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Secret parks and forgotten ruins
As Delhi prepares for the Commonwealth Games in 2010, former BBC South Asia correspondent Sam Miller finds how the ancient city is changing at breathtaking speed.
The inhabitants of India’s other great cities, Mumbai (Bombay) and Calcutta, used to sneer at Delhi with its much smaller population, and its supposed lack of sophistication. “It’s a collection of villages,” they would say. “A fossil, a reminder of past empires. Not a real city.” They would joke: “Delhi has got no culture… just agriculture.” They would say it was boring and sleepy. But Delhi has begun to emerge from the shadow of Mumbai and Calcutta, and even provokes a certain amount of jealousy. It is now – depending on how you calculate such things – one of the five most populous cities in the world, with a cultural life that equals or surpasses that of its Indian rivals. Delhi attracts migrants from all over India (as well as some like me, from the rest of world) and is now the most cosmopolitan and fastest-growing of India’s large cities. It has one of the world’s best metro railway systems, with more than 50 stations being added to the network over the next 15 months. It is also visibly preparing for its next moment of anxiously anticipated glory, the Commonwealth Games of 2010. Unsurprisingly, then, there are construction sites all over the city. But despite this extraordinary speed of development, Delhi remains both the leafiest and most archaeologically impressive of the world’s megacities. Magnificent ruinsMost evenings, just before sunset, I walk or run in a huge secret park in the heart of modern Delhi.
A ruin which is part of the Siri Fort. Photo: Sam Miller
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It is really a jungle with footpaths, known only to those who live close by. And peeking out of the jungle are the ruins of one of Delhi’s earlier incarnations, known as Siri Fort, the capital of the Khilji dynasty built in the early 14th Century. These ruins include one magnificent cathedral-like building – three stories high – that always seems destined to topple over in the next storm. It is popular with peacocks, but I have never seen another human there. Delhi is littered with such ancient ruins, so many indeed that the ones in my park are not even included by the Archaeological Survey of India in a list of more than 1,000 heritage buildings in the city. Anywhere else in the world these ruins would be a major tourist attraction. Parts of the walls of Siri were recently excavated and restored and the workmen told me why they were doing it. “It’s for the Commonwealth Games,” they said. Except of course it is not. These ancient walls have absolutely nothing to do with the Games, which have become kind of Delhi shorthand for any piece of urban development that the authorities want to be completed by 2010. Hidden heritageTwo summers ago, back in my local jungle park, I found another ruin, in an area of wilderness so thick with undergrowth that I had to beat my way through it with a stick.
There, long-forgotten, was half a mosque, a tree growing out of one of its walls, but the perfect rosettes and squinches created by artisans 700 years ago still intact. I tried to interest my friends and fellow journalists in my discovery of an unlisted ancient mosque in the heart of modern Delhi. I told people about it at Delhi parties and they yawned. I telephoned a leading historian of the medieval Sultanate period, who promised he would get back to me. A guide book writer did come to see and she told me it will be mentioned in the next edition. But I failed to get anyone else half as excited as me. ‘Treasure hunt’I tried the internet, joining a “treasure hunt” website called geocaching.com I hid my treasure – a few coloured paper clips in a plastic jar – inside the mosque, and posted the map co-ordinates on the website. I waited for eager treasure hunters to track down the mosque. I went away on holiday and an irate American traveller posted a note on the website to say the co-ordinates were wrong and that he had been chased away by an angry pig.
In a city boasting such archaeological riches, smaller ruins may go unnoticed
On my return I went back to the mosque and discovered that my co-ordinates were correct. The American had not gone to the wrong place. The mosque had gone. It had been bulldozed and there was no sign it had ever existed. The wilderness had become a building site and squash and badminton courts were being built for – yes – the Commonwealth Games. No-one made a fuss and I have found it hard to make the case that this archaeologically super-rich city is much poorer without one old tumbledown mosque. And though I have been able to immortalise it in photos and text in a book I wrote about my adoptive city, I am also aware that it is just one of dozens of minor ruins that have disappeared in recent years. And more will almost certainly go as the pace of development continues to accelerate. Delhi is a city that is more proud of its future than its past. How to listen to: From our own CorrespondentRadio 4: Saturdays, 1130. Second weekly edition on Thursdays, 1100 (some weeks only) World Service: See programme schedules Download the
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Source:BBC

