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Shannon Magrane made quite the impression on American Idol judges during last night’s season 11 premiere.

Awkwardly for the 15-year old’s father, though, it wasn’t simply due to her singing.

In a clearly contrived set-up, Randy asked Shannon after her athletic interests… which led to a mention that her dad, Joe, pitched in the 1987 World Series… which led to Joe and other family members entering the room… which led to Joe asking Steven Tyler about Boston and the Aerosmith frontman responding:

“Great, beautiful. Hot, humid and happening… just like your daughter!”

Shannon Magrane American Idol Audition

But let’s not let that quip detract from Magrane’s performance, as she earned a ticket to Hollywood due to a cover of “Something’s Got a Hold on Me.” We’ll be keeping an eye on Shannon, just not in the way Tyler implied above.

Remaining our overall favorite from Savannah, though? Phillip Phillips, by a long shot.

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/01/shannon-magrane-wows-american-idol-judges-earns-creepy-steven-ty/

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Authorities are on the lookout for a woman who forced an 84-year-old to empty her life savings from a bank account in Takoma Park, Md. WRC’s Darcy Spencer has the story.

By NBCWashington

A robber used young children to help take advantage of an elderly woman in Montgomery County, Md., last week, according to police.

The 84-year-old victim said she was robbed of her life savings by a woman claiming she needed help cashing a check at a bank. The culprit approached the victim at Murry?s Steaks in Takoma Park about noon Thursday with two toddlers and an infant in tow. She said the children hadn?t eaten in days.

?That?s the only thing that stopped me, to help the children,? the victim said.

She agreed to drive the culprit to a Bank of America on New Hampshire Avenue in Langley Park. The children stayed behind with another woman.

For more, visit NBCWashington.com

Once in the car, the robber changed her story.

?She told the victim she had a gun and threatened to shoot the victim if the victim did not withdraw several thousand dollars,? police said.

Inside the bank, the culprit stood next to the victim as she made the transaction. Surveillance video showed the robber shoving the victim out the door after the transaction.

The victim was forced to drive back to Murry?s, where the robber left with the cash.

?I?m still scared,? the victim said Wednesday. ?I keep looking around thinking they?re watching me, and that they will follow me home.?

Source: http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/19/10190870-woman-used-young-children-to-rob-84-year-old-of-life-savings

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Enlarge Andy Batt “Rose City Strut” is a funky, alluring collaboration between MarchFourth Marching Band (pictured) and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Andy Batt “Rose City Strut” is a funky, alluring collaboration between MarchFourth Marching Band (pictured) and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

Song: “Rose City Strut” Artist: MarchFourth Marching Band CD: Magnificent Beast Genre: Jazz

The idea of an album of marching-band music is pretty funny, but MarchFourth Marching Band doesn”t go for laughs in “Magnificent Beast,” as trombonists, trumpeters and sax players use their horns to build alluring melodies and throbbing beats. The group goes even brassier in “Rose City Strut,” as it’s joined by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band’s clarinetist, tenor saxophonist and tuba. The Preservation Hall band had come to Portland, Ore., home base for MarchFourth, for a joint concert last April; the New Orleans players agreed to improvise some solos for free if the recording could be made at the concert hall. The horns push and pull, wail and oompah, share conversations and sometimes seem to have a difference of opinion, but always reunite in blissful harmony. The band was going for a dark, sultry mood, but an optimistic spirit is just as evident. The bah-BOMP-a-BOMP BOMP melody insinuates itself into the listener’s brain, while the pace is perfect for a stroll down the street. The song’s “Rose City” title calls out to a dancer named Rose who performs with the band, but it also functions as an homage to Portland’s nickname. Portland has many musical identities, but here, it sounds like the grooviest place in America.

