Rihanna photo on Internet prompts police inquiry

By Calvin Palmer

Los Angeles Police Department is investigating whether a picture posted on a celebrity gossip website purportedly showing the bloody and bruised face of R&B star Rihanna was part of police evidence.

The image posted on TMZ.com under the headline “Rihanna — The Face of a Battered Woman” showed a woman said to be Rihanna with her eyes closed, a fat lip and apparent bruising to her forehead.

Singer-songwriter Chris Brown is alleged to have attacked the Barbados-born star after an argument in Los Angeles on February 8 that led to Rihanna canceling a scheduled appearance at the Grammys.

Brown surrendered to police for questioning and was booked on suspicion of making a felony threat before being released on a $50,000 bail.

The Los Angeles Police Department has so far refused to formally identify Rihanna as the victim, citing confidentiality rules regarding domestic violence cases.

In a statement today, the police department again did not identify Rihanna, saying only that a photo with “the appearance of one taken during an official domestic violence investigation” had appeared on a Web site.

The statement warned that anyone leaking information could be sacked.

“The Los Angeles Police Department takes seriously its duty to maintain the confidentiality of victims of domestic violence,” a department statement said. “A violation of this type is considered serious misconduct, with penalties up to and including termination.”

[Based on reports by the Los Angeles Times and AFP news agency.]

Homecoming queen can be such a drag

By Calvin Palmer

Homecoming queens are not what they used to be.  Students at George Mason University have elected 22-year-old Ryan Allen as the school’s homecoming queen.

He attracted more votes than the two women who sought the title at the school in suburban Washington, D.C.

Allen, in his final year, entered the contest as his alias – drag queen Reann Ballslee and was suitably attired in a sequined top, black skirt, heels and wig when he was proclaimed the winner during half-time at Saturday’s sold-out basketball game against Northeastern at the Patriot Center.

“When they said ‘Ms Mason 2009 is Reann Ballslee,’ the crowd went wild,” Allen said. “It was one of the best feelings I’ve felt in a long time. I had so many friends supporting me.”

Allen, who is gay and performs at local nightclubs, said he entered as a joke.

But he added: “In the larger scheme of things, winning says so much about the university. We’re one of the most diverse campuses in the country, and . . . we celebrate that.”

Well, perhaps not everyone.

Electing a dude as homecoming queen is not the way to bolster pride, sophomore Grant Bollinger said. Mason was recently named the No. 1 national university to watch by U.S. News & World Report, he said — it should act like it.

“It’s really annoying,” said Bollinger, who works as an ambassador for the admissions office. “The game was on TV. Everyone was there. All eyes were on us. And we do something like this? It’s just stupid.”

One of the competitors Allen beat for the title may also not have been overjoyed.

A government and politics major from Chesapeake and a Chi Omega sorority member told the school newspaper she should win because “I have pride in Mason to the point where my towels are green and gold.”

Still, I bet those towels came in handing for wiping away the tears of disappointment.

No reports have yet been received of Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, of the Westboro Baptist Church, planning to picket George Mason University.  But give them time.  They are still in the process of trying to get their refund on their air tickets to Britain.
 
Phelps and his daughter were banned from entering the country because of their extreme anti-gay views. They are not welcome, not even by the Baptist Union of Britain, the Evangelical Alliance, The Methodist Church and the United Reform Church.
 
According to George Pitcher, in The  Daily Telegraph, those churches joined together to say of the two representatives of Westboro Baptist Church: “Neither the style nor substance of their preaching expresses the historic, orthodox Christian faith.”

Praise the Lord and continue the condemnation.
 
[Based on reports by The Washington Post and newsday.com.]

Boy, 15, tells police he shot and killed man after sexual assault

By Calvin Palmer

Houston police are still investigating the claims of a 15-year-old boy that he shot and killed a man who sexually assaulted him on his way to school in northeast Houston.

Joe Edward Gary, 51, was found dead at a house on Lockwood about 1:15 p.m. on Wednesday, police said.

That same day, the teenager told Houston school authorities that a man had abducted him at gunpoint as he walked to school and taken him to the house and sexually assaulted him.

The boy said that he managed to get the man’s gun and shoot him in the head.  He then went to school and reported the incident.

A hospital examination confirmed that the boy had been sexually assaulted, police said.

School officials alerted Houston police, and homicide detectives investigating Gary’s death realized that he was the man the boy said he had shot.

According to investigators, neighbors reported hearing gunfire early in the morning. Police said no charges have been filed in connection with the shooting.

[Based on a report by the Houston Chronicle.]

Baboons up against fromage frais and colons for oddest book title prize

By Calvin Palmer

This year’s shortlist for the Diagram Prize, announced today, appears to prove the adage that everyone has a book inside them just waiting to be written. But instead of waiting for the muse to descend, these authors have gone ahead and written it.

The prize is awarded annually by trade magazine The Bookseller for the book with the oddest title.

Baboon Metaphysics, an academic study of primates in Botswana by Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth, is a strong contender for this year’s prize.
 
Titles come from all genres of books. The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais is a business book by Philip M. Parker, while the field of medicine is represented by Curbside Consultation of the Colon by Brooks D. Cash.

