Newspaper Owner Among Seven Killed in Fiery Massachusetts Plane Crash

Lewis Katz, Co-Managing Partner, Philadelphia Media Network and former owner of the New Jersey Nets NBA basketball team and the New Jersey Devils NHL hockey team participates in a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California in this May 2, 2012 file photo. Katz was among seven people who were killed when a private Gulfstream IV jet caught fire and crashed May 31, 20014 as it tried to take off from a small airfield near Boston, according to local media reports.

Seven people, including the co-owner of the Philadelphia Inquirer, were killed when a private jet crashed on takeoff and erupted in a fireball at a Massachusetts air field, authorities said early Sunday.

"There were no survivors," said Matthew Brelis, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which operates Hanscom Field in Bedford, where the Gulfstream IV crashed as it was taking off at about 9:40 p.m. en route to Atlantic City International Airport in New Jersey.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the people on board and their loved ones," Brelis said.

Philadelphia Inquirer co-owner Lewis Katz was among the dead, the newspaper's editor said Sunday.

According to Philly.com, last Tuesday, Katz and H.F. "Gerry" Lenfest bought out their partners in the publishing business for $88 million, gaining control of the media company that owns the Inquirer.

"We all deeply mourn the loss of my true friend and fellow investor in ownership of The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Daily News and Philly.com," Lenfest said. "It is a severe loss, but I am pleased to announce that Drew Katz, Lewis's son, will replace his father on the board of our new company."

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said he spoke to Katz a few days ago to congratulate him on the newspaper deal.

"Lewis was such a 'full of life' guy, always optimistic and forward looking, always wanting to push the envelope and do good things for Philadelphia and Camden," Nutter said.

"He would talk with me and other officials about what he could to do to make life better for children and improve the image of our great city. His passion for education, children's sports programs and improving the business climate in our city were just a few of the things that he would always talk to me about."

The names of the other victims were not immediately released, but Longport, New Jersey, Commissioner Jim Leeds told the Press of Atlantic City that his wife, Anne Leeds, was on board.

He said Katz, a neighbor, asked his wife, a former teacher, to travel to the Boston area "to see about an educational program."

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters said the plane "apparently ran off Runway 11" as it was departing. "Officials report that it caught fire," he said.

Nearby residents recounted seeing a fireball and feeling the blast of the explosion shake their homes.

Jeff Patterson told The Boston Globe he saw a fireball about 60 feet in the air and suspected the worst for those aboard the plane.

"I heard a big boom, and I thought at the time that someone was trying to break into my house because it shook it," said Patterson's son, 14-year-old Jared Patterson. "I thought someone was like banging on the door trying to get in."

The National Transportation Safety Board will lead the investigation. An airport spokesman said the bodies would not be removed from the wreckage until NTSB investigators got their first look at it.

The air field, which is about 20 miles northwest of Boston and serves the public, was closed after the crash.

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Hidden Cash Twitter campaign arrives in UK

An anonymous Twitter account is hiding envelopes of money around Britain and Tweeting clues to thousands of people.source

Harry McKeown is one of the lucky recipients

 The Hidden Cash Twitter campaign, which has seen an anonymous benefactor hide money in envelopes in America, has spread to the UK.

An account - called @HiddenCash_UK - was set up on Tuesday.

The account has so far tweeted clues to the location of four envelopes containing £50. They were found by people in Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester and Brighton.

It comes after a mysterious millionaire started leaving envelopes containing hundred dollar bills around San Francisco's Bay Area, before posting cryptic clues to their whereabouts.

Little is known about the benefactor, other than that he or she is a rich property mogul who feels bad about the discrepancy between rich and poor in San Francisco, where the wealth gap is the largest in the United States.

 The anonymous donor behind the UK campaign has said that more envelopes would be hidden in the coming days, including one in London.

The 25-year-old, who made his money though several e-commerce businesses, added that up to £200 could be stashed in the capital's drop on Sunday.

He said: “I had seen the version in the US and thought it was a really great idea. I thought why not bring that over here and the reaction has been really good.

“I’m in a fortunate position to be able to give away money on a daily basis at the moment. I have had a few businesses in e-commerce that have done really well for me.

“It got to a point where there is only so much stuff that money can buy and for myself - as well as for the people finding the money - I find it quite fun.

“I get more of a kick out of that than I would spending £50 on myself. We’ve planned a drop right down south, in Brighton, and I’ve planned one in London.”

He added a team of eight people around the UK would continue to orchestrate the next week as he travels abroad for international business meetings.

“I have to travel abroad but I’ve called on a group of people to keep it going for me. It will be a little more infrequent but I don’t have any plans to stop.

"There isn’t a limit on how much I’m going to give away. As long as there’s interest in it, I’ll keep doing it.

He added: “I’m a massive boxing fan and I’m that confident that [George] Groves will win tonight that if [Carl] Froch wins I’ll hide £200 in London on Sunday.”

The first drop in the UK was found by an electrician less than 30 minutes after @HiddenCash_UK tweeted a picture of a yellow grit bin outside Leeds City Museum.

Harry McKeown, 25, from Wakefield, said he found the money after stumbling across the Twitter account on a visit to the dentist.
He said the account tweeted a clue about pop star Robbie William's song Millennium
“I had seen an article about the American account while I was in the dentist that morning and followed it on Twitter," he said.
“I noticed there was a UK one which had been set up and it only had about 50 followers at the time. It had just been created and on my way to work they posted the first clue.
“It was a picture of the museum and a clue relating to Robbie Williams, [the pop star] which was a Millennium reference. I was only five minutes away.
"I thought it would be a stitch up but that I might as well go to have a look, and there was this envelope just sat there, behind the bin, with £50 in it. It was a productive morning.”
He added that he planned to use the money to take his girlfriend of five years out for a meal this weekend.
A second envelope bearing the message "Congratulations! Spend it wisely (or not)" was found outside the Hilton hotel in Manchester on Thursday morning.

