towards Sprite or the Coca-Cola corporation. C'est la vie, I guess.
I guess at the end of the day I just have to thank my lucky stars and get working on the next project. Who knows maybe I can make something else that will get people going as much as this did.
By the way, thanks for being one of the only sites to keep this online. Nice to know they're out there.
Thanks,
Max Isaacson"
Boston police officer Justin Barrett was suspended Wednesday, July 29, 2009, for using a racial slur to describe black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr.
NYDailyNews Reports
The Boston cop suspended for calling Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates a "banana-eating jungle monkey" in a mass e-mail was turned in by fellow cops.
The revelation that Officer Justin Barrett's brothers in blue were also revolted by his hateful words came as the police commissioner tried to repair to reputation of Beantown's police department.
"This type of venomous rhetoric is severely damaging," Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis declared Thursday.
"We will not allow the unacceptable actions of one member to define who we are."
Davis said he has apologized to Gates on behalf of the department and they are now checking whether Barrett had any run-ins with blacks while on the job.
Barrett is also not getting any love from the local police union, which has denounced his remarks as "offensive and hurtful."
"He's gone," Boston Mayor Tom Menino said of Barrett, who has already been suspended. "G-o-n-e. I don't care, it's like cancer. You don't keep those cancers around."
Barrett, 36, a cop for two years, has also been suspended by the National Guard, where he holds the rank of captain.
Earlier, Barrett insisted he was not a racist and "did not mean to offend anyone."
"The words were being used to characterize behavior, not describe anyone," Barrett told WCVB-TV.
Barrett conceded it was a "poor choice of words."
"I didn't mean it in a racist way," he added. "I treat everyone with dignity and respect."
Barrett said he was "just venting" about the July 16 arrest of Gates by a white Cambridge cop that became a national discussion about race when President Obama said the officers acted "stupidly."
"People are making it about race," said Barrett, who vowed to fight any attempt to fire him. "It is not about race."
But it may be about whether Barrett has any sense.
Barrett got into hot water after he fired off the note to his buddies on the force, in the Guard - and, inexplicably, The Boston Globe.
In the email, Barrett called the Globe story "jungle monkey gibberish" and wrote that Gates' "first priority should be to get off the phone and comply with police."
"For if I was the officer he verbally assaulted like a ... jungle monkey, I would have sprayed him in the face with OC deserving of his belligerent non-compliance," Barrett wrote.
OC is pepper spray.
Barrett went on to question Gates' credentials, called him a "God damned fool," and twice challenged the paper to "ax" him what he thinks.
"I am not a racist, but I am prejudice [sic] towards people who are stupid and pretend to stand up and preach for something they claim is freedom," Barrett wrote.
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MSNBC Reports
SYDNEY - A man whose relatives say had been sniffing gasoline burst into flames after a police officer Tasered him as he ran at officials carrying a container of fuel, police said Tuesday.
The man, identified by his family as 36-year-old Ronald Mitchell, was in critical condition at a Perth hospital in Western Australia state following Monday's incident in Warburton, an Aboriginal community 950 miles northeast of Perth.
Western Australia police said they were responding to a complaint at a house when Mitchell ran outside carrying a cigarette lighter and a large plastic bottle containing what they believe was fuel. When he refused to stop running toward them, one officer Tasered him, police said in a statement.
The man was immediately engulfed in flames. The officer threw him to the ground and smothered the blaze with his hands, the statement said. Mitchell was charged with assault to prevent arrest and possession of a sniffing substance.
An 18-year-old woman threw rocks at the officer as he tried to help, and he was later treated for a cut on his head and burns to his hands, police said.
Police say man sniffed gas
The woman was charged with two counts of assaulting an officer, police Sgt. Graham Clifford said. Two others at the house were charged with possessing a sniffing substance.
Mitchell's sister, Morinda West, told The Australian newspaper that her brother had been sniffing gasoline and that when he ran out of the house he was carrying a lighter and an orange juice container full of gasoline.
