Watch full size video:

NEW ORLEANS

John Gagliano, chief investigator for the New Orleans coroner’s place of business, says the body of Mark Mercer IV was spotted by a longshoreman at 2:30 a.m. today. Gagliano ruled the cause of debt of nature was drowning.

Family and friends utter Mercer was a musician and producer who was in New Orleans to attend the Pot Luck Audio Conference, a series of panels and workshops on the point the recording industry.

He had spent the last 18 months producing a record with the Seattle-based band Mass Phantoms.

Mercer was with friends on June 9 sitting on a reception near the ferry landing. They take for granted he boarded the ferry, ran to the vessel level and jumped over the rails in the sight of his friends could stop him.

They say that when the ferry band threw him life rings, Mercer refused to grab hold for the reason that he wanted to play around in the water and swim, apparently thinking he was terminate enough to the bank to swim back.

BOSTON (Reuters) - The Boston Celtics captured a record 17th NBA championship by trouncing the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 adhering Tuesday to seal the best-of-seven title series 4-2. PUBLICIDAD

Watch full size video:

The Game Six win clinched the first championship for the Celtics since the Larry Bird series 22 years ago. Hundreds of Celtics fans jammed the street on the surface Boston Garden to celebrate, some smashing storefront windows before dozens of police in riot gear dispersed the crowd.

Playing in the shadow of 16 championship banners hanging from the rafters, Boston took control of the game in the second quarter and stretched a four-point lead into a 58-35 superior situation by the intermission.

The Lakers never got closer than 23 points after halftime.

"We challenged them before the fearless, for one time, let's play 48 minutes of defense, regular all-out, denials, challenge shots," said Celtics coach Doc Rivers.

"Tonight we once for all lay it simultaneously on the perfect night to do it, offensively and defensively.

"It was just perfect."

Off-season acquisitions Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen each had 26 points to leadership the Celtics, Allen hitting seven-of-nine from three-point range. Paul Pierce had 17 points for the Celtics and was named the MVP of the championship series.

"I'm not living under the shadows of the other greats now," said Pierce, who averaged 21.8 points over the six games and showered Rivers with Gatorade in the dauntless's final moments. "I'm able to make my own history with my time here.

"If I was going to be one of the best Celtics to ever play, I had to steer up a banner. And today we did that."

'WHERES KOBE?'

A insane green and white-clad crowd at the Garden roared in unison "Beat L.A." and "Where's Kobe?' from the opening tip till the conclusive buzzer.

Lakers watchman Kobe Bryant opened by haste but fizzled. The confederate MVP had 11 points after the opening be stationed still only three free throws in the stand by when the Celtics took rule.

He finished with 22 points but hit solely seven of 22 shots and committed four turnovers in the rout.

"I'm startle more than anything, frustrated," said Bryant. "But I'm proud. I'm proud of the way we performed all year."

The Celtics, with Hall of Famers Bill Russell and John Havlicek looking on, foiled the Lakers' double-team on Pierce by finding the open man together the perimeter for the shot.

The Celtics' defense did its part, shutting down the Lakers' vaunted offense for much of the game and forcing 19 turnovers. The Celtics committed only seven.

Boston built an 89-60 lead by the start of the fourth quarter to clown the raucous crowd in a some one temper.

The Celtics, who celebrated their last title in 1986 when Bird was the MVP, outrebounded the Lakers at both ends of the floor.

"Everybody is disappointed that we didn't make a game out of this, accord. ourselves a chance," said Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who distracted his bid with regard to a 10th designate. "They took us out of what we probably to do."

At the close of the game, Garnett, who spent 12 seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves without contending for a title, hugged Russell, who won 11 championships during his 13-year career in Boston.

"I got my own, I got my own," he said in Russell's ear.

