FILE - In this June 16, 2011, file photo inductee Garth Brooks arrives at the 42nd Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards in New York. The Country music star is suing an Oklahoma hospital that he says reneged on a promise to name a building after his late mother in exchange for a $500,000 donation. The trial at the Rogers County District Court begins Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes)
FILE - In this June 16, 2011, file photo inductee Garth Brooks arrives at the 42nd Annual Songwriters Hall of Fame Awards in New York. The Country music star is suing an Oklahoma hospital that he says reneged on a promise to name a building after his late mother in exchange for a $500,000 donation. The trial at the Rogers County District Court begins Tuesday, Jan. 17, 2012. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes)
CLAREMORE, Okla. (AP) ? Garth Brooks appeared before a friendly crowd Tuesday ? the jurors who will hear his claim that an Oklahoma hospital refused to name a building for his late mother after he gave it $500,000.
Nearly everyone in the jury pool raised their hands when Brooks' lawyer asked whether they had heard of the country music star. Eight of the 18 selected for possible duty acknowledged they were fans, and several said they had attended one or more of his concerts.
Brooks claims he made the donation to Integris Canadian Valley Regional Hospital in Yukon because he believed at least some part of the facility would be named after his mother. He has sued to have the money returned.
Integris has said the donation was an "unconditional" gift and it has done nothing wrong by not naming a building after Colleen Brooks.
"Unfortunately, talks broke down or did not continue or Mr. Brooks was not satisfied with the options we were offering, and that's when he decided to sue," hospital spokesman Hardy Watkins said Tuesday before the trial began.
Dressed in blue jeans and a black cowboy hat, Brooks shook hands with lawyers and made small talk before proceedings began Tuesday afternoon. He was accompanied by his wife, country singer Trisha Yearwood, and a number of potential jurors said they were her fans too. Brooks' lawyer Peter Brolick called Yearwood "every bit the superstar" as Brooks.
Integris lawyer Terry Thomas, who indicated he was a pop music fan, asked potential jurors to ignore Brooks' celebrity and decide the case fairly.
"If Mr. Paul McCartney or a Mr. Brian Wilson were sitting there, I couldn't sit there, I just couldn't," Thomas told the prospective jurors. "That's what we're looking for here. If you're just not going to be able to determine that Mr. Brooks (is wrong), I need to know at this point."
None of the potential jurors were removed from consideration. The judge swore 12 jurors in and planned to pick an alternate. Opening statements begin Wednesday.
Brooks lives near Owasso, a Tulsa suburb, and is originally from Yukon, near Oklahoma City. His lawyer said the case features "one of the biggest country music stars that ever lived vs. the largest health care system in Oklahoma."
According to the lawsuit, hospital officials showed Brooks mock-ups of buildings bearing his mother's name and told him his donation was earmarked for such a project. Brooks' mother died of cancer in 1999.
In a statement prior to jury selection Tuesday, Brooks' spokeswoman said the musician was "stunned and hurt" by the company's failure to name anything for her.
Watkins, the vice president of marketing and communications for Integris Health, said Tuesday that hospital officials had several discussions with Brooks about naming options ? including for a women's center and even renaming the hospital itself ? in the two years after the donation was made. The naming options ranged from $250,000 to $15 million, Watkins said.
Watkins said Brooks' $500,000 donation, made in 2005, remains unspent in a hospital account and that the hospital followed all IRS guidelines governing donor giving.
"We certainly recognize Mr. Brooks is an amazing ambassador for Oklahoma, and a very accomplished star in his own right," he said. "We certainly wish it did not have to come to this."
(Reuters) ? Taylor Swift says her new album will be about an "absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak," prompting speculation in the media that the latest subject of her songwriting skills may be her short-lived 2010 crush on Jake Gyllenhaal.
Swift, 22, whose "Dear John" song was seen as a bitter ode to ex-boyfriend John Mayer, told Vogue magazine that she was working on her fourth album, and is currently single.
The country-pop crossover artist, who famously wears her heart on her songwriter's sleeve, said that writing about past loves is a way to ease the pain.
