Haith, others may wait months for Miami resolution

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (AP) ? When Frank Haith first spoke this week about the allegations against him as part of the NCAA's investigation into Miami, the Missouri basketball coach talked about how relieved he is that the long process is nearing an end.

That may be wishful thinking.

The NCAA has told Haith and others involved in the Miami matter that their cases may not be heard until July ? so any penalties that are forthcoming might not arrive until next fall, at least.

On Wednesday, Missouri released documents that the NCAA sent Haith as part of the notice of allegations against Miami, where he coached from 2004 through 2011. Two key dates jump out in the NCAA's planning: May 20, when responses by those named in the allegations are due, and an undetermined period in July ? when the governing body for college athletics is planning to convene its Committee on Infractions.

That is, "unless all parties ... agree to a shortened response time," the NCAA said.

And that could happen. If not, this long saga ? which most people weren't aware of until August 2011, though in actuality started nearly a year earlier ? may just keep dragging along.

That doesn't mean progress isn't happening. Miami President Donna Shalala is expected to talk to the infractions committee during their meeting later this week ? she'll be on the phone and it's not expected to be "a formal hearing for Miami at this point," said a person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the information was not to be publicly released.

The AP reported Tuesday night, when the NCAA's allegations were delivered to Miami, that Haith was hit with a charge of failure "to promote an atmosphere for compliance." Missouri confirmed that Wednesday.

The charge stems from his actions when former booster and convicted felon Nevin Shapiro ? whose claims sparked this investigation ? allegedly wanted money in exchange for not going public with accusations that he paid to help the Hurricanes recruit a player. The same accusation also included Jake Morton, a former member of Haith's staff at Miami.

"After learning of the threat, Haith failed to alert anyone in the athletics department administration about Shapiro's threat, ask reasonable questions of Morton to ensure that Shapiro's claim lacked merit or disclose the fact that Morton engaged in financial dealings with Shapiro," read Haith's portion of the notice of allegations. "Rather, Haith gave Morton funds that Morton then provided to Shapiro."

Missouri has been told by the NCAA that it does not face any possible sanctions, but that Haith's ability to coach may be affected "if he is found in violation" of rules.

"Missouri, while not a subject of this NCAA investigation, will continue to monitor the process," the school said in a release.

Haith is one of a handful of former Miami coaches who were named in the report. Another former member of his staff, Jorge Fernandez, is one of three former Hurricanes assistants who the NCAA believe provided false or misleading information during the probe into the Hurricanes' athletic department.

Also on that list with Fernandez: Former football assistants Clint Hurtt, now a coach at Louisville, and former Miami and Florida football assistant Aubrey Hill.

The NCAA said all three violated "principles of ethical conduct" as part of the notice of allegations served against the Hurricanes, according to a person who spoke to The AP on condition of anonymity because the allegations were not yet released publicly.

Other coaches are named or referenced in the allegations, but only Hurtt, Hill and Fernandez are facing the ethical-conduct charge, commonly known as NCAA Rule 10.1.

Miami is facing the charge that it had a "lack of institutional control" ? one of the worst things the NCAA can levy against a member school. The charge revolves around how the school allegedly failed to monitor the conduct of Shapiro, a convicted Ponzi scheme architect who provided cash, gifts and other items to players, coaches and recruits.

Shalala's stance is that Miami has already suffered enough through self-imposed sanctions. She declined to comment further on Wednesday.

The NCAA alleged Hurtt and Hill provided meals, transportation and lodging to a small number of recruits, current players, or both. Both were interviewed by the NCAA during the probe and allegedly denied providing those extra benefits, statements the NCAA said were contradicted by players.

Hurtt also took a $2,500 personal loan from Shapiro, which was repaid. The NCAA also believes he sent about 40 impermissible text messages to recruits.

Fernandez, the NCAA alleged, "knowingly provided extra benefits" in the form of an air ticket. The NCAA said Fernandez denied using air miles for the tickets for a men's basketball player and a high school coach, despite evidence to the contrary.