(Editing by Peter Rutherford)

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will never abandon to some "illegitimate" question by major world powers that it hold uranium enrichment, Iran's state radio on Wednesday quoted the country's envoy to the U.N. atomic watchdog as saying. Watch full size video:

"Iran will never give in to the illegitimate and illegal pressure of the West (to freeze its uranium enrichment)," said Ali Asghar Soltanieh in a speech in London about the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The EU's top diplomat, Javier Solana, presented Tehran on Saturday with a new package of economic incentives designed to persuade it to curb its nuclear work, which the West fears is aimed a building a nuclear weapon.

Solana said Iran should stop enrichment during negotiations to implement the offer.

The package agreed by the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany last month and delivered by Solana is a revised version of one rejected by Iran in 2006.

The U.N. Security Council has hit Iran with three rounds of sanctions for refusing to halt its enrichment work, as demanded by the council.

Western powers have warned Iran it would face more sanctions if it spurns the offer. So far Iran has shown no sign it will change its position, and suggested it was in no hurry to respond to the latest offer.

As a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran insists it has the right to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, including enriching uranium, for peaceful purposes.

It says it wants only electricity from enriched uranium, a process that provides fuel for power plants or, if concentrated to heighten the enrichment level, atomic bombs.

Watch full greatness video:

Military Judge Col. Steven Folsom dropped all charges against Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani, who was accused of violating a lawful order and desertion of duty, at a audience at the Camp Pendleton Marine base in Southern California.

Folsom's decision means that, out of eight Marines originally charged in December 2006, six have won dismissals of their charges and human being has been cleared at court martial.

The accused ringleader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, still faces court martial. The proceedings against him, however, have been put on hold depending the seek reference of the case of a pretrial ruling.

Folsom threw out the charges to counter-poise Chessani, a 44-year-old Colorado native, after finding that a four-star general who oversaw the cause could have been influenced by an searcher who later became his adviser.

The judge ruled that military prosecutors could refile the case but it was not immediately clear if they would do so. The prosecution could also appeal his chief.

Chessani's lawyer said the conjugal father of six young children and his legal team were "cautiously optimistic" that his two-year legal battle was behind him and that he could depart.

"We hope its over. We convinced it should be over," attorney Brain Rooney said.

Chessani was the highest-ranking official accused of wrongdoing in the shootings at Haditha, which were first reported in Time magazine and portrayed by Iraqi witnesses as a "massacre" of unarmed civilians.

The witnesses claimed resentful Marines killed the two twelve men, women and children out of take vengeance for after a favorite comrade, Lance Cpl. Miguel "TJ" Terrazas, died in a roadside bombing.

The reports brought international condemnation on U.S. body of troops in Iraq and famously inspired Rep. John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania and reviewer of the war, to charge that the Marines had killed the civilians "in cold blood."

Defense attorneys said the civilians died during a pitched battle with insurgents in and around Haditha that followed the death of Terrazas.

Rooney said that the fact that seven of the eight Marines had been cleared or no longer faced charges proved that the events at Haditha were "not the butchery that Time magazine and John Murtha made it out to be."

"We've had to spree through a two-year process to assay what we knew from the beginning," he said. "You need to trust to what your battlefield commanders are telling you and give them the benefit of the doubt."

(Editing by the agency of Mary Milliken and Cynthia Osterman)

Watch filled size video:

ANAHEIM, Calif. — Once he decided to fire Willie Randolph, New York Mets general manager Omar Minaya caught a flight to the West Coast, went to the team inn and waited to deliver the word in person.

“Eye to eye,” Minaya said Tuesday. “It was done quick.”

Even if it seemed to take at all times.

The late-night hit came as chants of “Fire Willie!” grew louder at Shea Stadium and forward New York’s sports talk radio stations. Yet when Minaya did that, the news shocked most everyone — fans, media and even Randolph.

“I’m really stunned by it,” the ex-manager said Tuesday. “I was surprised by dint of. it.”

Bench coach Jerry Manuel, a former American League Manager of the Year toward the Chicago White Sox, will manage the Mets for the rest of the year.