Some of the titles are enigmatic. Emmanuel Kowalski’s The Large Sieve and its Applications is about arithmetic rather than kitchen utensils. Strip and Knit with Style by Mark Hordyszynski may set the pulses racing but it turns out to be a manual on craft projects using strips of cloth.

The final contender is Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring by Lietai Yang, which seem pretty lame by comparison.

Philip Stone, a sales analyst at The Bookseller, said choosing the finalists had been particularly difficult this year.

“Six seems such a cruelly low number given titles such as Excrement in the Late Middle Ages and All Dogs Have ADHD were rejected,” he said.

Previous winners of the prize, founded in 1978, include The Joy of Sex: Pocket Edition; Living with Crazy Buttocks; The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories; The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification; and People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It.

The winner will be chosen by the public through an online vote at http://www.thebookseller.com and announced on March 27.

[Based on reports by the Associated Press and AFP news agency.]

Straw bends with the wind to relax curfew for Goody’s soon-to-be husband

By Calvin Palmer

Jade Goody will not be spending her wedding night alone. Justice Secretary Jack Straw today intervened to relax the bail conditions of her soon-to-be husband Jack Tweed.

Tweed was released early last month from an 18-month prison sentence for assault.  Under the terms of his bail, he has to be at his mother’s home by 7:00 p.m. each night.

Yesterday, he applied for special dispensation to allow him to stay with his bride after Sunday’s ceremony at Down Hall in Hatfield Heath, Hertfordshire, but the head of HMP Wayland in Norfolk refused to lift the curfew.

The Ministry of Justice reviewed that decision this morning and announced Tweed would be allowed to stay at the reception venue until 3:00 p.m. on Monday.

Straw said: “It is crucial that offenders are treated equally within the rules regardless of the publicity surrounding their case but I was satisfied that it was reasonable to allow this.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman added: “Jack has enormous sympathy for Jade Goody and her family at this time. She is showing extraordinary courage and his thoughts are with her and her family.”

The decision was also backed by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who said during a constituency visit in Fife: “I think everybody is sad at the tragedy that’s befallen Jade Goody. Everyone who suffers cancer has the thoughts of me and I think the whole country over what they’ve got to go through.”

Tweed was jailed for 18 months last September after assaulting a teenager with a golf club, but was released early on the Home Detention Curfew Scheme, which means that he has to wear an electronic tag and return to his mother’s home in Essex every evening.

Terminally-ill Goody, who has been given weeks to live, was said to be “heartbroken” at the prospect of parting from her new husband on Sunday night.

Preparations for the wedding — which is fetching an estimated £1 million in broadcast and magazine rights — are gathering pace.

Goody and Tweed received a visit yesterday from Bishop Jonathan Blake, of the independent London-based Open Episcopal Church.

He refused to be drawn on whether he would be conducting the wedding ceremony, but a source close to the planning said it was thought this would be the case.

Meanwhile, Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty urged people to pray for the mother-of-two as she prepared for her wedding.

Shetty and Goody were at the center of the Celebrity Big Brother race row two years ago, which sparked thousands of complaints. Viewers were outraged about the treatment of Shetty by Goody and other housemates on the Channel 4 reality TV show.

But Shetty, 33, spoke of her wish for everyone to forget the past and support Goody, who found out she was terminally ill with cervical cancer last week.

In a TV interview, she said: “I buried the hatchet a very long time ago, not because I’d heard about her being diagnosed with cancer.

“I’d repeatedly told people my feelings and I really didn’t want to have any ill feelings against her.

“It’s really sad to know that her health is deteriorating and I really want people to forget the past and I really want them to pray and send her good wishes because that’s something that will give her energy.

“I really want all the positive things to be affecting her at this point.”

Shetty said she had been invited to Goody’s wedding but was filming in Bombay — “but if I was in London I would definitely have been there to show her my solidarity”.

[Based on reports by The Times and The Daily Telegraph.]

Jealous man dragged his girlfriend behind a car in ‘barbaric act of murder’

By Calvin Palmer

An illegal immigrant accused of dragging his girlfriend to death behind a car because he was jealous yesterday pleaded guilty to a ‘barbaric act of murder’ in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

Jose Rubi-Nava, 38, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder at Douglas County District Court, regarding the death of Luz Maria Franco Fierros, 49.

The mangled body of Franco Fierros was found in September 2006 near Castle Rock, about 20 miles south of Denver. She had a nylon strap around her neck, and her body was found at the end of a 1.3-mile trail of blood.

The coroner said she died from strangulation and massive head wounds after she was dragged behind the vehicle. Police say that after his arrest, Rubi-Nava confessed to killing the woman.

Under terms of the deal, four other related charges were dropped. He is also required to pay $9,276 in restitution as well as $91,000 for costs to prosecute the case.

Rubi-Nava, who is in the United States illegally, declined to address the court when given the chance.

During the hearing, lead prosecutor Leslie Hansen noted how Rubi-Nava became jealous because he thought his girlfriend was interested in another man. So he made a noose and wrapped it around her neck, then dragged her behind the vehicle.

“This was a barbaric act of murder,” Hansen said.

[Based on a report by The Denver Post.]