COLUMBIA, S.C. – Texas Gov. Rick Perry was raising money at campaign headquarters when an Associated Press reporter called his press staff to ask what he was doing. An hour later, he walked into AP’s statehouse bureau to show he was alive and well and not, say, in South America for a romantic rendezvous.
Most of the nation’s governors were willing — even eager — to prove they were on the job after revelations that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford ditched his security detail and disappeared for a secret weeklong tryst with a mistress in Argentina.
The day after Sanford admitted his indiscretion at a tearful, rambling press conference, The Associated Press called governors’ offices nationwide to ask: What’s the boss doing right now?
Gov. Mike Beebe of Arkansas was at the dentist. Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was fishing with his 10-year-old son. Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle was flying back from a Washington speaking engagement, while Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was visiting U.S. troops in eastern Europe.
Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman was in his office, but a few minutes after a reporter called he, too, showed up at the AP’s Capitol bureau — a state trooper, the lieutenant governor and his chief of staff in tow — to jokingly show he could be accounted for.
The AP had problems finding Georgia’s Sonny Perdue, who is serving his final term. His spokesman, Bert Brantley, said Perdue had worked at his Capitol office earlier, but he wasn’t sure where the governor was precisely when the AP called. When pressed, Brantley said he would not call the governor just to answer a press inquiry into his whereabouts.
“Even when he’s on a personal day or family time, he still keeps his Blackberry on him,” Brantley said. “There’s not a time when he’s not reachable.”
Sanford’s vanishing act had his fellow governors scratching their heads, if not cracking wise. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer began a news conference Wednesday by joking he was late because he’d been in Venezuela.
“What was he thinking?” said Schweitzer, a Democrat. “Didn’t he think anyone would be watching?”
Impromptu checks by the AP showed most gubernatorial staffs keep close tabs on their bosses.
Florida Gov. Charlie Crist’s love life hasn’t been an obstacle to keeping in touch. Erin Isaac, Crist’s communications director, said: “I talked to the governor 100 times while he was on his honeymoon.” Crist just got married in December.
Generally, state officials and staffers should be able to locate a governor on a moment’s notice, and the public has a right to know too, said Gene Policinski, executive director of the First Amendment Center, a free speech education organization in Nashville, Tenn., that is part of the Freedom Forum.
Besides giving speeches, signing bills and attending ribbon-cuttings, governors must take charge in natural disasters. They command their states’ National Guards. And their personal time can become the public’s business, particularly when they betray people’s trust, Policinski said.
“As, unfortunately, recent scandals seem to indicate, there is legitimate public interest in knowing where a governor is and what they’re doing,” Policinski said.
When AP asked where governors were, the most common answer was in the office. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal was reviewing bills on the last day of the legislative session. Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry was interviewing a candidate for a judicial appointment.
Even when governors were traveling, staffers had little trouble saying exactly where they were. In Alabama, Gov. Bob Riley’s communications director, Jeff Emerson, knew Riley was landing in Seattle after an economic development trip overseas.
Palin’s spokeswoman, Sharon Leighow, said the Alaska governor was visiting National Guard troops from her state abroad, but wouldn’t immediately disclose where. She called back 30 minutes later, after getting the Defense Department’s OK, to say Palin was in Kosovo. Palin told the world where she was that same day in a Twitter update.
As Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty left a Republican fundraiser, he said he always tries to at least let his staff know what he’s doing.
“Regardless of whether you’re a governor or anyone else, having a little clear-your-head time is probably a good thing,” Pawlenty said. “But you always have to make sure you stay in touch in case there’s a problem. You have to communicate.”
While finding governors through their press offices is easy, tracking them down using schedules available to the general public can be trickier. Most release calendars of public events and news conferences, but some keep closed-door meetings and private functions under wraps even if they’re official state business.
Pawlenty’s staffers rejected a written request for access to his appointment calendar. On days when he doesn’t have news conferences or speeches, his daily events schedule often reads “No Public Events.” The fundraiser he attended wasn’t on it.
Many states cited security reasons for refusing to release schedules, while others said they’re not considered public records.
Most states were also tight-lipped about security, saying revealing details would put chief executives at risk, and arrangements varied widely in states willing to talk about them. In Virginia, State Police guard Gov. Tim Kaine around the clock, anywhere he goes, without exception. North Dakota Gov. John Hoeven, by contrast, normally drives his own car and state law doesn’t require him to have a security detail.
Sanford managed to slip overseas undetected because he dismissed his security detail before driving himself to the airport.
Reggie Lloyd, chief of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, told reporters his agency had no legal authority to refuse Sanford.
“As an adult male, he’s free to come and go as he pleases, and so we just honestly quit looking for him,” Lloyd said.
There was little need to ask Sanford’s office where he was after he returned Wednesday. His every move has been monitored and broadcast far beyond the borders of South Carolina.
On Friday, Sanford met with his agency chiefs to apologize for his baffling absence, then move on with any state business he may have neglected while he was AWOL in Argentina.

ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Jiyai Shin shot a 5-under 67 to extend her lead to four strokes at the Wegmans LPGA.
The South Korean star, seeking her fifth tour win in 11 months, moved to 16-under 200 Saturday after three rounds at the tree-lined Locust Hill course in suburban Rochester.
Morgan Pressel, a two-time winner whose season-best finish was a tie for seventh in April, shot a 70 and was in second place four strokes back. That was one better than rookie Stacy Lewis.
Cheyenne Woods, the niece of Tiger Woods, missed the cut in her professional golf debut. Woods and 70 other players completed their second rounds Saturday morning after play was interrupted by thunderstorms Friday.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) — Cheyenne Woods, the niece of Tiger Woods, missed the cut Saturday in her professional golf debut, shooting a 2-over 74 in the second round of the storm-disrupted Wegmans LPGA.
Woods and 70 other players completed their second rounds at the tricky Locust Hill course in suburban Rochester on Saturday morning after play was interrupted by thunderstorms for nearly five hours Friday.
The 18-year-old Woods finished at 5-over 149 — four strokes above the cutline.
“I could have made a couple more birdies — or not as many bogeys — but I’m happy,” said Woods, who competed on a sponsor exemption. “Three more years at Wake Forest and then hopefully I’ll be back out here.”
Morgan Pressel picked up two birdies to finish second at 10 under, one behind Jiyai Shin. Stacy Lewis was third at 9 under, one better than Kristy McPherson.
Michelle Wie, Mindy Kim and Germany’s Sandra Gal, the first-round leader, were tied at 7 under.
Defending champion Eun-Hee Ji could only manage a 71 and crashed out with a 7-over total. Paula Creamer withdrew with a hand injury.
Excelling on the greens, Shin finished her second round Friday with a record-low total of 133 at Locust Hill, a traditional, tree-lined course with compact, undulating greens.
In 2008, Shin became the first non-LPGA member to win three events. She reeled in the Women’s British Open last August, then followed with late-season wins in the Mizuno Classic and ADT Championship. In March, she captured the HSBC Women’s Champions in Singapore for her first victory as a tour member.
Woods, ranked 93rd among college golfers, got to 2-under — and 1-over total — through 10 holes before darkness ended play Friday. She opened with a par Saturday morning, then drove into trees, lost her ball and made a triple-bogey at the par-4 12th.
“I lost my drive to the right on 12 and we couldn’t find it in the rough,” she lamented as dozens of fans lined up for autographs. “There was a spotter there, he heard it drop but he never saw it. We were looking around all over but we never found it.”
Woods finished the tournament by making an 8-foot putt for birdie.
“My goal was to make the cut, but I thought I played well for the most part,” she said, masking her disappointment with a smile similar to her famous uncle’s. “I was … comfortable out there and then, I don’t know, I just had a lot of fun and just tried to take in the moment.”

