- Nothing is more appetizing for NFL fans than billionaire
owners being sued for billions of dollars by players who are paid hundreds of
thousands or millions of dollars to play a game. Fans love their favorite
sport’s newly-established labor peace, less than one year old, being upset
because the NFL Players Association is suing the league’s 32 teams for allegedly having a secret
salary cap in place during the uncapped 2010 season, thus colluding against the
players and costing them at least $1 billion in wages. NFL players union chief
DeMaurice Smith is busting out the heavy artillery early in the fight, arguing
that his group's claim of collusion will stand up in court and hitting the NFL
with a label typically reserved for the most brutal drug gangs of Mexico and
Colombia. "Cartels do what cartels will do when left unchecked,"
Smith said Thursday outside union headquarters. "The facts justify the
complaint." The suit was filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota on
Wednesday and within hours, the NFL issued a statement saying, "The
union's claims have absolutely no merit and we fully expect them to be
dismissed." NFL spokesman Greg Aiello further attempted to bury the
allegations, saying, "There was no collusion. There was no agreement.
These claims are totally unfounded." The drama centers around financial
penalties imposed on the Washington Redskins and Dallas Cowboys for
overspending during the uncapped season. The Redskins are losing $36 million
and the Cowboys $10 million. Both teams filed grievances against the league,
but those grievances were denied and within a few hours, the NFLPA was readying
its lawsuit. There are other lawsuits against the league and commissioner Roger
Goodell for various reasons, but this one is the largest financially. The union’s
allegations of a "conspiracy" that the league set a $123 million
salary cap for the 2010 season when owners did not have the authority to do so
should make for an interesting legal fight, but of course fans generally don’t
give a damn…………
- New Zealand, anti-smoking champions? Amazing as it may be,
the laid-back Kiwis have smoke-free bars, parks and even college campuses. However, the dream
for any nation has to be smoke-free status from border to border, north to
south and east to west. Smoking is a menace, a hazard and a filthy habit that
wrecks the health and well-being of everyone around it. New Zealand’s leaders
know this and they stepped up large Thursday by announcing a whopping 40
percent increase in tobacco taxes over the next four years. While tobacco
prices in New Zealand are already among the highest in the world, ramping up
the price can never hurt. With the additional taxes, the price of a pack of
cancer sticks will be $15 a pack on average by 2016. One great angle of the tax
hike is the transparency by government officials in admitting that they hope
higher taxes and new restrictions will bring the nation of 4.4 million closer
to a recent pledge to snuff out their smoking ways entirely by 2025. How
serious are New Zealand’s health officials? They recently considered hiking the
cost of a pack of cigarettes to $75 and had they followed through, it would
have been an awesome display of anti-smoking force. Another new law forcing retailers
to hide cigarettes below the counter will come into effect in July and on the
strength of these and other efforts, smoking rates among New Zealand adults
have fallen from about 30 percent in 1986 to 20 percent today. Kiwi smokers are
b*tching about the rate hike, especially since the country already charges more
than 70 percent in taxes on cigarettes, compared to 41 percent in China, 45
percent in the U.S. and 64 percent for Australia. Simply put, too freaking bad,
Kiwi cancer stick addicts…………
- Persistence pays off. Monroe, Ohio resident Ken Mercurio knows this truism well and
just five years after nearly biking his way to an early grave, he is part of a
group preparing t to make a 4,200-mile, seven-week journey from Butte, Mont.,
to Alaska and back. Mercurio nearly died in November 2007 when he was riding
with a group in California and crashed his bike. "I was riding along, and
the front fork on the bike snapped and broke and it went into the spokes,"
Mercurio said. "It broke half the spokes immediately and flipped me right
over on my head." He doesn’t remember much else about the incident because
he was knocked unconscious when he hit the road. When he awoke, he had gone
through hours of surgery to implant two rods and an assortment of screws into
his neck and fuse five of his vertebrae together. He also had three broken
ribs, but doctors assured him the crash could have been far worse. "The
neurosurgeon would say it to me every time I'd see him, 'You are lucky to be
alive,'" Mercurio said. Lucky or not, Mercurio fought his way back to
health and now rides a custom
bike that allows him to sit more upright. At age 60, he is a few weeks from
making the daunting trip from Montana to Alaska and back and four other riders
he will meet in Montana. The trip begins June 15 and it has a charitable angle
as well, to raise money in the fight against diabetes. Mercurio has
labeled the ride the Tour de Cure…….
- When you’re Jay-freaking-Z, you do pretty much whatever
you want and don’t worry about haters because after all, you’re Jay-Z. You are
richer, more successful, more famous and more talented than just about anyone
who might crack you. As a result, you can take on seemingly un-hip-hop projects
like writing new
songs for an updated movie version of the musical “Annie.” The film will
star Will Smith’s daughter Willow and Jay-Z will be in charge of the soundtrack
for the film. Believe it or not, Jay-Z does have ties to “Annie,” as in 1998 he
released 'Hard Knock Life (Ghetto Anthem)', which sampled the song 'It's the
Hard Knock Life', from the original 1970s “Annie” musical. The musical
was first turned into a film in 1982, starring Aileen Quinn in the title role.
Now, the man best known as the Fresh Prince of Bel Air will be producing the
remake for Sony Pictures, with British actress Emma Thompson writing a new script for the musical. Willow Smith,
11, released her debut single, “Whip My Hair,” in 2010. Along with her title
role in “Annie,” she is to Jay-Z's
label, Roc Nation and her debut album, 'Knees and Elbows', is due for release
later this year. No word on whether Jay-Z will also be working on fresh
versions of songs from “Hair,” “Newsies” or “Rent” any time soon…………
- Not many countries are down with helping Cuba. The whole
U.S. embargo issue, combined with the reign of terror by Fidel Castro, the
island nation’s Communist system and a generally unsavory international
reputation have left Cuba with few friends. Count Venezuela among them and
score a win for the friendship after Venezuela's
science and technology minister confirmed that an undersea fiber-optic cable
that was laid last year between Venezuela and Cuba is working. That Venezuelan
despot Hugo Chavez would help out Fidel and Raul Castro is no surprise and the
laying of the cable was completed last year by Alcatel-Lucent SA of France for
the state telecommunication companies of Venezuela and Cuba. Jorge Arreaza
confirmed that the cable is "absolutely operational" and said it will
be up to Cuba how it uses the cable on the island. Alcatel-Lucent SA workers
laid the cable beginning in Venezuela and reached eastern Cuba in February
2011. The system was supposed to go online within a few months, but Cuba’s
always-secretive government has made no mention of the cable. Its Internet remains
the slowest in the hemisphere and a project designed to improve online speed
would theoretically be a big deal and an accomplishment to trumpet. Instead,
secrecy has reigned and the confirmation from Venezuela is as close as the
world has come to any knowledge of the system and whether it is functional or
not. Any time Cuba wants to speak up about its end of the project, that would
be swell………..
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