Several other former Miami coaches are named in the allegations as well, including Morton, who the NCAA said accepted "supplemental income" of at least $6,000 from Shapiro. Morton is now on the staff at Western Kentucky.

Also named in the report is former Miami football assistant Joe Pannunzio, who was found to have sent about 30 impermissible text messages. Pannunzio is now on the staff at Alabama, and is not believed to be facing major penalties.

Some of the allegations in the NCAA's letter are more than 10 years old, including one in which Shapiro allegedly bought a suit for former Miami star running back Willis McGahee to wear to the Heisman Trophy ceremony in 2002.

Other allegations include that he paid for dinners at Benihana, televisions, sneakers, Miami Heat tickets, bowling parties, one player's engagement ring, a used washer-dryer set for current New England Patriots lineman Vince Wilfork, and that he directed his girlfriend to give two former Hurricanes no-show jobs for a couple of months.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/haith-others-may-wait-months-miami-resolution-081505403--spt.html

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The Brick That Went From Ancient Rome to a Fort in Washington State

How did a Roman brick from the British Isles get to Washington state's Fort Vancouver?

Fort Vancouver Historical National Historic Site

At some moment a few years after Jesus Christ died but before the second century began, someone made a brick on the island that would become the cornerstone of Great Britain. The area was controlled by Rome then, and known as?Britannia? and as the brick lay green, awaiting the kiln, a cat walked across the wet clay and left its footprints before wandering off to do something else. The clay was fired, the prints fixed, and the brick itself presumably became a piece of a building or road.

Two thousand years later, a Sonoma State master's student named Kristin Converse was poking around the holdings of the Fort Vancouver National Historic Site in Washington state. She was writing her thesis on the business and technology of brickmaking in Portlandia (known more formally as the Willamette Valley). A brick caught her eye. It was part of an odd group that was not of local origin. In one corner, there were the footprints of a cat. Where had this cat lived??

Back in 1982, the bricks in question had been examined by an archaeologist named Karl Gurcke who specializes in the identification of bricks. "The only bricks that come near to matching this type in size are the so-called 'Roman' bricks," Gurcke wrote in a report on excavations at Fort Vancouver. This suggested that the "type may indeed be Roman in origin," and that they were "shipped over from England."

Converse tested the presumed Roman bricks, using a process called neutron activation analysis, which allows scientists to determine the elemental components of a material. Bricks made from different clays and at different times show particular chemical signatures, so she could compare bricks from the Fort to bricks from Endland. "They tested very well like Roman bricks from England," Bob Cromwell, an archaeologist at Fort Vancouver told me. "It is still a hypothesis, but the data is all pointing in that direction: the size and the elemental analysis compares very favorably with definitive Roman bricks."

The question became, then, how did a Roman brick from the British Isles get to Fort Vancouver?

Fort Vancouver Historical National Historic Site

The answer: the mercantile empire of the Hudson's Bay Company, a commercial entity substantially older than the United States, having been incorporated in 1670. The Company controlled the entire Pacific Northwest under a local company official known as the Chief Factor. Although after 1818, the region was nominally under the shared control of the U.S. and Britain, the only real western power was the Hudson's Bay Company, and the only real resources it could draw on came from its global network of trading ships and outposts.

Fort Vancouver was the seat of the Company's west coast operations. It was established in the winter of 1824-1825 on the banks of the Columbia River, a few miles north of what would become Portland, Oregon. With the Willamette and the Columbia right there, it was like setting up shop at the intersection of two major highways. But despite the great location and abundant resources of the region, they didn't actually have the equipment or know-how to do a lot of things.?

While there were roughly 25 Native American tribes in the region, there were not any brickmakers among them, which meant there weren't any bricks. So, the Hudson's Bay Company, which ran the Fort, had to order them from a world away.

"You can certainly bring over brickmakers to look at the local lays and the Columbia River silts are great for making common brick. But at the time, when they are out there establishing their post, if they want some brick for their chimney, there just isn't any,"?Gurcke said, when I reached him at his job with the Park Service in Skagway, Alaska.?"So they ship them from, in this case, England. We do have some records of them shipping bricks very early from England."