LOS ANGELES – Elvis had one. So did Anna Nicole Smith and Marilyn Monroe. They are the doctors who cater to celebrities, dispensing powerful painkillers and sedatives to some of Hollywood’s best-known entertainers.
Now, as police investigate Michael Jackson’s sudden death, questions are swirling around the King of Pop’s personal cardiologist and his actions in the superstar’s final days.
Dr. Conrad Murray reportedly was with Jackson when he stopped breathing Thursday and performed CPR until paramedics arrived. An ambulance crew worked on Jackson at his home for 42 minutes before rushing him to UCLA Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
The cardiologist has hired a Houston-based law firm and on Saturday, an attorney there said he was cooperating.
“Dr. Murray has never left L.A. since Mr. Jackson’s death, and he remains there. Investigators have indicated Dr. Murray is considered a witness and is not in any way a target of any kind,” William M. Stradley told The Associated Press. He said his colleague was meeting with investigators on Saturday.
Also on Saturday, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said the singer’s family wants a private autopsy because of unanswered questions about how he died and about Murray.
And Jackson’s longtime friend Deepak Chopra said he’s been concerned since 2005 that physicians were overmedicating the singer.
The suspicions of Jackson’s friends and family fit into a long-standing pattern of celebrity doctors becoming entangled in death investigations involving prescription drugs.
Doctors can become enchanted by the glamour of the celebrity lifestyle and may find it hard to refuse potent painkillers for their clients because of their wealth and power.
“It’s a big issue with people who are used to getting what they want. And if someone says no, they can pay someone else to get what they want,” said Karen Sternheimer, a sociologist at the University of Southern California who is writing a book on social problems and celebrity culture.
“The physician is not immune to that heady feeling of being in a celebrity’s inner circle.”
In other instances, the doctors themselves may have questionable pasts or significant debts, and caring for a celebrity allows them to make large amounts of money, said Julie Albright, a sociologist at the University of Southern California.
“Some of these people might not be the most successful doctors, so the money will also buy their complicity in fueling a drug habit,” said Albright, who was speaking generally and not specifically about Murray.
Records reveal years of financial troubles for Murray, a 1989 graduate of Meharry Medical College in Nashville who practices medicine in California, Nevada and Texas.
Over the last 18 months, Murray’s Nevada medical practice, Global Cardiovascular Associates, has been slapped with more than 400,000 in court judgments: 228,000 to Citicorp Vendor Finance Inc., 71,000 to an education loan company and 135,000 to a leasing company. He faces at least two other pending cases.
Court records show Murray was hit last December with a nearly 3,700 judgment for failure to pay child support in San Diego, and had his wages garnished the same month for almost 1,500 by a credit card company. Another credit card claim for more than 1,100 filed in April remains open.
He also owes 940 in fines and penalties for driving with an expired license plate and for not having proof of insurance in 2000.
Best-selling author Deepak Chopra, a longtime friend of Michael Jackson and a licensed medical doctor, said he first became concerned about the pop star’s prescription drug use in 2005, when Jackson visited him shortly after his trial on sex abuse allegations.
Chopra said Jackson asked him to prescribe painkillers and already had a bottle of Oxycontin.
“I was kind of a bit alarmed. I said, ‘Why are you taking that. You don’t need that,’ and then I started to probe a little further, and after I grilled him a little bit, he admitted he was getting them from a bunch of doctors,” Chopra said.
Chopra said he refused to prescribe the medicine, but over the next four years the nanny of Jackson’s children would periodically call to say that a parade of doctors was coming to his homes in Santa Barbara County, Los Angeles, Miami and New York City.
She told Chopra she felt they were overmedicating him, and one time she even tried to stage an intervention with Chopra’s help, he said.
Each time, Jackson would discover the nanny’s calls and then shut himself off from Chopra to avoid discussing the issue, he said.
Chopra, a spiritual adviser, said he last talked to Jackson directly about his drug use about six months ago and spoke with him on the phone about two weeks before his death.
But they did not discuss drug use on that call, and Chopra said in his final months, Jackson seemed much healthier and excited about his upcoming concerts in London.
“This is a strange addiction. You cannot get these pills or injections unless a physician prescribes them, and he had this bunch of enabling doctors who were in a sense criminals. And they get away with it half the time — and I hope they don’t this time,” he said.
“It’s become a culture with celebrity doctors who in one sense get a sense of importance by hanging around with celebrities.”
Marilyn Monroe died at 36 from an overdose of sleeping pills in August 1962. She had been under a doctor’s care at the time.
Elvis Presley, who died in 1977 at 42, was known to travel with George Nichopoulos, a former physician who overprescribed drugs to clients. Nichopoulos lost his medical license but was acquitted of criminal charges related to Elvis’ death.
More recently, Los Angeles County prosecutors charged a psychiatrist and a doctor with conspiring to provide Anna Nicole Smith with thousands of prescription pills.
Smith died Feb. 8, 2007, in Florida after collapsing at a hotel; medical authorities later ruled her death an overdose.
Megastars may be given more leeway than ordinary patients because of their wealth — and because of expectations that the famous often have eccentric habits, said Albright, the sociologist.
“It’s almost expected in some ways if it’s a rock star or a big actor. You almost expect them to have a larger-than-life lifestyle,” she said. “People are drawn to celebrity like a moth to a flame, including these doctors who want to be around that lightness and brightness.”
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Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen in Chicago, Juan A. Lozano in Houston, and Beth Harris and Michael Blood in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

US pastor opens church to guns
A pastor in the US state of Kentucky has told his flock to bring handguns to church in what he says is an effort to promote safe gun ownership.Pastor Ken Pagano told parishioners to bring their unloaded guns to New Bethel Church in Louisville for a service celebrating the right to bear arms. He said he acted after church members voiced fears the Obama administration could tighten gun control laws. When the service began, some 200 people were present, AP news agency said. “We are wanting to send a message that there are legal, civil, intelligent and law-abiding citizens who also own guns,” Mr Pagano told the congregation. “If it were not for a deep-seated belief in the right to bear arms, this country would not be here today,” he said. The pastor was also planning a handgun raffle, as well as providing information on gun safety. In the US, the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, and there are thought to be more than 200 million firearms in private hands. But some gun owners fear that the new administration in the White House could try to challenge or amend some gun ownership laws. Critics of the laws, meanwhile, link high levels of gun crime with high levels of gun ownership.