MarchFourth Marching Band: A Brassy Strut

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FILE – In this May 24, 2010 file photo, actor Tobey Maguire arrives to the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 37th Chaplin Award Gala honoring Michael Douglas in New York. Maguire has agreed to pay $80,000 to settle a lawsuit seeking repayment of more than $300,000 he won from a convicted con man during high stakes private poker games. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

FILE – In this May 24, 2010 file photo, actor Tobey Maguire arrives to the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 37th Chaplin Award Gala honoring Michael Douglas in New York. Maguire has agreed to pay $80,000 to settle a lawsuit seeking repayment of more than $300,000 he won from a convicted con man during high stakes private poker games. (AP Photo/Charles Sykes, file)

LOS ANGELES (AP) ? Tobey Maguire has decided to fold ‘em and settle a lawsuit over his winnings from a convicted con man during high-stakes Hollywood poker games.

The “Spider-Man” star agreed to pay $80,000 to settle the lawsuit filed over more than $311,000 he was paid by a convicted Ponzi scheme operator in Texas Hold ‘Em matches that included celebrities, businessmen and others, court documents state.

If approved by a judge next month, Maguire will pay the money to a bankruptcy trustee who is trying to recoup money that former hedge fund operator Bradley Ruderman bilked from investors to finance his lavish lifestyle.

The money will be used to repay victims of the scheme, which Maguire and other players were unaware of.

Court records show that 14 of the 22 people sued to recoup poker winnings have settled their cases. Howard Ehrenberg, the bankruptcy trustee who sued the group, said Monday the poker settlements total more than $1.7 million.

Ehrenberg said Maguire’s payout to resolve the case is in the same range as others who agreed to settlements.

“He did not end up with any better settlement than the others,” Ehrenberg said.

Maguire’s settlement states he “strongly disputes that he violated any laws, rules or regulations in regard to participating in the poker games” but was agreeing to the payment to avoid fighting the case, which would be costly.

The actor signed the settlement on Nov. 22 and it was filed a day later with a bankruptcy court handling the lawsuits.

The trustee alleged Maguire and others had no right to keep their winnings from the unlicensed poker games held at upscale hotels and private residences. Maguire and others have denied there was anything improper about the matches.

In court filings, Maguire noted that he lost $168,500 to Ruderman, who is currently serving a 10 year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to two counts of wire fraud, two counts of investment adviser fraud and willful failure to file taxes.

Several of those sued are fighting the cases, most notably actor-director Nick Cassavetes. His attorney has said the games were not illegal and the statute of limitations has long passed for pursuing any criminal charges for the games held between 2006 and 2009.

Ehrenberg said he expects the remaining cases will be resolved before trial.

Filings show that billionaire Alec Gores and “Welcome Back, Kotter” star and poker aficionado Gabe Kaplan have also settled cases filed against them.

Gores, who along with his brother attempted to buy Miramax films last year, has agreed to pay $49,908 to settle a $445,500 lawsuit over Ruderman’s poker payments.

Kaplan has agreed to pay $26,900 after he was sued to try to recoup nearly $63,000 in winnings.

Ehrenberg filed the lawsuits in late March, attempting to recoup money on behalf of people who invested in the scheme by Ruderman.

___

Follow Anthony McCartney at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2011-11-28-Hollywood%20Poker%20Lawsuits/id-4b9a21906e1d47f5a046cd1af6b91eff

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BAMAKO, Mali (AP) ? Gunmen killed a German man in Mali’s most famous city of Timbuktu and seized three men from the Netherlands, South Africa and Sweden, officials and witnesses said, as officials on Saturday ordered a plane to evacuate foreigners from the tourist destination.

The Dutch and Swedish governments confirmed Saturday that their citizens had been taken. A fellow traveler said the other man seized was South African and said she met the German man.

Tour guide Ali Maiga was with the tourists during Friday’s attack at a Timbuktu restaurant and gave the same list of nationalities. A witness and an official said gunmen burst into the restaurant, grabbed four tourists dining there and executed one when he refused to climb into their truck.

Officials on Saturday evacuated foreigners from Timbuktu to the capital, said a man who owns a hotel in Bamako where the tourists previously stayed. He asked for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ward Bezemer confirmed that one Dutch man was among those kidnapped.

