Hilly Kristal, the founder of New York punk rock club CBGB, which helped make the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads stars, has died at age 75, his daughter said on Wednesday. Kristal died on Tuesday from complications of lung cancer, his daughter, Lisa Kristal Burgman, said.
Maria Sharapova produced another display of fearsome big hitting to roll into the US Open third round on Thursday, while top American hopes Andy Roddick and James Blake struggled to stay on course. The 20-year-old Russian glamour girl opened her shoulders to blast past overmatched Australian Casey Dellaqua 6-1, 6-0 in just 51 minutes.
Rafael Nadal struggled on a sore left knee past unheralded Australian Alun Jones on Wednesday to reach the second round of the US Open, but his bid for a third Grand Slam final in a row appears doomed. Severe tendinitis slowed the second-ranked Spaniard, who escaped with a 7-5, 3-6, 6-4, 6-1 victory after two hours and 44 minutes over a 123rd-ranked wild card.
Still struggling to rebuild, New Orleans on Wednesday mourned the loss of about 1 500 lives when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the coast two years ago, as United States President George Bush vowed better days lay ahead. Scores of tiny hand bells tinkled as the city’s prominent mayor, Ray Nagin, led a poignant memorial service to the dead.
An award-winning children’s book based on the true story of two male penguins that raised a baby penguin has topped the list of works attracting complaints from parents, library patrons and others, the American Library Association said on Tuesday. And Tango Makes Three is the first of 546 works on the list.
United States Republican Senator Larry Craig on Tuesday vehemently denied he was gay, despite pleading guilty after being arrested by police probing lewd incidents in an airport bathroom. Craig (62) was arrested in the Midwestern city of Minneapolis-St Paul in June by a plainclothes police officer.
A new email urging recipients to watch a video of themselves on YouTube actually directs them to a fake site that infects their computers and turns them into spam machines, security experts have warned. A hacker group known as ”Storm Botnet” began dispersing the emails over the weekend.
Yahoo! has introduced new features for its popular web-based email program, including software that allows computer users to type text messages on a keyboard and send them directly to someone’s cellphone. The enhancements make it easier to send email, instant messages or SMSs from a single website.
Microsoft will send out replacement parts for its Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel after 50 reports that the video-game controllers overheated and released smoke when plugged in, the software maker said last week. The steering-wheel-shaped controllers mimic the physical sensations of race-car driving.
Maria Sharapova opened the defence of her United States Open crown in commanding style on Tuesday by overpowering Italy’s Roberta Vinci 6-0, 6-1 in less than an hour. There were wins also for two former New York champions, Martina Hingis and Svetlana Kuznetsova, and for Andy Roddick, among others.
World number ones Roger Federer and Justine Henin breezed over qualifiers on Monday into the second round of the United States Open, while reigning grand-slam champions Serena and Venus Williams also advanced handily. Three-time defending champion Federer defeated American Scoville Jenkins in 92 minutes.
Steve Stricker ended a six-year victory drought on Sunday with birdies on the last three holes to give him a two-stroke win over KJ Choi of South Korea at the Barclays Classic. Stricker (40) stood two over par for the day through the first 13 holes, but charged back with four birdies over the last five holes for a two-under-par 69 and a total of 16-under-par 268.
Mother Teresa’s hidden faith struggle, laid bare in a new book that shows she felt alone and separated from God, is forcing a re-examination of one of the world’s best-known religious figures. Roman Catholic scholars argue that her struggles make her more accessible and her work all the more remarkable.
Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience. The phone, which combines an innovative touch-screen interface with the media-playing abilities of the iPod, is currently sold only in the United States.
United States President George Bush signalled on Saturday his unwillingness to consider early US troop reductions in Iraq, saying new offensive operations were just in their ”early stages”. The statement followed a fervent plea by John Warner, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, who publicly asked the president to initiate at least a symbolic withdrawal.
KJ Choi, who is having a career year on the PGA Tour, fired a 66 to take a two-shot lead after the second round of the -million Barclays Classic tournament on Friday. The 37-year-old South Korean star shot 64 on Thursday and has now rolled in 12 birdies over the first two rounds to reach 12-under-par 130 at the Westchester Country Club course.