Source:BBC

LOS ANGELES – Michael Jackson’s family wants a private autopsy of the pop icon because of unanswered questions about how he died and the doctor who was with him, the civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson said Saturday.
“It’s abnormal,” he told The Associated Press from Chicago a day after visiting the Jackson family. “We don’t know what happened. Was he injected and with what? All reasonable doubt should be addressed.”
People close to Jackson have said since his death that they were concerned about the superstar’s use of painkillers. Los Angeles County medical examiners completed an autopsy Friday and said Jackson had taken prescription medication.
Medical officials also said there was no indication of trauma or foul play. An official cause of death could take weeks.
The coroner’s office released the body to Jackson’s family Friday night. There was no immediate word on whether the second autopsy was being performed right away. Jesse Jackson described the family as grief-stricken.
“They’re hurt because they lost a son. But the wound is now being kept open by the mystery and unanswered questions of the cause of death,” he said.
Two days after Jackson died at a Los Angeles hospital, his most famous sister, Janet, arrived at the mansion Jackson had been renting. She drove up in a Bentley and left without addressing reporters.
Moving vans also showed up at the Jackson home, leaving about an hour later. There was no indication what they might have taken away.
There was also no word from the Jackson family on funeral plans. Many of Jackson’s relatives have gathered at the family’s Encino compound, caring there for Jackson’s three children.
A person close to the family told The Associated Press they feel upset and angry about a lack of information about those who were around the pop superstar in his final days. The person requested anonymity because of the delicate nature of the situation.
Jackson had been rehearsing for 50 London concerts aimed at restoring his crown as the King of Pop. He died Thursday at age 50 after what his family said appeared to be cardiac arrest.
A 911 call from Jackson’s rented home reported that his personal doctor was trying to revive him without success. Police have talked to Dr. Conrad Murray and have said they intend to speak with him again but have stressed he is not a criminal suspect.
Murray has yet to speak publicly since Jackson’s death. Police towed his car from Jackson’s home hours after Jackson died and said later it could contain medication or other evidence. Coroner’s officials also said Jackson was taking prescription medication but declined to elaborate.
A lawyer at a Houston firm, William M. Stradley, confirmed Murray had hired his firm and said one of its partners was meeting with Los Angeles police on Saturday. Stradley said Murray accompanied Michael Jackson to the hospital.
“He was there from the beginning and he’s been cooperating with police from the very beginning,” Stradley said. “Dr. Murray has never left L.A. since Mr. Jackson’s death, and he remains there.”
Murray lives in Las Vegas but apparently left his practice and moved in with Jackson about two weeks ago. No one answered the door Saturday at his Las Vegas home, which property records show Murray bought five years ago for 1.1 million.
The promoter of the series of London concerts that Jackson was to begin next month has said Jackson personally insisted Murray be on the payroll.
Also Saturday, spiritual teacher Dr. Deepak Chopra said he had been concerned since 2005 that Jackson was abusing prescription painkillers and most recently spoke to the pop star about suspected drug use six months ago.
Chopra said Jackson, a longtime friend, asked him for painkillers in 2005 when the singer was staying with him following his trial on sex abuse allegations. Chopra said he refused. He also said the nanny of Jackson’s children repeatedly contacted him with concerns about Jackson’s drug use over the next four years.
He said she told him a number of doctors would visit Jackson’s homes in Santa Barbara County, Los Angeles, Miami and New York. Whenever the subject came up, Jackson would avoid his calls, Chopra said.
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Associated Press writers Sophia Tareen in Chicago, Juan A. Lozano in Houston, and Gillian Flaccus, Brooke Donald, Beth Harris and Mike Blood and AP Global Media Services Production Manager Nico Maounis in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) –
Beatles For Sale?
The Fab Four's prized catalog — specifically 267 songs mostly written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney — is embarking on a long and winding road of ownership uncertainty following the death of Michael Jackson on Thursday.
The pop singer and Sony Corp's Sony Music arm operated a lucrative joint venture that either owns or administers the copyrights to about 750,000 compositions written by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Taylor Swift and the Jonas Brothers.
Industry analysts estimate that Sony/ATV Music Publishing is worth at least $1 billion, making Jackson one savvy entertainer. His initial investment cost him $47.5 million in 1985. Music publishing is considered a license to print money. Not quite as exciting as the piracy-ravaged recorded-music side, it involves collecting royalties from such diverse avenues as downloads, radio airplay and videogames.
But mystery now surrounds the beneficial ownership of Jackson's stake. According to a lawsuit filed in 2002 by a creditor, he secured bank loans totaling $270 million two years earlier using both his Sony/ATV stake and the copyrights to his own songs as collateral.
Jackson lived an extravagant lifestyle, even as his commercial appeal dwindled amid damaging child-abuse allegations and changing music tastes. The Wall Street Journal reported in 2005 that his cash reserves ran so low earlier that year that he worried about paying his electric bill. The paper reported earlier this month that he had racked up about $500 million of debt.
“VERY COMPLEX” VALUATIONS
A clearer picture of his finances will emerge during the administration period of his estate that usually lasts about 18 months, said Renee Gabbard of the law firm Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker in Costa Mesa, California.
Jackson's executors will evaluate his assets, file the estate tax return and invite creditors to submit invoices, said Gabbard, who has a number of wealthy clients with entertainment-related estates.
The process of valuing estate assets, especially intellectual property like music copyrights, is “very complex” and often takes “quite a while,” said Gabbard.
“When you have entertainers and musicians they usually have quite extensive royalty contracts. It's very tough to put a value on a catalog of songs,” she said.
Jackson and Sony formed their joint venture in 1995, with the singer contributing ATV Songs, whose 4,000 tunes included most of the Beatles catalog. He had bought ATV a decade earlier from Australian businessman Robert Holmes a Court, famously outbidding McCartney in the process.
Jackson was not involved in the day-to-day operations of Sony/ATV, but as a lover of the songwriting process was known to be “incredibly proud” of the company and its fast growth, according to a publishing industry source.
A spokesman for Sony/ATV declined to comment.
His stakes in both Sony/ATV and in Mijac, which holds his own copyrights, were owned by trusts. It was not clear if they were irrevocable or not. If they are revocable, then they could be dismantled to satisfy creditors, Gabbard said.
The estate would first pay federal taxes owed on Jackson's assets, most notably the publishing companies. The remaining assets then would go to satisfy creditors and the balance probably would be placed into separate trusts for his beneficiaries, most likely his children, Gabbard said.
But the publishing industry source said it was too premature to speculate about a possible change in ownership at Sony/ATV, which is run by music industry veteran Martin Bandier.
Additionally, each side is reportedly entitled to make a counter-offer if the other side lines up a buyer, or to bid for the other half it does not own.
The Beatles catalog, meanwhile, just keeps raking in money. The group's CDs will be reissued on September 9, the same day that a Fab Four version of the “Rock Band” videogame hits stores.
(Additional reporting by Dean Goodman, Editing by Anthony Boadle)

Aqueduct crowned world ‘wonder’
A 200-year-old aqueduct near Wrexham has been crowned as one of the heritage “wonders” of the world.Pontcysyllte aqueduct was added to the list of World Heritage Sites by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco). The structure, built by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain. There are about 900 such sites including Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and Taj Mahal. ‘Over the moon’The aqueduct is regarded as one of Telford’s greatest civil engineering achievements. A cast iron trough on top of 18 stone piers carries the Llangollen canal 126ft above the River Dee.
Dr Dawn Roberts, economic development manager for Wrexham Council, said: “We are absolutely over the moon. “We have been working on this for so long and it means so much to those of us that are from this area. “To have our aqueduct and our canal named as a World Heritage Site is amazing. There is so much local pride and a lot of celebrations going on.” Building projectThe aqueduct’s honour was confirmed by a panel representing 21 nations at a Unesco meeting in the Spanish city of Seville. The bid was supported by Wrexham Council and British Waterways. Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan said: “World Heritage nomination for Pontcysyllte aqueduct and canal is the cherry on the cake for Wales’s historic transport and industrial environment.” UK Culture Minister Barbara Follett said the honour was a “well-deserved boost to the area.” Pontcysyllte is one of the region’s biggest tourist attractions bringing in 250,000 visitors a year by boat. The aqueduct, built between 1795 and 1805 at a cost of 45,000, is the UK’s 28th World Heritage Site.

