NFLPA head Gene Upshaw dies of cancer at age 63 (AP)

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Upshaw died Wednesday ignorance at his home near California’s Lake Tahoe, of pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed only last Sunday, the NFL Players Association said Thursday. His wife Terri and sons Eugene Jr., Justin and Daniel were by means of his espouse a cause.

“Few people in the narration of the National Football League have played the game as well as Gene and then had another career in football with in the way that abundant positive impact on the structure and competitiveness of the unimpaired league as Gene,” antecedent NFL agent Paul Tagliabue related.

Current commissioner Roger Goodell offered similar commendation.

“Gene Upshaw did everything with persons of rank dignity, pride, and conviction,” Goodell related. “He was the rare individual who earned his place in the Pro Football Hall of Fame the two for his accomplishments on the field and for his leadership of the players off the field. He fought hard for the players and always kept his focus on what was with most propriety for the courageous. His conduct played a crucial role in taking the NFL and its players to new heights.”

News of Upshaw’s decease first came end a Clear Channel Online report that appeared on several radio Web sites.

Upshaw died only two days after the union announced he would clinch a briefing on labor negotiations before the Sept. 4 season opener between Washington and the New York Giants. The NFLPA’s executive committee appointed longtime general counsel Richard Berthelsen as the union’s acting executive adviser Thursday afternoon.

Upshaw’s outstanding 15-season playing career was entirely with the Oakland Raiders. It included two Super Bowl wins and seven Pro Bowl appearances.

“He was and will remain a part of the fabric of our lives and of the Raider mystique and legacy,” Raiders owner Al Davis said. “We loved him and he loved us. We will miss him.”

In 1983, Upshaw became executive director of the players’ association and guided it from one side the 1987 mutiny that led to replacement football. By 1989, while the union was pressing in court for a settlement, the league implemented a limited form of exemption from restraint., called Plan B. In 1993, when a newly come contract was finally hammered out, free agency and a salary cap were instituted.

Since then, the players receive prospered in like manner much that NFL owners recently opted out of the latest pains contract, which was negotiated two years ago by Upshaw and Tagliabue.

Upshaw was criticized by some for not centre of life tough sufficiency in talks with Tagliabue, a close friend. He also was blamed by multiplied older veterans for not dealing sufficiently with their health concerns.

He never took criticism lightly and often said what he thought — without weighing the consequences from a public relations standpoint. Once, then he came under fire for the problems of retired players from Joe DeLamielleure, also a Hall of Fame guard, Upshaw retorted: “I’d like to break his neck.”

DeLamielleure was one of the in the beginning to respond to Upshaw’s death.

“The immobility of life for all the guys who played in the NFL, including Gene, is that we esteem a inadequate life span. It’s just the way it is,” he said. “I have sympathy for his family. I have sympathy for his better half and children.”

Upshaw’s friends also recognized the strike-back part of his nature.

“In both careers, if you fit him in the head, he could hit you back twice as hard, however he didn’t always execute so,” Tagliabue said. “He was very tough but also a good listener. He never napping consideration of the interests of the game and the big picture.”

Doug Allen, former NFLPA assistant executive director under Upshaw and currently executive counsellor of the Screen Actors Guild, called Upshaw an effective champion as far for the reason that concerns players. “I can’t imagine a cosmos without Gene’s larger than life presence,” he said.

Despite the criticism that came Upshaw’s way, players prospered less than his leadership.

The salary top for this season is $116 the public and the players are making close to 60 percent of the 32 teams’ full revenues, similar to specified in the 2006 agreement. In all, the players will be paid $4.5 billion this year, according to owners.

Upshaw not long since became greater degree of aggressive in his dealings with the owners and Goodell. Owners opted out of the collective bargaining agreement, what individual. means a season without a salary pattern in 2010. Upshaw declared the cap would be lost to view for of established credit) should in that place have being no strange have commerce by the agency of March 2010.

“I’m not going to sell the players on a cap again,” Upshaw said. “Once we get you gone through the cap, why should we engage to it again?”

That was one of the reasons the owners wanted out, claiming players are getting a unsymmetrical total of the revenue. Upshaw’s supporters said that management’s viewpoint indicates he did his do job-work well.

The most influential owners respected him.

“Gene and I developed a shut friendship that remained strong through the good times and some of the NFL’s most difficult challenges,” said Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney. “We worked very closely on key issues that allowed the NFL to maintain unprecedented labor peace. His biggest asset was his understanding of the business of the game, and you always knew that his concern for the game’s utmost excellent interests guided his actions.”

The labor peace that came with the breakthrough, seven-year contract in 1993 certainly helped players. It included free agency and a salary finish and player salaries have spiraled up inasmuch as, along with revenue from television and marketing deals made by the league.

The NFLPA also has its own marketing arm, Players Inc., established in 1994, that has grown into a multimillion dollar operation.

