Actor Wesley Snipes headed to prison for tax evasion

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"The defendant Snipes had a fair trial ... The time has come for the judgment to be enforced," U.S. District Judge Terrell Hodges said in his ruling.
Revoking bail for the 48-year-old star of the "Blade" trilogy, the judge ordered him to report to prison as directed by the U.S. Marshals Service or Bureau of Prisons.
It was not clear when or where Snipes would begin serving his time behind bars, however. His lawyer, Daniel Meachum, has said he would appeal if a new trial was denied.
Meachum told the Orlando Sentinel the ruling was shocking.
"Wesley is very disappointed but staying strong and positive," the newspaper quoted Meachum as saying.
Snipes had already lost his appeal of the prison sentence stemming from his 2008 conviction in Hodges' Ocala, Florida, court on three counts of "willful failure to file tax returns" for 1999 through 2001.
Snipes was found not guilty of five other counts in the high-profile felony tax case.
In seeking a new trial, Meachum had argued that jurors in the original trial were biased and that the prosecution's star witness had his own criminal problems.
At his sentencing, prosecutors said Snipes, a resident of Windermere, Florida, had earned more than $38 million since 1999 but had filed no tax returns or paid any taxes through October 2006.
Although he is best known for his roles in action films, Snipes has also had critical success in comedies like "White Men Can't Jump" in 1992. He played the lead in director Spike Lee's interracial drama "Jungle Fever" in 1991 and also played the jazz saxophonist in Lee's "Mo' Better Blues" in 1990.
Eric Thompson, a supervisor in the U.S. Marshals Service office in Orlando, Florida, said the Bureau of Prisons would notify Snipes and his lawyer of a surrender date.
"He'll probably get it by certified mail," Thompson said.
He declined to say what prison was likely to be selected for Snipes except to say that it would not be in Florida.
A listing for Snipes already posted on the Federal Bureau of Prisons website says his prisoner ID or registration number as 43355-018, his location is "in transit" and his release date is "unknown."




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After 30 years, Iowa opponents still think pink at Kinnick Stadium

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Jim Weber runs LostLettermen.com, devoted to keeping tabs on former college football and basketball players and other bits of nostalgia. Today he tracks down former Iowa coach Hayden Fry for the origins of Iowa's pink locker rooms, on display Saturday against Ohio State.

For over three decades, opponents entering the locker room at Iowa’s Kinnick Stadium have felt like they just walked into a dollhouse. The space is coated floor to ceiling in bubblegum pink, even in the bathrooms, from pink sinks to lockers that look better suited for Barbies than 300-pound linemen.
What is a program decked in black and gold doing with a pink locker room? As the familiar legend has it, former Hawkeye coach Hayden Fry, a psychology major, ordered the makeover when he took over in 1978 in an effort to create a soothing effect on opponents. Jails have employed the same technique.
But the psychological edge is only part of the reason.
“Frankly, the only color paint we could find at the stadium was pink,” Fry said this week from his home in Mesquite, Nev.
Whatever the motivation, the motifs have become a cherished part of Iowa tradition and a constant annoyance for opponents. Former Michigan coach Bo Schembechler hated it so much he had his assistants put paper over the walls to cover it.
[Photos: Oregon's crazy new basketball floor]
The Iowa athletic department took things to a new level in 2005 when, as part of an $89 million renovation to the stadium, it added pink to just about everything else left in the locker room – shower floors, carpet, sinks, toilets, down to the urinals.
Not everyone was laughing. A visiting law professor at the school set off a media firestorm when she said the over-the-top makeover was offensive because it promoted sexism and homophobia by attempting to emasculate opponents. Suddenly, seven years after retiring from coaching, Fry found himself caught in the middle of a dispute in which he wanted no part. Supporters pointing out that sexism and homophobia had nothing to do with why Fry originally painted the locker room pink. Critics said that didn’t matter because sexism and homophobia were implied.
[Related: Wisconsin head football coach's awkward Iowa tattoo]
It came to a head when the coach ended up on a radio station with the irate head of a lesbian organization. 
"This lady started in on me saying a lot of bad things about the pink locker room," said Fry, never short on knee-slapping stories in his Texas drawl. "And I finally had to interrupt her and I said, 'Lady, I don’t care how bad you have to go to the bathroom, I wouldn’t let you use my pink locker room.' And I hung up. And the radio station called me back and said, ‘Coach, you can’t do that.’ And I said, ‘I just did.’ And I hung up on him."
Five years later, the debate has died down and the pink locker room remains, with its legend only growing.
"I honestly don’t know anything about Iowa, the state or just anything to be honest,” Ohio State kicker Devin Barclay told the OSU student newspaper, The Lantern, ahead of Ohio State's visit to Kinnick Stadium on Saturday. “I know that they have a pink locker room, that’s about it."
[Rewind: The coolest stadiums of the 2010 World Cup]
Sadly, Fry’s health has been an issue in recent years. He retired from coaching in 1998 because of prostate cancer and has had an ongoing battle with the disease since. Fry, 81, says if it weren’t for cancer, he'd still be coaching alongside Penn State's Joe Paterno, who turns 84 next month.
But cancer certainly hasn’t stripped the coach of the quirky sense of humor that sparked the pink locker room, player sing-alongs during practice, stand-up comedy routines prior to games and, occasionally, a team-wide rendition of the Hokey Pokey after big wins.
“I’ll give you my secret formula,” Fry said of his health. “Every morning when I wake up and realize I’m still on the right side of the grass, I do two things. I thank the good Lord, that’s number one. And number two, I reach over and chug a quart of WD-40 that keeps my metal knees lubricated."


