Taylor Armstrong Accuses Late Husband of Spying, Paranoia

It's been far too long since Taylor Armstrong bashed her late husband in public.

But, don't worry, the latest issue of Us Weekly contains excerpts from the reality star's disgusting upcoming memoir, "Hiding from Reality."

In the book, Taylor describes Russell as a paranoid stalker, someone who constantly asked her about past sexual partners and even posed as a potential employer in order to run a background check on his wife with her alma mater.

She even found a tape recorder under her home office desk once.

"For the next nearly six years, I always assumed I was being recorded in the car and at home," Taylor writes. "I was always careful to make sure the content of my conversations was very clear."

Russell supposedly defended his actions by saying he had "been burned before" and just wanted to get to know his wife as well as possible.

Years after that discovery, Armstrong added, "I went into my email settings and found that he had set it up so that all of my emails were forwarded to him the moment I received them."

Taylor says she never changed the setting or asked Russell about this issue, and it's not like we can get his take on the allegations.

What a sad, pathetic, money-hungry woman.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/taylor-armstrong-accuses-late-husband-of-spying-paranoia/

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Funeral service for Paterno as thousands mourn

People pay their respects as the hearse carrying the casket of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno passes through State College, Pa., Wednesday Jan. 25, 2012. Paterno died Sunday at the age of 85. (AP Photo/John Beale)

People pay their respects as the hearse carrying the casket of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno passes through State College, Pa., Wednesday Jan. 25, 2012. Paterno died Sunday at the age of 85. (AP Photo/John Beale)

Meghan James, 14, left, and her grandmother Joan Wanat, both from Huntington, N.Y., comfort each other after going through the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State campus for the viewing for former Penn State coach Joe Paterno Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012 in State College, Pa. Paterno died Sunday morning. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Mourners arrive at the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State campus for memorial services for former Penn State coach Joe Paterno Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012 in State College, Pa. Paterno died Sunday morning. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Alysha Ulrich, 10, left foreground, from Oley, Pa., waits in line to go through the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State campus for the viewing for former Penn State coach Joe Paterno Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012 in State College, Pa. The second day of a three-day period of public mourning for Paterno will culminate with the funeral and burial for the Hall of Fame football coach who became the face of Penn State University. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Blaze Feury, right, a member of the Penn State rugby team, gives out hot chocolate to mourners in line to go through the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center on the Penn State campus for the viewing for former Penn State coach Joe Paterno Wednesday, Jan. 25, 2012 in State College, Pa. The second day of a three-day period of public mourning for Paterno will culminate with the funeral and burial for the Hall of Fame football coach who became the face of Penn State University. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) ? Quiet mourners lined the route of Joe Paterno's funeral procession Wednesday, watching with grief and reverence as the electric-blue hearse carrying the Penn State coach's casket slowly drove by.

Some took pictures with their cell phones, or waved to his widow. Others craned their necks hoping for a better glimpse through the crowd sometimes four deep or more.

The private funeral and burial service capped another emotional day for a campus and community pained over Paterno's death from lung cancer Sunday at age 85, and over the way his stellar career ended ? being fired by university trustees Nov. 9 in the wake of child sex-abuse charges against a former assistant.

Thousands of students, alumni and fans took to the streets in and around Penn State to say their last goodbyes to the football coach who grew into a beloved figure in Happy Valley, not only for his five undefeated seasons but for his love of the school and his generosity.

"He cared about the kids. He wanted to see us succeed. So for a lot of us, he became a grandfather-like figure," Jordan Derk, a senior from York, said after the procession went past Beaver Stadium.

"He loved us and we loved him back," Derk said. "So saying goodbye is very tough."

Jay Paterno, the coach's son and quarterbacks coach, sent a message to the mourners via Twitter.

"Thank you to all the people who turned out for my father's procession," he wrote. "Very moving."