“In the interests of the people involved, we never comment on these cases,” Bezemer told The Associated Press.

The kidnapping comes ahead of an official visit by Mali’s president to the Netherlands next week.

Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on Saturday confirmed on Twitter that one of those kidnapped was Swedish. He did not mention the nationalities of the others.

Germany’s Foreign Ministry said in a Saturday statement that the killed foreigner is “with a high probability a German national” and updated its Mali travel advisory to mention the killing.

South African foreign affairs department spokesman Clayson Monyela said Saturday his government was trying to confirm whether one of those kidnapped was South African.

Canadian tourist Julie-Ann Leblond said she met a group consisting of a South African, a Swede and a Dutch couple in Mali. She said they invited her to join them as they headed to Timbuktu, but she took ill on Wednesday and had to stay behind.

“I was supposed to go there with them,” Leblond, a 25-year-old resident of Quebec City, told the Associated Press by phone from Bamako. “I was never so happy to get a cold.”

She did not provide the names of the travelers and said the German was traveling separately. She said the group of four met on the road as they were traveling from Europe to Africa.

“They’re incredible people, so peaceful, so nice,” she said. “That kind of thing cannot just happen to those kind of people. It’s crazy.”

The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, also condemned the attack in a statement and said “these incidents show the need to continue and intensify the efforts against insecurity in the Sahel,” the desert region stretching from Mauritania to Chad.

“Through its Strategy for Security and Development in the Sahel, the EU is committed to help the Sahel countries in this endeavor,” the statement said.

Until a few years ago, Timbuktu was one of the most visited destinations in Africa, but it is now one of the many former tourist hotspots in Mali that have been deemed too dangerous to visit by foreign embassies because of kidnappings by the local chapter of al-Qaida.

Friday’s incident comes after two French citizens were grabbed in the middle of the night from their hotel in the Malian town of Hombori on Thursday. French judicial officials have opened a preliminary investigation into their kidnappings.

Neither kidnapping has yet been claimed by al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, whose members have kidnapped and ransomed more than 50 Europeans and Canadians since 2003.

If Friday’s kidnapping is by AQIM, it will mark the first time they have taken a hostage inside of Timbuktu’s city limits. Thursday’s kidnapping would be another first ? the first hostage taking south of the Niger River.

The group’s footprint has grown dramatically since 2006, when the Algerian-led cell first joined al-Qaida. Security experts estimate the group has been able to raise around $130 million from ransom payments alone.

___

Associated Press writer Mike Corder contributed to this report from The Hague, writer Juergen Baetz contributed from Berlin, writer David Stringer contributed from London and writers Anita Powell and Donna Bryson contributed from Johannesburg.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2011-11-26-AF-Mali-Kidnapping/id-62a1bf85f73043d7bc083e4f73facef3

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PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) ? French President Nicolas Sarkozy will press German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday to let the European Central Bank act decisively to rescue the euro zone from a deepening sovereign debt crisis now hitting Germany.

French officials hope Berlin will relent in its opposition to a greater crisis-fighting role for the ECB after Germany itself suffered a failed bond auction on Wednesday, highlighting how investors are now shunning even Europe’s safest haven.

“There is urgency (for ECB intervention). We will talk about it today in Strasbourg,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said on France Inter radio, hours before the French, German and Italian leaders were due to meet in the eastern French city.

“I think and hope that the thinking will evolve and that the ECB should play an essential role to re-establish confidence,” Juppe said.

Sarkozy took a step toward Merkel this week by agreeing to amend the European Union’s treaty to permit intrusive powers to change national budgets in euro area countries that go off the rails. But the German leader has so far maintained her line that the treaty forbids the ECB from acting as lender of last resort to buy euro zone bonds.

With contagion spreading fast, a majority of 20 leading economists polled by Reuters predicted that the euro zone was unlikely to survive the crisis in its current form, with some envisaging a “core” group that would exclude Greece.