The third stash, hidden in Sheffield, was found just minutes after the drop on Friday, prompting @HiddenCash_UK to tweet: "You guys are too good! Gonna have to start making this harder"
The original hidden cash benefactor told CNN he had launched the game as a way of giving back to society after making a fortune in the city's real estate market.

He said: "I want the spotlight on what I'm doing and trying to do. I have no plans to stop anytime soon. I'm planning to continue this indefinitely into the future."

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Founder of Pirate Bay arrested in Sweden after two years on the run

Peter Sunde had been sought by Interpol for copyright violations.

 One of the founders of file-sharing website Pirate Bay has been arrested in southern Sweden to serve an outstanding sentence for copyright violations after being on the run for nearly two years, Swedish police said on Saturday.

Peter Sunde had been wanted by Interpol since 2012 after being sentenced in Sweden to prison and fined for breaching copyright laws.

"We have been looking for him since 2012," said Carolina Ekeus, spokesman at the Swedish National Police Board. "He was given eight months in jail so he has to serve his sentence."

Ekeus said Sunde had been arrested on Saturday in the southern Swedish county of Skane but she was not able to provide further details.

Four men linked to Pirate Bay were originally sentenced to one year in prison and a fine of 32 million crowns (£2.85 million). An appeals court later reduced the prison sentences by varying amounts, but raised the fine to 46 million Swedish crowns (£4.1 million).

In September, 2012, Cambodia arrested and deported another Pirate Bay co-founder at Sweden's request.

Swedish media reported on Saturday that Sunde may have been living in Germany in recent years and that Sweden's Supreme Court had as recently as May rejected an appeal from him.

"He is extremely talented and I still think that the judgment was wrong," Peter Althin, who defended Sunde during the trial, was quoted as saying by Swedish news service TT.

"It's about being on the cutting edge if one is going to be successful... But if one is too far ahead it is not always about success. Peter fought for file-sharing and in 10 years I think it goes without saying that file-sharing for one's own needs will be allowed."

Pirate Bay, launched in 2003, provided links to music and movie files that were stored on other users' computers. Swedish subsidiaries of prominent music and film companies had taken the company to court claiming damages for lost revenue.

Peter Sunde had been wanted by Interpol since 2012

Despite the Swedish court case, the website is still functioning. On its website, Pirate Bay says it is now run by a different organisation and is registered in the Seychelles.

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Google received 12,000 requests in the first day of offering an online removal form.

Google takes steps to comply with EU’s ‘right to be forgotten’ ruling.

Google Inc has launched a service through which European citizens can request that links to what they deem as objectionable material be taken off search results, the first step to comply with a court ruling affirming the “right to be forgotten.”

The world’s largest Internet search engine, which processes more than 90 percent of all Web searches in Europe, said on Thursday that it has made available a webform through which people can submit their requests, but stopped short of specifying when it would remove links that meet the criteria for being taken down.

Google said it has convened a committee of senior Google executives and independent experts to try and craft a long-term approach to dealing with what’s expected to be a barrage of requests from the region’s roughly half-billion occupants.

“To comply with the recent European court ruling, we’ve made a webform available for Europeans to request the removal of results from our search engine,” Google said in a statement.

“The court’s ruling requires Google to make difficult judgments about an individual’s right to be forgotten and the public’s right to know. We’re creating an expert advisory committee to take a thorough look at these issues. We’ll also be working with data protection authorities and others as we implement this ruling.”

The decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union requires that Internet search services remove information deemed “inadequate, irrelevant or no longer relevant.” Failure to do so can result in fines. Google, which began getting requests to remove objectionable personal information from its search engine shortly after the ruling this month, has said it was disappointed by the decision.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has said the ruling created an inherent conflict between the “right to be forgotten and a right to know” – referring to the delicate balance of enforcing the ruling while preserving a stated corporate philosophy of making as much information freely available to as many people as possible. Google added on Thursday that it will work with data protection authorities and others as it implements the ruling.

Data Headaches

The court decision creates extra headaches for U.S. Web companies, which have businesses based on handling tremendous amounts of data that often aren’t touched by humans. It paves the way for European users to flood the firms with Web takedown requests, adding to costs.

The shares of Google were little changed at $559.89 at the close in New York yesterday.

The right to be forgotten and the right to free information “are not foes but friends,” Reding said. “It’s not about protecting one at the expense of the other but striking the right balance in order to protect both.”

“The European court made it clear that two rights do not make a wrong and has given clear directions on how this balance can be found and where the limits of the right to be forgotten lie,” she said. “It is mass surveillance not data protection that legitimizes the actions of repressive regimes.”

Tougher Rules

The EU’s move toward tougher rules may make it harder for Internet startups, according to Page’s FT interview.

“We’re a big company and we can respond to these kind of concerns and spend money on them and deal with them, it’s not a problem for us,” he told the FT. “But as a whole, as we regulate the Internet, I think we’re not going to see the kind of innovation we’ve seen.”

The new special committee has five members, including Wikipedia’s Wales, Frank La Rue from the United Nations, Peggy Valcke of the University of Leuven law school, academic Jose Luis Pinar, and Oxford University’s Luciano Floridi.

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Chicago teacher killed in gang crossfire

A Chicago public school teacher was fatally shot at her second job at a real estate office in what police say was an exchange of gunfire between two groups of alleged gang members.

Betty Howard taught at Gwendolyn Brooks College Prep, and after work with special needs students she spent time at a realty company in Chatham, a middle-class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Family members say she was in the office when she was shot Thursday.

Police said the gunfire appeared to stem from a gang conflict. Family members said a bullet came through a wall and struck her in the head.

Howard, 58, would travel to homes to teach disabled students, doing whatever it took to help some of the city's most challenged youth, Brooks Principal D'Andre Weaver said.