Randolph, 53, became the first manager in the majors to be fired this season, the move announced in some e-mail at 12:14 a.m. PDT Tuesday. He was dismissed by the Mets below .500, still wobbling from last year’s colossal collapse and speculation about his job status growing every day.

The tension went on “alienated too long,” Minaya declared. “It was not candid to the team, it was not fair to Willie Randolph, it was not fair to the organization.”

Pitching coach Rick Peterson and first-base coach Tom Nieto also were fired.

Minaya said he made the judgment Monday and stressed it was his alone. He met with Randolph after that night’s 9-6 win over the Los Angeles Angels left the Mets at 34-35.

“I think he was resigned to it,” Minaya said. “When wholly is declared and done, I think he was relieved.”

Minaya uttered it would have been discourteous to fire a manager while he was still in uniform. Instead, Minaya said he waited to use for conversing to Randolph let us go. from the ballpark.

Watch full bulk video:

CHICAGO

As consumers muddle through everything that is plaguing the economy, they have battened below the horizon the hatches and vigorously shifted their spending habits, turning to money-saving options that pressure the gamut from transportation to hale condition as they find ways to be a good investment towards dramatic increases in gasoline and food.

What emerges is a new example of consumerism that some experts believe resoluteness live slow after the economy recovers.

“Suddenly consumers are focused in succession buying what they have to have as opposed to buying what they desideratum to have,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a New York retail consulting and investment-banking solid.

“This is a permanent change for Americans, who will assurance a declining standard of living over the next 20 years,” he added.

Consider this: Truck and SUV sales are losing air quickly but sales of hybrids and fuel-efficient car are holding their own. Sales of scooters, which can shroud twice as much ground on a four quarts of gasoline as America’s favorite Toyota Camry sedan, are gaining as fast as prices at the pump.

Sales at sphere of duty and specialty stores have been in the dumps but drugstores and most deep-discount stores are in rally mode as more people opt for stores closer to home and those perceived as value giants.

Meanwhile, Jo-Ann Fabrics delivered surprisingly strong first-quarter earnings after a stretch of dark results, thanks in part to strong sales of sewing notions, quilting and craft items.

Same is true for Michael’s Arts and Crafts, suggesting consumers are going back to the basics as they spend more time at home.

At the grocery, the soaring costs for chicken, fresh strawberries and beans are leading consumers to the frozen- and canned-foods aisles at what place the prices are more savory on the side of a family of five. Even Spam is making a comeback.

“This is impacting each single American lawful now,” said Dan Houston, president of Principal Financial Group. “No single in kind’s immune.”

Phil Rist, a principal at Ohio-based BIGresearch who has been appraising consumer attitudes and patterns in spite of some time, agrees with Houston and has consumer surveys to back it up. “Even the rich are bitching,” he said.

A customer-service rep is poorly educated, but no one last will and testament answer the questions he still has. It’s a good way to lose clients—and employees

by Liz Ryan

Watch full size video:

My friend Nathan took a new job recently, and he’s been giving me the play-by-play. It’s fascinating to have a ringside seat as he gets up to speed on his new responsibilities, but I’m sorry to say that things aren’t going very well. The superintendent has made it clear that he doesn’t like to be bothered with Nathan’s questions.

"I’ve asked each of my co-workers three or four questions cropped land," Nathan told me. "I’m actually keeping track of whom I’ve approached for help, so I don’t keep bugging the same family. There are plenty of times when the whole department is on the phone or in a junction, and then I have no preference but to ask my boss, Jules, for help. I can hardly stand to dial his number and hear his long exhalation as he picks up the phone. ‘What is it NOW, Nathan?’ is his standard greeting."

"I slip on’t understand," I uttered to Nathan. "Didn’t they followers you?"

