- The mystery around former Pentagon official John P. Wheeler III’s death keeps on growing. Ever since Wheeler's body was discovered New Year's Eve at Wilmington's Cherry Island landfill as a sanitation truck was unloading garbage it had picked up from metal trash bins in Newark, Delaware police have struggled to piece together exactly how he died and the circumstances that surrounded his harrowing final hours. On Friday, the Delaware medical examiner's office announced autopsy results whose conclusion was that Wheeler died as a result of blunt force trauma after being assaulted." Results of a toxicology analysis done during the autopsy were not announced, nor have police identified any suspects in the case. "We don't know, ultimately, who was responsible for his death," said Lt. Mark Farrall spokesman for the Newark Police Department. Police have determined that Wheeler was last seen by a surveillance camera in Wilmington at 8:42 p.m. on December 30. On footage recorded near the Nemours Building in Wilmington, Wheeler appears confused and unsteady. Complicating matters further, police are not sure about the circumstances that led him to Newark in the first place. "We don't know how he got to Newark," Farrall explained. "We're still canvassing the area, conducting interviews, checking video surveillance." On Dec. 29, a Wilmington parking lot attendant, Iman Goldsborough, spotted Wheeler when he stumbled into her garage. "It striked me as being odd because he had one shoe in his hand and no coat on," said Goldsborough. A dearth of witnesses and other evidence has stymied the case thus far, which further adds to a sad and tragic ending for the first chairman of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, a man who worked relentlessly to construct the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Wheeler also worked in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. Yet now, the thing he will be most known for is a bizarre, peculiar ending to his life, a mystery that may never be solved………
- A bad run for movies continued this weekend……and I’m not only referring to the quality of the films themselves. No, those crappy flicks are in turn producing subpar revenue numbers and this weekend’s results won't do anything to reverse than trend or stem the tide. Even the weekend’s top film turned in an uninspired effort, as Anthony Hopkins latest scare flick, The Rite, scared up a measly $15 million in its opening weekend. That was still enough to beat out the thoroughly awful No Strings Attached, which has the misfortunate of a) having Ashton Kutcher as its star and b) sucking. Strings made $13.7 million in its second weekend and has now made $39.7 million through two weeks of release. Debuting in a disappointing third place was Jason Statham’s latest cookie-cutter action film, The Mechanic, in which he once again plays a mercenary who does dangerous things for money, saves hot girls and blows things up, made $11.51 million in its first weekend. That put it in a virtual dead heat with The Green Horney, which made $11.5 million in its fourth weekend, a 35-percent dropoff from last weekend and yet, still enough to boost the superhero-themed action/comedy to $79 million through three weeks. Rounding out the top five was The King’s Speech, which rode high on the buzz from 12 Oscar nominations and the addition of 877 theaters to raise its earnings by 41 percent from last weekend and make $11.1 million in its tenth weekend of release. Making $72.2 million in 10 weeks might not seem that impressive for a movie, but considering that King’s Speech is still in fewer theaters than any movie above it on this list, I’d make an exception in this case. The rest of the top 10 was comprised of: True Grit (No. 6 with $7.6 million in its sixth weekend and an impressive $148.5 million and counting in its coffers), The Dilemma (still sucking exponentially at No. 7 with $5.5 million and a three-week tally of $40.6 million), Black Swan (No. 8 and dropping a bit for the first time since its release, declining 13 percent but still making $5.1 million to up its running total to $90.7 million for nine weeks), The Fighter (No. 9 with $4.1 million, now having made $78.4 million through eight weeks) and Yogi Bear (No. 10 with $3.2 million and a solid-but-not-overwhelming $92.6 million for its seven weeks of work). Dropping out of the top 10 from last week was Tron Legacy, which checked in at No. 11 this week and remains $3.3 million from turning a profit on its $170 million budget……….