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Daniel Day-Lewis Will Be Steven Spielberg's Abraham Lincoln

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Ladies and gentlemen, here's your Lincoln. Francois Durand/Getty Images For what seems like forever, director Steven Spielberg has talked about wanting to do a biopic on Abraham Lincoln from a script by "Angels in America" playwright Tony Kushner. But for the past decade, Spielberg has instead focused on other projects while Liam Neeson remained committed to playing our 16th president. When Neeson announced this summer that he was finally leaving the project, that seemed to be the end of it ever happening, but now the film is very much back on track: Daniel Day-Lewis is going to play Lincoln.

Photos: See more of Lincoln-to-be Daniel Day-Lewis>>

While Neeson would have a made a great Lincoln, we think Day-Lewis is just about a perfect choice: He has just the right amount of humanity, gravitas and charisma to play the most admired and worshipped (and therefore scrutinized) of all presidents. It's a major role in a major film by a major filmmaker, which means that audience expectations will be set ridiculously high, so you want someone who's got the chops to pull it off. He proved himself in Oscar-winning roles in "My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood," picking up additional Oscar nominations for his work in films including "In the Name of the Father" and "Gangs of New York." And after the debacle of "Nine," Day-Lewis needs to return to the type of full-bodied character portrayals he's known for, like "There Will Be Blood." This Lincoln project should do just that for the notoriously reclusive actor who has been known to go into seclusion for years following a film (he took off four full years after "My Left Foot").
Related: 'Jerry Maguire' child star finds new role >>
The film, based on Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals" biography about Lincoln's battles with his White House Cabinet during the Civil War between 1861-1865, profiles the clashes brought about by the nation's turmoil. The Wrap reports that Spielberg will be shooting the film in the fall of next year. In other words, Spielberg will start the Lincoln project just before his next two movies will be coming out: the World War I drama "War Horse" and "The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn." There had been some thought his next assignment after those two would be the apocalyptic sci-fi film "Robopocalypse", but it appears Spielberg will now be focusing on 19th century history before he turns his attention to the dystopian future. And now he's got arguably the best actor on the planet by his side to make this long-awaited film finally happen.


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Are the New Airport Scanners Safe?