"Sure they did," said Nate, "in unit marathon five-hour don’t-get-out-of-your-seat training session, in front of a computer. There’s a test to take at the end of it, when I was completely brain-dead. And before that there was a three-hour orientation where a guy stood up in front of the room and rattled off facts over the company health plan. It was mind-numbing."

"So you don’t remember anything from the computer training?" I asked.

The Training Catch-22

"The criterion at the end gives you the answer allowing that you young lady it the first time," said Nathan. "After eight hours without a break or a flour or a chance to draw out my legs, I was just trying to achieve through that test and be reckoned home, so whenever I got the wrong answer, I permit the computer tell me the right one and I entered it. I didn’t retain more than 10%, and now I’m dealing through live customers and complex situations."

It’s no secret that teaching budgets hold been slashed, except companies puissance exist surprised to hang around the cubes and listen in to perceive by the ear what damage that budget-mindedness has done to client relationships. Nathan said he was supposed to have further training with a specialist, but the specialist called in sick and that was the end of it. Without the proper training, he feels in the same manner as he has no choice but to term his master-workman, who gets steamed. And so do the customers Nate can’t help.

"I had two mob hang up on me today and they’re both greater accounts," he told me.

Coaching Programs Don’t Happen on Their Own

I’m shocked that organizations would view the preparation of frontline customer-facing employees as a low priority, but decimating training budgets is a time-honored way to save money in the short run.

I understand the reflecting is "If we don’t bestow vulgar herd the product and process training they need to do their jobs, they’ll teach one another." And ideally, that is what should happen. Employees can subsist fantastic coaches and mentors to one another. But good coaching and mentoring programs are designed; they don’t just happen on their own. They especially dress in’t just betide when employees are pressed in the place of particular period, with multiple large accounts to employment.

Jules, the boss who doesn’t like to be bothered, is missing a harsh reality. When a conductor is too busy to help abroad a subordinate who needs information, three bad things happen. One is that the employee isn’t able to help a client the way he’d like to.

The No. 2 ill effect is that a client is left less than delighted at the visitors’s service level. No. 3 may be the worst of all. The employee, frustrated in his attempts to shape out how things drudge, gives up. He goes through the motions, figuring "If the partnership won’t train me appropriately and the manager won’t take my calls, what else can I carry into effect?" The service aim drops to the bare minimum.

Setting a Customer-Service Example

Busy managers have existence possible to be forgiven for bristling then employees hit them with "tell me how," "tell me what," and "tell me who" each 10 seconds. But admitting that we managers slip on’t coach our employees, who pleasure? If everybody has been trained to a T and given profusion of post-training resources to refer to at the time their memories not answer the expectation of them, then a manager can be forgiven for saying, "Don’t you have your training manual from last week’s workshop? You’ll remember this better if you look it up."

But if the breeding doesn’t exist or isn’t sufficient to fill the need, then a manager’s help is a customer-facing employee’s last concourse. When we respond harshly to the employee’s appeals for help, we’re truly saying, "Figure it to the end on your own." Hearing that enough times, lots of employees will reason "He’s the master-workman, and he doesn’t care about the customer’s satisfaction—so why should I?"

Conventional wisdom says the community make different jobs for pay and perks, but being left poorly equipped to do a job is a huge source of worker frustration. Luckily, in that place’s any yielding question managers can ask their teams in order to make one’s self acquainted with how well employees are prepared for a job’s challenges: Do you possess the complaint you need to get your job done, most or nearly all of the term? If the answer is yea, then you know that whatever issues you may have to surmount, employee readiness isn’t one of them.

If the answer is no, at smallest you’ll be sure about your problem before it bites you. Even 15 minutes a day of group or one-on-one refresher training can frame a huge difference, giving employees a chance to get their burning questions answered. That’s cost 15 minutes of your particular period, isn’t it?

Watch full size video:

A neighbor across the hall from Diana Martin’s second-floor unit in the Roanoke Terrace chamber building led her to safety Monday afternoon.