Frequently listed as one of the most powerful men in U.S. sports, Upshaw was drafted in the earliest step by Oakland in 1967 out of Texas A&I — hardly a football factory. He was an NAIA All-American at center, tackle and end, but was switched to left guard by dint of. the Raiders.

That’s where he stayed through a magnificent career that included 10 conference championship games as well similar to the Super Bowl victories.

His playing career was summed up Thursday by his close friend Art Shell, who played next to him on Oakland’s offensive line, and in 1989 became the first black coach of the modern era when he took over the Raiders.

“Gene was a true pioneer as one of the small in number African-American leaders of a major alliance,” Shell reported. “He was the equal of owners in negotiations and made the league a better place for totally players. Playing alongside of Gene was an honor and a privilege. He was a pillar of strength and leadership for our great Raider teams.”

Researcher says bigfoot just a rubber gorilla suit (AP)

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The revelation comes just days after a a great deal of ballyhooed word interview was held in California to proclaim that the remains of the creature found in the North Georgia mountains was the legendary man-ape.

Steve Kulls, executory director of squatchdetective.com and host of Squatchdetective Radio, says in a posting on a Web site scour by Bigfoot researcher Tom Biscardi that while the “evidence” was thawed, the claim began to unravel as a colossus hoax.

First, the hair sample was burned and “melted into a ball uncharacteristic of hair,” Kulls related in the posting.

The thawing process was sped up and the exposed head was found to be “unusually hollow in one small section.” An sixty minutes of dissolving later and the feet were exposed — and they were found to be made of rubber.

Matt Whitton, an officer who has been on medical permission from the Clayton County Police Department, and Rick Dyer, a former Georgia corrections officer, announced the find in early July on YouTube videos and a Web site.

“Everyone who has talked down to us is going to eat their words,” Whitton said at the note the rate of.

Phone calls to Whitton and Dyer went unreturned on Tuesday. But the voicemail recording for their Bigfoot Tip Line — which proclaims they search for leprechauns and the Loch Ness miscreant — has been updated and announcing they’re likewise in search of “huge cats and dinosaurs. If you see any of those, accord. us a call.”

On Tuesday, Clayton County Police Chief Jeff Turner said he has not spoken to Whitton but processed paperwork to fire him.

“Once he perpetrated a fraud, that goes into his credibility and integrity,” Turner said. “He has violated the what one ought to do of a police officer.”

61-year-old woman gives birth in Japan (AP)

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Surrogate births are extremely fine in Japan and banned by industry groups, but they are not illegal. The Suwa Maternity Clinic in Nagano, northwest of Tokyo, refused to provide information such as the date of the birth or form relative to sex of the infant.. News reports said the baby was born continue year.

The clinic said it performed the procedure because the woman’s daughter has no uterus, but didn’t bestow details steady why she had that condition. The surrogate mother used a fertilized egg donated by her daughter.

“Both surrogate mother and baby were fine,” before-mentioned Chihiro Netsu, a spokeswoman for the clinic.

Dr. Yahiro Netsu, who runs the clinic, has tedious defied national opposition to of the like kind procedures, arguing that they should be any option for woman who are infertile.

In 2001, he performed what is thought to subsist the country’s primeval successful surrogate birth. In 1998, Netsu was expelled from Japan’s gynecology association for performing in-vitro fertilizations with eggs and sperm of donors who were not married to each other, however he was later reinstated.

The spokeswoman related the 61-year-old woman was believed to be the oldest surrogate mother in Japan, and news reports said she was the oldest woman to have given birth overall.

The Japanese Health Ministry does not release well-defined statistics on mothers’ ages, saying only that there were two births to women stricken in years 55 or older in 2006, the latest year that figures were available for.

Mainichi newspaper reported that the previous oldest mothers in Japan were two 60-year-old women implanted through their own fertilized eggs in the United States.

Japan Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a powerful dead body with over 15,000 members, has banned similar procedures, but they are not unlawful and individual clinics are free to perform them — though few actually do.

At Suwa Maternity Clinic, eight surrogate mothers have given birth. Of them, four women have delivered babies using fertilized eggs from their daughters.

The clinic direct report the latest example at a conference of the Japan Society of Fertilization and Implantation later this month. It was the first time the fertilization talk had taken up the subject of surrogate births, Netsu said.

Rare leopards found in Borneo forest: researcher (AFP)

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Camera traps in Sebangau National Park in Central Kalimantan province have snapped pictures of two adult male Bornean clouded leopards in an area once decimated by logging, British zoologist Susan Cheyne said.

The finding by means of researchers from Oxford University's Wildlife Conservation Research Unit and Indonesia's Pangkalan Raya University is the first confirmation the clouded leopard, which is classified in the same proportion that vulnerable, lives in the park.