Students on Friday wrote "thank you" letters to Howard. Students from her home room released green and pink balloons, the colors of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the teacher's sorority.

Sophomore Isaac Simmons said he didn't know Howard, but his friends who were in her class could feel the concern she had for them.

"I know a couple of kids that actually went to her for help, and it seemed like she was always trying to help out and do the best for kids," he told WMAQ-TV. "It's so much violence, you really don't know what to do. I mean, I've just got to hope and pray that something like that doesn't happen to me."

Community activist Andrew Holmes says some members of the community are offering a $2,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Howard's killer.

"I'm talking directly to the people they were shooting at," Holmes said. "You know who was shooting at you. Whether you were shot today, you know who was shooting at you. What you need to do is pick up that phone (and call police)."

Chicago's battle with violent crime has been closely watched. In 2012, the city led the U.S. in homicides with more than 500. It ended 2013 with 415 homicides — the lowest total in nearly half a century but still far more than any other U.S city, including much larger Los Angeles and New York
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Victim from shooting that killed teacher: 'You're hitting innocent people' 

Brittany Willams went through several emotional stages after getting grazed by a stray bullet Thursday night down the street from her Chatham neighborhood apartment.

"Shocked. Worried. Grateful. Thankful. Blessed," she recalled this afternoon about the graze wound to her left hand during an interview at her job at McCormick Place. "...I've never been in action like this. And for a person whose never been through this, it was a shock. I didn't know that I was really hit until somebody started coming around me like, 'You're bleeding.'"

She was one of three people shot Thursday evening in the 700 block of East 79th Street, a shooting that left 58-year-old Betty Howard dead, and a coworker injured from an errant bullet that penetrated the wall of a realty business.

With her left hand bandaged up, Williams told the Tribune that she had just finished running errands when she decided to take her 1-year-old Shih Tzu, Lauren, for a walk. While she walked north on Evans Avenue, Williams crouched down to tend to her pet.

"My dog, she loves grass. So I noticed that she had some by her mouth," Williams recounted. "So I bent down to touch her face. That's when I heard the first gunshots."

Williams immediately dropped to the ground, clutching Lauren with her right arm.

"That's when I felt the bullet shave my (left) hand," Williams recalled. "And when it did that, a couple more shots went off, and that's when I heard...tires screeching to ride off.

"And that's when I hurried up and grabbed my baby and ran," she said.

Williams felt pain in her left hand, but because of the adrenaline rush, she initially thought she only scratched herself.

Moments later, Williams collapsed in front of Kale Realty, where Howard and a coworker were shot. That's when passersby crowded around her and noticed she was shot.

"I'm like, 'I'm OK.' And then I look at my hand and my hand is just swelled up big," Williams recalled.

As for her dog Lauren, she made it out unharmed, but wouldn't leave Williams's side.

"She knew something was wrong with me," Williams said of her dog. "She just stayed under me until my (girlfriend) came outside."

The paramedics bandaged up her wound, but didn't clean it, she recalled. Williams then removed the bandage temporarily to apply peroxide and Neosporin to her wound. Today, a co-worker wrapped a fresh bandage around the wound.

Williams said she's lived down the block at 79th and Cottage Grove Avenue for three years -- a bustling area with numerous storefronts. Historically, the area has been plagued by gang violence. But residents and business owners have acknowledged that the area improved greatly last year after the Chicago Police Department added rookies to work foot patrols and veteran cops to work overtime shifts seven days a week.

But the violent crime has still been a nuisance to Williams, who plans on moving out of her apartment with her girlfriend and the dog. She's heard gunshots on multiple occasions from her apartment.

She was even about to leave work early this afternoon to talk to her realtor about where to move next. It's one thing to hear gunshots every now and then, but to become a shooting victim in the neighborhood was the final straw, she said.

Every time there's gunfire, she worries about who the next victim is going to be.

"Honestly, I just want everybody to just stop shooting," she said. "...You're hitting innocent people that don't have nothing to do with what y'all got going on."

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US Airways Cross-country flight diverted after dog poops

A cross-country fight had to make an unscheduled landing when a service dog pooped twice in the aisle, sickening passengers with the odor.

US Airways spokesman Andrew Christie said the May 28 US Airways flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia had to make an unscheduled stop in Kansas City,

Christie called the episode a "rare and unfortunate situation." The flight continued after the mess was cleaned up on the ground. The passenger and service dog were rebooked on another flight.

Jim Kutsch, president at The Seeing Eye guide dog school in Morristown, New Jersey, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer that such incidents are rare, but that dogs occasionally get sick on planes, too.

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Toddler badly burned by police device during Georgia drug raid

Habersham County :_ A 19-month-old boy was fighting for his life at an Atlanta hospital on Friday after being severely burned by a "flash bang" grenade police tossed into the house to distract a drug suspect during a raid, police said.

The toddler was injured early on Wednesday when the device landed in the playpen where the child was sleeping, said Habersham County Sheriff Joey Terrell.

An undercover officer had purchased methamphetamine from a man who lived in the house, and police returned to arrest him in a “no-knock” raid, Terrell said. The suspect had previously been arrested on weapons charges, according to the sheriff.


Officers used a battering ram to open the home's locked door,Terrell said.

“They opened it up just enough to get the flash bang in,” said the sheriff. Terrell called the incident “devastating” but unavoidable, as officers did not know the crib was in front of the door.

“All the information we had was that there were no children in the house,” he said. “All you can do is pray for the child, pray for the family, pray for the officers."

The toddler was treated by medics at the scene and then taken to an Atlanta hospital where he was placed in a medically induced coma, the sheriff said. Hospital officials would not release any information on Friday about his condition.

The drug suspect, a relative of the child, was not in the house during the raid but later was arrested nearby, Terrell said.

The boy's parents told local media it could be weeks before they know if he will survive and what treatment he will need.