Police spokeswoman Susan Usher said Mitchell appeared to have received third-degree burns to about ten percent of his body.
Western Australia Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan defended the officer's actions on Tuesday, calling Mitchell a known gasoline sniffer and violent offender.
"The police officers were concerned that they were going to be burnt so they deployed a Taser," O'Callaghan told reporters in Perth. "The only other choice they would have had is to use a police-issue firearm and the circumstances would almost certainly have been far more grave."
O'Callaghan also said that while Mitchell did burst into flames after the Taser was deployed, it wasn't immediately clear if the stun gun actually sparked the fire.
"There is a very strong possibility the fire was caused by the lighter in the hand of the offender," he said.
The officer who Tasered Mitchell was not suspended, Clifford said.
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KTLA Reports
ESPN reporter Erin Andrews was secretly videotaped in the nude while she was alone in a hotel room and the video was posted on the Internet, her attorney and the network said.
The blurry, five-minute video shows a nude blond woman standing in front of a hotel room mirror. It's unknown when or where it was shot.
Andrews' attorney, Marshall Grossman, says the 31-year-old reporter plans to seek criminal charges and file civil lawsuits against the unknown cameraman and anyone who publishes the material.
"While alone in the privacy of her hotel room, Erin Andrews was surreptitiously videotaped without her knowledge or consent," Grossman said in the statement. "She was the victim of a crime and is taking action to protect herself and help ensure that others are not similarly violated in the future."
A woman answering the phone Tuesday at Grossman's office said he would have no further comment.
Andrews has covered hockey, college football, college basketball and Major League Baseball for the network since 2004, often as a sideline reporter during games.
A former dance team member at the University of Florida, Andrews was something of an Internet sensation even before the video's circulation. She has been referred to as "Erin Pageviews" because of the traffic that video clips and photos of her generate, and Playboy magazine named her "sexiest sportscaster" in both 2008 and 2009.
She last appeared on the network as part of its ESPY Awards broadcast on Sunday, and is scheduled to be off until September, when she will be covering college football, ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz said.
"Erin has been grievously wronged here," Krulewitz said. "Our people and resources are in full support of her as she deals with this abhorrent act."
It was not clear when the video first appeared on the Internet. Most of the links to it had been removed by Tuesday.
Ephraim Cohen, a spokesman for the video portal Dailymotion, could not confirm the video had actually appeared on his company's site, but said it may have been there months ago. He said a search for the name of the user who purportedly uploaded the video showed the person had opened an account in February, but had since closed it.
"As far as we can tell, the user took the account and the video down a while ago," he said.
Illegal videos often are posted to multiple sites such as
YouTube and Dailymotion, which remove them as soon as they are found. The videos also often circulate on peer-to-peer or file-sharing sites, much like illegal music downloads.
Graham Cluley, who writes a blog for the antivirus software maker Sophos, wrote that several links purporting to send Internet users to the Andrews video actually sent them to sites with malicious software and computer viruses.
He said the some of the hackers actually include a portion of the video on their sites, apparently hoping that the malware gets passed along as users share the link with friends.
"They keep on using (videos like this) because it works," Cluley said. "If more people thought with their head rather than with their trousers, maybe less of these viruses would spread on our computers."
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Model/rapper Gloria Velez recently aired out an unnamed ex-boyfriend via a blog penned over at GlobalGrind.com, and now she's revealed the identity ... the San Diego Chargers' linebacker Shawne Merriman.
Velez stopped by Angela Yee's Lip Service radio show (via TeamYee.tv) to discuss their relationship, why the broke up, and who came between then.
She says they were on and off for nearly four years before Merriman said he was ready to commit.
"Before it hit New Years of '09, he was like 'I wanna be serious, I'm ready for the relationship to be serious,' and I was like 'aight.' I was traveling back and forth, and I was like 'Nah, you're not serious' and he's like 'Yea, I wanna have a family,' " Glo explained.