It often took two years for the bricks to reach the Fort, which is one reason that many brickmakers sprung up in later decades.?Converse, in fact, found several spots in the Willamette Valley that could have provided bricks to Fort Vancouver in later decades as settlers arriving via the Oregon Trail figured out that the little city was a good market.?

But those are hard stories to tell, as Converse discovered, because the early brickyards?have long since been built over with houses and TGIFriday's. She can prove that many bricks at Fort Vancouver were made from Willamette Valley clay, but it's hard to say more.

It's almost easier to tell the global story than it is to tell the local one because the strangeness of the material can be pinpointed more easily. For example, the mortars that were used to cement bricks together were made from Hawaiian corals.

"They had a trading station at Oahu, harvesting coral, and shipping it here," Cromwell said. "We have bricks with this coral mortar still adhering to it. They would break up the coral, mix it with sand and water and you'd have an instant mortar."

And none of this is to mention "the Village," which sprung up outside the Fort and housed up to 600 people from all over the world including "English, French-Canadian, Scottish, Irish, Hawaiian, Iroquois, and people from over 30 different regional Native American groups." They learned to speak Chinook Jargon, a mixture of Chinook, English, and French. Every once in a while, Cromwell told me, people from other European nations would show up, too, or a few Japanese sailors would come by after having been shipwrecked.

So to make a lowly chimney in some house in the employee village near the Fort, you might have Roman bricks, mortared together with Hawaiian coral, and built with the labor of a?Portuguese?worker or an Iroquois visitor. Globalization! And it was the middle of the 19th century: Mark Twain was still a child.

What's fascinating, too, is that this story can be told with an almost unthinkably mundane object, the common brick, which turns out to be uncommon if you look hard enough.

"At a glance, bricks appear all alike, yet upon examination, they can exhibit a frustrating degree of variation. Unbranded bricks in particular provide an unsatisfying ratio of information gained to curation space occupied, and many excavated bricks went unrecorded, uncollected, and even discarded," Converse notes in her master's thesis, with just a note of despair. "Yet bricks have a story to tell if we can coax it from them, and contain potential information regarding the development of industry, trade networks, construction techniques, resource utilization, and even attitudes and status."

And sometimes, they tell you a story about a mischievous cat whose imprint traveled all the way around the world, then ended up in a museum. Which I learned about because Cara Tramontano?tweeted it?after words started going around?about another cat who left his imprint on a southeastern European scribe's work from March 11, 1445.?

Where, exactly, do the epistemology books cover this sort of thing? I'm sure I'll find out soon, after a cat walks across someone's keyboard and accidentally tweets me a link to a letter by a philosopher who will turn out to be my mother's cousin's best friend, and the world expert on serendipity in Jacksonian America.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Best-Of-The-Atlantic/~3/2rf5W0waYD8/story01.htm

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Witness: 'Non-stop shouting' at Pistorius home

PRETORIA (Reuters) - A witness heard "non-stop shouting" coming from the home of Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius shortly before his girlfriend was shot dead, the lead detective in the murder investigation said on Wednesday.

Warrant officer Hilton Botha, a detective with 24 years on the force, also told the Pretoria magistrates court that Pistorius' girlfriend, model and law graduate Reeva Steenkamp, was hit by three bullets, in the head, elbow and hip.

Pistorius, a double amputee known as the "Blade Runner", broke down in tears as Botha presented his testimony.

The shooting has stunned South Africa and the millions around the world who saw the track glory of the athlete, who had no lower legs, as an inspiring tale of triumph over adversity.

Steenkamp was in a locked toilet adjoining Pistorius' bathroom when she was shot in the early hours of Thursday last week. Botha said the angle at which the shots were fired through the door suggested the shooter had aimed specifically to hit somebody on the toilet.

Botha, who arrived at the scene at 0415 local time (0215 GMT) to find Steenkamp dead at the bottom of the stairs, also said police had found unlicensed .38 ammunition in Pistorius' house in an upmarket gated compound north of Pretoria.

In an affidavit delivered on Tuesday, Pistorius said he used to sleep with a 9-mm pistol under his bed and had grabbed it when he awoke in the middle of the night thinking an intruder had climbed through his bathroom window and entered the toilet.