“He's only a baby, he didn't deserve any of this," the toddler’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, told Atlanta television station WSB.

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1 dead, 1 injured in New Jersey floor collapse

A fire official says a collapse in the basement of a northern New Jersey restaurant has killed one construction worker and injured another.

Emergency crews are on the scene at Coda Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood.

Deputy Fire Chief Joseph tells News 12 New Jersey that it's not clear what the workers were doing when the floor above the basement apparently collapsed Friday morning.

Callaghan says the injured worker is in serious condition. A third worker escaped injury.

Authorities are on the scene of a possible partial building collapse on Maplewood Avenue in Maplewood.

Information from: News 12, http://www.news12.com

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US border agency releases report on use of force

The U.S. Border Patrol's parent agency has released a critical report that it commissioned amid complaints that agents used excessive force, a step that the new commissioner says is part of a commitment to transparency.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent looks into Tijuana, Mexico, from the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border fence near San Diego, California.

The report by the Police Executive Research Forum that was released Friday says some agents are suspected of intentionally placing themselves in the escape route of assailants in fleeing vehicles before firing guns. It also says some shootings of rock throwers were questionable, especially when the attackers were hurling projectiles from across the border in Mexico.

The report was released with revised guidelines on use of force.

The Customs and Border Protection agency steadfastly resisted calls from members of Congress and immigration activists to release the report after it was completed in February 2013.

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Central American migrants in Texas flown to Arizona and released

Authorities flew 400 people suspected of entering the United States illegally to Arizona over the weekend and released them at bus stops because detention facilities were full after a surge in migrants, U.S. officials said on Thursday.

Migrants, consisting of mostly women and children, disembark from a U.S. ICE bus at a Greyhound bus station in Phoenix.

Over the past month, detention facilities in Texas overflowed with migrants for the first time as a large influx of Central Americans crossed the border into the Rio Grande Valley, said Andy Adame, a U.S. Border Patrol spokesman in Tucson, Arizona.

“We have enough manpower, it’s due to detention space,” Adame said in explaining why the immigrants, mostly families with young children, were sent to Arizona.

Many Republicans in Congress and some state lawmakers say the federal government is not doing enough to secure the U.S. southern border, while a number of groups push for policy reform to allow the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country to obtain a pathway to U.S. citizenship.

Many people who cross the border illegally from Mexico are quickly returned by the U.S. Border Patrol, but those from Central America and other regions are supposed to be transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) so they can be flown home.

The 400 migrants who crossed into Texas were transferred into the custody of ICE and released, dropped off at bus stops in Tucson and Phoenix, according to that agency.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the migrants will be required to report within 15 days to an agency office near where they were dropped off, and their cases will then be handled based on immigration enforcement priorities.

Federal officials under President Barack Obama have focused their immigration enforcement priorities on turning back unauthorized immigrants stopped in border regions and deporting others outside of those areas who are convicted of crimes.

On Tuesday, Obama asked his administration to hold off on making changes to deportation policy until the end of the summer in order to allow Congress time to pass immigration legislation.

Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which calls for restrictions on immigration, said the released migrants will likely slip away and avoid deportation if they do not commit any crime.

"Essentially, they have gotten successfully into the country and it's unlikely that they're going to leave,” Mehlman said.

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New Mexico:Cook licked sandwiches,served officers

A cook at a New Mexico facility that trains state corrections employees faces battery charges after authorities say she secretly licked sandwiches then served them to probation and parole officers.

Yolanda Arguello 

KOAT-TV reports (http://goo.gl/MCnk5i) Yolanda Arguello (ar-GWAY'-oh) was charged this week following witness interviews into the bizarre allegations at the South Valley New Mexico Women's Recovery Academy in Albuquerque.

According to a criminal complaint, witnesses told investigators that the 59-year-old would take a piece of cheese, lick it and put it on sandwiches at the academy. Another witness told authorities Arguello was seen sucking on an ice cube and putting it back into a cup before handing it to a staff member.

She is charged with three counts of battery on a peace officer.

A phone listing for Arguello was disconnected, and it was unknown if she had an attorney.

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The next chapter in the Snowden leaks may unfold in a New York museum

Over the past year, the secret US government documents that Edward Snowden disclosed have been cascading through the pages of newspapers and magazines around the world.

The NSA has surveillance down to an art form, but Laura Poitras is actually turning it into one.

In the spring of 2016, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City plans an exhibition on the American filmmaker Laura Poitras, who recently won the Pulitzer Prize for her central role in bringing the National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs to light.

Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, a journalist at the Guardian, flew to Hong Kong in June 2013 to meet with Snowden, who gave them the thousands of classified documents that would become the heart of the biggest national-security story in a generation.

Until now, Poitras’s journalism has taken a fairly straightforward, narrative form, appearing as documentary films and news articles. The Whitney show will use the same source material but use it to create “an installation of immersive environments,” according to a release from the museum.

“It will be a chance for her to make a site-specific, environmental exhibition format that will look at some of these issues, and materials and media that she’s gathered over the years, and try to frame them and display them in a different way,” the show’s curator, Jay Sanders, told me.

 “And it will take advantage of the durational and spatial context of a museum to get at how surveillance affects us physiologically, socially, mentally; how information moves.”

Sanders can’t say exactly what shape the exhibition will take—mostly because it hasn’t been worked out yet, as Poitras is busy editing a still-untitled documentary on NSA surveillance, the third film in her post-9/11 trilogy. But he suggests looking to her work for the 2012 Whitney Biennial (which he co-curated) as a template.

There, Poitras held a “surveillance teach-in,” using unconventional tactics to get the audience to grasp what she calls “the contemporary Panopticon.” While William Binney (paywall), a previous NSA whistleblower, and Jacob Appelbaum, a security researcher and hacker, spoke on a panel, a security company Poitras had hired frisked museum visitors and detained some of them temporarily.