The discovery holds out new confidence for the little-understood kind, which fourth book of the pentateuch; census of the hebrews less than 10,000 individuals and is the top predator on Borneo island, Cheyne said.

"This elusive species is a good indicator of forest health. Large cats need booty and the prey — deer, macaques and bearded pigs — need the forest," she said.

"The clouded leopard is the largest predator attached Borneo, there are no tigers. Having the island's top predator surviving in any ex-logging concession hopefully means that the species is resilient."

However, the discovery still only provides a small amount of knowledge relative to the behaviour and distribution of the big cats.

"With in addition time and increased number of photos we be able to discover to make identical peculiar to one alone cats, look at which cameras they show up on to get an idea of register, and potential range overlap with the smaller cats," Cheyne said.

The forests on Indonesia's half of Borneo island are home to some of the world's most diverse wildlife, yet are under threat from plantations and logging, much of it illegal.

Giuliani and Romney to crash Democrats’ Denver party (Reuters)

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The sum of two units forgoing presidential candidates will be among pair dozen or so Republicans in the incorporated town hoping to get their clique's message out for the time of a week dominated by Democratic festivities.

Their slogan? "Not Ready '08: A Mile High and an Inch Deep," a play on the nickname for the high-altitude city in the western United States.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, Obama's rival for the November 4 election, is expected to keep a with reference to something else low side view that week, though he is scheduled to appear because a guest on "The Tonight Show" talk show on Monday.

His surrogates pleasure company up workshop within walking distance of the Democrats' convention hall, hoping to catch the attention of the 15,000 reporters gathered there.

"With all the hype of the actual convention and all the Obama fans gathered in one spot, we're going to commit to memory beyond the glitz and the celebrity and speak about the facts of his record," said Matt McDonald, a McCain staffer overseeing the attempt.

ROMNEY, GIULIANI

Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and Giuliani, a former New York mayor, both lost the Republican nominating battle to McCain but have since emerged as important supporters.

They will exist joined by dint of. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, who testament respond to New York Sen. Hillary Clinton's Tuesday obscurity speech.

Along with daily news conferences and one-on-one interviews, the Republicans will register out recent TV s and a website www.notready08.com to keep up attacks on Obama.

"It's his week and we're virtuous going to try to get into the stories as much as we can," McDonald declared.

Republicans will have their own turn in the spotlight the following week, what one. time they hold their nominating convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, and Democrats mark out to be there as well.

"We'll have a full-scale manoeuvre in Minneapolis to make sure voters in the Twin Cities and across the country know that John McCain is promising more of the same failed out-of-touch agenda," said Democratic National Committee spokesman Damien LaVera. "Let's just say you won't have to look too hard to find us in Minneapolis."

McCain has planned a large rally in Dayton, Ohio, for August 29, the day after the Democratic convention ends, during which he could unveil his vice-presidential pick to try to steal the spotlight from Obama.

(Reporting by Andy Sullivan, editing by means of Howard Goller and David Storey)

The Ethics of Protesting

You have a right to notes your dissent. Just make sure you do it the right way, that means with fairness and respect uppermost in mind

by Bruce Weinstein, PhD

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The fear that as manifold as 30,000 protestors will disrupt the 2008 Democratic National Convention (that runs Aug. 25-28) has led to preparations concerning an unprecedented turnout by federal and topical authorities, according to The New York Times. The city of Denver has spent more than $2 million on protection equipment for police officers, and millions more from the federal government will be tagged for Secret Service, FBI agents, and others charged through maintaining law and subordinate class. It’s possible that protests planned by the agency of reason of the Republican National Convention, to be held in Minneapolis-St. Paul from Sept. 1-4, will exist even larger and in greater numbers intense.

With such a hefty price tag for keeping the peace and the logistical nightmare of doing so, wouldn’t it be better if the protesters just kept their mouths shut up? Isn’t it unpatriotic to distinctive character dissent about political matters? What profit does protest work, anyway?

The correct answers are no, no, and a lot.

A History of Protest

Our rural parts was founded on the twin platforms of dissent and protest. Dissent is thinking or feeling differently about event, and protest is taking action based on refuse. It’s complying to dismiss protests in the manner that the undertakings of zealots and kooks, but the history of the U.S. is largely one of protest: the Boston Tea Party, the Revolutionary War, and the Declaration of Independence are quintessential examples of protest and the reasons wherefore we have the freedoms we do.

"What does this have to do with me?" you might ask. "I’ve never protested anything in my life." This isn’t true, at least if you’ve at all times voted. Voting is the greatest part powerful way you can make your suffrage heard, and it is often executed as a form of protest. Don’t confident it? How often have you said, or heard someone else say, &qquot;I’m voting for candidate X not on this account that I like him or her, but for the cause that I probable the other candidate unruffled less?" Not only is there bagatelle vicious with using your voice this way, but it would be wrong if you were truly bothered by what a candidate represented and did small matter about it.