"There's just been this earth-shattering, not recent, but absolute crash-and-burn heartbreak and that will turn out to be what the next album is about," she told Vogue in a cover story for its February edition.
"The only way that I can feel better about myself -- pull myself out of that awful pain of losing someone -- is writing songs about it to get some sort of clarity," she said.
Swift dated "Brokeback Mountain" star Gyllenhaal for about three months in late 2010 before their much-photographed relationship ended suddenly around the Christmas holidays that year. U.S. celebrity magazines claimed that Gyllenhaal had ended the relationship because he was unhappy at the attention the couple was generating.
Swift told Vogue she did not feel like dating at the moment. "I really have this great life right now, and I'm not sad and I'm not crying this Christmas, so I am really stoked about that."
Asked whether she was crying last Christmas, Swift replied, "I am not gonna go into it! It's a sad story!"
Swift gave no details, but media speculation over whom she was talking about quickly fell on Gyllenhaal, her last known relationship.
The Grammy-winning young singer's previous romances with "Twilight" actor Taylor Lautner and singer Joe Jonas are widely thought to have inspired her songs "Back to December" and "Forever and Always".
"I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid," she told Vogue. But she said she had learned some of the romantic pitfalls to avoid, including obsessive privacy.
"I can't deal with someone who's obsessed with privacy. People kind of care if there are two famous people dating. But no one cares that much. If you care about privacy to the point where we need to dig a tunnel under this restaurant so that we can leave? I can't do that," she said.
(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)
The Apache Tomcat developers are advising users of the 7.0.x, 6.0.x and 5.5.x branches of the Java servlet and JSP container to update to the latest released versions 7.0.23, 6.0.35 and 5.5.35. Recent investigations revealed inefficiencies in how large numbers of parameters and parameter values were handled by Tomcat.
Analysis of the recent hash collision denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability had allowed the developers to identify "unrelated inefficiencies" which could be exploited by a specially crafted request, causing large amounts of CPU to be consumed. To address the issue, the developers modified the code to efficiently process large numbers of parameters and values.
The project has been quietly releasing the fixes to the Tomcat code; 7.0.23 appeared at the end of November 2011 and 6.0.35 arrived at the start of December. Now that they have released an update to last of the currently supported versions, 5.5.35, the developers have published their advisory. Users who have yet not updated can download version 7.0.23, version 6.0.35 and version 5.5.35 from the Apache Tomcat site.
See also:
Editor's note: This story is a corrected version of an early story.
Thought you were all done for new products and first looks? Think again. Looks like Numark is trying to stay ahead of the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) curve, outing its new Traktor-specific 4Trak DJ controller a few days before the show. Its N6 and N7 Serato-flavored devices have been well received, so it's no surprise the DJ stalwart made one for the other dominant mixing software. On board there's a four channel mixer, four-deck control, touch-strip track search, high resolution platters and a veritable flight deck of 1:1 hardware / software controls. See that tilted section up top? It's actually a separate clamp-on "FX Kommand Console" (for controlling effects, unsurprisingly) that comes bundled in the box; an unusual, yet welcome variation. If this sounds like your cup of awesome, you could be spinning with it as soon as the end of Q1. You'll need to lay down the estimated $1099 street price, but that does include a custom version of Traktor. Still interested? Tap the PR over the break for the full run down.
Powering electric vehicles with sunlightPublic release date: 17-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sean Nealon sean.nealon@ucr.edu 951-827-1287 University of California - Riverside
University and partners receive $2 million award to build solar arrays, advanced battery storage, vehicle charging stations and an electric trolley
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) The Riverside area will become a leader in powering electric vehicles from the sun under a $2 million award to the Center for Environmental Research and Technology at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering.
The two-year project, supported by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and involving a number of public and private partners, will build solar arrays, advanced battery storage, vehicle charging stations, an electric trolley, and a grid management system to provide clean energy to clean vehicles efficiently.