However, despite the attempt at making their relationship official, Velez says the NFL player didn't stay committed. She suspects that he and a certain female celebrity hooked up at Diddy's recent All-White Party in Los Angeles.
"Long story short, we tried to make it happen for a minute, and we were waiting to see if I was pregnant. Then recently, he went to Puffy's All-White Party, and we was doing his thing like he was single," Glo sad.
"I believe he was f***ing for sure. Not at the party, but obviously, he f***ed somewhere. Obviously, she tweeted it," she continued. "4'11" midget, MySpace hoe, non-talented bitch ... yes [Tila Tequila]. She kept in-directing comments about me on Twitter. She knew about [me and Shawne] because she kept talking about me on the Twitter. She was like 'Yea, I'm his boo and I'm his wifey, f*** video hoe this' and mentioning videos I was on and going on and on. "
Now, after getting it off her chest via the blog, Glo says the relationship is over and she has moved on.
"After I read the situation, I said 'F*** you, I'm moving on.' Thank God I'm not pregnant," she concluded.
Source : BallerStatusRead more…
A young Muslim woman has been warned by police that her life is in danger after a male friend lost his tongue in an alleged assault using acid in an apparent “honor attack”.
The Asian man is in a serious but stable condition in hospital after an incident in Leytonstone, East London, three weeks ago. Sulphuric acid is said to have been thrown in his face and he was stabbed twice in the back.
The 24-year-old, being treated in a specialist unit in Essex, is now blind, his tongue has been destroyed and he suffered 90 per cent burns.
The woman, who claims the relationship is an innocent friendship, and the man live in the Asian community of East London, where their relationship is said to have upset her family for bringing dishonor on them.
Scotland Yard have issued what is known as an “Osman warning” — telling the woman that there is a threat to her life.
A police source told The Times that she had not been moved into a safe house but police were in daily contact with her.
Detectives believe that the man and woman were not in a sexual relationship but were just friends.
Two men, aged 19 and 25, are due to appear before Waltham Forest Magistrates today, charged with the attempted murder of the 24-year-old man on July 2, 2009. Both men are said to be related to the woman, one is understood to be her brother.
Five men have been arrested and bailed “pending further inquiries” by police.
At the time of the attack a police source said: “It looks like this gang set out to deliberately target this man. They were dressed in masks and gloves so none of the acid would get on them.”
An Osman warning system follows a legal ruling directing that police have a “duty of care" to issue alerts, not only to civilians but also to known criminals.
It was introduced after a high-profile failure by officers to protect several individuals from Paul Paget-Lewis, a teacher suffering from psychotic tendencies. In 1988 Paget-Lewis wounded a former pupil, Ahmet Osman, to whom he had formed a disturbing attachment, and killed his father, Ali, as well as two others.
Many people warned by police seek alternative accommodation with relatives or move abroad, while others can be taken into the witness protection programme.
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New York Times Reports
A civil lawsuit has been filed in Nevada against Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger by a woman accusing him of sexually assaulting her in a Lake Tahoe hotel room in July 2008.
Roethlisberger’s lawyer, David Cornwell, said Roethlisberger denied the charge. “Ben has never sexually assaulted anyone,” Cornwell said in a statement.
According to the civil complaint filed Friday in the Second Judicial District Court in Washoe County, Nev., the woman accused Roethlisberger of assault while he was a guest at Harrah’s Lake Tahoe, where she is an employee. The suit, however, is also for libel and slander and is filed against nine defendants, including Roethlisberger. The eight others are reportedly employees at Harrah’s whom the woman accuses of defaming her following the assault and whom McNulty says did not adequately investigate her complaint.
Roethlisberger was in Lake Tahoe last July for a celebrity golf tournament. The woman said she was working on the penthouse floor at Harrah’s where Roethlisberger was staying when he assaulted her in his hotel room. She also asserts that she was hospitalized and suffered from depression.