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If you haven't seen the new screening machines that are popping up at U.S. airports, chances are you will soon. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is replacing most metal detectors with imaging devices that reveal items hidden underneath passengers' clothing. But some experts worry that the new machines could expose travelers to health risks. And there are obvious concerns about privacy issues, too.
There are actually two types of scanners, both of which require you to step into a booth and raise your arms. Millimeter wave machines use electromagnetic waves to create an image of the body, while the more controversial backscatter devices beam low-energy X-rays to produce a picture. The government says the radiation emitted from those devices is minimal, equal to the natural exposure during 2 minutes of flying, though some research suggests it's higher.
Because the backscatter machines use low-energy X-rays, most of the radiation is absorbed by the skin and doesn't penetrate the body, as medical X-rays do. But some experts think that could raise the risk of skin cancer or sperm mutations, especially in frequent flyers.
Other concerns involve cancer patients, children, pregnant women, and anyone with a compromised immune system, all of whom are more vulnerable to radiation risks. But perhaps the biggest fear about using X-ray scanners at airports is the possibility of a software glitch or operator error that exposes passengers to excessive doses of radiation.
Although the TSA says the scans are safe, you’re allowed to skip them and pass through a metal detector instead. But if you choose that option you’ll be subject to a hand search, which can take extra time. And some people consider them to be more intrusive.
You might encounter resistance from airport screeners when declining to be scanned, so print the FAQs from the TSA's website, which state that you have that right. You can also ask at the airport if the device uses the more worrisome X-ray technology.


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Smith's 'Just Kids' is award winner for nonfiction

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NEW YORK (AP) -- Patti Smith is a literary star.
The singer-poet's memoir about life in New York City in the 1960s, "Just Kids," won the National Book Award for nonfiction. "Just Kids" is a bittersweet look back at her deep friendship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and at a revolutionary time in the country.
A tearful Smith, 63, recalled working decades ago at a Scribner's bookstore and stacking up the National Book Award winners, wondering if she would ever receive such a prize.
"So thank you for letting me find out," said Smith, who now claims an honor previously given to Rachel Carson, Gore Vidal and Joan Didion.
The fiction prize Wednesday night was a surprise, Jaimy Gordon's "Lord of Misrule," a wry, hard-luck racetrack comedy chosen over such better known works as Lionel Shriver's "So Much for That" and Nicole Krauss' "Great House."
Gordon, who for 20 years has been releasing books through small publishers, spoke briefly. Currently published by McPherson & Co., Gordon acknowledged she had not expected to win and cited friends who had told her that she had given them hope just by being nominated. Gordon's fate has already changed. Her next novel will be published by an imprint of Random House Inc.
Kathryn Erskine's "Mockingbird," inspired in part by "To Kill a Mockingbird" and by the Virginia Tech shootings, was cited for young people's literature. Cited for a story featuring an 11-year-old girl with Asperger's, Erskine praised parents who encourage their children to ask questions and teachers who inspire students to read and to "think for themselves."
Terrance Hayes' "Lighthead" won for poetry and thanked his wife and his editor for being "the best kind of partner," one "who lets you be imperfect."
Winners in the competitive categories for the 61st annual awards each received $10,000.
Honorary medals were presented to "Bonfire of the Vanities" novelist Tom Wolfe and to one of the creators of "Sesame Street," Joan Ganz Cooney.
Smith did not sing Wednesday, but there was music on stage, as Wolfe crooned a few lines from "The Girl of Ipanema," part of a long, leisurely speech that included memories of his early newspapers days and of the party thrown by Leonard Bernstein and attended by members of the Black Panthers, a gathering immortalized by Wolfe as "radical chic."



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Forget the Axe: Cal, Stanford face off for Hogwarts’ favorite game

