- Jay-Z is already working on fuel for his next album, it
seems. On his latest release, “Magna Carta Holy Grail,” he fired a shot across
the bow of baseball über-agent Scott Boras on account of poaching one of Boras’
biggest clients, Robinson Cano, for his new sports agency. If he wants to begin
penning rhymes for the follow-up, perhaps H.O.V.A. can use his beef with one of
the best actors of the past 40 years as a source of motivation. Jay-Z has
confirmed that he has fallen out with Robert
De Niro and has no intention of resolving their differences. The drama
allegedly stems from an incident at Leonardo DiCaprio's 38th birthday party,
when De Niro had an “I’m Robert F’Ing De Niro” moment and boldly walked up to
Jay-Z and lit him up for not returning his calls about a project he wanted the
rapper to be involved with. Jay-Z has likely big-timed a lot of people, but
doing it to another A-lister may have been a bit much. To his credit, Jay-Z
didn’t deny there was trouble afoot when the topic came up. "I treat people
based on who they are... who they really are. Not the name, not Robert De Niro,
like, you know, who you are as a person,” he explained. "It doesn't matter
who you are, everyone has to be respectful and everyone has to be a human
being. No one is above. That's just the end of it and that's how I carry it
with anybody." Those words were spoken just before an odd performance at
an art gallery in New York in which Jay-Z performed his song “Picasso Baby” for
six hours straight. The show was part of a plan to create a video for the song
with “Girls” actor Adam Driver, Judd Apatow and artist Marina Abramovic.
One could guess that De Niro was not invited to the party…….
- Building one’s own home is an ambitious project. Bullard,
Tex. resident Thomas Graham has held just such a dream for much of his life and
is now fully committed to the effort. As the Texas summer heat streams down on
the Lonestar State, Graham is hard at work on his new home – he just can't see
what he’s doing. That’s because the man ambitious enough to chase this vision
is blind and has been since the age of 18. He points to the day he got his
first walking cane as the time he began moving toward the goal of building his
own home. Once he became comfortable with his cane, he attended a rehabilitation institute in
Austin and there, he took a class called Industrial Art that taught him how to
use construction tools. "That probably was the first step," he said.
What he learned at Lighthouse for the Blind provided him with the skills
necessary to build a home for himself and his wife Evonne. "He's not
normal, he's so gifted that, it's just unreal, I've never met a man, even
sighted man, this gifted," Evonne Graham said. "He's always, ever
since I met him, wanted to build a house.” His dream home is a work in progress
and although he won't ever see a single inch of it, the fact that he is taking
on the challenge of building it and not using his blindness as a reason not to
pursue what he wants most in life is something that most able-bodied people can’t
say. Graham admits that he does become frustrated at times while working on the
house and may occasionally throw a tool or two around in anger. "Just hope
that the wife or the son isn't standing in the way, ya know," he said.
That frustration IS a feeling that anyone who has ever worked on a construction
project – large or small – can definitely relate too, regardless of whether
they can see or not………
- Congratulations, Rwanda. Your nation has been tabbed as the
least corrupt country on the African continent and one of the least-corrupt nations
in the world by a global report on graft released by anti-corruption watchdog
Transparency International (TI). TI executive director Apollinaire Mupiganyi
said in announcing the report that the level of corruption has decreased by 10
percent in Rwanda that in the past three years. The Global Corruption Barometer
2013 report shows that just 12 percent of Rwandans who had come into contact
with health and medical services paid a bribe, compared to corruption king Tanzania
with 45 percent. Additionally, 89 percent of those surveyed say that corruption
has decreased in the last two years in Rwanda. On a global level, Rwanda is
ranked the 13th least corrupt country in the world. That ranking could be
higher if only the most corrupt institutions – the police and judiciary – could
bring down their corruption scores of 2.1 and 2.0, respectively, on a scale of
1-5. The TI report indicates that bribes were paid to police by 23 percent of
those who had contact with law enforcement and 11 percent of those who had
contact with the judiciary. However, the report shows strong political will to
fight corruption within the Rwandan government. "Day-to-day bribery that
occurs between citizens and public service providers is not only a cost to
citizens in terms of the money that is handed over for unjust reasons, but it
also has discriminatory effects on the prevision and management of the
service," Mugiganyi said. The African nations at the other end of the
corruption continuum were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Indonesia,
Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone, all of which boasted a police bribery
rate of 75 percent or above. Police were viewed as the most corrupt institution
in 36 countries included in the report and in those 36 countries, 53 percent of
respondents said they had paid a bribe to the police. Globally, Australia,
South Korea, Malaysia, Norway, Japan, Belgium, Maldives, Portugal, Uruguay, New
Zealand, Spain, Georgia and Finland all tallied bribery rates below 5
percent…….
- A new, super-blue planet has been discovered by the Hubble Space
Telescope and now the question is how similar this new celestial sphere is to
Earth. The Hubble data has revealed a planet orbiting a nearby star has a
similar deep-blue color to Earth, but that is where the similarities end. The
planet, unimaginatively named HD 189733b, orbits around a star some 63 light
years away, about 372 trillion miles, according to University of Oxford
researcher Tom Evans. It is roughly the same size as Jupiter, but has a mass 13
percent heavier than the largest planet in our solar system and orbits very
close to its star, circling it once every 2.2 days. The last of those
characteristics made it a "hot Jupiter" planet, the study declares, with
cloud temperatures likely around 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit and winds whipping
around at 4,350 mph. Including this find, more than 800 "exoplanets"
-- planets that orbit stars outside our solar system – have now been discovered
in the last two decades. HD 189733b’s clouds are likely blue, based on
spectroscope data from Hubble, which viewed the planet, before, during and
after it was eclipsed by its star. In so doing, astronomers were able to subtract
the light from the star from the light reflected off the planet, giving them a
sense of its color. "We saw the brightness of the whole system drop in the
blue part of the spectrum when the planet passed behind its star," Evans
said. "From this, we can gather that the planet is blue, because the
signal remained constant." The Oxford team believes that the planet’s blue
color comes from a hazy atmosphere filled with melting glass particles, ones
that scatter blue light…….
- Professional athletes, no matter how upright or noble,
rarely walk away from $77 million they are guaranteed to earn merely by showing
up every day for the next 12 years and being mildly competent. New
Jersey Devils superstar winger Ilya Kovalchuk is the exception, as he proved by
announcing his decision to retire from the NHL and forfeit the final 12 years
and $77 million remaining on his contract. "This goes back to the lockout,
and prior to coming back, his thought process of staying in Russia was
there," Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello said. "As you know, he
was here a little late [getting back after the lockout was lifted]. Then there
was no conversation whatsoever throughout the year about it. Then it resurfaced
and his desire was to retire from the NHL, and the only way he could do that
was to sign his voluntary retirement papers, which he did." No one needs
to feel badly for Kovalchuk....and not just because he is considered one of the
top players in the world. He is returning to his native Russia to play for SKA
St. Petersburg in the Kontinental Hockey League next season and will likely
have a chance to make a large chunk of change in that role. "This decision
was something I have thought about for a long time going back to the lockout
and spending the year in Russia," Kovalchuk said in a statement.
"Though I decided to return this past season, Lou was aware of my desire
to go back home and have my family there with me. The Devils will suffer a
small salary cap hit and a large lineup hit on their top line and power-play
unit with Kovalchuk gone. Interestingly, the pile of cash Kovalchuk left on the
table could have been even larger had the NHL allowed the Devils to sign him to
the 17-year, $102 million contract the
two sides had originally agreed to…….
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