A criminal complaint was not filed against Roethlisberger after the incident, although one could still be opened. She is seeking damages of at least $390,000.
“The timing of the lawsuit and the absence of a criminal complaint and a criminal investigation are the most compelling evidence of the absence of any criminal conduct,” Cornwell said. “If an investigation is commenced, Ben will cooperate fully and Ben will be fully exonerated.”
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Vernon Forrest, right, landed a right hand hook against Ike Quartey during their Junior Middleweight fight at Madison Square Garden in 2006 in New York City.
New York Times Reports
Vernon Forrest, a former middleweight boxing champion also known for his charitable work, was shot and killed Saturday night in Atlanta. The police said that he had apparently been robbed and then exchanged gunfire with his assailant.
Forrest, 38, is the third prominent boxer to die this month. Arturo Gatti, a super featherweight and light welterweight, was found dead July 11 at a Brazilian resort. Alexis Argüello, a champion in the lightweight divisions, was found dead on July 1 at his home in Managua, Nicaragua. He had been elected mayor of Nicaragua’s capital last year.
Last September, Forrest reclaimed his World Boxing Council title at 154 pounds by beating Sergio Mora, an opponent 10 years younger. Forrest, who had a 41-3 career record with 29 knockouts, had been sidelined by injury and vacated his crown. In 2002, he twice defeated Shane Mosley and was named Ring Magazine’s Fighter of the Year.
Forrest, who lived in Atlanta, had stopped at a gas station on Whitehall Street in central part of the city to put air into the tires of his Jaguar when a man robbed him at gunpoint, the police said. Forrest, who also was armed, chased the man several hundred feet, toward a nearby intersection. The two exchanged gunfire, Atlanta Police Det. Lt. Keith Meadows told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Forrest suffered seven to eight shots to the back, the police said. Lt. Meadows said there was evidence that Forrest had used his weapon, but the police did not know if the assailant had been shot.
An 11-year-old boy who was in Forrest’s vehicle gave police a description of the assailant. The boy, the son of Forrest’s girlfriend, did not witness the shootings, the police said.
An autopsy was planned for Sunday, The Associated Press reported.
Forrest, a former W.B.C. super welterweight champion, was just as noted for his work outside the ring. In 1998, he started Destiny’s Child, a foundation for people with mental disabilities in Atlanta.
Forrest said he thought of starting the foundation after seeing an autistic child struggle to tie his shoes. “If you sit there and watch a person take about an hour to tie his shoestrings, then you realize that whatever problems you got ain’t that significant,” he said in a 2006 New York Times interview. “A light just turned on in my head.”
The foundation set up group homes in the Atlanta area.
“We teach mathematics and how to count money,” Forrest said in a 2003 Times interview. “We had this one 18-year-old boy to whom all money looked the same. He had trouble with quarters and nickels. Then one day, he said, ‘Uncle Vernon, I got it, I got it.’ ”
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TimesOnline Reports
An actor who appears in the Harry Potter films today admitted growing cannabis.
Jamie Waylett, 19, who plays bully Vincent Crabbe, pleaded guilty to growing 10 plants in tents at his mother’s home.
The teenager and his friend, John Innis, 20, were arrested when Waylett took a photograph of police as the pair drove past officers.
Innis’s black Audi was then searched and police discovered a knife and eight bags of cannabis. They also discovered pictures of the cannabis plants on the digital camera that led them to Waylett’s mother’s house in Kilburn, northwest London.
After searching the premises they found 10 cannabis plants.
They also found another three bags of cannabis in Innis’s possession.
Appearing at City of Westminster Magistrates’ Court, Waylett, of Kilburn, North London, admitted production of cannabis during his first court appearance.
Innis, from Barnet, North London, admitted possession of a knife and having 11 bags of cannabis. The pair are due to be sentenced next week.
Victoria Oja, for the prosecution, said: “He admitted purchasing seeds and growing them into plants. He confirmed it was for personal use at the time.”