The elder Paterno won two national titles and a Division I record 409 games over 46 seasons as head coach. His cancer was disclosed just nine days after he was forced to leave the football program he had worked with since 1950.

But Wednesday was once again a salute to Paterno's life and accomplishments. The service, a Roman Catholic Mass, was attended by a veritable who's who of Penn State and Paterno connections.

Paterno's family arrived about an hour before the funeral service on two blue school buses, the same kind the coach and his team rode to home games on fall Saturdays. His wife of nearly six decades, Sue, sat in the seat traditionally reserved for her husband and was first off the bus, followed by Jay.

Former defensive coordinator Tom Bradley walked to the service with NFL great Franco Harris. Also in attendance were other ex-NFL players including Matt Millen and Todd Blackledge, both now TV analysts. Nike founder Phil Knight and actor William Baldwin were there, too.

"Today's Mass was a celebration. We laid to rest a great man," Bradley said. "Not so much for the football victories ... He meant so much to so many people."

Charles Pittman, who played for Paterno in the 1960s, also was at the Mass.

"It really focused on the type of person Joe Paterno was ? his devotion to his family, his wife, his grandkids," said Pittman, a senior vice president for publishing at Schurz Communications Inc., an Indiana-based company that owns television and radio stations and newspapers, and a member of the Board of Directors of The Associated Press.

A family spokesman, Dan McGinn, said Paterno's grandchildren escorted the casket down the aisle during the opening procession, and again at the end of the service. Jay Paterno and his brother, Scott, were among the pallbearers.

In between, during the service, all of Paterno's children spoke except for Jay, who is scheduled to talk at a campus memorial service Thursday at the Jordan Center. Two of Paterno's 17 grandchildren also talked and shared the favorite moments collected among the rest of the grandkids ? including one instance when Paterno mistakenly drove over a bicycle after returning home from work.

Former defensive tackle Anthony Adams, who carried a program with a black-and-white picture of a smiling Paterno on the cover, said the service was befitting of his former coach, who loved to be surrounded by family and just talk.

On the other hand, Paterno also was notorious for trying to avoid the spotlight himself.

"He would've been embarrassed. He would've hated it," Millen said. "He would've told us to shut up already. I guarantee it."

Paterno didn't focus on the scandal that led to his stunning ouster, Scott Paterno has said, and neither did mourners.

Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant coach at the center of the abuse scandal, has been charged with molesting 10 boys over a period of 15 years. He has pleaded not guilty and is out on bail, awaiting trial. Paterno was criticized in the days after Sandusky's arrest for not going to authorities outside campus when he was told of an allegation against the retired assistant in 2002. Paterno did notify two of his superiors at Penn State.

Mike McQueary, the then-graduate assistant who told Paterno about the alleged assault, went both to the public viewing and the funeral. Also at the service was former athletic director Tim Curley, who along with former university official Gary Schultz, is charged with perjury and failure to notify authorities about the 2002 allegation.

They melted into the crowd on a day when Paterno was the center of attention.

"The things he did for athletes, the things he did for all students actually ? that alone earns our respect to say one final goodbye," said Alex Jimenez, a sophomore from Manapalan, N.J., standing directly across from Paterno Library. The procession went right past the library to which the Paterno family has donated millions of dollars.

And the procession rolled past Beaver Stadium, the 100,000-plus seat facility that Paterno helped turn into a college football landmark. Thousands watched in silence there until the convoy reached "Paternoville," the makeshift campground outside the stadium used by students the week before games.

There, as the procession slowed nearly to a stop to negotiate a curve, someone in the throng screamed, "We are!"

"Penn State!" came the crowd's reply.

___

Associated Press writer Michael Rubinkam and AP freelance writer Emily Kaplan contributed to this report.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2012-01-25-Penn%20State-Paterno/id-882270cf2f12456ca48a4d88c0e4af7f

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Why Online Reputation Matters to Small Business

You?re a small business owner. Most of your customers are the people who live within 25 miles of your storefront. Why does it even matter what the Internet has to say about your brand? That has no impact on your bottom line.
Right?

