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Serena Williams says her emotions got the best of her when she berated the chair umpire during her loss to Samantha Stosur in the U.S. Open final.
“My emotions did get the best of me this past weekend when I disagreed with the umpire,” Williams tweeted today. “It has been a long road to get back to the US Open this year, and I am thankful to have had such a great two weeks in New York.”
Williams’ tweet came two days after she was cited for a code violation and fined $2,000 for verbally abusing chair umpire Eva Asderaki.
Facing a break point while serving in the first game of the second set Sunday night, Williams hit a forehand that she celebrated with a yell of “Come on!”
Asderaki applied the hindrance rule, noting the scream came while Stosur reached out and got a racket on the ball. Asderaki awarded the point to Stosur.
And Serena went off.
She hurled a series of insults directed at the official, reminiscent of her tirade on the same court when she berated and brandished her racket at a line judge who called a foot fault in the 2009 semifinal against Kim Clijsters.
A sampling of what Williams said, prompting Asderaki to call the code violation:
• “You’re out of control.”
• “You’re a hater, and you’re just unattractive inside.”
• “Really, don’t even look at me.”
The United States Tennis Association said Grand Slam committee director Bill Babcock conducted his own review of the incident and determined “Williams’ conduct, while verbally abusive, does not rise to the level of a major offense under the Grand Slam Code of Conduct.”
Stosur stunned Williams 6-2, 6-3 Sunday, winning her first Grand Slam title. She became the first Australian woman to win a major championship since Evonne Goolagong Cawley at Wimbledon in 1980.
As Norway continues to grapple with the attacks by a home-grown extremist that killed 77 people last month, one couple, who moved to help young people fleeing from gunman Anders Breivik, is getting a bit of belated recognition.
Hege Dalen and her wife, Toril Hansen, were eating dinner on July 22nd on the other shore from Utoya island when they heard screaming, the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sannomat reported. After bombing government buildings in Oslo, Breivik had come to the island dressed as a policeman and went on to shoot more than 100 young people attending a Labour party camp there.
“We were eating,” Dalen told the newspaper. “Then shooting and then the awful screaming. We saw how the young people ran in panic into the lake.”
The couple took off in their boat for the island, picking up shocked victims from the water and transporting them to the mainland. They made four runs in all, helping rescue some 40 of Breivik’s victims, the paper reported.
“Between runs they saw that the bullets had hit the right side of the boat,” the paper wrote.
Some lesbian-gay news sites and blogs have picked up the account in recent days, noting the same-sex married heroes of the story haven’t gotten much attention in the Western press.
Results of a study released May 12th showing that the early introduction of antiretroviral drugs immediately after an HIV diagnosis deters the spread of HIV are “highly encouraging,” said C. Virginia Fields, President and CEO of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS, Inc. (NBLCA).
“We applaud the efforts of the courageous individuals and highly respected scientists who participated in the trial, known as HPTN 052,” Fields said. “They have made an important and significant contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS. Certainly, more scientific study is called for. The results of this trial, although extremely encouraging, is not a panacea. Ultimately, researchers, supported by sufficient funding from our federal government, must step up their efforts to find a cure for this devastating global HIV/AIDS pandemic. Three decades of living in the dark shadow of HIV/AIDS is long enough!”
Fields added: “This highly encouraging study supports what the NBLCA, other organizations, and infectious disease specialists have been saying for years. Knowing one’s HIV status and gaining early access to treatment and care is beneficial both for the individual and the community at large. In 2010, armed with this scientific knowledge, the NBLCA played a leading role in successfully amending Article 27F of New York State’s Public Health Law to require medical practitioners to offer HIV testing to New Yorkers between the ages of 13 and 64 in all appropriate medical settings, as recommended by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The idea is simple – a patient who tests positive for HIV can be linked to treatment and care early in the course of their infection, as opposed to later when they become sicker. This early treatment benefits the patient by keeping them healthier longer and reduces the community’s viral load.”
On Thursday, May 12, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Myron Cohen from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, announced the findings of a $73 million HIV trial involving 1,763 couples in 13 cities and four continents, including Africa, Asia, South America, and North America.
After 25 years, it’s splitsville for Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. The couple has four children. It was Maria who moved out. Schwarzenegger just left his post as the governor of California, and he wants his wife back. Shriver has wanted out of the marriage for a while, but she had to deal with a number of personal crises, including the death of her parents. Shriver has complained to friends that she felt underappreciated in the marriage and that Schwarzenegger has been ignoring her for years. She long dealt with rumored cheating and his out of control ego. The emotional toll with his erratic behavior became too much and she opted to leave.
At a meeting in Helsinki yesterday, “most groups stated they want to have a kind of clear responsibility for investors in Portugal’s sovereign bonds,” said Kimmo Sasi, who heads the Finnish parliament’s working group on bailout talks, in a phone interview. The Social Democrats, which emerged as the second- biggest party after April 17 elections, will provide the “most important proposal,” he said.
Portugal this month became the third euro member to obtain aid as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis spreads beyond Greece and Ireland. Voters in Finland last month rewarded parties critical of bailouts, with the euro-skeptic True Finns winning record backing to become parliament’s third-biggest group. Finance Minister Jyrki Katainen, whose pro-Europe National Coalition is Finland’s largest party, will present his country’s stance on crisis-handling measures at a May 16 meeting of European finance ministers.
While Katainen would be able to get majority lawmaker support for a Portuguese bailout without the True Finns, he can’t do so without the backing of the Social Democrats. The party yesterday said it wants burden sharing to be incorporated into bailouts and demands a bank tax be introduced to help fund future financial rescues. The party also wants the option of restructuring to be available if sovereign debt burdens become unsustainable, while demanding that aid donors be first to get their loans repaid.
You knew the list was gonna leak today, sooner or later.
ABC is set to reveal the cast for its forthcoming “Dancing With the Stars” tonight at the end of “The Bachelor.” TMZ, however, is not waiting around.
The website says it has confirmed 6 of the 11 celebrities who will appear on the show – among them Wendy Williams, who had been rumored to be part of the cast; and rapper Lil’ Romeo, who was booked for the show several years ago but injured his leg and was replaced by his father, Master P.
Below is the list of confirmed celebs and their partners, according to TMZ:
Wendy Williams & Tony Dovolani
Lil’ Romeo & Chelsie Hightower
Chris Jericho & Cheryl Burke
Kendra Wilkinson & Louis van Amstel
Kirstie Alley & Maksim Chmerkovskiy
Disney star Chelsea Kane & Mark Ballas
Sunday’s show we will be discussing the institution of marriage. It seem to have become an
obsolete value in America. Is it the cost of marriage, the cost of divorce? Is it the prenup?
Why are more folks living together, than a formal commitment?
These and more questions and hopefully answers on Sunday’s show. Please call in and join
the discussion, we are very interesting in what America thinks about the institution of marriage
and where it is headed in 2011.
www.blogtalkradio.com/Lennis or show title – “Talk 2 ME”
6-7pm only 1 hr. PST time, 646-727-2914.
Thanks to all for your participation, in this hot topic!