The News Of …

This Friday, November 11, is Veterans Day. For numerologists, it’s doubly significant this year because it happens to be 11.11.11. November 11 used to be called Armistice Day because it was on this date in 1918 that an armistice to end World War I was signed in a railroad car in Compiegne, just outside of Paris. But the armistice that was signed that day would prove to make the numbers 11-11-11 unintentionally infamous for all time.
News of the ceasefire spread quickly by telegraph to all parts of the world. Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso got up early in New York City to celebrate and sang the American national anthem in English from his hotel balcony. Citizens in Windsor Locks ran along Main Street shouting, clanging pots and pans, and then burned Kaiser Wilhelm in effigy. Similar acts of celebration occurred throughout the country.
But the celebration was premature. The war had not really ended. It had about six hours to go, as the ceasefire was to begin at 11 a.m. on the 11th day of the 11th month — 11-11-11.The Allied signers of the armistice thought it would be more memorable if the peace began at 11. Little did they realize the horrible consequences their desire for numerical symmetry would have upon the lives of thousands of people.
Historian Joseph Persico has done extensive research about the final six hours of the Great War. Persico has found that more than 10.000 were killed, wounded, or missing on both sides during those last six hours. That’s more than the total casualties for both sides during the D-Day invasion during World War II!
American AEF Cmdr. Gen. John J. Pershing, who opposed the armistice, sent out an order to observe the ceasefire at 11 a.m. Pershing’s orders did not specify what to do between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. Nine of the sixteen American divisional commanders, therefore, pressed on with their attacks against the Germans that morning. Seven commanders saw no point in putting their men’s lives at risk to take land that would be theirs to control in just a couple of hours and refused to engage the enemy.

Veterans Day.

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Washington Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos has been kidnapped in his home country of Venezuela.
Reports said Ramos, 24, was kidnapped from his home on Wednesday evening.
Ramos’ winter league team, the Aragua Tigers, confirmed the kidnapping via Twitter. Kathe Vilera, the team’s spokeswoman, tweeted that four armed men in a pickup truck took Ramos from his home.
“This is sad, worrisome and true that Wilson Ramos has been kidnapped,” Vilera wrote.
El Siglo, a Venezuelan news outlet, reported that Ramos was taken while he was in the company of his family. Another Venezuelan outlet, El Nacional, said Ramos’ family is waiting to hear from the kidnappers.
Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said the team is waiting for more information before commenting. In 2011, Ramos hit .267 with 15 home runs and 52 RBIs in 113 games.
Major League Baseball players from Venezuela have had family members kidnapped in the past, including former Tiger Ugueth Urbina, whose mother was kidnapped in 2004. She was held for ransom but was rescued by police after five months.

Wilson Ramos.

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Rotund RAP legend Heavy D died Tuesday after collapsing in his California home. He was 44.
The Westchester County-raised entertainer was taken by ambulance to Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles about 11:25 a.m. and died 90 minutes later – cops told the Daily News.
Heavy D was conscious and talking when officers responded to a 911 call from his Beverly Hills condo, said Lt. Mark Rosen of the Beverly Hills Police Department.
Rosen said the portly rapper, whose real name was Dwight Arrington Myers, was having difficulty breathing as paramedics rushed him to the hospital.
The performer had just returned from Europe and was battling pneumonia, KTLA news in Los Angeles reported.
Rosen said Heavy D had come home from a shopping trip Tuesday and began laboring for breath as he walked into his condo building.
“He collapsed in an exterior hallway” – Rosen said. “There doesn’t appear to be any foul play. We believe it was medically related.”
The actual cause of death is pending an autopsy.
Born in Jamaica and raised in Mount Vernon, Heavy D rose to stardom in the 1990s as the frontman for Heavy D & the Boys.
Along with band mates G-Whiz, Trouble T. Roy and Eddie F., he made hip-hop history with hit songs like “Now That We Found Love””and “Nuttin But Love.” They also performed the theme song for the 1990s comedy TV series “In Living Color.”
Heavy D last performed in October at the BET Awards.
In recent years, he had ventured into acting, scoring small movie roles, including one in the 1999 film “The Cider House Rules.”

Heavy D.

