I know most students probably do not really know the history behind Bubba Smith, or maybe who he even is. Bubba Smith will get his number retired on Saturday night on the same Spartan Stadium turf where just the sound of his name scared opponents so many years ago.

Smith may very well be the best defensive player ever to put on green and white along with teammate George Webster. Those two anchored what was the best defense ever in the Spartans' history and nearly led the Spartans to back-to-back national titles in 1965 and 1966, if it would not have been for some 10-10 tie in 1966 against the Irish.

When Bubba was flying around the field, the chant from the entire stadium would echo "Kill, Bubba, kill." I'm asking that for one more time, Spartan Stadium echo with that chant again — not only during the ceremony, but also when the Spartans are on defense.

With this being the 40th anniversary of that 10-10 tie, it would be a fitting way to honor that game and also maybe inspire the defense to play a little like the best Spartans defense of all time.

Chris Watsonkinesiology senior

Tuesday, September 5th
London, Abbey Road Studios: birthplace to most of the Beatles records, and countless other classic albums from Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ to Radiohead’s ‘Kid A’.

Larry and Edge have flown in from Dublin, Bono from France and Adam, already in the city, has taken the short drive across town. Waiting in the control room is the instantly recognisable figure of Mr Rick Rubin, a producer whose musical pedigree stretches from Justin Timberlake to The Mars Volta, from Johnny Cash to Metallica. Rubin met up with the band earlier in the summer down in France and word is that some of what was written and demoed then will be recorded properly in the coming days.

Wednesday, September 6th 06
Back in the studio this afternoon, a late kick-off but now working on a new U2 track. Taping, as we used to call it, is briefly interrupted when Paul McCartney and Beatles producer George Martin drop by. U2 and McCartney were last in a London studio together in the summer of 2005, rehearsing ‘Sergeant Pepper’. Then playing Live 8 to a billion people next day. Bit of a moment to see Macca sliding down the bannister of the stairway from the control room to the studio floor. This place is like his second home. Then U2 got back to making music… and on into the night.

Thursday, September 7th 06
U2 were again at work by early afternoon, this time on a track that sounds like a U2 classic with an instant hook and a mesmerising chorus.

‘Bono had demoed it in Dublin,’ explains Larry. ‘Then brought it to the band and even in its most basic form you had the feeling that something special was going on.

‘It felt that maybe this time we were not going to be pushing a rock up a hill as we do a lot of the time with new material.’

U2 is working on material for its next studio album with producer Rick Rubin, according to the band's Web site. The group has been at work on the as-yet-untitled follow-up to 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb since last month.

While in the studio, U2 will be joined by Green Day to record a cover of Scottish punk band the Skids' "The Saints Are Coming." Proceeds from the track will benefit Music Rising, an instrument replacement fund co-founded by U2 guitarist the Edge last summer in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Meanwhile, a DVD chronicling U2's Zoo TV tour will arrive Sept. 19 via Island/UME.

He says Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs would be "a great disaster movie for kids...I think it's because those disaster movies are kind of silly, and they take themselves really seriously. And we felt like, it's sort of a silly idea for a movie in the first place. And giving it a little bit of a tongue-in-cheek comedy treatment felt like the way to go."

MILWAUKEE (Aug. 24) - Milwaukee has been ranked by Forbes.com as "America's Drunkest City" on a list of 35 major metropolitan areas ranked for their drinking habits.

Forbes said Tuesday it used numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to rank cities in five areas: state laws, number of drinkers, number of heavy drinkers, number of binge drinkers and alcoholism.

Minneapolis-St. Paul was ranked second overall; followed by Columbus, Ohio; Boston; Austin, Texas; Chicago; Cleveland; Pittsburgh and then Philadelphia and Providence, R.I., in a tie for ninth.