The 26-year-old then described how he fired into the door in a blind panic, in the belief the intruder was lurking in the toilet.

He said he and Steenkamp, 30, had been asleep in bed before he woke up.

In contrast, lead prosecutor Gerrie Nel painted a picture of a premeditated killing, a crime which carries a life sentence in South Africa. "If I arm myself, walk a distance and murder a person, that is premeditated," he told the packed courtroom on Tuesday.

The bail hearing is expected to conclude by the end of the week.

(Reporting by David Dolan; Editing by Ed Cropley and Pravin Char)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pistorius-bail-hearing-restarts-pretoria-081412153--finance.html

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Autopsy confirms Mindy McCready's death as suicide

FILE - In this undated file photo, country singer Mindy McCready performs in Nashville, Tenn. McCready, who hit the top of the country charts before personal problems sidetracked her career, died Sunday, Feb. 17, 2013. She was 37. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

FILE - In this undated file photo, country singer Mindy McCready performs in Nashville, Tenn. McCready, who hit the top of the country charts before personal problems sidetracked her career, died Sunday, Feb. 17, 2013. She was 37. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey, File)

HEBER SPRINGS, Ark. (AP) ? Authorities in Arkansas say preliminary autopsy results confirm country music singer Mindy McCready's death was a suicide.

The Cleburne County sheriff said in a statement Wednesday that preliminary autopsy results from Arkansas' state crime lab show McCready's death was a suicide from a single gunshot wound to the head.

Investigators have said McCready apparently shot and killed her late boyfriend's dog before she turned the gun on herself Sunday at her home in Heber Springs, Ark. Authorities found McCready's body and the dog on the front porch where her longtime boyfriend, musician David Wilson, died last month of a gunshot wound to the head.

Authorities are investigating Wilson's death as a suicide but haven't determined an official cause of death yet.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-02-20-US-McCready-Death/id-9275063e1b924254bb96926b9c3d33e6

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SwiftKey turns 4, brings 'flow' gesture typing to prime time

The folks at SwiftKey have made a hell of a good keyboard for Android phones and tablets. They've garnered numerous awards for it, from names like the GSMA, Fast Company, and our very own Editor's Choice awards for two years running. We're on record saying it's simply the best all around predictive text keyboard money can buy. There's a reason SwiftKey has sold over 2,000,000 copies and has over 70,000 5-star ratings in Google Play.

When they debuted their beta versions of SwiftKey Flow, which incorporates swiping gestures into the keyboard, folks fell in love with it all over again. It was a swiping keyboard, with great autocorrect and personalized predictions that seemed to read our minds.

SwiftKey has finalized things and they have released SwiftKey 4. It's on sale for $1.99 (it's normally a $3.99 app) if you don't already have SwiftKey, and it's a free upgrade for everybody who has already purchased. SwiftKey 4 incorporates "the flow" on top of the great features we're already using, and it just works. Ask anyone who has been using the beta builds -- you want this keyboard. Grab it from the Google Play link above, or install the tablet version from Google Play here. 

read more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/androidcentral/~3/364P_zhxymI/story01.htm

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Rob Kardashian Explains Rita Ora Bashing as Form of Self-Protection

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2013/02/rob-kardashian-explains-rita-ora-bashing-as-form-of-self-protect/

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Katy Perry Requested Not To Be Seated Near Rihanna At The Grammys

Katy Perry Requested Not To Be Seated Near Rihanna At The Grammys

Katy Perry and Rihanna are definitely not BFFs anymore, with Perry purposely avoiding RiRi at the Grammy Awards on Sunday. The former good friend, who had a falling out over Rihanna’s reconciliation with Chris Brown last October, are apparently not speaking to one another anymore. Katy Perry made a special request to make sure she ...

Katy Perry Requested Not To Be Seated Near Rihanna At The Grammys Stupid Celebrities Gossip Stupid Celebrities Gossip News

Source: http://stupidcelebrities.net/2013/02/katy-perry-requested-not-to-be-seated-near-rihanna-at-the-grammys/

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