Her 12-year-old tabby cat, Fitzgerald, was overcome by means of smoke and resuscitated at the scene by Seattle firefighters.

At least three of the units in the 16-unit, four-story apartment building in the 2600 block of Eastlake Avenue East were heavily damaged by the blaze that Seattle Fire Department spokeswoman Helen Fitzpatrick said appeared to have spread from the balcony of Martin’s one-bedroom unit, on the southerly espouse a cause of the building.

The call came in shortly after 5:30 p.m. Firefighters arrived to find heavy wicked emptiness pouring from the unit and fire extending up the building outside to the third and fourth floors.

Martin, in her 60s, said she was watching television in the bedroom when she was roused by the neighbor, Chris Sumption, who also pulled the fire alarm in the erection, which does not have a sprinkler arrangement, according to residents. “I saw flames on my deck,” Martin before-mentioned.

After being resuscitated with an oxygen subterfuge, Martin’s masculine cat was taken to a veterinarian for treatment. “We know in what condition important pets are to people, so we have basic pet oxygen masks in three different sizes,” Fitzpatrick declared.

Martin said she has lived in the building conducive to brace decades. Fitzpatrick said the fire was sparked by a cigarette discarded in a planter pot forward the second-floor unit’s deck. Loss had not been determined.

Watch well stocked size video:

Seattle Times news services

BOSTON — The best player was no match for the with most propriety team.

Even Kobe Bryant couldn’t solve Boston’s suffocating defense in the NBA Finals, what one. ended Tuesday night when the Celtics crushed the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 in Game 6.

“I’ve seen some moderately beautiful stiff ones, and this was right up in that place with them,” Bryant related of the Celtics’ defense. “They definitely were the best defense I’ve seen in the entire playoffs.”

Bryant finished with 22 points, but shot only 7 of 22 from the field and was quiet after a sizzling start for the second straight game.

He averaged 31.9 points end the first three rounds, tops amidst all players in the postseason. But the Celtics limited him to 25.7 per intrepid and 40 percent shooting, rotating a number of defenders on him and making sure there was always cure behind allowing that Bryant did try to get to the basket.

And there was no one else to pick up the slack. Lamar Odom didn’t have a tract of land goal until the fourth quarter of Game 6, when the Lakers were already down by 29 points. Pau Gasol took just seven shots and finished with 11 points — and he was their second-leading scorer until deep in the fourth quarter, whereas Odom went to work adverse to the reserves who played the last few minutes while Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen were busy celebrating on the sideline.

With the Lakers’ season on the line, Jackson left Bryant onward the floor for the entire advance quarter, instead of his usual break early in the period. Maybe the residue would desire been a more completely idea.

Bryant missed all four shots and committed two turnovers in the limit, whenever the scheme was decided after Boston outscored Los Angeles 34-15. And at what time he desperately needed his teammates to pick him up, the rest of the Lakers combined in spite of just three field goals in the period, and the Celtics had a commanding 58-35 lead by means of the time it was over.

“They broke the game when they got ahead by 23 points at halftime and we didn’t respond to it,” Gasol said.

Pierce not headed for Beijing

Despite how well Pierce played in the NBA Finals, USA Basketball reiterated that it isn’t going to add him to its Beijing Olympics team, managing director Jerry Colangelo reported Tuesday.

Amid high demand for Firefox 3, Mozilla prepares its open-source software to capture on Microsoft, Google, and a universe of cell-phone confusion

by Steve Hamm

Watch well stocked size video:

When Mozilla releases its Firefox 3 browser update June 17, it hopes to set the first-ever Guinness world record for number of Internet software downloads in 24 hours. The target: 5 million. That would be quite a feat, ago the last Firefox update netted just 1.6 million downloads. But it’s none mission impossible. Firefox 3 speeds up browsing and adds a host of improvements, including the ability to suit to your preferences similar to you use it. Over the past half-decade, Mozilla, an open-source software company, has gained grassroots act from some 170 million users and amassed any 18% worldwide market share, according to Web metrics outfit Net Applications. In the train, it has broken Microsoft’s (MSFT) grip on the critical browser place of traffic.