No. Dangerously wrong.

Weber Shandwick recently released a new report called The Company Behind The Brand: In Reputation We Trust [PDF] that breaks down exactly why business owners should be concerned with the online footprint they?re leaving (or not leaving) behind. One of the most interesting parts of the report for me was the finding that any disconnect between corporate and brand reputation triggers a sharp consumer reaction. That means even if your product or service is excellent?if the image of your brand is less than stellar, it will still hurt you.

According to the report, when a consumer learns that a product they like is made by a company they have a negative relationship with (54 percent of consumers responded they?ve experienced this), 96 percent of consumers took some kind of action.

What kind of action?

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The most frequent response was that consumers stopped purchasing the product (40 percent). In fact, surprised consumers were twice as likely to STOP buying the product as they were to continue to buy it. And this is a product they originally admitted to liking! That was pretty startling to me. Just as noteworthy ? consumers who didn?t immediately stop buying the product went online to try and learn more about the company.

Both of these statements speak to the importance of creating a positive Web presence.

1. Consumers are using social word of mouth, online reviews, and other online content to form a judgment about your company. The judgment they form is then strongly tied to whether or not they decide to purchase your product.
2. When consumers are conflicted, they go to the Internet to answer the ?should I trust you? question. They?re then using the information they find about your brand to help them make that decision.

It doesn?t matter if you?re not trying to target a national audience. Local consumers are using the Web to find information about local businesses. It?s up to you to make sure they?re finding the right kind of information.

What should every small business be doing to help build their Web presence?

1. Create a Web site: Your brand Facebook profile or Google+ business page is great. But your business still needs a Web site. Some place where you can talk about your product/services, establish credibility, introduce your team, offer resources, and be found for hyper-local keywords.
2. Blog: There are few better ways to build industry authority than with an active blog. Producing content on a regular basis also ensures there?s always something you can promote and be found for.
3. Get involved in social media: Maybe that means getting active on Twitter or Facebook. Or maybe it means developing a presence on a Q&A site like Quora or participating in a small business networking site like BizSugar. Either way, find out where your audience is engaging online, and set up a satellite community there. Talk to your audience and let them get to know you on a more human level. Just don?t get too human.
4. Get involved in your community: Whether it?s sponsoring your town?s little league team, speaking at local events, or putting together an industry-related group at the local high school, by getting involved in the community that you live in you help to build a positive reputation offline, which can then carry online when people write about your efforts, link to sponsors, etc.
5. Guest blog on relevant sites: Guest blogging is a great way to build goodwill, establish industry credibility, and introduce your company to people in other networks.
6. Solicit & manage online reviews: This is a biggie and it?s only becoming more important. We?re going to sites like Yelp, Google Place Pages, TripAdvisor, etc, to learn how the experiences others had with your brand. Make sure you?re not only doing what you can to encourage customers to leave reviews, but positively responding to any negative or neutral comments that may be there. You not only help save that relationship, but you show everyone else who may find that review in the search results that you?re listening, you care, and that you hear them.

Online reputation management is important for businesses of any size. It?s about creating a positive Web presence to make your brand one that people trust and want to engage with. Because, as the report mentioned above shows, it doesn?t matter how great your product is ? if people don?t trust you, they won?t be interested in it.

About the Author

Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer at Outspoken Media, Inc., an SEO consulting firm that specializes in providing clients with online reputation management, social media services, and other Internet services.

Connect with Lisa Barone:

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Source: http://smallbiztrends.com/2012/01/why-online-reputation-matters-to-small-business.html

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Obama isn't the first president to serenade public (AP)

Is it too much to ask our presidents to uphold the Constitution, command the armed forces, execute the nation's laws ? AND provide us with a little musical interlude?