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 Jackie Burrell
Quaffle? Check.
Bludgers? Check.
"Harry Potter" fanatic racing by the Campanile with a tube sock bobbing behind? Got that, too.
As any Hogwarts-loving Muggle knows, Quidditch is the wizarding sport played astride flying brooms. What many don't know is that here in the non-magical world a land-based version is the hottest sport to hit college campuses in years.
View a slide show of the hot sport.
What began as a scrimmage at Vermont's Middlebury College in 2005 has grown to include more than 400 collegiate teams at schools that include Harvard, Yale, USC and universities from Peru to Perth. More than 300 high schools participate, too. There's even talk of a bid for NCAA membership, which is pretty remarkable for a fictitious sport -- a cross between soccer, one-handed basketball, dodge ball and tag -- that involves flying brooms and magical balls.
It's a big enough deal that with the premiere of the seventh "Harry Potter" movie just days away, 46 of those Muggle Quidditch teams congregated in New York City last weekend for the Quidditch World Cup.
The West Coast was the site of its own epic matchup Sunday, in the shadow of UC Berkeley's Campanile, when Cal and Stanford -- two universities whose traditional rivalry equals Gryffindor's and Slytherin's -- went broomstick to broomstick before a crowd of hundreds.

The warm fall weather made it a perfect afternoon for flying or, more accurately, scampering around a field with a broom, dodging bludgers and seeking the Snitch, the golden winged ball whose capture ends the game.
In Muggle Quidditch, the role of Snitch is played by a runner -- in this case, Cal co-captain Sean Robbins, dressed in shiny gold leggings and a neon yellow shirt, with a tube sock-encased tennis ball dangling from his waistband.
Of the two teams, Berkeley's is more established. Stanford had no choice but to join, said co-captain Stewart, once students saw a YouTube video of a Cal scrimmage, in which players repeatedly described their desire to beat their age-old rival. As the Cardinal were snitch-less, the Scotland-born Stewart MacGregor-Dennis and his co-captain Madison White -- a sophomore who has read Rowling's books "about 50 times" -- fielded a team.
As game time neared Sunday, students, faculty, parents and kids gathered on the sidelines. They discussed ticket availability for midnight screenings of the latest "Harry Potter" film. (Stanford's players will be seeing the movie in dorm groups; Cal's will go as a team, wearing their jerseys.) And they debated whether the Snitch, who was warming up by doing handstands in the middle of the field, could elude capture.
"Quidditch is one of those things you can't talk about without a smile on your face," MacGregor-Dennis said, gazing around at the hundreds of spectators and athletes.
Stanford's small team toted red brooms from Ikea, a departure from the international league's official brooms, $50 movie-set-ready, handcrafted models made by Alivan's.
Cal's 50-person team wore custom-designed navy blue shirts emblazoned with a golden bear holding a golden snitch. Ace Hardware is their broom vendor of choice.
It was a spectacle made more spectacular by the cast of characters that floated past. Across the pitch, Alastor "Mad-Eye" Moody joined the spectators. Albus Dumbledore hawked butterbeer -- a nonalcoholic brew made with vanilla ice cream, butterscotch syrup and something fizzy.
Cal senior Jace Meierhenry took his place behind the microphone, channeling Gryffindor commentator Lee Jordan.
"Don't worry about the applause. I hear it in my head constantly," he assured spectators, as the teams took the field astride their brooms, dropping to one knee and closing their eyes as the Snitch was released into play. Robbins took off, like a streak of neon yellow.
The refs stepped forward and the game was on.
Beaters sent red bludger balls soaring, knocking out players, dodgeball-style, as beaters raced to throw the quaffle, a slightly deflated volleyball, through one of the three hoops poised at each end of the pitch. Players who were hit with a bludger raced it back to their own goal to tag up before returning to play.
Cal's Gavin Saldanha raced for the hoops and lobbed the quaffle through one of them, notching the first 10-point goal of the game.
Every few minutes, the Snitch streaked back across the field, two seekers in pursuit, as the crowd roared with delight.
Armed with a campus map, Stanford's seeker, Minh Nguyen, chased Robbins up and down hills and around Doe Library, as Cal's seeker, Donovan McNiff, closed in from the other side.
Then it was over. McNiff hoisted the tube sock triumphantly and, for just a moment, he was Harry Potter. He grinned, his hair damp with sweat and his glasses slightly misty, as friends rushed up.
"I think my wrestling talents helped," he said later.
When all was said and done, Cal had won two games (90-0 and 100-0) and lost one (40-60), and taken home its first Big Sweep trophy. All that was left was the celebrating -- and planning for future matches.
Robbins and Wurden dream of a West Coast tournament on the field in front of Bowles Hall. Teams at San Jose State, UC Santa Cruz, USC and Berkeley's Graduate Theological Union have expressed interest.
And Stanford is demanding a rematch.
"Next time," MacGregor-Dennis said, "it's a home game."
Photo caption: Cal's Calvin Saldanha scores against Stanford on Nov. 14, 2010. (Carlos Fajardo / Bay Area News Group)