Yet just as Mozilla girds for download madness, Web browsing is entering a new phase: It’s about to explode in succession cell phones. Until now, expressive browsing has been frustrating—slow, text-heavy, and hard to navigate. But improvements in software, processing power, conceal weak glue, and networking bandwidth are expected to boost the number of high-performance browsers on new changeable phones from 76 million last year to 694 million in 2013, according to market researcher ABI Research. "There’s a allot of achievement to come," says ABI analyst Michael Wolf.

Not to be left abaft, Mozilla is readying a changeable version of Firefox 3 for release later this year. One of its aims is to make it easy on the side of vulgar herd to shift from browsing on their PC to browsing on their mobile and to pick up where they left off. "There’s a lot of extent for helping people get to Web sites and have rich browsing experiences," says Jay Sullivan, head of Mozilla’s changeable initiative.

STEERING THE USER

Mozilla’s impending entry into variable browsing highlights the rigid differences between the PC and mobile-phone worlds. Desktop browsing was ruled first by pioneer Netscape Communications (TWX) and then by dint of. Microsoft, whose Internet Explorer captured a 95% place of traffic share ahead of transgression to 74% today. The mobile browser market is fragmented, in part because telecom carriers, handset companies, and software makers all have a say in which browser technologies end up adhering phones. Chaos rules, with dozens of mobile browsers in use. Norway’s Opera Software is the guide in advanced browsers for smartphones, while Silicon Valley’s Openwave (OPWV) is the leader in low-end browsers. Only one thing seems certain: No company will dominate the way Microsoft formerly did in PC browsers. Even Microsoft seems reconciled to the situation. "It’s in regard to the consumer choosing and us not dictating," says Scott Rockfeld, a Microsoft assemblage product manager.

Browser software doesn’t generate much revenue. Mozilla collects fees from search companies for embedding their search in its browsers. But browsers matter strategically to companies because they’re the means by dint of. which users navigate the Web. If one company dominates, it can power of impelling where people go and what they see. Browsers also matter tremendously to consumers for they have a major impact on their Internet experiences.

Right now the vast majority of expressive browsers are text-only programs that tap into limited Web sites designed especially for mobile phones. Apple’s (AAPL) introduction of the iPhone a year ago showed that graphics and moderate use could acquire being achieved without ceasing a handset. Now competitors are racing to companion or beat the experience adhering the iPhone, which uses Apple’s Safari browser. Apple continues to race ahead, having just announced a new iPhone with faster networking. Each player has its own approach. Opera, for instance, enables people to access normal Web sites and zoom in on information that particularly interests them. Nokia (NOK), the leading handset maker through a 40% worldwide mart share, uses different browsers for different types of devices. "There are a hazard of options," says Ari Jaaksi, a Nokia vice-president.

ADVANTAGE: MOZILLA

The uncertainty about which technologies will eventually triumph leaves Web site operators, handset makers, and telecom carriers stuck making difficult decisions about which technologies to offer. For consumers, that means trouble. Some Web sites are a breeze to navigate via cell phone, at the same time that others are nearly impossible. There’s pressure steady the industry to take to one’s self standard technologies that would improve compatibility betwixt browsers and Web sites.

This gives Mozilla an advantage. Firefox is designed to work smoothly with other open-source software, and open-source technology is emerging as a popular choice for handsets because companies can interest the costs and results. Last month, Mozilla became the first browser specialist to join the LiMo Foundation, a consortium of industry leaders that are collaborating on a mobile-phone software package that is based without interruption the Linux operating system. However, Mozilla’s new browser isn’t included in Google’s (GOOG) open-source software package for mobiles, called Android. For Mozilla, this nearest chapter in Internet computing will entail fierce competition on multiple fronts.