In signs of public resistance to austerity in the currency area’s troubled south, riot police clashed with workers at Greece’s biggest power producer protesting against a new property tax, and Portuguese workers staged a one-day general strike.

Wednesday’s auction, in which the German debt agency found no buyers for half of a 6 billion euro 10-year bond offering at a record low 2.0 percent interest rate, sent Bund futures down to their lowest level in nearly a month on Thursday as confidence in German debt continued to be shaken.

Bond investors are effectively on strike, interbank lending to euro area banks is freezing up, ever more banks are dependent on the ECB for funding, and depositors are withdrawing increasing amounts from southern European banks.

Investors are also unnerved by reports that Belgium is leaning on France to pay more into emergency support for failed lender Dexia under a 90-billion-euro ($120-billion) rescue deal that had appeared done and dusted.

A special report by Fitch Ratings suggested France had limited room left to absorb shocks to its finances, such as a new downturn in growth or support for banks, without endangering its triple-A credit status.

Merkel, Sarkozy and new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti were also expected to discuss the reforms planned by Italy’s new government of technocrats marking Rome’s return to grace in Europe after the era of scandal-plagued former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who resigned this month.

The German bond auction pushed the cost of borrowing over 10 years for the bloc’s paymaster above those for the United States for the first time since October.

“It is a complete and utter disaster,” said Marc Ostwald, strategist at Monument Securities in London.

GERMAN EXPOSURE

Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble’s spokesman said the auction did not mean the government had refinancing problems and few on financial markets disagreed. Some analysts said Berlin just needed to offer a more attractive yield.

But it was a sign that, as the bloc’s paymaster, Germany may face creeping pressure as the crisis continues to deepen. One senior ratings agency official said it could give Berlin cause to re-examine its refusal to embrace a broader solution.

“It’s quite telling that there has been upward pressure on yields in Germany – it might begin to change perceptions,” David Beers of Standard & Poor’s told a conference in Dublin.

Merkel showed no sign on Wednesday of bending to calls, most notably from France, to allow the ECB to act more decisively.

In a forceful speech to the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, she warned against fiddling with the bank’s strict inflation-fighting mandate. She also hit back at proposals from the European Commission on joint euro zone bond issuance, calling them “extraordinarily inappropriate.”

Merkel has said the EU treaty bars the ECB from acting as a lender of last resort and printing money to buy government debt. She rejected joint “euro bonds,” dismissed a proposal to mutualise the euro zone’s debt stock, and rebuffed attempts to allow the bloc’s rescue fund to borrow from the ECB or the IMF.

Yet at the same time, she has declared that the only answer to the crisis was “more Europe” and won endorsement from her party to press for a fully fledged European political union based around the euro zone.

The borrowing costs of almost all euro zone states, even those previously seen as safe such as France, Austria and the Netherlands, have spiked in the last two weeks as panicky investors dumped paper no longer seen as risk-free.

“Bunds are starting to lose their appeal because markets have to believe the euro bonds story and Germany is very close to starting, essentially, to guarantee the debt of other countries,” said Achilleas Georgolopoulos, strategist at Lloyds Bank in London.

The crux of an acceleration of the crisis in the past month is Italian bond yields’ jump to levels around 7 percent widely seen as unbearable in the long term, despite intervention by the European Central Bank to buy limited quantities.

STABILITY BOND

Bank of England policymaker David Miles said in an interview broadcast on ITV late on Wednesday there is a risk that one of the euro zone’s 17 member states could leave the currency bloc.

“I don’t think any of us can feel confident one way or another about whether all the countries that are currently in the euro zone will still be in it,” he said.

In a Reuters poll conducted over the last 10 days, 14 out of 20 prominent academics, former policymakers and independent thinkers agreed the euro zone’s make-up would change.

A new “core” euro zone with fewer members received qualified backing from 10 economists as a possible solution, with seven of them saying Greece should be excluded from it.