• Time Machine - a new built-in backup system that will back up your entire system and allow you to restore the whole thing or just selected files.
• Enhancements to iChat -- including a tabbed interface, custom still or video backdrops for your video iChat, iChat Theater (which lets you show iPhoto pics or a Keynote presentation during an iChat), and Photo Booth effects to make yourself look silly during a chat. Other iChat enhancements that were mentioned but not demoed include video recording (yes!), invisible mode, and animated buddy icons. The Apple site also shows the ability to share your desktop during an iChat. Now just let me figure out how to use these features to do screen recordings and machinima -- hmmm.
• Two dashboard additions -- Web Clip, which allows you to build dynamically updating widgets from any Web page (examples -- a cartoon or bestseller list that updates every day); and DashCode for widget development, complete with modifiable widget templates (for RSS, podcasts, and more), and a library of parts to pop into your widget.
• Additions to Mail.app -- a To-Do list made automatically from emails and that ties into iCal and other apps; Stationery (rich HTML email templates); and Notes (to replace those reminder emails you've been sending yourself).
• Universal Access features - natural sounding voiceover, closed captioning in QuickTime, and braille support.
• Core Animation - with features like keyframing and tweening to help developers create animations.
• Spotlight enhancement - Spotlight will be able to search other machines on your network, do Boolean search, and will launch your applications for you.
• Virtual desktop Spaces - letting you combine task-based applications into separate logical desktop configurations. That means you can have one group of apps running for Web design, another for print production, and yet another for podcast creation and editing. You'll be able to drag items between Spaces.
• Complete package - of built-in apps, including Boot Camp, Front Row, and PhotoBooth.
• 64 bit processing.

GROVE CITY, Ohio -- A bizarre act of nature was found in Grove City Wednesday -- a kitten was born with two faces.

The kitten was born Wednesday morning. It has two mouths that meow in unison, two noses and four eyes that have not opened yet, NBC 4's Mike Bowersock reported.

"I was playing outside in the rain. Once I came in, I saw a two-faced cat my mom was picking up. That's how I knew there was a two-faced cat," said Charles Roberts, the cat's owner.

The cat's owner told NBC 4 that she fed Tiger at about 1 a.m. Friday. But when she awakened at about 5 a.m. to check on the cat, it was gone.

The family searched their entire home, but the kitten was not found, NBC 4 reported.

The cat was scheduled to go to a veterinarian on Friday. The cat did not originally nurse since it was born but was eating at the time of his disappearance, the cat's owner said.

Two other kittens were part of the litter but there was only one cat born with two faces, NBC 4 reported.Dr. Shane Bateman with The Ohio State University Veterinary Hospital said a two-faced kitten is extremely rare and there's no real explanation as to why it would have happened.

There's a time when you cast a shadow and a time when the shadow casts you. This, more than anything, is why Brendan Shanahan left the Red Wings on Sunday and signed with the New York Rangers.

"It was just a growing instinct," he said via phone from his summer home in Massachusetts. "As great as the future is in Detroit, I think I belonged a little more to its great past."

This is not your typical departing-athlete statement, which more often goes: "I had to do what was best for my family."

But Shanahan was never a typical athlete. More cerebral than most, more risk-taking than others, Shanahan, in his decade in this city, was keenly aware of the public thermometer. He knew how rare it was to ride a wave of Red Wings fever to three Stanley Cups in six years. And now, at 37, with the local horizon filled less with championships than with melancholy comparisons, he got while the gittin' was good.

"I guess I felt my group was leaving, our era is kind of over," he said. "I think it's better to walk out the door than to have it opened for you and, you know" -- he chuckled -- "they grab you by the scruff of the neck and throw you out."

This is not Ben Wallace, harpooning big money and leaving behind the teammates who made him special. Shanahan took a one-year, $4-million deal from the Rangers, for the same or even less potential money than the Wings were offering, because he feels he is down to his final seasons and he wants to play them on the ice, not against his shadow. He spoke to Steve Yzerman about it. He spoke to Ken Holland about it. Both conversations, he said, ended not with anger but with them talking about how much they had accomplished together...

