Diana's secret love letters

Infatuated Princess Diana thanked her "Darling Dodi" for the "most magical" holiday in intimate love letters made public for the first time yesterday.
Diana wrote two letters on headed Kensington Palace notepaper after returning from a holiday in St Tropez with the millionaire son of Harrods tycoon Mohammed Al Fayed.
In the first, dated August 6 1997, she said: "Darling Dodi, Heaven knows where on earth I begin to thank you for the most magical six days on the ocean waves.
"It is a bit of Oh my God situation. I adored it all and every possible minute was full of laughter and happiness, and that combination is a serious treat." She ended: "This comes with all the love in the world and, as always, a million heartfelt thanks for bringing such joy into this particular chick's life, from Diana xx"

The second poignant letter, written a week later, accompanied the gift to Dodi of a pair of cufflinks that belonged to Diana's late father Earl Spencer.
Besotted Diana wrote: "Darling Dodi, These cufflinks were the very last gift that I received from the man I loved most in the world, my father.
"They are given to you as I know how much joy it would give him to know they were in such safe and special hands.
"Fondest love, from Diana."
Just over a fortnight later the couple were killed with their chauffeur Henri Paul in a Paris car crash.

The letters were read at the inquest into Diana's death yesterday to press home Mr Al Fayed's case that the couple were deeply in love and not merely enjoying a summer fling.
They were produced during cross-examination of Rosa Monckton, one of Di's closest friends.
Ms Monckton had played down the relationship between Diana and Dodi, claiming Diana was still in love with heart surgeon Hasnat Khan.
But Michael Mansfield QC, for Mr Al Fayed, said: "She was treating this relationship with Dodi as a serious matter, wasn't she? It doesn't suggest it was little more than a fling after a couple of days."
Ms Monckton said: "She tended to speak and write in an extravagant way."
But she agreed that Diana had not just written the letters to make someone happy, saying: "It was clearly more than that."
Ms Monckton told the inquest jury at the High Court in London that Diana said Dodi "showered" her with unwanted gifts. She went on: "She said she did not want to receive so many. He was going to give her a ring and it was going firmly on her right hand."
Mr Mansfield asked if Diana may have been reluctant to admit she planned to wear the ring on her left hand as she knew her friend disapproved of her blossoming relationship.
Ms Monckton denied it. But she did admit she did not approve of Dodi.
She then wept as she admitted that Diana may not have confided everything in her.
She said: "Diana was a very good friend of mine for six years.
"But that doesn't preclude her from not telling me certain things. You don't tell people everything the whole time."
The hearing had to be adjourned while Ms Monckton regained her composure.
Coroner Lord Justice Scott Baker warned the QC he had come "fairly close to the line".
Earlier Ms Monckton said Diana would have stayed with Hasnat Khan if he had not ended the relationship because of the intense publicity.
She claimed Diana was devastated when pictures of her and Dodi emerged as it meant Mr Khan would not take her back.
Ms Monckton denied "putting a gloss" on her recollections.
She also denied the suggestion that Diana ended the relationship as she was in love with Dodi.
Later she said Diana had told her she regretted giving a TV interview to Martin Bashir in which she described Prince Charles's camp as the enemy.
Mr Al Fayed believes Diana's crash was an establishment plot. The hearing continues.

Source: Mirror.co.uk

Party girl Paris burns up Berlin

PARIS HILTON was never going to pass through Germany quietly.
The heiress was in Berlin recently on promotional duties but found time to fit in a spot of raunchy dancing at one of the city's nightspots.
To see more pics of Paris' wild antics at the Maxx club, click HERE

Not content with cutting her moves on dancefloor, chairs and tables, Paris moved things up a notch by swinging from the ceiling pipes.
Wearing a tiny dress, she gave clubbers below a real eyeful.
Not that anyone seemed to mind...