“The euro zone can and should survive, but it will not survive on the current trajectory,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.

With time running out for politicians to forge a crisis plan that is seen as credible by the markets, the European Commission presented a study on Wednesday of joint euro zone bonds as a way to stabilize debt markets.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso unveiled proposals for much more intrusive oversight of euro zone countries’ budgets and efforts to meet macroeconomic targets, and set out the options for introducing common euro zone bonds.

(Reporting by Stephen Brown, Noah Barkin, Natalia Drozdiak, Veronica Ek, Eva Kuehnen; Writing by Paul Taylor, editing by Mike Peacock)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/eurobiz/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20111124/bs_nm/us_eurozone

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CAIRO?? International criticism of Egypt’s military rulers mounted Wednesday as police clashed for a fifth day with protesters demanding the generals relinquish power immediately. A rights group raised the death toll for the wave of violence to at least 38.

The United Nations strongly condemned authorities for what it deemed an excessive use of force. Germany, one of Egypt’s top trading partners, called for a quick transfer of power to a civilian government. The United States and the U.N. secretary general have already expressed their concern over the use of violence against mostly peaceful protesters.

Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, deplored the role of Egypt’s security forces in attempting to suppress protesters.

“Some of the images coming out of Tahrir, including the brutal beating of already subdued protesters, are deeply shocking, as are the reports of unarmed protesters being shot in the head,” Pillay said. “There should be a prompt, impartial and independent investigation, and accountability for those found responsible for the abuses that have taken place should be ensured.”

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Clashes resumed for a fifth day despite a promise by the head of the ruling military council on Tuesday to speed up a presidential election to the first half of next year, a concession swiftly rejected by tens of thousands of protesters in Tahrir Square. The military previously floated late next year or early 2013 as the likely date for the vote, the last step in the process of transferring power to a civilian government.

Video: Protesters throw stones, conflict grows in Cairo (on this page)

The clashes are the longest spate of uninterrupted violence since the 18-day uprising that toppled the former regime in February.

The standoff at Tahrir and in other major cities such as Alexandria and Assiut has deepened the country’s economic and security crisis less than a week before the first parliamentary elections since the ouster of longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak.

Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi tried to defuse tensions with his address late Tuesday, but he did not set a date for handing authority to a civilian government.

The Tahrir crowd, along with protesters in a string of other cities, want Tantawi to step down immediately in favor of an interim civilian administration to run the nation’s affairs until a new parliament and president are elected.

The government offered more concessions on Wednesday, ordering the release of 312 protesters detained over the past days and instructing civilian prosecutors to take over a probe the military started into the death of 27 people, mostly Christians, in a protest on Oct. 9. The army is accused of involvement in the killings.

The military also denied that its troops around Tahrir Square used tear gas or fired at protesters, an assertion that runs against numerous witness accounts that say troops deployed outside the Interior Ministry were firing tear gas at protesters.

Street battles have been heaviest around the heavily fortified Interior Ministry, located on a side street that leads to the iconic square that was the epicenter of the uprising earlier this year. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to keep the protesters from storming the ministry, a sprawling complex that has for long been associated with the hated police and Mubarak’s former regime.

An Associated Press reporter at the scene said a truce negotiated by Muslim clerics briefly held in the late afternoon, after both the protesters and the police pulled back from the front line street, scene of most of the fighting. State television, meanwhile, broadcast footage from the scene of the clashes showing army soldiers forming a human chain between the protesters and the police in a bid to stop the violence.

The truce was soon breached in a barrage of tear gas and rubber bullets from police and a shower of rocks by protesters.

One of the clerics, Mohammed Fawaz, said he and others were trying to regroup and try again to stop the fighting.

“We’re scattered. we are trying to from a new human chain between protesters and police. We want the army to protect us,” he said as a white cloud of tear gas hung low over the crowd and shots rang out.