He knows glory. He knows defeat. And he knows that all players eventually reach that bracing moment when they face a hook: Either they hang their skates on it, or they are given it by management. He didn't want that happening in Detroit. He leaves with a good decade behind him, locked and laminated. It's the smart play, maybe as positive an ending as he was going to get as a Wing.

Detroit has lost three major stars in the past week. Each had his own story. Yzerman was canonized. Wallace was jeered.

Brendan Shanahan, when the smoke clears, will be appreciated -- and missed. You can be happy that he has found a team for his closing chapters, or you can be angry that he didn't make it Detroit. But he didn't leave spitting. He didn't wave a bundle of cash from the train. He spent a lot of time on the ice over the years anticipating a pass or a punch, and when he anticipated his end here, he saw more shadows than light. He made a choice. And he's right about one thing. An era has passed.

Time moves like a river. Ours is called the Detroit. And his, now, is called the Hudson.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Three people have been arrested on charges of offering Coca-Cola secrets to rival Pepsi for $1.5 million, federal prosecutors have said.

The FBI began an undercover sting after Pepsi informed Coke it had received a letter from someone claiming to be a Coke employee, offering "very detailed and confidential information" about products being developed, according to David Nahmias, the U.S. attorney in Atlanta.

It was the second time MSU had three players drafted (2001 was the other). It was the fourth time MSU had two players picked in the first round. And it gave the Spartans six first-round selections since 2000 - trailing only Connecticut (eight) and Duke (seven) in that time.

"It was a huge night for the program. I thought Stephen A. Smith did us a lot of favors," MSU coach Tom Izzo said of the ESPN analyst who praised MSU's player development more than once. "And I think that is respect for the program and the guys that have played here."

Shannon Brown to Cleveland: could play a lot right away, the beneficiary of passes from another former Spartan, Eric Snow...with lots of open court room as Lebron James is double-teamed. Look for him on ESPN's Top Ten plays of the day with a few explosive dunks next season.

Maurice Ager to Dallas: Whew. Could be a tough lineup to crack, what with having just made the Finals and all. Somebody in the paper sees him as the ultimate successor to Jerry Stackhouse for bench scoring, to which I say...'huh?' Stack must be four inches taller and 40 pounds heavier.

Paul Davis to the LA Clippers: will make the team, and then might lead the NBA in splinters behind Chris Kamen and Elton Brand on a young team that's finally moving up after a history of futility. Hope I'm wrong.

Not to stick sand in that sharp new Sparty swimsuit, but if Brown, Ager, and Davis truly are first-round talents, it would be fair (and even more frustrating) to re-ask the question: How did MSU manage to finish 8-8 in the Big Ten and get bounced from the NCAA Tournament in the first round?

"We had three very good players," Izzo says. "But it takes more than three very good players to win at the level we're trying to win at. We didn't have the depth or the luck to get done what we wanted to get done. I don't look at it as a negative because I understand some of the reasons why we weren't (better)."

NEW YORK (June 22) - Larry Brown was fired by the New York Knicks on Thursday and replaced as coach by president and general manager Isiah Thomas.

In Brown's one season in New York, the Knicks stumbled to a 23-59 record - second worst in the NBA and matching the most losses in club history.

AN INQUIRER READER attending a conference in Japan was sat just feet away from a laptop computer that suddenly exploded into flames, in what could have been a deadly accident.

Guilhem, our astonished reader reports: "The damn thing was on fire and produced several explosions for more than five minutes".

Should you witness such an event, his advice is, "Don't try anything courageous/stupid, stay away, away, away!"

"For the record, this is a Dell machine," notes Guilhem. "It is only a matter of time until such an incident breaks out on a plane," he suggests.

Guilhem managed to catch all the action in these amazing pictures.

"Fire extinguishers leave a mess on your suit and belongings; pack your stuff (if you can) and leave, leave, leave!" he advises.

DETROIT (AP) - Eminem will return to the big screen in an updated version of the television Western "Have Gun - Will Travel."