The question comes to mind in the wake of Barack Obama's appearance at the Apollo Theater, when the leader of the free world took a moment to channel the Rev. Al Green, singing a bar from "Let's Stay Together." The crowd (and admirers on the Internet) went nuts, reacting in a way they rarely do to, say, a veto message or a Thanksgiving Proclamation.

Obama, of course, is not the first president to show his tuneful side to the public. Through the years, commanders-in-chief have turned musicians-in-chief, with varying results.

Among them:

_RICHARD NIXON. He was no Billy Joel. And yet twice in 1974, in the last months of his doomed administration, the President Who Was Not a Crook became the President Who Was the Piano Man. He played "God Bless America" at the Grand Ole Opry, and the same tune when he accompanied singer Pearl Bailey in the East Room of the White House. The two also conspired on "Home on the Range" and "Wild Irish Rose." "You don't play as well as I sing," Bailey joked, "but I don't sing as well as you govern." She was half right.

Nixon also appeared on TV with Jack Paar in 1963, and played a little concerto of his own devising. Nixon said this would put the kibosh on his political career: "The Republicans don't want to another piano player in the White House," he said.

_HARRY TRUMAN. Nixon was referring to "Give `em Hell Harry," a Democrat who could never pass a piano without sitting down to play a few bars. In 1952, Truman conducted a nationally televised tour of the newly renovated White House and played a bit on the 1938 Steinway. The building had been condemned when a leg of piano played by his daughter Margaret, a singer whose talent was of some dispute, crashed through the floor of the decrepit mansion.

Truman also played for Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at the Potsdam Conference, neither shortening nor lengthening World War II appreciably. The man did love the piano: "My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician," he once said. "And to tell the truth, there's hardly any difference."

_THOMAS JEFFERSON. He played the violin, and not just to meet women (though that is how he came to know his harpsichord-playing wife, Martha). When he wasn't writing the Declaration of Independence or rewriting the Bible or inventing a four-sided music stand for string quartets, he made music. He played the cello and clavichord, but the violin was his instrument, and he was a ringer for several orchestras. Though often in need of money, he always refused payment.

_BILL CLINTON. William Jefferson Clinton, not yet president, took a giant step in that direction in June 1992 when he showed up with a saxophone and wraparound sunglasses to play "Heartbreak Hotel" on "The Arsenio Hall Show." "It's nice to see a Democrat blow something besides the election," quipped the host.

After he won the presidency, Clinton played with E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons at an inaugural ball. He also took a moment from an East European tour in 1994 to climb the stage of Prague's Reduta Jazz Club and play "My Funny Valentine" and "Summertime." At one point he invited Czech leader Vaclav Havel to join him; this would be remembered in political and musical history as the Two Presidents Gig.

_Many other chief executives performed, though not necessarily in public. John Quincy Adams played the flute, Chester Arthur the banjo, Woodrow Wilson the violin. Franklin Roosevelt liked to sing. And John Tyler ? of "Tippecanoe and Tyler, too" fame ? organized his 15 children in a White House minstrel band. Historian Elise Kirk says this probably included banjo, bones, drums and guitar. Plus a country fiddle.

Mercifully, no videos exist.

___

News Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120120/ap_on_re_us/us_presidents_in_tune

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Cruise ship threatens marine paradise off Italy

PORTO ERCOLE, Italy (AP) ? Stone fortresses and watchtowers that centuries ago stood guard against marauding pirates loom above pristine waters threatened by a modern peril: fuel trapped within the capsized Costa Concordia luxury liner.

A half-million gallons (2,400 tons) of heavy fuel oil is in danger of leaking out and polluting some of the Mediterranean's most unspoiled sea, where dolphins chase playfully after sailboats and fishermen's catches are so prized that wholesalers come from across Italy to scoop up cod, lobster, scampi, swordfish and other delicacies.

"Even the Caribbean has nothing on us," said Francesco Arpino, a scuba instructor in the chic port of Porto Ercole, noting how the sleek granite sea bottom helps keep visibility crystal clear even 135 feet (40 meters) down.

