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ABOUT TIME…..heh! heh!
While she won’t exactly be stocking up on Ramen noodles, the Queen of England will have a little less in her purse for the next few years.
Queen Elizabeth II faces a freeze on her income through at least 2015 thanks to funding cuts for the royal household resulting from a recently passed law. Her income has already dropped in real terms since 2009 as she has joined the millions of others affected by the economic downturn.
The funding for the royal family has traditionally come from the civil list, a public fund controlled by the British Parliament. However, a law passed six weeks ago will replace the civil list with a single fund, the sovereign grant, in April 2013.
A punishing heat wave has settled over central and eastern parts of the US, pushing temperatures as high as 43C (110F) and causing up to 22 deaths.
The National Weather Service warned of “dangerous” levels of heat and humidity creeping east, with no relief expected in eastern states until Sunday.
As much as 50% of the US population was under a heat advisory, officials said.
Meteorologists have put the temperatures down to a “dome” of high pressure in the atmosphere.
“This is an exceptionally strong ridge of high pressure that really has an exceptional scope and duration,” Eli Jacks, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, told the BBC.
“The air is sinking, as it sinks it compresses and gets warmer.” It also dries out, so few clouds form to block the high early-summer sun, he said.
Space shuttle Atlantis has landed back on Earth, bringing to a close America’s 30-year orbiter programme.
The vehicle swept into the Kennedy Space Center, its wheels touching the runway just before local sunrise.
Nasa’s shuttles were instrumental in building the space station, and were used to maintain the Hubble telescope.
“The space shuttle changed the way we view the world and it changed the way we view the Universe,” said commander Chris Ferguson on landing.
“There’s a lot of emotion today but one thing’s indisputable: America’s not going to stop exploring,” he radioed to mission control.
Retirement of Nasa’s iconic shuttle fleet was ordered by the US government, in part due to the high cost of maintaining the ships.
The decision leaves the country with no means of putting astronauts in orbit.
The Atlantis crew became known as “the final four”The US space agency’s intention is to invite the private sector to provide it with space transport services, and a number of commercial ventures already have crew ships in development.
These are unlikely to be ready to fly for at least three or four years, however.
In the interim, Nasa will rely on the Russians to ferry its people to and from the International Space Station (ISS).
Despite the dark skies over Florida’s Space Coast, large crowds came out to try to glimpse Atlantis as it made its historic return from orbit. Two thousand people were gathered at Kennedy’s landing strip itself, but even in at the Johnson Space Center in Texas, where mission control is sited, they came in huge numbers.
The de-orbit track brought Atlantis across central Florida and the Titusville-Mims area before a hard bank to the left put the vehicle on a line to Runway 15 at Kennedy.
Wanted-style posters which declared a “fatwa” on the home secretary are being investigated by police in south London.
Several posters have been displayed around Tooting, criticising Theresa May “for the abduction, kidnapping and false imprisonment” of radical clerics.
These include Abu Hamza, the preacher imprisoned in 2006 for inciting murder and racial hatred.
The Metropolitan Police said it was “working to find out who put them up” and hoped the posters would be removed.
It was talking to the local authority about this, a spokesman added.
A fatwa is a religious ruling under Islamic law which can be interpreted as an incitement to kill.
The Home Office said it would not comment as it was a matter for the police to investigate.
A London judge has denied bail to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who told a London court he intends to fight his extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations.
Judge Howard Riddle told Assange that he had “substantial grounds” to believe the 39-year-old Australian wouldn’t turn up for subsequent proceedings. He then put Assange into UK custody ahead of an extradition hearing.
Assange faces allegations of sex crimes in Sweden. He denies the accusations.
The WikiLeaks founder told a London court on Tuesday he intends to fight his extradition to Sweden on sex crime allegations, setting up what could be a drawn-out legal battle.
HP asked a court on Tuesday to block Hurd, HP’s former CEO, from joining Oracle, saying his hiring by the rival technology firm puts HP’s trade secrets “in peril.”
Oracle Corp CEO Larry Ellison fired back, calling the lawsuit “vindictive” and saying HP’s board is making it “virtually impossible” for the two companies to partner together.
Cathie Lesjak, who became HP’s interim CEO after Hurd was forced out on Aug. 6 over expense account irregularities, said on Wednesday at the Citigroup Global Technology Conference that Ellison’s comments “strained” the relationship a bit.
But she added: “At the end of the day, business will prevail and, ultimately, we will go back to being good partners, and competitors where we’ve been competitors.
“I believe that HP is important to Oracle and Oracle is an important partner of ours.”
HP shares fell 3.6 percent to $38.48 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while Oracle shares fell 1 percent to $24.01 on the Nasdaq.
Three people were arrested after protesters threw eggs and shoes at Tony Blair when he arrived to sign copies of his best selling memoir at a bookshop in Dublin.
Some 200 activists clashed with police on the city’s main thoroughfare O’Connell street.
Security at the former’s British prime minister’s first signing of his autobiography had been tight due to opposition by an Irish nationalist group opposed to British control of Northern Ireland and by critics of Blair’s decision to join the war in Iraq.
No injuries were reported and the missiles did not hit Blair.