Paramount Pictures has extended an 18-month option on the property to develop it as a vehicle for the Detroit rapper, Daily Variety reported Tuesday. The show debuted on CBS in 1957 and ran until 1963.

Eminem, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III, has committed to shoot the role and is excited about his latest opportunity, Interscope Records spokesman Dennis Dennehy told The Associated Press. Dennehy did not provide additional details.

The concept of the series will be updated to contemporary times and feature Eminem playing a bounty hunter, Daily Variety said.

DURHAM, N.C. (AP) -- Duke standout J.J. Redick was arrested early Tuesday on charges of driving while impaired, according to court records.

Redick, 21, was also charged with unlawful use of highways and his drivers license was revoked for 30 days, according to records cited in several published reports.

The creative minds behind Fox's "24" have finally inked deals to create a movie based on the Emmy-winning series, finally moving the buzz-worthy project out of the realm of mere speculation.

According to Variety, 20th Century Fox has reached deals with Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, the show's creators, and Howard Gordon, a long-time executive producer, to work on a big screen version of the nail-biting adventures of the always-busy Jack Bauer.

One person who currently isn't under contract is Kiefer Sutherland, who has played anti-terrorism agent Bauer for five seasons. However, given Sutherland's repeated contributions to the "24" feature's rumor mill--he's long been in favor of the idea--his addition seems to be only a matter of time.

The industry trade paper repeats rumors that the feature would abandon the show's real-time format to allow for an expanded plot.

The flick hasn't been given the official green light, however.

Shannon Brown, I have two words for you: MARCUS TAYLOR. Just keep repeating those words when you think about hiring an agent and officially closing the door on your senior year at Michigan State.

Okay, so Downtown Shannon Brown hasn't done this yet, but after reading this story in the State News and this one in today's Lansing State Journal, I can't say I'm optimistic. Why? Because this is the exact same routine Marcus Taylor put us through four years ago. He declared for the draft without hiring an agent, and now he has a thriving NBA career... in his driveway.

But Thursday, after weeks of hearing nothing but positive feedback on his status, Brown finally decided to make his jump official. He will forfeit his senior year at Michigan State despite not getting a rock-solid promise that he'll go in the first round. First-round picks get guaranteed three-year deals.

"There won't be any regret because it's my decision," Brown said via teleconference, when asked about the possibility of not going in the first round. "There's no regret at all. There's a possibility I could get picked in the first round, there's a possibility I could get picked in the second round, and there's a possibility I won't get picked at all. It's something I have to deal with."

Brown will hire Chicago-based agent Mark Bartelstein, CEO of Priority Sports and Entertainment, who acted as an adviser to Brown throughout the process. Bartelstein, MSU coach Tom Izzo and Brown's father, Chris, worked closely in gathering information.

Maybe Hyundai Motor Co. drivers don't need that 10-year, 100,000-mile warranty after all.

The South Korean automaker known for its value pricing -- all its vehicles sell for less than $29,000 -- delivered a jaw-dropping performance in J.D. Power and Associates' annual survey on new-vehicle quality, which was released Wednesday.

Hyundai was the No. 1 non-premium brand in the United States, edging past Toyota, the Japanese brand whose rock-solid quality reputation has been shaking Detroit's dominance in the nation's auto market for years.

Overall, Hyundai was No. 3 in this year's report, behind No. 1 Porsche and No. 2 Lexus, Toyota's luxury brand, and right ahead of Toyota. Last year, Hyundai was No. 11, so the leap made Hyundai the third-most improved nameplate this year.

Enron founder Lay was convicted on all six counts against him in the corporate trial. Former Chief Executive Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts, including one count of insider trading, and acquitted on the remaining nine.

Lake set sentencing for Sept. 11. Lay's charges carry a maximum penalty in prison of 45 years for the corporate trial and 120 years in the personal banking trial. Skilling's charges carry a maximum penalty of 185 years in prison.