Source:BBC

The Nation — The Obama administration is rushing towards a unilateral plan to imprison people without trial, according to a huge, new joint article from the Washington Post and ProPublica. The proposal would completely cut Congress out of the process by using an executive order to essentially bring Gitmo stateside:
The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.
That is a terrible idea. For its part, the White House dispatched aides to push back. From the article:
White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said there is no executive order and that the administration has not decided whether to issue one. But one administration official suggested that the White House was already trying to build support.
After publication, another Obama official issued an odd denial to The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder:
An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, flatly denied the report to me. “There is no executive order. There just isn't one.” (emphasis added)
First, there is no legitimate reason for a government official to claim anonymity here. It simply echoes the official line from the article, which is likely to be Robert Gibbs' line when reporters press the issue in Monday's briefing.
Second, the response is a classic dodge — there is no executive order now, and no decision has been made. Of course, the article is not reporting that an order has already been issued. The news is that Obama officials are preparing to advance President Bush's Gitmo detention regime through a unilateral executive order soon, cutting out Congress, and thus any democratic accountability, while extending a controversial, unpopular policy.
Even though Obama's National Archives speech asserted the importance of working with other branches of government. (“We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded,” he said, “They can't be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone.”)
Even though the Bush administration already tried this unilateral tack, only to have its system invalidated by the Supreme Court precisely because Congress was shut out. (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.)
And even though decades of legal precedent show, as Professor/President Obama knows, that the executive branch operates at the nadir of its constitutional power when acting without the cooperation of Congress, even in the national security arena. (A point most famously established for President Truman in the Youngstown case.)
Obama's argument for preventive detention “violates basic American values and is likely unconstitutional,” warned Sen. Russ Feingold in a recent letter to the President, cautioning that detention without trial “is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world.” Advancing such a controversial precedent on American soil, without the participation of Congress or the American people, would be disastrous.
UPDATE: The AP reports that two administration officials said Obama is considering an executive order for preventive detention. The article includes responses from the ACLU and CCR, two human rights organizations that have battled the Bush and Obama administrations:
Christopher Anders, [from] the American Civil Liberties Union Washington office, says the organization strongly opposes any plans for indefinite detention of prisoners.”We're saying it shouldn't be done at all,” he said Friday…. Civil rights advocates and constitutional scholars accused Obama of parroting [Bush's] detention policies. “Prolonged imprisonment without trial is exactly the Guantanamo system that the president promised to shut down,' Shayana Kadidal, a senior attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said in a statement Friday, [adding,] “If the last eight years have taught us anything, it's that executive overreach, left to continue unchecked for many years, has a tendency to harden into precedent.”
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Nato resumes Russia military ties
Russia and Nato have agreed to resume co-operation on security issues, after nearly a year of difficult relations.The deal came at a meeting in Greece of foreign ministers from the two sides. Ties deteriorated sharply in 2008 after Russia’s brief conflict with Georgia. Nato chief Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said differences over the issue remained. But he said Nato and Russia would nonetheless resume co-operation on issues such as Afghanistan, drug trafficking and piracy. “We have restarted our relations at a political level, we also agreed to restart the military-to-military contacts which had been frozen since last August,” the Nato secretary-general told a news conference in Corfu. Fundamental differences still remained on Georgia, he said, but the two sides agreed “not to let disagreements bring the whole train to a halt”. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the agreement “to a certain extent a positive development”. But he said Nato had to accept Russia’s recognition of the independence of Georgia’s separatist regions. “All have to accept the new realities and [that] the decisions taken by Russia after the conflict are irreversible,” he said. Russia and Georgia fought a short war in August 2008. Georgia tried to retake its breakaway region of South Ossetia by force after a series of lower-level clashes with Russian-backed rebels. Russia launched a counter-attack and the Georgian troops were ejected from both South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a second breakaway region, days later. Moscow has backed both regions’ declarations of independence.

Source:BBC

Jackson family ‘want new autopsy’
Relatives of Michael Jackson will seek a second autopsy on the star because they still have unanswered questions about his death, family friends say.Veteran politician Rev Jesse Jackson, who has been counselling the family, said they were upset the official cause of death might not be known for weeks. He said the family wanted answers from the star’s personal doctor, Conrad Murray, who was with him when he died. Coroners ruled out foul play after an initial autopsy on the 50-year-old. But they gave no cause of death, saying toxicology tests could take weeks. Police say Dr Murray is not a suspect, but they do intend to interview him thoroughly about what happened. A lawyer for Dr Murray said the physician had agreed to answer questions from detectives. “Contrary to what has been out there, Dr Murray has been co-operating with authorities from the outset and will continue to do so,” Bill Stradley told Reuters news agency. Jesse Jackson said the family had a flurry of questions of their own for the doctor. “When did the doctor come? What did he do? Did they inject him, if so with what,” Jesse Jackson said. The rights leader claimed Dr Murray had gone missing in the hours immediately following the singer’s death, which raised “questions of substance that will not go away until they are answered”. “He owes it to the family and to the public to say: ‘These were the last hours of Michael’s life and here’s what happened.’” The Los Angeles County coroner returned Jackson’s body to his family earlier, and they are now reportedly making funeral arrangements. Coroner’s investigator Brian Elias said Jackson’s family had told his office on Friday they wanted a second autopsy carried out.

Source:BBC

LOS ANGELES – A Houston lawyer says his firm has been hired by the doctor who reportedly was with Michael Jackson when the pop star was fatally stricken in his Los Angeles home.
William M. Stradley, a partner in the firm of Stradley, Chernoff & Alford, says his firm has been hired by Dr. Conrad Murray.
Stradley says investigators have indicated Murray is considered a witness and is not a target in any way.
Stradley says one of the partners, Edward Chernoff, is in Los Angeles meeting with Police Department investigators.
Stradley says he doesn’t know if Murray is taking part in Saturday’s meeting.
Stradley says Murray accompanied Jackson to the hospital, but he doesn’t know if it was Murray who performed CPR on the singer or called 911.
The attorney says Murray has cooperated with police from the beginning and never left Los Angeles.