“She thinks about these things, the totality of how you can tell people things in different ways, and how you can use art in relation to content and political information,” Sanders says.

With Snowden’s revelations still making headlines, it was a no-brainer for the Whitney to invite Poitras to stage an exhibition for the museum’s first year at its new location.

“People are really wondering, what are the possible ways that art and politics can connect?” Sanders says. “She’s an artist who explores that in a deep, meaningful way.

There was an urgency to doing something with her.”

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Shelly Sterling agrees to sell Clippers to Ballmer

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has agreed to buy the Los Angeles Clippers for a record-breaking $2 billion. Now it's up to others whether the deal goes through.

Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, left, greets former NBA players Bill Russell, right, and "Downtown" Freddie Brown, second right, during an NCAA college basketball game between Washington and Oregon State in Seattle, Wash., on Jan. 25, 2014.

Shelly Sterling said in a statement issued late Thursday that she'd signed a binding contract for a sale of the Clippers by The Sterling Family Trust to Ballmer in what would be a record deal if approved by the NBA.

Ballmer "will be a terrific owner," Sterling said, "We have worked for 33 years to build the Clippers into a premier NBA franchise. I am confident that Steve will take the team to new levels of success."

Sterling negotiated the sale after her husband, Donald Sterling, made racist remarks that were made public. The remarks included Sterling telling girlfriend V. Stiviano not to bring blacks to Clippers games, specifically mentioning Hall of Famer Magic Johnson.

Shelly Sterling's statement noted that she made the deal "under her authority as the sole trustee of The Sterling Family Trust, which owns the Clippers." Donald Sterling's attorneys contend that he is a co-owner and therefore must give his assent for the deal to go through. They also say he won't be giving it.

"Sterling is not selling the team," said his attorney, Bobby Samini. "That's his position. He's not going to sell."

Ballmer beat out bids by Guggenheim Partners and a group including former NBA All-Star Grant Hill after presenting an "all-around superior bid," according to an individual with knowledge of the negotiations. The individual, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said Ballmer made more than an hour-long personal visit to Shelly Sterling's Malibu home Sunday and laid out his plan.

"He knocked their socks off, they bonded, had a good connection," the individual said. The amount was also the largest of the offers, and Ballmer was one potential buyer to deal with rather than numerous members of a group.

Ballmer said in a statement that he is honored to have his name submitted to the NBA for approval and thanked the league for working collaboratively with him throughout the process.

"I love basketball. And I intend to do everything in my power to ensure that the Clippers continue to win — and win big — in Los Angeles," Ballmer said. "LA is one of the world's great cities — a city that embraces inclusiveness, in exactly the same way that the NBA and I embrace inclusiveness."

On Thursday, Magic Johnson lauded the deal on his Twitter account: "Steve Ballmer owning the Clippers is a big win for the City of LA and all the people who live in the City of Angels!"

Though Donald Sterling's attorneys now say he won't agree to sell the team, a May 22 letter obtained by The Associated Press and written by another of Sterling's attorneys that says that "Donald T. Sterling authorizes Rochelle Sterling to negotiate with the National Basketball Association regarding all issues in connection with a sale of the Los Angeles Clippers team." It includes the line "read and approved" and Donald Sterling's signature.

Samini said Sterling has had a change of heart primarily because of "the conduct of the NBA." He said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver's decision to ban Sterling for life and fine him $2.5 million as well as to try to oust him as an owner was him acting as "judge, jury and executioner."

"They're telling me he should stand back and let them take his team because his opinion on that particular day was not good, was not popular?" Samini said. "It doesn't make sense. He's going to fight."

It's unclear how the agreement will affect a special hearing of NBA owners planned for Tuesday in New York to consider the charge against Donald Sterling for damaging the league with his comments. A three-quarters vote of the 30 owners to support the charge would have resulted in the termination of both Sterlings' ownership of the franchise. The deal is expected to be presented to the league before Tuesday, according to the individual.

Silver has said his preference would be for the franchise to be sold rather than seized — and that means sold in its entirety, with neither Sterling retaining a stake. Though according to the deal's terms Ballmer will own 100 percent of the team, Shelly Sterling may continue to be involved under conditions worked out privately with Ballmer, the individual said.

Franchise sale prices have soared since the current collective bargaining agreement was ratified in 2011. The Milwaukee Bucks were just sold to New York investment firm executives Marc Lasry and Wesley Edens for about $550 million, an NBA record.

Last year, Vivek Ranadive's group acquired a 65 percent controlling interest in the Sacramento Kings at a total franchise valuation of more than $534 million.

This is not Ballmer's first foray into potential NBA ownership. Ballmer and investor Chris Hansen headed a group that agreed to a deal to buy the Kings from the Maloof family in January 2013 with the intention of moving the team to Seattle, where the SuperSonics played until 2008.

But Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson lobbied the NBA for time to put together a bid to keep the team in California, and though the Ballmer-Hansen group later increased its offer, owners voted to deny the bid for relocation and the Kings were sold to Ranadive.

The former Microsoft CEO helped Bill Gates transform the company from a startup with fewer than 40 employees and $12 million in annual revenue into the world's most valuable business. The pair met in 1973 while living down the hall from each other in a Harvard dorm.

During his tenure at Microsoft, Ballmer was known for his competitive drive and wild displays of emotion and hand-waving.

At his farewell address to Microsoft employees, he high-fived and hugged audience members, pumped his fists in the air, and even shed tears as the popular 1987 song "(I've Had) The Time of My Life" played on the sound system. In a video of the event widely viewed on YouTube, he screams: "You work for the greatest company in the world!"

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Shinseki resigns amid veterans' health care uproar

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki apologized in public and then resigned in the privacy of the White House on Friday, driven from office by a mushrooming scandal over the agency's health care system that serves millions of the nation's former warriors.