On the campaign trail or in the debating chamber, there’s just no escaping it. Like the spectre at the feast, the Iraq war is dominating the White House race in a contest in which every word counts. The eight hopefuls chasing the Democratic Party nomination for the 2008 elections to replace President George Bush seem united in their calls to end the unpopular conflict.
Britain’s Tim Henman, who reached six Grand Slam semifinals in a 14-year career, announced his retirement from tennis on Thursday. The 32-year-old, who reached the Wimbledon semifinals on four occasions, said his last tournament will be Great Britain’s Davis Cup tie against Croatia at the All England Club from September 21 to 23.
Eve Ensler has just returned from hell. That is how the author of The Vagina Monologues describes her trip to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), where tens of thousands of women have been sexually attacked and mutilated in the African nation’s civil war.
The United States Justice Department is giving Britain’s largest airline a break, even as it faces one the largest antitrust fines in years. Representatives of British Airways are scheduled to plead guilty on Thursday to two counts of conspiracy and face a likely fine of -million for colluding with Virgin Atlantic over fuel surcharges.
United States internet giant Google is to begin running advertisements along with video clips on its popular video-sharing website YouTube, according to a statement on the YouTube official blog. The ads will run as ”animated overlays that appear on the bottom 20% of a video”, said Google late on Tuesday.
Fruit bats that roost in caves are apparently the source of Marburg virus, which causes a deadly hemorrhagic fever related to Ebola virus, researchers said on Tuesday. Tests of 1 100 bats of various species turned up the virus in only one common species of fruit bats.
Space shuttle Endeavour returned to its Florida home port on Tuesday, touching down safely at the Kennedy Space Centre following a hectic but successful 13-day mission to the International Space Station. Commander Scott Kelly gently steered the 100-tonne spaceship through breezy, blue skies before nosing Endeavour down on to a 4,8km runway.
Sheila Drummond didn’t need to see her hole-in-one. She heard it. Drummond, blinded by diabetes 26 years ago, experienced the highlight of her golfing career on Sunday, recording an ace on the 144-yard, par-three fourth hole at Mahoning Valley Country Club in Pennsylvania, United States.
Billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley, who famously declared ”only little people pay taxes” and later went to prison for tax evasion, died on Monday at the age of 87, her publicist said. Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer house in Greenwich, Connecticut, publicist Howard Rubenstein said.
Billionaire hotelier Leona Helmsley, who famously declared ”only little people pay taxes” and later went to prison for tax evasion, died on Monday at the age of 87, her publicist said. Helmsley died of heart failure at her summer house in Greenwich, Connecticut, publicist Howard Rubenstein said.
A huge fire ripped through an abandoned skyscraper next to Ground Zero in Lower Manhattan on Saturday, killing two firefighters who were responding to the blaze. The former Deutsche Bank office building had been vacant since the September 11 terrorist attacks turned it into a toxic nightmare.
The Bush administration is preparing a case to designate the Horn of Africa nation of Eritrea a ”state sponsor of terrorism” for its alleged support of al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militants in Somalia, the top United States diplomat for Africa said on Friday. Officials are compiling evidence of Eritrean backing for the extremists to support the designation.
When On the Road came out in 1957, Jack Kerouac became the voice of the beat generation almost overnight. Now, 50 years on, the tale of disaffected youth struggling to find a place in post-war America is to be re-released in its original form, unedited, cruder and more erotic.
In a bold bid to turn back a rising financial storm, the United States Federal Reserve on Friday cut a key bank lending rate and signalled a willingness to take more dramatic action to cushion the economy from tightening credit. The US central bank tried to calm financial markets by lowering the discount rate that governs Fed loans to banks.
Hurricane Dean is expected to grow into a ferocious category-five storm as it passes Jamaica and nears Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and the oil and gas rigs of the Gulf of Mexico after it smashed into several Caribbean islands, the United States National Hurricane Centre said on Friday.
The 2008 BMW 5 Series was the worst performer in new side-impact crash tests of luxury sedans by the United States insurance industry. The Acura RL, Kia Amanti and Volvo S80 all earned the highest safety rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, according to results released on Thursday.