The funding, approved Jan. 6, will allow the university to install up to two megawatts of solar arrays and two megawatt hours of lithium battery storage systems at three locations on and near the UC Riverside campus. The solar energy will be used to charge vehicles directly at several sites on campus and additional sites throughout Riverside.
In partnership with the City of Riverside and Riverside Public Utilities, UC Riverside engineers will design methods to direct the solar energy to electric vehicle charging in a way that minimizes loads on the grid and demands for electricity generated from non-renewable resources. The system will support the growth in manufacturing and demand for plug-in electric vehicles.
Additionally, UC Riverside plans to convert a trolley from diesel to electric power to shuttle students and area residents around UC Riverside.
"This major effort further propels the city of Riverside and UC Riverside to the forefront of green energy technology," said Matthew Barth, the director of the Center for Environmental Research and Technology and the principal investigator on the $2 million grant.
The project is one of eight funded by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. In total, the district is committing more than $12 million to renewable energy generation, distribution, and storage projects throughout Southern California.
"We're pleased that AQMD recognized the benefits of this project," said Reza Abbaschian, dean of the Bourns College of Engineering. "This is yet another example of our commitment to smart-grid energy solutions that integrate solar energy generation, battery storage, and distribution that are at the core of the mission of CE-CERT and our new Winston Chung Global Energy Center."
The Winston Chung Global Energy Center is a new venture funded by Chinese inventor, entrepreneur and Fellow of the College Winston Chung. Chung's company, Winston Global Energy, will donate 2-megawatts of rare earth lithium-ion batteries for the project.
Bourns, Inc., which is adjacent CE-CERT, will provide the property for the solar installation, and SolarMax, a partner with the college in a number of research projects, will provide the solar panels.
Balqon, a manufacturer of heavy duty electric vehicles, will assist in the conversion of the trolley and in the installation of the battery storage, charging and distribution system. A similar 1.1-megawatt system is currently being tested by Balqon and CE-CERT researchers in advance of its being used to help power Winston Chung Hall on the UCR campus.
The AQMD project is a unique collaboration between the CE-CERT, its industry partners and the City of Riverside, Riverside Public Utilities and Riverside Transit Agency.
"This project will allow us to help the City of Riverside make a huge leap toward in realizing its Green Action Plan," Abbaschian said. "Our research capabilities, combined with the expertise and resources of our industry and municipal agency partners, promises to provide clean, renewable energy solutions in the years ahead."
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Powering electric vehicles with sunlightPublic release date: 17-Jan-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Sean Nealon sean.nealon@ucr.edu 951-827-1287 University of California - Riverside
University and partners receive $2 million award to build solar arrays, advanced battery storage, vehicle charging stations and an electric trolley
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (www.ucr.edu) The Riverside area will become a leader in powering electric vehicles from the sun under a $2 million award to the Center for Environmental Research and Technology at the University of California, Riverside's Bourns College of Engineering.
The two-year project, supported by the South Coast Air Quality Management District and involving a number of public and private partners, will build solar arrays, advanced battery storage, vehicle charging stations, an electric trolley, and a grid management system to provide clean energy to clean vehicles efficiently.
The funding, approved Jan. 6, will allow the university to install up to two megawatts of solar arrays and two megawatt hours of lithium battery storage systems at three locations on and near the UC Riverside campus. The solar energy will be used to charge vehicles directly at several sites on campus and additional sites throughout Riverside.
In partnership with the City of Riverside and Riverside Public Utilities, UC Riverside engineers will design methods to direct the solar energy to electric vehicle charging in a way that minimizes loads on the grid and demands for electricity generated from non-renewable resources. The system will support the growth in manufacturing and demand for plug-in electric vehicles.
Additionally, UC Riverside plans to convert a trolley from diesel to electric power to shuttle students and area residents around UC Riverside.
"This major effort further propels the city of Riverside and UC Riverside to the forefront of green energy technology," said Matthew Barth, the director of the Center for Environmental Research and Technology and the principal investigator on the $2 million grant.
The project is one of eight funded by the South Coast Air Quality Management District. In total, the district is committing more than $12 million to renewable energy generation, distribution, and storage projects throughout Southern California.