Divers in these transparent waters marvel at an underwater world of sea horses and red coral, while on the surface sperm whales cut through the sea.

But worry is clouding this paradise, which includes a stretch of Tuscan coastline that has been the holiday haunt of soccer and screen stars, politicians and European royals.

Rough seas hindering divers' search for bodies in the Concordia's submerged section have also delayed the start of a pumping operation expected to last weeks to remove the fuel from the ship. Floating barriers aimed at containing any spillage now surround the vessel.

According to the Dutch salvage firm Smit, which has been contracted to remove the fuel, there are about a half million gallons (2,400 tons) of heavy fuel oil on board, as well as some 200 tons of diesel oil and smaller amounts of lubricants and other environmentally hazardous materials.

The ship lies dangerously close to a drop-off point on the sea bottom. Should strong waves nudge the vessel from its precarious perch, it could plunge some 90 feet (30 meters), further complicating the pumping operation and possibly rupturing fuel tanks. Italy's environment minister has warned that if the tanks break, the thick black fuel would block sunlight vital for marine life in the seabed.

A week after the Concordia struck a reef off the island of Giglio, flipping on its side, its crippled 114,000-ton hull rests on seabed rich with an underwater prairie of sea grass vital to the ecosystem. Environmentalists warn the sheer weight of the wreckage has likely already damaged a variety of marine life, including endangered sea sponges, and crustaceans and mollusks, even before a drop of fuel leaks.

"The longer it stays there, the longer it impedes light from reaching the vegetation," said Francesco Cinelli, an ecology professor at the University of Pisa in Tuscany.

The seabed is a flourishing home to Poseidon sea grass native to the Mediterranean, Cinelli told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"Sea grass ... is to the sea what forests are to terra firma," Cinelli said. They produce oxygen and serve as a refuge for organisms to reproduce or hide from predators.

The Tuscan archipelago's seven islands are at the heart of Europe's largest marine park, extending over some 150,000 acres (60,000 hectares) of sea.

They include the islands of Elba, where Napoleon lived in exile, and Montecristo, a setting for Alexandre Dumas' novel "The Count of Monte Cristo," where rare Mediterranean monk seals have been spotted near the coast.

Montecristo has a two-year waiting list of people hoping to be among the 1,000 people annually escorted ashore by forest rangers to admire the uninhabited island. Navigation, bathing and fishing are strictly prohibited up to a half mile (one kilometer) from Montecristo's rocky, cove-dotted coast. A monastery established on the island in the 7th century was abandoned 900 years later after repeated pirate raids.

Come spring, Porto Ercole's slips will be full, with yachts dropping anchor just outside the port. A steep hill provides a panoramic view of a sprawling seaside villa, once a holiday retreat of Dutch royals, and of the crescent-shaped island of Giannutri, with its ancient Roman ruins.

Alberto Teodori, who said he has been hired as a skipper for the yachts of Rome's VIPs for 30 years, noted that the area thrives on tourism in the spring and summer and survives on fishing in the offseason.

If the Concordia's fuel should pollute the sea, "Giglio will be dead for 10, 15 years," Teodori fretted, as workers nearby shellacked the hull of an aging fishing boat.

The international ocean-advocacy group, Oceana, describes the national marine park as an "ecological diamond," favored by divers for its great variety of species.

"If the pollution gets into the water, we are ruined," said Raffaella Manno, who with her husband runs a portside counter selling fresh fish in Porto Santo Stefano, a nearby town where ferries and hydrofoils depart for Giglio.

She said fish from the archipelago's waters are prized throughout Italy for their quality and variety.

"The water is clean and the reefs are rich" for fish to feed, she said, as trucks carrying oil-removal equipment waited to board ferries to Giglio. "The priciest markets in Italy come here to buy, from Milan, Turin, even Naples."