Hariri steps out of his father’s shadow
By Natalia Antelava
BBC News, Beirut
The Lebanese President Michel Suleiman has designated the 39-year-old leader of the Sunni majority, Saad Hariri, as the country’s new prime minister, asking him to form a new government.Saad Hariri’s pro-Western alliance won a majority of seats in the June parliamentary election, beating the Iranian-backed opposition led by the Shiite military group Hezbollah. Lebanon’s new prime minister is already among the country’s most prominent public figures. The young billionaire businessman Saad Hariri heads one of the largest business conglomerates in the Middle East and has powerful allies in Saudi Arabia and the West. But he is best known for being the son of Rafik Hariri – Lebanon’s former prime minister who was killed in Beirut in 2005. The assassination, which altered the course of Lebanon’s history, marked the beginning of Saad Hariri’s own political career. Softer rhetoricRafik Hariri’s heir emerged at the forefront of the campaign for justice for his father. Along with his supporters at home and in the West, he blamed Syria for the car bomb that killed his father and forty others. Damascus denied any involvement, but the assassination sparked such outcry that Syria was forced to withdraw its troops, ending its 30-year domination of Lebanon. But more recently Saad Hariri has softened his anti-Syrian rhetoric and following the parliamentary election in June, he vowed to work together with the pro-Syrian opposition led by Hezbollah. “His rhetoric now is much more reconciliatory, and is very different from what it was two years ago, when he was clearly a divisive figure,” says Rami Khoury, the director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy at the American University of Beirut. PlayboyPrior to his political career, Saad Hariri was best known for his playboy lifestyle, but many say that over the years he has transformed himself from a rich and inarticulate young man into a much more seasoned and assertive politician. “He has made mixed impressions, and he still has to prove himself, but I think he has shown himself as a smart man who is up to the task,” says Mr Khoury.
But the task is daunting – Saad Hariri will need to create a unity government in the country, which remains deeply divided along sectarian lines. On the eve of his nomination as prime minister, Saad Hariri met with one of his main opponents, the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah. At the end of their rare, four-hour meeting, the two men vowed to work together. New dialogueBut like everything else in Lebanon, Saad Hariri’s success, or failure, as the prime minister will depend largely on what happens outside Lebanon. This tiny country has always been the battleground of regional powers. Many here believe that the success and calm of the June parliamentary election is the direct reflection of the new dialogue between the old regional foes – Syria, which supports Hezbollah, and Saudi Arabia, which backs Saad Hariri. Equally, the recent events in Iran, Hezbollah’s biggest backer, have undermined the potential for a dialogue between Tehran and Mr Hariri’s allies in Washington – and that too could have a real impact on what happens in Lebanon.

Source:BBC

LOS ANGELES – A Houston lawyer says his firm has been hired by the doctor who reportedly was with Michael Jackson when the pop star was fatally stricken in his Los Angeles home.
William M. Stradley, a partner in the firm of Stradley, Chernoff & Alford, says his firm has been hired by Dr. Conrad Murray.
Stradley says investigators have indicated Murray is considered a witness and is not a target in any way.
Stradley says one of the partners, Edward Chernoff, is in Los Angeles meeting with Police Department investigators.
Stradley says he doesn’t know if Murray is taking part in Saturday’s meeting.
Stradley says Murray accompanied Jackson to the hospital, but he doesn’t know if it was Murray who performed CPR on the singer or called 911.
The attorney says Murray has cooperated with police from the beginning and never left Los Angeles.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Iranian authorities have barred journalists for international news organizations from reporting on the streets and ordered them to stay in their offices. This report is based on the accounts of witnesses reached in Iran and official statements carried on Iranian media.
___
The Iranian government has seized and detained several hundred activists, journalists and students across the nation, in one of the most extensive crackdowns on key dissidents since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Even as unprecedented protests broke out on the streets after the June 12 disputed presidential election, the most stinging backlash from authorities has come away from the crowds through roundups and targeted arrests, according to witnesses and human rights organizations. They say plainclothes security agents have also put dozens of the country’s most experienced pro-reform leaders behind bars.
The Iranian government says only that unspecified figures responsible for fomenting unrest have been taken into custody.
The arrests have drained the pool of potential leaders of a protest movement that claims President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole the election by fraud. They also point to the potential for high-profile trials — and serious sentences — before a special judicial forum created to handle cases from the unrest.
With the main reformist candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi under constant police surveillance, protests demanding a new vote have withered. Many of those rounded up during demonstrations have been released within days.
But most of those detained in raids against potential opposition remain in custody. That has spread fear among Mousavi supporters and left the opposition movement reeling.
“We heard some news about people who are arrested at night and we are worried if it could happen to us,” a Tehran resident active in the protests wrote in an e-mail Friday, asking for anonymity for fear of government retaliation.
The targeted arrests appear to have begun the day after the election. Several of Iran’s best-known reformist politicians were taken into custody, including the brother and several close allies of former President Mohammad Khatami.
Since then, at least 230 more students, professors, journalists and reformists have been arrested, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. At least 29 are known to have been released, the New York-based organization said in a list released Wednesday, although it acknowledged that the numbers were constantly changing.
The crackdown appears to have grown bolder as the government escalated its use of force on the streets.
Security agents arrested nearly the entire staff of Mousavi’s newspaper, The Green Word, Monday night, seizing 25 people in a raid on its offices, according to a statement on Mousavi’s Web site. Four or five who were out of the office during the raid remain free, according to the paper.
On Thursday, authorities arrested 70 reformist university professors after they met with Mousavi, his Web site said. At least 66 were later freed, said Hadi Ghaemi, spokesman for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
Among the most prominent reformists detained was Ebrahim Yazdi, 78, who was a key aide of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and served as foreign minister after the 1979 revolution. Yazdi was hospitalized with a bladder problem when agents walked into his room on June 17, had his intravenous tubes disconnected and took him to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.
“They did not show any judicial or legal papers, nothing,” Yazdi told The Associated Press by telephone from Tehran. “Even in prison they didn’t interrogate me. Nobody came to tell me why they were arresting me.”
Yazdi said he was treated respectfully and released the next day. But many other members of his Freedom Movement of Iran remain in prison along with leaders of other reformist parties, some of whom served in Khatami’s government.
They include Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a former government spokesman under Khatami; Saeed Hajjarian, an adviser to Khatami who was paralyzed in an assassination attempt in 2000; and human rights lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, who was arrested in his office by security forces posing as clients, according to the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.
Officials even briefly arrested the daughter and four other relatives of one of Iran’s most powerful men, Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani. The detentions were seen as an official warning to Rafsanjani, a former conservative president who many believe now favors the opposition.
Observers say the crackdown is the largest since Khatami’s 1997 election and the birth of the modern Iranian reform movement.
“The people that they have arrested represent a wide spectrum of the political orientation,” Yazdi said. “It is much broader than in the past.”
State television has begun broadcasting purported confessions of street protesters who say they acted on behalf of Britain and other Western nations in a bid to destabilize the government.
“These kinds of arrests usually are undertaken in order to produce some kind of a show trial,” said Ahmad Sadri, a sociology professor at Lake Forest College in Illinois who writes a column for the reformist Iranian daily Etemad-e-Melli, or National Confidence.
The editor-in-chief of Etemad-e-Melli, which is owned by reformist presidential candidate Mahdi Karroubi, was taken into custody last week, according to the Committee to Protest Journalists, which says roughly 40 journalists have been arrested. Among them was Newsweek correspondent Maziar Bahari, a dual Iranian-Canadian citizen, and Iason Athanasiadis, a Greek national reporting for The Washington Times.
Arrests of foreign reporters without family ties to Iran have been rare in recent years. The Greek government said Athanasiadis, who lived in Iran from 2004-2007, was taken into custody last week on an alleged visa violation. Iran has said little about the case.
Athanasiadis’ parents have appealed for his release, calling him a reporter, photographer and filmmaker with “a particular love of Iran, and a deep respect for its cultural and religious traditions.”
Arrests have taken place not only in Tehran but in smaller cities like Hamedan, Zanjan and Shiraz, rights groups said. The numbers of detentions outside Tehran could not be verified independently.
“It causes mass paranoia that nowhere’s safe; you can’t be in your home, you can’t be in the hospital,” said Afshon Ostovar, who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Iran’s security forces at the University of Michigan.
The targeted roundups allow authorities to suppress dissent while avoiding the flood of amateur videos and photographs that have documented police or militia confrontations with demonstrators. The most famous showed music student Neda Agha Soltan bleeding to death from a gunshot wound on a Tehran street.
“It’s much easier to arrest people at night than crack heads in the daylight,” Ostvar said. “There’s no camera, there’s no proof, there’s no pictures.”
Iranian officials appear to have identified some protest leaders by monitoring cell phones, e-mail accounts and Internet activity. The fear of official surveillance has forced some opposition supporters into self-censorship.
“In any demonstrations we turn off our cell phones and remove its battery because we heard they can search people by the phones even when it’s off,” the Tehran protester who insisted on anonymity wrote in his e-mail.
Many fear the government can track down opponents by tracing their computers if they visit certain Web sites.
Sadri, the professor in Illinois who regularly visits Iran, said he has begun couching his criticism of the government in his newspapers, taking an indirect approach to avoid angering the government.
“It is much more writing in allegory and symbols,” he said.