Protester Islam Mohammed, 22, said a friend, Shehab Abdullah, died earlier in the day from what he said was a live bullet fired by police. “I will avenge his death. We all will,” he said. “We are defending Tahrir square. If we sleep, police will attack us.”

Soon after the truce was shattered, Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehan Nojaim was arrested, according to her friend and co-producer Karim Amer.

He said Nojaim called from her mobile telephone to say that she was detained by military police.

“They arrested her because they don’t want anyone documenting what’s happening,” Amer said.

Elnadeem Center, an Egyptian rights group known for its careful research of victims of police violence, said late Tuesday that the number of protesters killed in clashes nationwide since Saturday is 38, three more than the Health Ministry’s death toll, which went up to 35 on Wednesday. All but four of the deaths were in Cairo.

The clashes also have left at least 2,000 protesters wounded, mostly from gas inhalation or injuries caused by rubber bullets fired by the army and the police. The police deny using live ammunition.

Human Rights Watch on Tuesday cited morgue officials as saying at least 20 people have been killed by live ammunition.

Shady el-Nagar, a doctor in one of Tahrir’s field hospitals, said three bodies arrived in the facility on Wednesday. All three had bullet wounds.

The turmoil broke out just days before the start of staggered parliamentary elections on Nov. 28. The votes will take place over months and conclude in March.

The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s strongest and best organized group, is not taking part in the ongoing protests in a move that is widely interpreted to be a reflection of its desire not to do anything that could derail the election, which it hopes win along with its allies.

Hundreds of Brotherhood supporters, however, have defied the leadership and joined the crowds in the square. Their participation is not likely to influence the Brotherhood’s leadership or narrow the rift between the Islamist group and the secular organizations behind the uprising that toppled Mubarak and which are behind the latest spate of protests.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, meanwhile, was said by a spokesman to be following events in Egypt “with great concern.”

“In the new Egypt, which wants to be free and democratic, repression and the use of force against peaceful demonstrators can have no place,” spokesman Steffen Seibert said in Berlin. “The demonstrators’ demands … for a quick transition to a civilian government are understandable from the German government’s point of view,” he added.

___

Associated Press writers Maggie Michael in Cairo and Frank Jordans in Geneva contributed to this report.

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45418680/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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WASHINGTON ? National Security Adviser Tom Donilon said Tuesday that Iran has been weakened under the Obama administration, rebutting Republicans and other critics who have called the White House policy on Iran ineffective.

Donilon’s remarks at the Brookings Institution came just hours before a scheduled foreign policy debate by GOP presidential candidates, several of whom have called for a tougher line against Iran. The White House said that the timing was coincidental.

Donilon told experts at the Brookings Institution that when President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, Iran seemed to many in the region to be “ascendant,” its regime faced no significant challenge at home and the international community was divided over how to deal with Tehran’s nuclear program.

He said that after Iran rejected U.S. overtures for dialogue, the administration ramped up sanctions, sought to isolate Tehran diplomatically, thwarted Iran’s efforts to “meddle” in its neighbors affairs and strengthened military cooperation with Persian Gulf states. “We have steadily increased the pressure on the Iranian regime and raised the cost of their intransigence,” he said.

Donilon said the administration’s international sanctions, internal divisions and the revolts of the Arab Spring have reduced Iran’s influence in the Middle East and beyond.

Michael Singh, the director for Iran for the Bush administration’s National Security Council, said the only real measure of progress is whether the U.S. is any closer to forcing Iran to abandon its prohibited nuclear programs.

“The fact is, we’re not,” Singh said. He said that so far no U.S. administration “has really come up with a formula to stop Iran in its tracks.”

When Donilon was asked if the White House strategy is succeeding, he said that with persistence and international support, “over time the goal would be to raise the price and force the choice” between Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and an important role in the international community.

Donilon’s comments came two weeks after the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog found that Iran had engaged in nuclear weapons research and one day after the U.S. expanded sanctions to include Iran’s petrochemical industry and central bank.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20111122/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iran_white_house

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