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Joe Frazier (the son of a South Carolina sharecropper who punched meat in a Philadelphia slaughterhouse before Rocky) won Olympic gold, and beat an undefeated Muhammad Ali to become one of the all-time heavyweight greats, died on Monday, his family said in a statement. He was 67.
Frazier, whose liver cancer was diagnosed about a month ago, spent his last days living under hospice care in a Center City apartment.
Frazier, known as “Smokin’ Joe,” was small for a heavyweight, just under six-feet tall, but compensated with a relentless attack in the ring, bobbing and weaving as if his upper body were on a tightly coiled spring, constantly moving forward, and throwing more punches than most heavyweights.
“A kind of motorized Marciano” is how Time magazine described his style in a 1971 cover story before Frazier’s 5 million dollars fight with Muhammad Ali, the first of their three epic battles and the most lucrative boxing match ever at the time.
Fans could watch Frazier fight for minutes at a time and not see him take one step back.
“There were fights when he didn’t step backward. He took very few backward steps in his career” – recalled Larry Merchant, the HBO boxing analyst, who was a Philadelphia newspaperman during Frazier’s early years. “What made him good was not so much his punching power as his willingness to keep coming and walking through the fire, his toughness and grit — and willingness to train so he could take the kind of punishment a fighter take in order to get to his opponent.”
Frazier’s signature weapon was a destructive left hook, which he used to win his first title in 1968 and floor Ali in their first meeting in 1971. He developed his powerful left as a young child, growing up without electricity or plumbing in rural Beaufort, South Carolina. His father had lost his left arm in a shooting over a mistress, and young Joe became his father’s left arm.

Joe Frazier.

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Running the New York City Marathon on Sunday, former “Survivor” winner Ethan Zohn spotted his girlfriend of eight years, Jenna Morasca, cheering him on outside of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, where he has spent countless hours battling his Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“I jogged over to her and gave her a big giant hug. And there may have been some tears shed” – says Zohn, 37. Calling it “a really emotional moment,” Morasca adds – “It was just an overwhelming sense of pride on my side and for him, just a feeling of being supported. There were a lot of emotions packed into that one hug.”
That support carried Zohn through the last eight miles of the race, when he really began to feel the wear on his body.
“My quads were burning, my hamstrings felt like they were about to rip off” – he says. “But I knew with every step I was crushing little cancer cells on the road. I even wrote ‘f–k canzer’ on the bottom of my shoes. That’s what kept me going.”
Rounding each corner, Zohn was met by thunderous cheers from fans. “Literally it was like walking into a surprise party that was organized just for me. ‘Go Ethan! Keep running! Outrun cancer!’ It was really an incredible experience” – he says.
“Everyone in New York City came out to support so many people. Everything was happy, everything was positive, and you don’t see that that often.”
Zohn finished the race in 4:20:46, and Morasca was waiting for him at the finish line. “She was right there, by my side, as always” – says Zohn. “I gave her a big fat hug and a big sweaty kiss and it was worth every second of it.”
Morasca insists the moment was bigger than the both of them. “I was just so happy to see him. There’s nothing he could ever do that could make me feel like he’s any stronger because he’s already accomplished so much” – she says. “I never have any doubt that he’s going to overcome any obstacles he’s presented with.”

Ethan Zohn.

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Legendary CBS News commentator Andy Rooney (known to millions for his witty essays on mundane topics) died Friday night in New York. He was 92.
He had been hospitalized after suffering complications following minor surgery last month.
“It’s a sad day at ’60 Minutes’ and for everybody here at CBS News” – said Jeff Fager, chairman of CBS News and the executive producer of ’60 Minutes.’ “It’s hard to imagine not having Andy around. He loved his life and he lived it on his own terms. We will miss him very much.”
Rooney made his last regular weekly appearance on ’60 Minutes’ on October 2. A few weeks later, CBS announced he was in a hospital.
Rooney’s colleague and longtime ’60 Minutes’ correspondent Morley Safer told CNN Saturday that Rooney worked to the very end and that he would not have wanted it any other way.
“That’s the way to go” – Safer said. “The only thing better than three weeks would have been three minutes.”
Correspondent Steve Kroft reflected on the length of Rooney’s storied career.
“What a life: ninety-two years of doing what you love to do while engaging and entertaining millions and millions of people” – he said.
And Lesley Stahl, also Rooney’s colleague on the show, called him “our poet laureate.”
“He was the Oracle of West 57th Street, an everyman if everyman wrote like a dream” – she said. “He was the most popular member of our team, loved by the audience, and far more loved by all of us than he knew.”

Andy Rooney.