DALLAS – A casket minus a cadaver yielded nearly 100 pounds of marijuana after a traffic stop in Dallas. William Dale Crock of Cave City, Ark., was in jail Friday on a marijuana possession charge, plus traffic and seat beat violations. Dallas police say Crock was arrested Wednesday when bundles of marijuana were discovered under the casket’s cover and pillow.
Sr. Cpl. Kevin Janse (JAN’-see) told said the van turned up during surveillance on a suspected drug house. Police stopped the van in Mesquite, after noticing Crock not wearing a seat belt. Officers also said he allegedly ran a red light and did an improper lane change.
A drug-sniffing dog alerted officers to the casket in the van.
The online records of the Lew Sterrett Justice Center had no listing for an attorney for Crock.

KALAMAZOO, Mich. – Police wish all their cases were this easy to solve. A breaking and entering suspect inadvertently turned himself into the police after committing his crime on Wednesday.
The 27-year-old man walked into the Department of Public Safety around 4 a.m. He was bleeding from cuts on his arms and hands and apparently was drunk. He told officers he had seen someone breaking into a building.
WWMT-TV, WOOD-TV and the Kalamazoo Gazette reported the man told police he wanted to stop the crime, so he climbed into the building and scuffled with the other person.
When officers investigated, it became clear to them the witness actually was the suspect.
The Kalamazoo police say in a statement it “cannot always count on suspects to report their own criminal activity.”

Lottery results: Are you a winner?
The winning numbers in Saturday’s Lotto main draw were 9, 17, 25, 26, 31, 42, and the bonus number was 7.The estimated jackpot is 6.9m. The machine was Topaz. The Thunderball numbers were 6, 10, 12, 25, 30 and the Thunderball was 12. The winning numbers in the Lotto Dream Number game were 0, 3, 1, 1, 9, 9 and 9.

Source:BBC

CORFU, Greece (Reuters) –
NATO and Russia on Saturday resumed formal cooperation on broad security threats but failed to bridge major differences over Georgia in their first high-level talks since the war in the Caucasus region.
The deal emerged after NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said the two sides recognized it was time to crank up joint efforts against Afghan insurgents and drug trafficking, Somali piracy, terrorism and nuclear proliferation.
The Russia-NATO thaw emerged a week before a summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow, and a summit of G8 powers in Italy.
“We have restarted our relations at a political level, we also agreed to restart the military to military contacts which had been frozen since last August,” de Hoop Scheffer told a news conference, referring to the Russia-Georgia conflict.
“The NATO-Russia Council is now back in gear. We agreed not to let disagreements bring the whole train to a halt. On Georgia, there are still fundamental differences … (But) Russia needs NATO and NATO needs Russia,” he said.
“Afghanistan is clearly, also from the Russian side, a dossier where more and closer cooperation is certainly within the range of the possible,” he said, and this could include intensifying counter-narcotics operations.
Russia was decidedly more reserved about the foreign ministers' deal struck on the Greek island of Corfu after protracted recriminations over Moscow's military intervention to repel Georgia's attempt to wrest back rebel territory.
RUSSIA STANDS FIRM ON GEORGIA
Lavrov called the meeting after a 10-month vacuum “to a certain extent a positive development” and cited “very frank exchanges,” alluding in part to intractable differences over Georgia's status.
Lavrov repeated that Russia's recognition of the “independence” of two rebel regions from Georgia was an irreversible “new reality” and the West should get used to it.
Russia routed Georgian troops who tried to retake South Ossetia in August 2008 and has blocked an extension of an OSCE peace monitoring mission in Georgia, which expires on Tuesday, by insisting on a separate mandate for South Ossetia.
Western diplomats fear the OSCE military observers' imminent departure might lead to new fighting in the tinderbox Caucasus.
Despite the impasse over Georgia, de Hoop Scheffer said efforts to flesh out Saturday's accord would begin soon at ambassadorial level in Brussels.
Many of the ministers will stay on for an informal European Union review of ties with Iran over its post-election crackdown on opposition protesters, and an OSCE session to tackle Western-Russian grievances stoked by the Georgia conflict.
A senior U.S. official said earlier NATO also hoped for cooperation with Russia in counter-piracy operations off Somalia and to extend, to a NATO level, bilateral talks on transit of military supplies to Afghanistan through Russian territory.
On Sunday, OSCE foreign ministers will assess ways to converge views on Georgia and a new “European security architecture” proposed by Medvedev.
This could not replace NATO or the OSCE, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said, alluding to fears Moscow seeks to eclipse a longtime U.S.-dominated security framework that has drawn in ex-Soviet satellites in eastern Europe.
But a window had opened, he said, to resolve problems like missile defense and curbing nuclear and conventional arsenals.
(Additional reporting by Dina Kyriakidou and Hans-Edzard Busemann in Corfu; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Charles Dick)