- How convenient that the NFL players union chose now of all times to release a report called "Dangers of the Game of Football" in which it claims the average number of injuries has risen during the 2010 season? I mean, it’s not as if the union is currently engaged in a bitter battle with NFL owners over a new collective bargaining agreement, right? But hey, I’m sure it’s just a giant coincidence. Either way, the report’s most significant claim is that injuries increased from 3.2 to 3.7 per week per team and the share of players injured increased to 63 percent compared to a 2002-09 average of 59 percent. Additionally, the report indicates that 13 percent of all injuries required players to be placed on injured reserve this season, compared to an average of 10 percent for 2002-09. In other words, there are more injuries occurring and those injuries are more serious than ever before. The NFLPA based its findings on data from NFL Weeks 1 through 16 from Football Outsiders, which compiles information from the publicly available weekly injury reports. The league has its own data and those numbers also show more players on IR than in recent years: 464 for the entire season, up from 388 the previous year, 416 in 2008 and 413 in 2007. Predictably, the league was quick to protect its position in CBA negotiations, er, to urge everyone not to overreact to the statistics about the number of players placed in injured reserve on face value. "Every year almost 2,600 players go through the system [32 teams x 80 players going into training camp] and a few hundred are put on injured reserve for different reasons," Aiello said. "That number could include everything from rookies put on IR for the season with injuries of differing severity to players with relatively minor injuries who then reach injury settlements with their teams and are released." You can be certain that you will hear these numbers bandied about often over the next few weeks as the current CBA nears its expiration and the two sides try to position themselves for a favorable new deal. NFLPA chief DeMaurice Smith will undoubtedly point to the report’s claim that 37.7 percent of all injuries caused players to miss games and 30 percent of players missed at least some game time, up 1 percent. Asked about the report’s findings at the Pro Bowl in Honolulu, Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald pointed to the ever-increasing size, strength and speed of players as a primary cause. "I think the sheer size and athleticism of guys creates that," Fitzgerald said. "You got a guy moving at that speed, hitting somebody, more damage is going to be done. That's just the way football is. It's a violent game." As the negotiation process moves forward, expect plenty more maneuvers and power plays like this report to come from both sides. The current collective bargaining agreement expires March 4, so time is running out for both sides to get their final jabs in and stake out their positions for what could be a long and bitter work stoppage………
- Rest assured that if there is a way to oppress his people, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez will find it. Thus, it surprises me not at all to hear that a whopping 1,734 violations of private-property rights have been attributed to President Hugo Chavez's government since 2005, according to an advocacy group that promotes economic and personal freedoms in Venezuela (a lost cause if I’ve ever seen one). Now, Liderazgo y Vision (Leadership and Vision) is trying to fend off its own rights being violated after Chavez’s administration has enacted a new law that bans certain vaguely defined organizations from accepting foreign money. In other words, any group that opposes Chavez can't accept money from foreign sources because it would help them spread their message in Venezuela. It fits perfectly with scores of other laws put in place during Chavez’s 12-year reign of terror to clamp down on critics. "There's great uncertainty in Venezuela today because many organizations are in doubt about whether to continue projects that were financed by U.S., European and Asian organizations," said Liderazgo y Vision official Alonso Dominguez. Liderazgo y Vision relies heavily on Venezuelan donors, but Dominguez admits he has also leaned on foreign funding to run courses in leadership training and community policing. Some of that support has come from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy and the U.S. Agency for International Development, which can't sit well with known U.S. hater Chavez. “Are we to allow political parties, NGOs, figures of the counterrevolution to continue being financed with millions and millions of dollars from the Yankee empire?" Chavez said in a speech in November, a month before his allies in the National Assembly crammed the new legislation down Venezuelans’ throats. The law even came with a catch title: the "Law for the Defense of Political Sovereignty and National Self-determination." It empowers the government to fine a group double the sum it receives from abroad, bar offenders from running for office, and impose similar penalties for inviting foreigners who publicly give "opinions that offend state institutions." All in all, a gross abuse of power and a complete fraud, so well done on the part of one of the world’s worst dictators and his sycophants. Such a generic, undefined and sweeping law gives Chavez more unmitigated power, the one thing a dictator can never have too much of. It’s wording speaks of groups promoting "political rights" and individuals engaging in "political activities" without defining how foreign funding for these might incur prosecution. Chavez’s paranoia of U.S. support for any organization in his country stems almost entirely from the 2002 coup he survived that he believes to have been heavily supported by American sources. He’s also in denial over the current political state of his country, saying in a recent speech, “There is no dictatorship here, nor will there be a dictatorship.” Hugo, look in the dictionary under the word “dictator” and then look in the mirror, amigo………
- Booyah! For all my stoner friends out there, this next story should fire you up…….well, as fired up as a bunch of toked-out, blunted, stoned, über-mellow people can be. As it currently stands, you’re pretty much limited to getting baked the old-fashioned way…..smoking the chronic. Whether you roll a fattie or light up your bong, you’re essentially getting your high the same way. Maybe you bake some into your brownies, but that’s more effort than the average stoner wants to put out. But now, you might just have an option thanks to a California entrepreneur with plans to market a line of medical marijuana soft drinks. With many medical marijuana dispensaries carrying an increasing number of edibles or so called medibles - food products containing THC - and stoners embracing the concept, Daminan Gunther is looking to cash in with a line of beverages by Cana Catering that are sold with the names "Leisurely Lemonade" and "Compassion Fruit Punch." For those who don’t want to bake or munch their way to a nice high, Gunther offers liquid refreshment. "It's really a chill cool drink. It tastes really good," he said. He will soon have competition from a new drink containing THC that will be launched next month in Colorado. That drink is already generating a huge amount of controversy among haters who want to keep it off the shelves. "This should appear to be a legitimate form of medication, not a soda pop that children could easily confuse as a real soda pop," Regional Director of the National Narcotic officer's Association Coalition Bob Cooke said. So what, you want it with giant skull-and-crossbones emblems all over the packaging? If stores can't handle the product responsibly or stoners who buy it can't keep it out of the hands of their kids, then that’s on them and not the company making this innovative new drink. Stop hassling stoners, especially when one of them is innovative enough to come up with something cool and new………
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