"We're pleased that AQMD recognized the benefits of this project," said Reza Abbaschian, dean of the Bourns College of Engineering. "This is yet another example of our commitment to smart-grid energy solutions that integrate solar energy generation, battery storage, and distribution that are at the core of the mission of CE-CERT and our new Winston Chung Global Energy Center."
The Winston Chung Global Energy Center is a new venture funded by Chinese inventor, entrepreneur and Fellow of the College Winston Chung. Chung's company, Winston Global Energy, will donate 2-megawatts of rare earth lithium-ion batteries for the project.
Bourns, Inc., which is adjacent CE-CERT, will provide the property for the solar installation, and SolarMax, a partner with the college in a number of research projects, will provide the solar panels.
Balqon, a manufacturer of heavy duty electric vehicles, will assist in the conversion of the trolley and in the installation of the battery storage, charging and distribution system. A similar 1.1-megawatt system is currently being tested by Balqon and CE-CERT researchers in advance of its being used to help power Winston Chung Hall on the UCR campus.
The AQMD project is a unique collaboration between the CE-CERT, its industry partners and the City of Riverside, Riverside Public Utilities and Riverside Transit Agency.
"This project will allow us to help the City of Riverside make a huge leap toward in realizing its Green Action Plan," Abbaschian said. "Our research capabilities, combined with the expertise and resources of our industry and municipal agency partners, promises to provide clean, renewable energy solutions in the years ahead."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The uncertainties of the economy and stock markets over the past decade have created an attitude of ?spend now, rather than lose it in the future.? One New Jersey investment expert calls that wrong-headed thinking.
Mercer County investing expert Ken Kamen says one of the legacies of the past ten years? which he calls the, ?flat decade? for markets? is that some have lost faith in investing and saving. Kamen says it would be the mistake of your life. He says just like economies, markets have a way of leveling out.
He says there are no magic bullets, it is all about homework and patience. Kamen says, ?it is boring, no one likes to hear that. But the truth of the matter is, savings is an important thing, and investing in equities is just one place to put your savings.?
Kamen says, ?save or invest whatever you can.?
He points out that many industries, most especially technology, will continue to grow in the future, so those who invest with those industries will likely grow their investments. Kamen also points out that as the middle class spreads around the world, more people are going to create a demand for the products that we have in America, and that speaks well for the growth trends looking forward.
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WASHINGTON?? Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry on Sunday accused the Obama administration of "over-the-top rhetoric" and "disdain for the military" in its condemnation of a video that purportedly shows four Marines urinating on corpses in Afghanistan.
Perry's comments put him at odds with Sen. John McCain, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who said the images could damage the war effort.
"The Marine Corps prides itself that we don't lower ourselves to the level of the enemy," McCain said when asked about Perry's position. "So it makes me sad more than anything else, because ... I can't tell you how wonderful these people (Marines) are. And it hurts their reputation and their image."
No one has been charged in the case, but officials in the U.S. and abroad have called for swift punishment of the four Marines. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that he worried the video could be used by the Taliban to undermine peace talks.
Other political news of note
Huntsman to drop out of GOP race
Campaign sources say he will support Mitt Romney.
Huntsman wins key SC newspaper endorsement
Perry: Marines in video are 'kids,' not criminals
Santorum on Romney ad: 'Yuck'
Gingrich goes to the dogs with Romney reference
A military criminal investigation and an internal Marine Corps review are under way. The Geneva Conventions forbid the desecration of the dead.
Texas Gov. Perry said the Marines involved should be reprimanded but not prosecuted on criminal charges.
"Obviously, 18-, 19-year-old kids make stupid mistakes all too often. And that's what's occurred here," Perry told CNN's "State of the Union."
He later added: "What's really disturbing to me is the kind of over-the-top rhetoric from this administration and their disdain for the military."
Later appearing on the same show, McCain said he disagreed.
"We're trying to win the hearts and minds" of the Afghanistan population, he said. "And when something like that comes up, it obviously harms that ability."
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Public release date: 17-Jan-2012
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