As Lake read the verdict from the bench, Lay tossed his head at hearing the first "guilty" on the conspiracy count. He clutched his wife's hand as he heard that word over and over again.

Lay sat with his wife, Linda; his daughter, Elizabeth Vittor, a member of his defense team; and Linda Lay's daughter, Robyn. As Lay clutched Linda Lay's hand, the three women leaned forward and began to sob quietly.

After Lake left the courtroom, Lay's family and some friends gathered around him as the ex-chairman, red-faced and fighting back tears, hugged them and thanked them for their support.

iTunes is not playing.Skilling, sitting with his brother, Mark, showed no emotion when the verdict was read.

"Obviously, I'm disappointed," Skilling told reporters outside the courthouse. "But that's the way the system works."

But in Alabama, the home state of Taylor Hicks, the chubby, Birmingham-born finalist, Idol has become a bit of a nuisance for some of the professionals whose business it is to focus on the old-fashioned kind of election -- and the state of Alabama has a big one on June 6.

So popular is "Idol" that the show's viewership in the state has exploded, dwarfing anything else on television.

Last week's show drew a record 42.6 rating compared to 4 ratings each for the perennially strong "Good Morning America" and "The Today Show."

The "Hicks Factor" has created an unprecedented opportunity for Alabama candidates and consultants for the upcoming primary: practically the entire state is tuning in to 'American Idol' and paying rapt attention -- and to top it all off, they're voters! (If you count voting for your favorite 'Idol' contestant, that is!) Problem is, the cost of associating one's candidacy with Alabama's new favorite son is enough to bankrupt lesser campaigns.

As "Idol's" ratings have skyrocketed, so has the cost of 30-second ads, which can range from $5,000 up to $20,000. The "Hicks Factor" has even spilled over into morning and evening newscasts, whose ratings have been boosted by countless Taylor Hicks tie-ins.

According to information provided to us by one top consultant in the state, Fox's late news has seen a 63 percent increase in ratings due to the 'Idol' lead.

Too bad for Hicks that the state's filing deadline has passed:
if he doesn't take home the crown tonight, he'd have to be the odds-on favorite for governor.

I have been to Iraq nine times since the American invasion three years ago, for a total of about 10 solid months. (My wife is counting.) During that time, I have seen bombs and blood, I have seen rebuilding and restructuring, and I have seen death and democracy. So what have I heard? That's easy: Lionel Richie.

Grown Iraqi men get misty-eyed by the mere mention of his name. "I love Lionel Richie," they say. Iraqis who do not understand a word of English can sing an entire Lionel Richie song.

This is the same Lionel Richie who wrote "Say You, Say Me." This is the same Lionel Richie who is the father of some young woman named Nicole. Yes, that Lionel Richie. Could he really be an Iraqi icon?

I decided I had to investigate, and not just investigate, I decided I had to ask Lionel Richie himself. So I called him from Baghdad. Actually it was a formal interview. It was the first interview with Lionel Richie ever on the subject of Iraq and Iraqis.

I asked Richie if he knows just how big he is here. He said, "The answer is, I'm huge, huge in the Arab world. The answer as to why is, I don't have the slightest idea."

Did you know that Pat Robertson can leg-press 2000 pounds! How does he do it?

Where does Pat find the time and energy to host a daily, national TV show, head a world-wide ministry, develop visionary scholars, while traveling the globe as a statesman?

One of Pat's secrets to keeping his energy high and his vitality soaring is his age-defying protein shake. Pat developed a delicious, refreshing shake, filled with energy-producing nutrients.

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Tuesday's final presents a stark choice. McPhee would seem to be a record executive's dream candidate: a classy, pretty girl from Los Angeles who can really sing. But there's only a few record executives out there, and many millions of Idol voters, and I suspect that they, with guidance from Simon, Randy, and Paula, will choose Hicks, the prematurely gray-haired doofus who has spent the past several weeks jerking across the Idol stage like a spaz while belting out classic R&B covers. There's something vaguely unsettling about his shtick: Although he's not black, he calls his fans "The Soul Patrol," and although he's neither black nor blind, he insists on lurching backward when he sings like his idol Ray Charles.