U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki departs after addressing the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans May 30, 2014 in Washington, DC.

President Barack Obama said he accepted the resignation "with considerable regret," and appointed Sloan Gibson, the agency's No. 2 official, as temporary secretary. Obama also said that the Justice Department would determine if any illegality had occurred, and that a top White House aide who has been detailed to the Veterans Affairs Department would remain there for the time being.

As for Shinseki, Obama said, "I regret that he has to resign under these circumstances." He lavished praise on the Vietnam veteran and former Army chief of staff for his decades of service. He said the Cabinet officer had told him "he does not want to be a distraction" from the need to repair the agency, a task the president said pointedly could well require Congress to approve additional money.

A lifetime of service, in uniform and out, wasn't enough to save Shinseki's career, though, after agency investigators reported widespread problems in its sprawling hospital system. They reported that 1,700 veterans seeking treatment at the Phoenix facility alone were consigned to limbo because they had never been added to official wait lists.

In the 36 hours that followed the findings on Wednesday, Democrats in tough re-election races joined Republicans in clamoring for Shinseki's resignation.

In an appearance before a veterans group before he met with Obama, Shinseki said, "I extend an apology to the people whom I care most deeply about — that's the veterans of this great country — to their families and loved ones, who I have been honored to serve for over five years now. It's the calling of a lifetime."

He called the problems outlined in the midweek report "totally unacceptable" and a "breach of trust" that he found indefensible. He announced he would take a series of steps to respond, including ousting senior officials at the troubled Phoenix health care facility.

He concurred with the report's conclusion that the problems extended throughout the VA's 1,700 health care facilities nationwide, and he said that "I was too trusting of some" in the VA system.
Obama said Shinseki told him the agency needs new leadership and that he didn't want to be a distraction. "I agree. We don't have time for distractions. We need to fix the problem."

As his last act as a Cabinet official, Shinseki submitted a preliminary audit, which concluded that some VA schedulers were pressured to make waiting times for medical appointments appear shorter than they actually were.

The review said the agency would revoke a 14-day standard as a goal in performance reviews, and also suspend bonuses for this budget year.

Republicans in Congress said Shinseki's resignation alone wasn't enough to solve problems at an agency that has been struggling to keep up with a huge increase in demand for its services. About 9 million veterans are now enrolled in the health care system, roughly 1 million more than only six years ago. The influx comes from returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, aging Vietnam War vets who now have more health problems, a move by Congress to expand the number of those eligible for care and the migration of veterans to the VA during the last recession after they lost their jobs.

And Shinseki's departure seemed unlikely to end an election-year political struggle between the parties.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the resignation "does not absolve the president of his responsibility to step in and make things right for our veterans." He and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called on Democrats to join them in legislation "that would help to fix this system that has so failed our veterans."

The Republican-controlled House passed one measure recently to give the VA more ability to fire up to 450 senior executives. The Democratic-controlled Senate is likely to debate a different version in the following week.

Gibson, the president's choice to take over the agency at least temporarily, has held the No. 2 post since February. He was formerly president and chief executive officer of the USO, the nonprofit organization that provides programs and services to U.S. troops and their families. Gibson is the son of an Army Air Corpsman who served in World War II and grandson of a World War I Army infantryman.

The VA has a goal of trying to give patients appointments within 14 days of when they first seek care. Treatment delays — and irregularities in recording patient waiting times — have been documented in numerous reports from government and outside organizations for years and have been well-known to VA officials, members of Congress and veterans service organizations.

But the controversy now swirling around the VA stems from allegations that employees were keeping a secret waiting list at the Phoenix hospital — and suggestions that up to 40 patients may have died while awaiting care. A preliminary VA inspector general probe into the allegations found systemic falsification of appointment records at Phoenix and other locations but has not made a determination on whether any deaths are related to the delays.

President Barack Obama makes a statement in the Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, May 30, 2014, following his meeting with Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki.

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Southwest gets hefty fines for advertising $59 fares that didn't exist

The fares advertised by Southwest Airlines sounded too good to be true: $59 for flights from Atlanta to Los Angeles, Chicago or New York.

The Department of Transportation has fined Southwest Airlines $300,000 for violating the full-fare advertising rule. Above, a Southwest passenger checks in at Dallas Love Field in February.

But when would-be fliers tried to book the fares, they found no seats available on those routes.

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced $200,000 in fines Thursday against the Dallas-based carrier for violating the federal full fare advertising rule.

The regulation requires airlines to display the full cost of all fares, including taxes and fees. Airlines that advertise fares for specific routes must also offer a "reasonable numbers of seats" for those flights.

In addition to the fine issued Thursday, the DOT ordered the airline to pay a $100,000 penalty that had been suspended after a previous violation of the same rule.

Southwest Airlines said the latest violation was the result of an error in a television ad. The airline said it never intended to offer the $59 fare for flights to New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.

"As soon as we became aware of our mistake, we pulled all incorrect advertisements off the air," the airline said in a statement.

In the previous violation, Southwest advertised $66 one-way fares from Dallas Love Field to Branson, Mo., between March 1, 2013, and March 21, 2013.  However, the DOT found that there were no seats available at the advertised price during the sale period.

The DOT fined Southwest $200,000 for that violation but suspended half the fine on the condition that the airline "cease and desist" from violating the same rule for a period of one year.

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Virgin space flights cleared for take-off

Richard Branson's dream of commercial space flights took a step nearer reality after Virgin Galactic signed a deal with US aviation authorities to let it blast paying customers into space, the company said on Thursday.

The agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) sets out how routine space missions from the Spaceport America base in the US state of New Mexico will be coordinated with the normal air traffic control system.

Commercial flights are to begin by the end of this year and more than 600 people have already signed up at $250 000 each to take a trip on SpaceShipTwo.

“Our team is working hard to begin routine and affordable space launches from Spaceport America and this agreement brings us another step closer to that goal,” said Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides.