The teenage niece of golf superstar Tiger Woods has failed to make the cut in her first professional tournament.
Cheyenne Woods was handed entry into the Wegmans tournament on a sponsor’s invite.
Cheyenne Woods was four strokes shy of qualifying for the weekend rounds of the LPGA Tour’s Wegmans event at Locust Hill in Rochester, New York. The 18-year-old had to complete her second round on Saturday along with half of the 140-player field due to delays of almost five hours following thunderstorms in the area. Competing on a sponsor’s invite, the college amateur followed up her opening 75 with a two-over-par 74 to be well down the field. She had been two-under for the round after 10 holes on Friday, but fell back again with a triple-bogey at the par-four 12th before finishing strongly with a birdie. Cheyenne is the daughter of world No. 1 Tiger’s half-brother, Earl Jnr.
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Defending champion Eun-Hee Ji also missed the cut after completing a 71 which saw her seven over the card. South Korean Shin Jiyai had led by three strokes overnight after posting a 68 which gave her a 36-hole total of11-under-par 133. However, Morgan Pressel reduced that advantage to just a single stroke when she picked up two birdies to complete a 66, leaving her one shot ahead of third-placed fellow American Stacy Lewis.
Source:CNN

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – Authorities said a man using the drive-through at a Tallahassee bank deposited 200 and a small bag containing marijuana and cocaine. Police said an employee at the Wachovia Bank called police Wednesday after the unusual deposit. An officer arrested a 38-year-old man and found the remnants of three marijuana cigarettes inside his vehicle.
The man was charged with drug possession and later released on 3,000 bail.
It’s not clear why the man included the drugs with his deposit.
___
Information from: Tallahassee Democrat, http://www.tdo.com

MEXICO CITY – Michael Jackson imitators moonwalked at Mexico’s Angel of Independence, a prison in the Philippines organized a “Thriller” tribute dance, political leaders paid homage and French fans gathered at Notre Dame to sing and cry as the world mourned the King of Pop.
From Paris to Peru, tributes both personal and public were held Friday by generations of fans, from those who danced to “ABC” and hummed along with “I’ll be There” and “Ben” in the ’70s, to the Generation X’ers who moonwalked and gyrated to “Billie Jean,” “Thriller” and “Bad” in the 1980s.
In Mexico City, a half-dozen 20-something fans took turns busting Jackson-like moves on the steps of the country’s iconic Angel of Independence monument and later sat arm-in-arm holding candles and posterboards covered with Jackson photo collages and heartfelt messages.
“I love you Michael Jackson, King of Pop,” said one. “I will love you forever.”
One member of the small gathering, Oliver Munoz, tried to moonwalk his sadness away as he fondly remembered his 20-year membership in a local Jackson fan club.
“At first it’s kind of like being in shock,” he said. “It doesn’t soak in. But then later you really start to feel the sadness and you just give in to the tears.”
In one of Mexico City’s hundreds of busy nightclubs Thursday evening, a DJ interchanged standard techno-music and hard rock with Jackson songs including “Beat It” and “Billie Jean,” while clients sadly raised their glasses in a toast.
Throughout Latin America, fans planned weekend tributes in town squares, while in Paris on Friday hundreds of Jackson fans sang, danced, cried and shouted out in grief at a gathering in front of the Notre Dame cathedral.
In London, shocked fans united at the Lyric Theatre, where a live show based on Jackson’s record-selling album “Thriller” is being performed, and waited for news about refunds for 750,000 tickets to his sold-out, 50-night run.
In the Philippines, prison security consultant Byron Garcia planned a tribute for Jackson on Saturday with inmates performing an encore of a famous video in which they do a synchronized dance to “Thriller.” The video has had 23.4 million hits on YouTube.
“My heart is heavy because my idol died,” Garcia said.
Newspapers around the world covered their front pages with pictures of Jackson, who publicly morphed from a bellbottom-wearing child star to a pale-skinned, thin-nosed man with lipstick, eyeliner, and a troubled personal life.
Many Japanese TV channels switched to special programming while Mexico’s TV Azteca invited Jackson imitators to participate in a special program it will devote to the entertainer in coming days.
One such impersonator, Uruguayan singer Jorge Drexler, performed a duo, acoustic version of “Billie Jean” with Mexican actress and singer Ximena Sarinana on Thursday night in Mexico.
“I am sad,” Drexler was quoted by El Universal newspaper as saying. “I danced a lot with him (Jackson) when I was a kid.”
Fans snatched up recordings of Jackson’s music around the world: A major Japanese online retailer was flooded with orders for Jackson’s recordings, and music stores in Mexico City’s touristy Pink Zone had sold out of his compact discs.
“Sales have been impressive,” said Ana Reinish, marketing manager for the Mexican music chain Mixup, without elaborating. “I’m sure it’s going to break records, more than for any other artist who has died. We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Jackson’s death also caused a commotion in cyberspace, where it dominated social networking sites on which users only days earlier had focused on and supported the rise of the Iranian opposition.
But at least one expert says it is dangerous to draw any connection between a drop in Iran-related tweets and the weakening of the opposition.
“If you are a cleric in Iran wishing for the international community to stop paying attention to this extraordinary story in your back yard, you are certainly glad for this distraction” of Michael Jackson’s death, said John Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor and faculty co-director of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society.
“But I would be very careful about giving it a sense of cause and effect: ‘The Michael Jackson story has risen on Twitter and Iran has fallen and therefore’” it has negatively affected the opposition movement.
“That’s an extraordinary overstatement,” he said.
Governments from around the world recognized Jackson’s passing, with former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung, who had met the singer, remarking that “We lost a hero of the world.”
Mexican President Felipe Calderon made a reference to Jackson during a ceremony commemorating the international day against illegal drug use and trafficking saying, “What a paradox today that … one of the greatest idols of several generations and the largest seller of pop music died precisely because of this … excessive use of drugs.”
In fact, the official cause of Jackson’s death has not been determined and is not expected to be known for weeks, although Brian Oxman, a former Jackson attorney and a family friend, told NBC’s “Today” show Friday that he had been concerned about Jackson’s use of painkillers and had warned the singer’s family about possible abuse.
In November 1993, Jackson canceled the rest of his “Dangerous” world tour to seek treatment for addiction to painkillers prescribed after reconstructive scalp surgery.
Whatever led to Jackson’s death, his passing left a deep impression on fans and fellow singers worldwide.
“Michael Jackson was the king of artistic brilliance,” Colombian pop star Shakira said in a statement. “With his death … a legend is born that will last until the end of time.”
_________
Associated Press writers Istra Pacheco, E. Eduardo Castillo and Jose Osorio in Mexico City; Frank Bajak in Bogota; Deborah Seward in Paris; Gregory Katz in London; Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo; Kim Yong-ho in Seoul; and Teresa Cerojano in Manila contributed to this report.