Concordia's captain, initially jailed and then placed under house arrest in his hometown near Naples, is suspected of having deliberately deviated from the ship's route, to hug Giglio's reef-studded coastline in order to perform a kind of "salute" to amuse passengers and islanders.

The maneuver is apparently a common practice by cruise ships, environmentalists lament.

"These salutes are an established practice by the big cruise ships," said Francesco Emilio Borrelli, a Green party official from Naples. He said that the Greens have received reports of numerous such sightings by ships sailing by the Naples area islands of Capri, Ischia and Procida.

Even before the Concordia tragedy, environmentalists had railed against what they brand "sea monsters," ? massive cruise liners releasing huge amounts of greenhouse gases ? sailing perilously close to the coast to thrill the passengers aboard.

"These virtual cities put at risk the richness of biodiversity, which we must never forget is at the foundation of our very survival on Earth," said Marevivo, an Italian environmental group.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/b2f0ca3a594644ee9e50a8ec4ce2d6de/Article_2012-01-20-EU-Italy-Paradise-in-Peril/id-bc724a269f61487cb228f76a221050ee

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Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke dead at 29 (AP)

SALT LAKE CITY ? Sarah Burke was an X Games star with a grass-roots mentality ? a daredevil superpipe skier who understood the risks inherent to her sport and the debt she owed to it.

The pioneering Canadian freestyler, who helped get superpipe accepted into the Olympics, died Thursday after a Jan. 10 crash during a training run in Park City, Utah.

Burke, who lived near Whistler, in British Columbia, was 29.

Tests revealed she sustained "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released by her publicist, Nicole Wool, on behalf of the family.

A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke crashed on the same halfpipe where snowboarder Kevin Pearce sustained a traumatic brain injury during a training accident on Dec. 31, 2009.

Wool said Burke's organs and tissues were donated, as she had requested before the accident.

"The family expresses their heartfelt gratitude for the international outpouring of support they have received from all the people Sarah touched," the statement said.

A four-time Winter X Games champion, Burke will be remembered as much for the hardware she collected as the legacy she left for women in superpipe skiing, a sister sport to the more popular snowboarding brand that has turned Shaun White, Hannah Teter and others into stars.

Aware of the big role the Olympics played in pushing the Whites of the world from the fringes into the mainstream, Burke lobbied to add superpipe skiing to the Winter Games program, noting that no new infrastructure would be needed.

Her arguments won over Olympic officials and the discipline will debut at the Sochi Games in 2014, where Burke likely would have been a favorite for the gold medal.

"Sarah, in many ways, defines the sport," Peter Judge, the CEO of Canada's freestyle team, said before her death. "She's been involved since the very, very early days as one of the first people to bring skis into the pipe. She's also been very dedicated in trying to define her sport but not define herself by winning. For her, it's been about making herself the best she can be rather than comparing herself to other people."

She was, Judge said, as committed to the grass roots of the sport ? giving clinics to youngsters and working with up-and-coming competitors ? as performing at the top levels.

"She was a great, positive person for the whole team, the whole sport," said David Mirota, the Canadian team's high performance director. "She enlightens the room, and she's great."

News of Burke's death spread quickly through the action-sports world, where the Winter X Games are set to start next week in Aspen, Colo., without one of their biggest and most-beloved stars.

"She's probably one of the nicest people I've known in my life, and that's about the only thing I have to say about it," said American superpipe skier Simon Dumont, a multiple X Games medalist.

Jeremy Forster, the program director for U.S. Freeskiing and U.S. Snowboarding, said freeskiers would remember Burke "first, as a friend, and then as a competitor who constantly inspired them to do greater things."

"She was a leader in her sport, and it's a huge loss for the freeskiing community," Forster said.

"Shocked and saddened," former freestyle Olympian Jeremy Bloom said on Twitter. "Sarah was a true champion in everything that she did."

Burke's death is also sure to re-ignite the debate over safety on the halfpipe.