“We are grateful to the FAA and New Mexico for their partnership to achieve this milestone.”

The Virgin announcement came hours before Branson's main rival in the commercial space race was to unveil its latest spacecraft.

Elon Musk, CEO and chief designer of SpaceX, was to present his company's “next generation” Dragon V2 spacecraft at an event in California on Thursday evening.

Company wants to start offering flights by end of 2014.

It's all systems go for Virgin Galactic.

The commercial space flight company owned by billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson said Wednesday it has clearance from the U.S. government to begin planning space flights.

The flights will leave from Spaceport, which is owned by the state of New Mexico and was built to provide commercial space flight services.

The Federal Aviation Administration will work with local air traffic control to clear airspace for Virgin space flights.

Virgin Galactic has been gearing up to offer space flight services for the general public and has said it wants to start offering flights by the end of 2014.

Branson and his family will be on Virgin's first space flight.

Virgin Galactic said it has accepted more than $70 million in deposits from about 580 individuals. That's about 10% more than the total number of people who have ever gone to space.

Virgin Galactic's space vehicle is called SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic is preparing to take its first round of passengers on a suborbital space flight on SpaceShipTwo (pictured above) later this year. 

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Veterans Affairs scandal:1,700 vets kept off waiting list.

Navy veteran Ken Senft turned to the Department of Veterans Affairs for medical care in 2011 after his private insurance grew too costly. It could have been a fatal mistake, he now says.

A few years ago, the 65-year-old had a lesion on his head. He went to a VA clinic near his home outside Phoenix, but he said the doctor told him it could be two years before he might get an appointment with a dermatologist.

So he paid out of pocket to see a private physician. Turns out, he had cancer.

"What if I had waited two years?" Senft said in frustration. "I might be dead."

Senft's story comes amid allegations of delayed care and misconduct at VA facilities across the nation.

A probe of operations at the Phoenix VA Health Care System found that about 1,700 veterans in need of care were "at risk of being lost or forgotten" after being kept off an official waiting list. The investigation, initially focused on the Phoenix hospital, found systemic problems in the VA's sprawling nationwide system, which provides medical care to about 6.5 million veterans annually.

The scathing report by the VA Office of Inspector General released Wednesday increased pressure on VA Secretary Eric Shinseki to resign.

The top Republican and Democrat in the House, however, weren't ready to join in those calls. House Speak John Boehner said he is reserving judgment, while Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said she has great respect for Shinseki and firing him would reward those who misled him.

President Barack Obama found report's findings "extremely troubling," his spokesman, Jay Carney, said.

"As the president said last week, the VA must not wait for current investigations of VA operations to conclude before taking steps to improve care," Carney said in a statement.

The interim findings confirmed allegations of excessive delayed care in Phoenix, with an average 115-day wait for a first appointment for those on the waiting list. That's nearly five times longer than the Phoenix hospital system had reported to national VA administrators.

"While our work is not complete, we have substantiated that significant delays in access to care negatively impacted the quality of care at this medical facility," Richard J. Griffin, the department's acting inspector general, wrote in the 35-page report. It found that "inappropriate scheduling practices are systemic throughout" some 1,700 VA health facilities nationwide, including 150 hospitals and more than 800 clinics.

Griffin said 42 centers are now under investigation.

"What makes me angry is the fact that there are a lot of veterans who couldn't afford to do what I did, and it would have been too late for them," said Senft, who was wounded during the Vietnam War. "It's just a disappointment when you serve your country and you expect to get good medical care - and you just don't."

Several Republican lawmakers and a handful of Democrats have called for Shinseki's resignation.

Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., also have called for criminal probes.

"I believe that this issue has reached a level that requires the Justice Department involvement. These allegations are not just administrative problems. These are criminal problems," McCain said during a news conference.

Miller said the report confirmed that "wait time schemes and data manipulation are systemic throughout VA and are putting veterans at risk in Phoenix and across the country."

Dr. Samuel Foote, a former clinic director for the VA in Phoenix who was the first to bring the allegations to light, said the findings were no surprise.

"I knew about all of this all along," Foote told The Associated Press. "The only thing I can say is you can't celebrate the fact that vets were being denied care."

Still, Foote said it is good that the VA finally appears to be addressing long-standing problems.

"Everybody has been gaming the system for a long time," he said. "Phoenix just took it to another level. ... The magnitude of the problem nationwide is just so huge, so it's hard for most people to get a grasp on it."

Shinseki called the Inspector General's findings "reprehensible to me, to this department and to veterans." He said he was directing the Phoenix VA to immediately address each of the 1,700 veterans waiting for appointments. The hospital system's director has already been placed on leave amid the probe.

Reports that VA employees have been "cooking the books" have exploded since Foote went public with allegations that management at the VA in Phoenix had instructed staff to keep a secret waiting list to hide delayed care and that as many as 40 patients may have died while waiting for appointments.

Griffin said he's found no evidence so far that any of those deaths were caused by delays.

Lawmakers say the agency's 14-day target for seeing patients seeking appointments is unrealistic, while the Inspector General's report found it encourages employees to "game" the appointment system in order to collect performance bonuses.

The report described a process in which schedulers assigned appointments based on the next available slot, but marked it down as the patient's desired date.

"This results in a false 0-day wait time," the report said.

Thomas Lynch, of the Veterans Health Administration, an arm of the VA, said VA health care quality compares favorably with that in the private sector while also explaining that a bonus system based on meeting the 14-day goal had a negative effect.

"Our performance measures have become our goals, not tools to help us understand where we needed to invest resources," he told the House Veterans Affairs Committee late Wednesday. "We undermined the integrity of our data when we elevated our performance measures to goals."

Griffin said investigators' next steps include determining whether names of veterans awaiting care were purposely omitted from electronic waiting lists and at whose direction and whether any deaths were related to delays in care.