Newly hired Southern California athletic director Pat Haden says Reggie Bush apologized to him and expressed regret in a phone call last week about the NCAA’s sanctions that resulted from findings that he received improper benefits while playing for USC.
“He’s really contrite,” Haden told USA Today of Bush. “He knows he made a series of mistakes. It wasn’t just one mistake. It was a series of mistakes.”
Bush, a running back for the New Orleans Saints, has not been stripped of the Heisman Trophy he won in 2005, though USC has returned Bush’s Heisman given to the school. Two trophies are awarded for each recipient.
“He told me, ‘If I could turn the clock back, I would. If I could give the Heisman Trophy back, I would,’ ” Haden told the newspaper.
In Louisiana for the start of the Saints’ training camp, Bush said he was focusing on football but admitted he is bothered by the way the university has distanced itself from him.
“I think I’d be lying if I said it didn’t,” Bush has said publicly. “Obviously, it does, but at the end of the day it is what it is. All I can really do now is focus on the New Orleans Saints and just try to move on. It bothers me and it sucks. The whole situation is terrible and nobody feels worse about it than I do.
“But, at the same time, I can’t dwell on the negatives because I do have a job to do and I have a whole organization and a city riding on my back, not necessarily my back, but the team’s back.”
Haden said Bush was barred from visiting the Los Angeles school.
“I wish I could ask Reggie to come talk to our football team. I can’t,” said Haden, who replaced ousted AD Mike Garrett on Aug. 3. “He’s not allowed on the campus. But I think he would tell them what a big mistake he made and how sorry he is.”
Bush said he hopes his relationship with USC doesn’t remain fractured forever.
“I hope someday at some point it can be repaired,” Bush said when training camp started. “We’ll see what happens. That’s all I can do.”
His death was announced by his son-in-law, James Coughlin, who said Dundee had recently been treated for blood clots.
In more than 60 years in professional boxing, Dundee gained acclaim as a brilliant cornerman, whether healing cuts, inspiring his fighters to battle on when they seemed to be reeling, or adjusting strategy between rounds to counter an opponent’s style.
“In that one minute, Angelo is Godzilla and Superman rolled into one,” Dr. Ferdie Pacheco, who often worked with Dundee and then became a TV boxing analyst, once remarked.
Ali told The New York Times in 1981: “You come back to the corner and he’ll say, ‘The guy’s open for a hook,’ or this or that. ” If he tells you something during a fight, you can believe it. As a cornerman, Angelo is the best in the world.”
When Thomas Hearns was rallying against Leonard in their welterweight championship unification fight in September 1981, Dundee got Leonard going again after the 12th round bell, telling him, “You’re blowing it, son, you’re blowing it.” Leonard knocked Hearns down in the 13th round and won the bout when the referee stopped it in the 14th.
Dundee “knew precisely how to get through to me at the most pivotal moments, and no moment in the fight, or in my career, was as pivotal as this,” Leonard recalled in his memoir “The Big Fight” (2011),” written with Michael Arkush.
Dundee’s first champion was Carmen Basilio, the welterweight and middleweight titleholder of the 1950s from upstate New York. Although best remembered for Ali and Leonard, Dundee also trained the light-heavyweight champion Willie Pastrano, the heavyweight titleholder Jimmy Ellis and the welterweight champion Luis Rodriguez. Dundee advised George Foreman when he regained the heavyweight title at age 45. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1992.
He was born Angelo Mirena in Philadelphia, the son of a railroad worker. He became Angelo Dundee after his brother, Joe, fought professionally under the name Johnny Dundee, in tribute to a former featherweight champion; another brother, Chris, also adopted the Dundee name.
After working as a cornerman at military boxing tournaments in England while in the Army Air Forces during World War II, Dundee served an apprenticeship at Stillman’s Gym near the old Madison Square Garden, learning his craft from veteran trainers like Ray Arcel, Charley Goldman and Chickie Ferrara. In the early 1950s he teamed with his brother Chris to open the Fifth Street gym in Miami Beach. It became their longtime base, Angelo as a trainer and Chris as a promoter.
In the late 1950s, Dundee gave some tips to a promising amateur named Cassius Clay, and in December 1960, after Clay’s first pro bout, Dundee became his trainer, working with him in Miami Beach. He guided him to the heavyweight title with a knockout of Sonny Liston in February 1964.
Dundee avoided the temptation to tamper with the brilliance of his young and charismatic fighter, and he used a bit of psychology in honing his talents.
“I never touched that natural stuff with him,” Dundee recalled in his memoir, “My View From the Corner” (2008), written with Bert Randolph Sugar. He added: “So every now and then I’d subtly suggest some move or other to him, couching it as if it were something he was already doing. I’d say something like: ‘You’re getting that jab down real good. You’re bending your knees now and you’re putting a lot of snap into it.’ Now, he had never thrown a jab, but it was a way of letting him think it was his idea, his innovation.”
When Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali soon after winning the heavyweight title, his boxing management and financial affairs were handled by the Nation of Islam. Dundee was the only white man in his camp, and he grew disturbed over references to that fact.
In his memoir, Dundee said that he and Ali “had this special thing, a unique blend, a chemistry.”
“I never heard anything resembling a racist comment leave his mouth,” he said. “There was never a black-white divide.”
Dundee knew all the tricks in the boxing trade, and then some.