Dressed in a black suit and sky-blue shirt, he sat with his head bowed in the dock after admitting the offence. His lawyer pleaded with the judge not to send him to jail for the sake of his career.
Adjourning the hearing, the chief magistrate, Timothy Workman, said: “Clearly the possession of cannabis is a serious matter and indeed the possession of knives is serious as well.
“At the moment I’m not giving you any promises as to how the court will deal with this case.”
Cheryl Rudden, for the defence, told the court: “He has co-operated fully. He is a young man in the public eye and he has of course done something which is far from approved of in society.
“What I would not want you to do is make an example of him in that way. The effect on him is such that there are possible issues as to his future within his field.”
She said that he had been videoing the road side for a music compilation when he caught the attention of officers.
Waylett played a sidekick of the villain Draco Malfoy in the Harry Potter films.
The latest instalment in the series, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, went on general release yesterday.
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CBC Reports
Former world boxing champion Arturo Gatti, who was raised in Montreal, has been found dead in northeastern Brazil.
On a second honeymoon with his wife and 10-month-old baby, Gatti's blood-stained body was found in an apartment in Porto de Galinhas, Brazilian police say.
A police investigation is underway, but few details are being released. Foul play is suspected in the death.
Gatti's body was found at around 6 a.m. Saturday morning. He was found in his underwear, with blood stains on his neck and the back of his head.
Nicknamed "Thunder," Gatti was one of the most successful Canadian boxers in history. Beginning his professional career in 1991 at age 19, he scored a third-round knockout in his first bout.
Three years later he captured the United States Boxing Association junior lightweight title and successfully defended it twice. He earned the International Boxing Federation's world junior lightweight title the following year.
Born in Italy but raised in Montreal, the 37-year-old Gatti retired two years ago.
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The woman found dead with former Titan's quarterback Steve McNair, Shaleh Kazemi, had a sister who spoke out and said she was a young woman who wanted to have fun and was incapable of hurting herself or anyone else.
Sepideh Salmani is actually the victim's niece but was raised with Kazemi as a sister. Her family adopted Salmani when she was nine after her mother was killed in Iran, her native country. Salmani said she talked to her sister everyday and said claimed was content with her relationship with McNair, reports USA Today.
She said she does not believe her sister killed herself or McNair.
"She was one, young girl who had so many dreams that they never came true," Salmani said. "She would never kill anyone, ever. Or anything. Not even a little bug. I want people to know that."
McNair was found sitting on the sofa and had suffered four gunshot wounds, while Kazemi was lying on the floor and had only suffered one gunshot wound to the temple. The gun was found underneath her body.
A neighbor, Reagan Howard, who lives in the apartment complex where the bodies were found, said she didn't know if it was Kazemi or McNair's apartment because he was there so often.
"She was such a nice girl," Howard said. "I can't believe she would do that."
When McNair purchased an Escalade for Kazemi, Howard said, she had to help her figure out how to use the remote starter.
Salmani said she had been talking to her sister for several months about her relationship with McNair.
"He started to talk to her a little," Salmani said. "They exchanged phone numbers, and started dating from there."
Kazemi told her sister that McNair was in the process of divorcing his wife.
"That's why she was like, 'OK, now you're divorcing. We can date,'" Salmani said. "He told her, it was going to be finished, the whole divorce was going to be done, two weeks from yesterday."
Salmani said her sister believed that she and McNair would move in together once the divorce was final, and eventually marry.
Davidson County's court record show no pending divorce for McNair and his wife Mechelle. McNair's widow has yet to speak publicly about the murders. Police say she is distraught over his death.
"All she was trying to do was have fun," Salmani said. "Nothing else. I believe there is a third person involved." Salmani believes jealous people in McNair's life are the reason her sister is dead.
Her greatest dream, Salmani said, was to be famous.
"I think she is now," she said. "She is everywhere."
Source : BossipRead more…
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