Investigators at some of the 42 facilities "have identified instances of manipulation of VA data that distort the legitimacy of reported waiting times," he said.

Griffin said investigators are making surprise visits, a step that could reduce "the risk of destruction of evidence, manipulation of data, and coaching staff on how to respond to our interview questions."

U.S. Justice Department officials have already been brought into cases where there is evidence of a criminal or civil violation, Griffin said.

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41 charged in insurance scam involving dead deer

Forty-one people in Philadelphia are facing charges in what prosecutors call an elaborate insurance fraud scheme that used dead deer to fake car accidents.

Undated booking photograph of Ronald Galati.

Ronald Galati Sr. is accused of running a $5 million scam out of his auto body shop.

District Attorney Seth Williams said Wednesday that Galati coached customers to claim they'd struck a deer rather than a car. That way, insurance companies would consider them "no fault" accidents and pay the claims without raising the customers' premiums.

Investigators say Galati stored deer carcasses, blood and fur in the back of his shop to use as props.

Also charged are Galati's wife, son and daughter, several insurance adjusters, tow truck drivers, a city official and a police officer.

Defense attorney Anthony Voci said he couldn't comment specifically on the charges because he hadn't seen the grand jury presentment but that his client is innocent until proven guilty.

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U.S. charges five Boston airline employees with smuggling cash

Federal prosecutors in Boston on Thursday charged five U.S. airline employees with agreeing to use their security passes to smuggle $417,000 in cash that the employees believed to be the proceeds of illegal drug sales through the city's airport.

Airline customers queue up to check in at Logan International Airport during a winter storm in Boston, Massachusetts January 2, 2014.

Employees of JetBlue Airways Corp and Delta Air Lines Inc agreed to work with a foreign national who was cooperating with federal investigators. The witness had a prior drug arrest.

From August 2012 through February 2014, the airline employees met the witness in airport bathrooms and carried cash through security checkpoints at Boston's Logan International Airport, prosecutors said.

They carried the cash onto flights bound to Florida, prosecutors said.

The five defendants are Rupert Crossley, 25, Alvin Leacock, 27, Eric Vick, 24, Anthony Trotman, 24, and Dino Dunkley, 31. Each faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

"Security at our nation's airports is paramount and the conduct alleged today is alarming," U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Carmen Ortiz said in a statement.

"A potentially dangerous breach in security was identified."

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Snowden says he wants to return to US

Fugitive self-proclaimed spy Edward Snowden said Wednesday he wants to return home, as he defended his massive leak of US intelligence secrets, saying abuses of constitutional rights left him no choice.

In this image taken from video provided by NBC News on Tuesday, May 27, 2014, Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, right, speaks to NBC News anchor Brian Williams, left, during an NBC Exclusive interview.

"If I could go anywhere in the world, that place would be home," Snowden said almost a year to the day since he revealed a stunning US surveillance dragnet mining data from phones and Internet companies around the world, including Europe.

"From day one, I said I'm doing this to serve my country. Whether amnesty or clemency is a possibility, that's for the public to decide," he told NBC in his first interview with US television since the scandal broke in early June last year.

And he sought to defend himself against charges led by the US administration that he is a hacker and a traitor who endangered lives by revealing the extent of the NSA spying program through the British daily The Guardian.

"The reality is the situation determined that this needed to be told to the public. You know, the Constitution of the United States has been violated on a massive scale," he said.

"How can it be said that this harmed the country when all three branches of government have made reforms as a result?" Snowden asked, looking relaxed and calm during the interview in a Moscow hotel.

But top US officials laughed off the idea of a clemency. Secretary of State John Kerry said the 30-year-old former CIA employee should "man up" and return to face trial.

Snowden also alleged he was not just a low-level contractor working for the CIA, as the White House has repeatedly insisted.

"I was trained as a spy in sort of the traditional sense of the word in that I lived and worked undercover overseas -- pretending to work in a job that I'm not -- and even being assigned a name that was not mine," he told NBC.

Snowden said he had worked covertly as "a technical expert" for the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency (NSA).

But National Security Advisor Susan Rice disputed his contention, replying "no" when asked by CNN if he had been a highly-trained undercover spy.

Snowden however blamed the United States for forcing him into exile in Russia.

-'Trapped'-

"The reality is, I never intended to end up in Russia," he said in the interview recorded clandestinely last week in Moscow.

"I had a flight booked to Cuba onwards to Latin America and I was stopped because the United States government decided to revoke my passport and trap me in Moscow Airport," Snowden told NBC.

"For a supposedly smart guy, that's a pretty dumb answer, frankly," Kerry hit back.

Snowden should do the patriotic thing and return to the US to face espionage charges for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents, the top US diplomat said.

"This is a man who has betrayed his country," Kerry told CBS News. "He should man up and come back to the US."

"The fact is, he has damaged his country very significantly. I find it sad and disgraceful."

Snowden was granted asylum by Russia in August 2013 after spending weeks holed up in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, having flown in from Hong Kong.

He says he cannot return to face trial because of the "extraordinary charges" laid against him which would bar him from using classified information in his defense.

Snowden said he had had no contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin since he was given in asylum, and denied he was being paid by the Russian government.

And he said he missed his family, colleagues and his work, insisting he was a patriot, still serving the US government.

"Sometimes to do the right thing you have to break a law," he insisted.

"Being a patriot doesn't mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your constitution," Snowden added.

"If Mr Snowden wants to come back to the United States today, we'll have him on a flight today," Kerry told NBC.

His temporary asylum expires August 1 and Snowden said "if the asylum looks like it's going to run out, then, of course, I would apply for an extension."

"I may have lost my ability to travel, but I have gained the ability to go to sleep at night, put my head on the pillow and feel comfortable that I have done the right thing even when it was the hard thing. I'm comfortable with that," Snowden concluded.

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