Still, I'll be rooting hard for Hicks. I wager he'll win in a walk, as well he should: He's just a more interesting singer. A Hicks victory would be the ultimate answer to critics who've slammed Idol for its plastic pop-music values. (Bar Band Singer Bests Pop Princess!) And it would continue the Idol voters' streak of choosing talent over beauty—think of pretty boy Justin Guarini falling to Kelly Clarkson, who despite the best efforts of a battery of stylists still looks more like a Dutch mastiff than Jessica Simpson. No matter what happens, it's destined to be a riveting few hours of television. If you're one of the last American Idol holdouts, I urge you to tune in. There will doubtless be at least a couple of great performances—and maybe even a moment.

Look. This is no longer about quotes. This is no longer about Rasheed Wallace's silly claims or the Pistons' verbal confidence. This is only about what's happening on the floor. The Pistons are playing badly. They are shooting badly. On Wednesday, they made dumb passes, lazy passes, technical fouls -- two, the point difference in the game -- and their shots were blocked 10 times.

And the bugaboo that nobody wanted to face but you knew they were going to face sometime -- Ben Wallace at the free-throw line -- came to pass at the worst moment, 40 seconds left with the game tied.

He missed the first. He really missed the second.

The Pistons didn't score again.

It can't happen, right? But it's happening.

"I'm still not concerned," guard Chauncey Billups said, almost incredibly, after the Pistons -- the team that wins nail-biters -- lost another nail-biter, 86-84, Wednesday night at the Palace. "I know what we're capable of."

"How can you say that?" someone asked.

"Say what?"

"That you're not concerned?"

"Because I'm not concerned."

By the way, Billups fouled out -- another thing that doesn't happen. But it happened.

Speculation about his future heightened last weekend when Gore opened NBC's "Saturday Night Live" with a skit in which he pretended to be the president of the United States looking back on six years of accomplishments.

No global warming. No war in Iraq. No budget deficits. And gasoline at 19 cents a gallon. The nation's big crisis under a President Gore: "Glaciers that once were melting are now on the attack," he joked.

"The global warming issue has been good for him because he approaches it with a great deal of passion, something he was lacking in 2000," said Mark Byrnes, political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tenn.

Gore served as Tennessee senator from 1985-93 after eight years in the House.

"An Inconvenient Truth" is keeping Gore on the road. He attended the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, earlier this year and was in Los Angeles on Tuesday for a movie preview.

He will attend a Washington preview Wednesday before heading to France for the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. The movie opens May 24 in New York and Los Angeles, the day a book of the same name goes on sale.

"I'm going to say he's the favorite, but what do I know?" Cowell told Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show" Monday.

Cowell had earlier predicted that rocker Chris Daughtry, who was booted off "Idol" in an upset last week, would be among the show's three remaining finalists.

Instead, along with the 29-year-old Hicks, an Alabama native, the remaining contestants on the Fox program are sultry crooner Katharine McPhee and Elliot Yamin.

Cowell expects Yamin to be the next to go, resulting in a Hicks-McPhee finale on May 23-24. Though Cowell thought McPhee, 21, should have been voted off last week, he thinks she'll last one more round.

"Based on last week, absolutely she should have gone," said Cowell. "But, you know, she's got a fighting chance. I think she'll make the final, and I'll tell you why: because I'm choosing one of her songs this week."

I am a witness to this. I have watched these brave and beautiful souls who are fighting a forest fire of a pandemic with watering cans, knowing they will not see the light of a day when their work will be honoured. I have been a witness to their conversations around canteen tables, deciding who will live or die, because they do not have enough pills to go round. I've seen Zackie Achmat refuse his medications until he won his action against the South African government, forcing their hand on universal access. What a witness he was. And so I testify.