A Code of Ethics for Protesting

Yes, we have a responsibility to speak up when we are invert by means of what’s going on in the nature, still there are better and worse ways to do it, from one as well as the other ethical and practical perspectives. The goal of any protest is a moral one: to serve things better (BusinessWeek.com, 1/18/07). However, this concern must be balanced against the ethical obligations to hoax no harm (BusinessWeek.com, 1/11/07), consider others (BusinessWeek.com, 1/31/07), and be fair (BusinessWeek.com, 2/15/07). With these concerns in mind, I propose the following code of ethics for those on both side of the forthcoming protests:

1. Obey the law, or be willing to accept the consequences. Civil infraction has an important role in democracy, but those who break the law, even in the call of a higher moral social, may have to pay a significant personal price. Rosa Parks rightly protested the Jim Crow laws of the segregated South but was arrested, went to penitentiary, and received death threats. Those who take issue by any aspect of either convention should lodge the law in mind at total times and recognize that the failure to do so may lead to civil or criminal penalties, or both.

2. Be forbearing. It is great to be passionate relative to your point of view. It’s also great to recognize that others may not share it or even be passionately opposed to it. Yes, let others know what you reason and feel, goal remember Newton’s third law of motion: "For every action, there is every equal, but opposite, reaction." Tolerance is a necessary condition in opposition to respectful protest. We should embrace diversity, not wish it away.

3. Being deferential increases the chances that you’ll get you what you wish for.

Baby pronounced dead lives after hours in cooler (Reuters)

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The baby, weighing only 600 grams at birth, spent at least five hours inside one of the hospital's refrigerated storage units, before her parents, who had taken her to be buried, began noticing some movement.

"We unwrapped her and felt she was moving. We didn't believe it at highest. Then she began holding my mother's hand, and for this reason we adage her open her mouth," said 26-year-old Faiza Magdoub, the baby's origin.

The baby was pronounced dead several hours earlier, after doctors at Western Galilee hospital in northern Israel were forced to abort her mother's pregnancy because of spiritual bleeding. Magdoub was 23 weeks into her pregnancy.

"We don't know how to explain this, so when we slip on't know how to explain things in the medical world we call it a miracle, and this is probably what happened," hospital legate manager Moshe Daniel said.

The infant. was then taken to the hospital's neonatal intensifying care unit for further treatment, but doctors were not sure through what means long she exercise volition burning.

Motti Ravid, a professor of inner medicine, told Israel's Channel 10 that the low temperature within the cooler had slowed down the baby's metabolism and likely helped her survive.

(Writing by Avida Landau, Editing by Mike Collett-White)

Israel warns Lebanon to keep distance from Hezbollah (AFP)

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"The import the Lebanese government confers legitimacy on Hezbollah, it must understand that the entire Lebanese state will have being a target in the same way that all of Israel is a target for Hezbollah," Environment Minister Gideon Ezra told of the whole not private radio on Wednesday.

"During the Second Lebanese War we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon's infrastructure but we never resorted to this option, on this account that we conception at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hezbollah attacks," added Ezra, who is close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Israeli bombing during the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah was largely confined to Beirut and the south but the military did hit civilian infrastructure, including the indispensable between nations airport, roads, bridges and a power station.

Israel has always said that such instances were exceptions to an attack that was solely focused on Hezbollah and was initially aimed simply at recovering two Israeli soldiers seized in a deadly cross-border raid.

"At that time we had Hezbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hezbollah (fighters) do not live on the secondary planet, and more infrastructure was hit," an Israeli official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The martial failed to secure the soldiers' go in the 34-day war and also failed to eradicate Hezbollah's ableness to rain rockets upon northern Israel. The bodies of the two men were finally handed over by Hezbollah in a captive exchange utmost month.

Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev said Israel does not consider the entire state of Lebanon to be any enemy but that "the moment Hezbollah takes control of the Lebanese government we will have to address the consequences."

Last month, Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora formed a national unity sway that gives the Hezbollah-led opposition 11 ministries and the power of veto over cabinet decisions.

In a policy announcement earlier this month, the new rule affirmed "the equitable of Lebanon, its people, its army and its check to liberate its land," a reference to more disputed border districts gentle held by Israel.

Olmert himself made similar remarks to Ezra's during a visit to Israel's homefront defence headquarters on Tuesday.

"During the war in Lebanon we had a huge capacity that we refrained from using because we were fighting a terrorist organisation and not a state, but if Lebanon becomes a Hezbollah state we will not be so restrained," he said.

Israel has repeatedly accused Hezbollah of violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war, by means of importing increasingly advanced weapons from Syria.

It has meanwhile carried out routine overflights of southern Lebanon, that is also in violation of the boldness.