Pearce's injury ? he has since recovered and is back to riding on snow ? was a jarring reminder of the dangers posed to these athletes who often market themselves as devil-may-care thrillseekers but know they make their living in a far more serious, and dangerous, profession.

The sport's leaders defend the record, saying mandatory helmets and air bags used on the sides of pipes during practice and better pipe-building technology has made this a safer sport, even though the walls of the pipes have risen significantly over the past decade. They now stand at 22 feet high.

Some of the movement to the halfpipe decades ago came because racing down the mountain, the way they do in snowboardcross and skicross, was considered even more dangerous ? the conditions more unpredictable and the athletes less concerned with each other's safety.

But there are few consistent, hard-and-fast guidelines when it comes to limiting the difficulty of the tricks in the halfpipe, and as the money and fame available in the sport grew, so did the tricks. In 2010, snowboarding pioneer Jake Burton told The Associated Press that much of this was self-policed by athletes who knew where to draw the line.

"If the sport got to the point where halfpipe riding became really dangerous, I think riders would do something about it," Burton said. "It wouldn't be cool anymore."

His opinion is shared by many.

"There are inherent risks in everything," Judge said. "Certainly, freestyle skiing has one of the greatest safety records of almost any sport. Freestyle is a very safe sport in large part because we had to build a safe sport in order to get into the Olympics."

In 2009, Burke broke a vertebra in her back after landing awkwardly while competing in slopestyle at the X Games. It was her lobbying that helped get the X Games to include women's slopestyle ? where riders shoot down the mountain and over "features" including bumps and rails.

It wasn't her best event, but she felt compelled to compete because she pushed for it.. She came to terms with her injury quickly.

"I've been doing this for long time, 11 years," she said in a 2010 interview. "I've been very lucky with the injuries I've had. It's part of the game. Everybody gets hurt. Looking back on it, I'd probably do the exact same thing again."

She returned a year after that injury and kept going at the highest level, trying the toughest tricks and winning the biggest prizes.

A native of Midland, Ontario, Burke won the ESPY in 2007 as female action sports athlete of the year.

In 2010, she married another freestyle skier, Rory Bushfield, and they were headliners in a documentary film project on the Ski Channel called "Winter."

In her interview with AP two years ago, Burke reflected on the niche she'd carved out in the action-sports world.

"I think we're all doing this, first off, because we love it and want to be the best," she said. "But I also think it would've been a great opportunity, huge for myself and for skiing and for everyone, if we could've gotten into the (Vancouver) Olympics. It's sad. I mean, I'm super lucky to be where I am, but that would've been pretty awesome."

A little more than a year later, with Burke's prodding, her sport was voted in for the next Winter Games.

___

AP National Writer Eddie Pells contributed to this story from Denver.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20120119/ap_on_sp_ot/fre_obit_sarah_burke

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India, China Agree to Prevent Flareups along Border

Posted Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 11:40 am

India and China have agreed to work to prevent any flare-ups and to ensure peace along their disputed Himalayan border.

India's ambassador to China, S. Jaishankar, and China's Assistant Foreign Minister Liu Zhenmin signed an agreement in New Delhi to establish a committee on border management.

The agreement calls for both countries to strive to maintain ?peace and tranquility? along their border, and to conduct ?timely communication? about border incidents. The new committee is to meet once or twice a year.

The agreement was signed Tuesday after several days of meetings between Indian and Chinese officials.

India and China, two of the world's foremost emerging economic powers, have a history of disagreements, including unresolved border disputes. The two countries fought a brief but bloody war in 1962.

Kashmir is one source of tension between the two countries. India and Pakistan both claim full ownership of the disputed territory, which is also claimed in part by China.

The Tibetan issue is another source of tension. China has long objected to India granting asylum to the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959.

Tags: China, Correction, India, V
Posted in East Asia Pacific

Source: http://blogs.voanews.com/breaking-news/2012/01/18/india-china-agree-to-prevent-flareups-along-border-2/

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