These firefighters deserve fire engines with sirens and low-flying aircraft with bellies full of of rain. At the very least, they deserve their situation to merit the classification of an emergency. Code Red, like Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in south Asia, which swept away a hundred and fifty thousand lives. These were natural catastrophes. Africa loses a hundred and fifty thousand men, women, and children every month to Aids, a wholly avoidable disaster, a preventable, treatable disease.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Chris Daughtry is looking to launch his music career after getting booted from "American Idol." Fuel is searching for a lead singer after Brett Scallions quit.

The band offered Daughtry a job Thursday, hours after viewers voted him off the Fox television talent show.

Bass player Jeff Abercrombie and guitarist Carl Bell made their pitch on the TV show "Extra."

"Chris, if you are watching, we've talked about this before, and if you want to entertain it again we'll take it and go," Abercrombie said...

Daughtry performed the band's song "Hemorrhage" on a recent "Idol" show. His wife, Deanna, said she's not sure which option he should pursue, but either way music is all he's ever wanted to do.

"He's got a lot on him and hopefully he'll have a lot of wisdom there," she said. "The public forgets so fast about those idols once they get off the show. I just hope they don't forget about Chris."

NEW YORK—Pro-life advocates celebrated approval of the new anti-abortion drug UR-86 by the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday, calling it a "safe and effective method" for terminating pregnant women while leaving their unborn children unharmed.

Pfizer, manufacturer of UR-86—dubbed the "last-morning-ever pill"—said the drug is intended only for occasions when the mind-set or politics of the mother threaten the life of the fetus.

"This drug is designed for extreme cases in which the mother cannot or should not be saved, or when her health has been placed before that of her unborn child," Pfizer spokesman Anthony Wright said.

The orally ingested drug first tests for the presence of a fetus. If the outcome is positive, a near-lethal dose of barbiturates is released, which induces a coma in the expectant mother until the child is born, at which point a second, fatal dose is released...

"This is a step forward for equality," men's rights activist Charles Hackett said. "For too long, women have had an unfair advantage in the outcome of a pregnancy. UR-86 levels the playing field for husbands and boyfriends across America."

Anti-abortion advocates, many of whom had petitioned the FDA to approve UR-86 while the drug was still in the research-and-development stage, also reacted warmly to the FDA's decision. Randall Terry, founder of the pro-life organization Operation Rescue, praised the new pharmaceutical for its potential use in cases of rape and incest, saying it could help end the shame and humiliation of such trauma while saving the life of the fetus.

"Victims of sexual assault can feel trapped, like they've got nowhere to turn," Terry said. "Now, they can solve their deep, internal problems once and for all, without unfairly condemning their children."

"We're happy he's not dead. Everyone else was chanting, 'David, David', and we were chanting, 'Don't die, Don't die'," said Suzanne Moyer.

But as usual in this city, there were some harder-hearted assessments of their local son's performance.

"I thought it was sick - I think he let New York down tonight," said Nico Mitchell, 17, who went along with four cousins.

"I wish I'd had a Ferrari to drive around down here - it would have been a better show than that."

Good news for Star Wars fans with long memories: On September 12, Lucasfilm is releasing DVDs of the original trilogy in its original theatrical form. In other words, you'll finally be able to see Han shoot Greedo first, like he did in 1977. This should please all of us Star Wars oldtimers who were irked at the Stalinist digital airbrushing in the re-released versions, tinkering that smoothed the rough edges (of both the characters and the special effects) and seemed like George Lucas' effort to erase from our collective memory the grubby and flawed originals we first fell in love with. Of course, there's a catch: the discs will be available only until Dec. 31.

I admire Bono's dedication and his willingness to make decisions. There is no pretense about him. In fact, he has opened himself up to criticism because he has been willing to work with anyone to find help for these children. After our first meeting, he invited me to be his guest at a U2 concert. My grandchildren were only too happy to come along. Bono enjoys telling people that I said watching the audience swaying to the music reminded me of a cornfield rustling in the wind. It was also a reminder of the millions he manages to touch every day with his music and his heart.