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Three-time World Cup overall champion and Olympic gold medalist Lindsey Vonn was too busy training and competing to go to school dances during her teen years. Now, she’s making up for lost time.
Vonn, a Vail, Colo. native, was visiting her old stomping grounds at the Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy Thursday (November 3) when she was pleasantly surprised with an invitation to attend the school’s homecoming dance the following night by 16-year-old nordic ski racer Parker McDonald.
“When Parker asked me he was cute, nervous and very polite so of course I said YES!” Vonn told her international network of more than 300,000 Facebook friends. “All through school growing up I never got the chance to go to a school dance so I’m excited for tonight!”
Vonn is in Vail with the rest of the U.S. Ski Team for several days of training on the resort’s Golden Peak ahead of the next World Cup event in Aspen, Colo. November 27-28.
“I thought, ‘I need a date and there’s Lindsey Vonn. I’ll ask her!’” McDonald told the Vail Daily. “She walked by my lunch table and I whipped out the question.”
The question on the rest of our minds? Can Lindsey Vonn move on the dance floor like she does on the race course.

Lindsey Vonn.

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The DASH diet recently received kudos from the US News & World Report expert panel as a balanced dietary plan for everyone in the family to improve their overall health.
Pop diets come and go but it seems the DASH diet is here to stay. DASH stands for “Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension.” Beside lowering blood pressure and cholesterol, the DASH diet is associated with a lower risk of kidney stones, cancer, stroke, heart failure, heart disease and developing diabetes. On Nov. 1, 2011, US News and World Report ranked it one of the healthiest diets for the entire family.
US News and World Report reported David Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine, said: “Most diets aren’t about the family, and that really is a fundamental flaw. It is typically an every-man-for-himself scenario, and inevitably, people leave their families behind.”
The DASH diet is family-friendly, making it a top choice for all kinds of people. While it deflates blood pressure, it also keeps weight in check. The DASH diet is easily tailored for everyone from children to seniors. Meals include vegetables, fruits, fat-free or low-fat dairy, lean meant, poultry and fish and grains. Included in the diet are buckwheat pancakes, fruit smoothies and southwestern-style potato skins.
Teresa Fung, a nutritionist at Simmons College in Boston, said: “I don’t think the typical American diet looks anything like DASH or Mediterranean. Most families get pizza or go out to eat twice a week.” She stated moving a step closer would be an improvement for families.
According to the DASH diet website, the diet is recommended by physicians for people with hypertension or pre-hypertension. The National Institute of Health sponsored studies and found the diet plan has been proven to lower blood pressure.

Dash Diet.

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Is Justin Bieber a baby daddy? A girl by the name of Mariah Yeater claims to have taken the pop singer’s virginity during a backstage tryst last year at a Los Angeles concert. Now, she wants Justin Bieber to take a paternity test and pay child support. In fact – she’s filed a lawsuit.
One look at the girls picture and she looks a bit nutty and delusional. Of course, Star Magazine must have bought the rights to her story but her claim that Justin became overwhelmed with lust and chose to have a 30 second encounter with her seems far fetched. Mariah Yeater has filed a lawsuit against Justin Bieber and he will be forced to appear in court on December 15th. Bieber’s attorneys have called the allegations made by Yeater “malicious, defamatory and demonstrably false.”
“This is so unfair” – said the source. “Justin is simply being targeted because of his fame. … While unfortunately it’s the kind of thing that comes with stardom today, this is only going to make Justin more gun-shy and could lead him to become more isolated from the public.”
Luckily for the Biebs, his girlfriend Selena Gomez is standing by her man and doesn’t appear to be mad. Justin and Selena are in love and aren’t going to allow fame and stardom to get in the way of their relationship.
Astrochicks predicts Justin Bieber will weather the storm and Mariah Yeater will crawl back under the rock she came from.

Justin Bieber.

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Actress and singer Zooey Deschanel and Death Cab for Cutie frontman Ben Gibbard have ended their two-year marriage.
A representative of Deschanel confirmed the split to US Weekly. “It was mutual and amicable” – a source added. “There was no third party involved.”
The 31-year-old actress/singer and Death Cab for Cutie frontman, 35, were married near Seattle in late September 2009.
In New York magazine’s September cover story about Deschanel, Gibbard gushed about meeting and pursuing the star, who also fronts the band She and Him. “I’d seen her movies and obviously I thought she was very beautiful” – he said.
When their mutual music manager finally introduced them three years ago, Gibbard was “just awestruck that she was even talking to me”.
Deschanel previously told iVillage that it was “definitely hard” being apart from her indie rocker guy when he was away on tour.
“He’s really good at calling” – she said. “He’s probably better than I am. He’s a very conscientious person.”

Zooey Deschanel and Ben Gibbard.

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