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AP Exclusive: Raising retirement age hurts poor

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WASHINGTON – Raising the retirement age for Social Security would disproportionately hurt low-income workers and minorities, and increase disability claims by older people unable to work, government auditors told Congress.
The projected spike in disability claims could harm Social Security's finances because disability benefits typically are higher than early retirement payments, the Government Accountability Office concluded.
The report, obtained by The Associated Press ahead of its scheduled release Friday, provides fodder for those opposed to raising the eligibility age for benefits, as proposed by the leaders of President Barack Obama's deficit commission.
[Related: Get a bigger Social Security check]
"There's more to consider than simply how much money the program would save by raising the retirement age," said Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging. The report shows an unequal effect on certain groups of people, he said Thursday, and many of them "would have little choice but to turn to the broken disability program."
Under current law, people can start drawing reduced, early retirement benefits from Social Security at age 62. Full benefits are available at 66, a threshold gradually increasing to 67 for people who were born in 1960 or later.
The deficit commission's leaders, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, last week proposed a gradual increase in the full retirement age, to 69 in about 2075. The early retirement age would go to 64 the same year.
Under their plan, the new thresholds wouldn't be fully phased in until today's 4-year-olds are ready to retire.
AARP criticized the recommendations and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called them "unacceptable." Experts, however, warn that Social Security is on a financially unsustainable path that will worsen as people live longer and collect more benefits.
For many workers, reducing early retirement payments or delaying eligibility would provide an incentive to put off retiring, resulting in more earnings and potentially more savings for later in life, according to the watchdog agency's report.
But it "could create a financial hardship for those who cannot continue to work because of poor health or demanding workplace conditions," the report said.
The report, requested by Kohl's committee, draws on research by outside groups as well as interviews with Social Security officials and data from the Social Security Administration. Researchers also analyzed data from the Health and Retirement Study, a continuing study of older Americans by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
About one-fourth of workers age 60 and 61 — just under the early retirement age — reported a health condition that limited their ability to work. Among those older workers, blacks and Hispanics were much more likely to report fair or poor health than whites, according to the report.
Less healthy older workers had lower incomes, less accumulated wealth and were much less likely to have attended college.
"Some people just can't continue to work beyond age 62 for either health reasons or they're just not able to find jobs," said David Certner, legislative policy director for AARP. "Just because we tell people they should work longer doesn't mean that there are employers out there willing to hire people."
Workers older than 55 are less likely than younger workers to lose their jobs, the report said. But when older workers get laid off, they are less likely to find other employment.
[Related: Ways to save money in retirement]
Nearly 54 million retirees, disabled workers, surviving spouses and children now get Social Security. Payments for retired workers average $1,020 a month; disability benefits average $929 a month. In 75 years, 122 million people, or one-fourth of the population, will be drawing benefits.
On its current path, Social Security is projected to run out of money by 2037, largely because of aging baby boomers reaching retirement. The longer action is delayed, the harder it will get to shore up the program.
The GAO report says that raising the age when workers qualify for full benefits would save money. But raising the age when workers can get early benefits would hurt the program's finances because of the expected increase in disability claims.
The plan from Bowles and Simpson promotes shared sacrifice: High-income workers would pay more in payroll taxes to support the system; current retirees would get smaller annual increases in benefits; future retirees have to wait longer to qualify for full benefits.
"We put a hardship exemption in there for people who have, what people are always talking about, backbreaking jobs, people that really need to retire at 62," Bowles said. "We think it is balanced."
___
Online:
Social Security: http://www.ssa.gov
Obama's deficit commission: http://www.fiscalcommission.gov
(This version CORRECTS the agency's name to Government Accountability Office, not General Accountability Office.)



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