Source: www.thesun.co.uk

Who is the best celebrity autograph signer?Story Highlights

NEW YORK (AP) -- Want an autograph from Johnny Depp? Chances are, he'll sign something for you -- and not be a jerk about it.

The 44-year-old actor is the most gracious celebrity -- for the third year in a row -- on Autograph magazine's annual list of the "10 Best and 10 Worst Hollywood Signers."
Depp is " 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory' on film, and Johnny and the Signing Factory in person," the magazine said.
"Though soft-spoken and laid-back, likes to talk to fans and get to know them while signing," New York autograph dealer Anthony Risi explains in the December issue, now on newsstands. "He'll sign more than one item when he has time, too."

The magazine said editors compiled input from autograph-collecting judges based in Europe, New York and California in ranking the celebs.
Matt Damon is second on the list, followed by George Clooney, Jack Nicholson, Rosario Dawson, John Travolta, Katherine Heigl, Jay Leno, Dakota Fanning and Russell Crowe -- wait, Russell Crowe?
Crowe, who has a history of throwing temper tantrums, ranked among the worst signers on last year's list. But in a turnaround, the magazine said, the 43-year-old actor "started treating fans great, signing, taking pictures and chatting them up."
Will Ferrell is deemed the worst celebrity signer, followed by Tobey Maguire, Joaquin Phoenix, William Shatner, Renee Zellweger, John Malkovich, Julie Andrews, Bruce Willis, Teri Hatcher and Scarlett Johansson.
However, "keep in mind that even the best signers don't sign sometimes, the worst sometimes do, and that just because they're on the worst list doesn't mean they're bad people," the magazine said.

Source: CNN.com

Investigator 'knows who took Madeleine McCann'

The private investigator searching for Madeleine McCann claims that he knows who abducted her and hopes that she will be back with her parents by Christmas.
Francisco Marco said that Madeleine, who disappeared from a holiday apartment in Portugal on May 3, is being held by a group of paedophiles.
The Método 3 detective agency is being paid £50,000 a month by the public fund set up to find Madeleine after she vanished from the Ocean Club in Praia da Luz. The Barcelona-based agency, which specialises in corporate investigations, has no expertise in looking for missing people.
Despite the inevitable scepticism about the claim, Mr Marco, who is the director-general of Método 3, insisted: “We know who kidnapped her but not where she is. We believe she is in an area not very far from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. And we have a fairly certain idea of who she is with. I cannot say who she is with because we are putting together conclusive proof that we can present to the authorities so they can proceed with their arrests.”

Mr Marco said: “God willing, I hope she’ll be back with her parents before Christmas. I have to believe it 100 per cent because I know how to look for living people, not dead ones.
“I have no proof that Madeleine is alive. We have proof of her movements after her kidnap and we know that she was alive the day after her disappearance.
“We are not certain that she left Portugal. We are certain that the kidnappers left Portugal at a certain moment in time,” he told the Spanish newspaper Metro.
“I talk of certainties because we know which group may have her or could have kidnapped her to sell her on to others.”
The Times has been told that the agency believes that a resident of Praia da Luz had been hired to identify suitable girls for abduction. The man is alleged to have been seen taking pictures of little blonde girls in the town for several days before Madeleine was abducted. The “spotter” is then alleged to have monitored Madeleine’s movements and discovered that her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, left their children alone each evening when they went out to eat.
It is claimed that a second man was paid to abduct Madeleine from her bed and to transport her to a gang. Mr Marco said: “In principle, we’re talking about paedophiles. It’s not a kidnap carried out for economic reasons.”
Mr and Mrs McCann, both 39, from Rothley, Leicestershire, were made official suspects in their daughter’s disappearance three months ago. Detectives have suggested that Madeleine was accidentally killed in the holiday apartment and her parents then disposed of her body. The couple have strenuously denied any involvement and have appealed for police to concentrate on the theory that their daughter was abducted by a stranger.

Source: TimesOnline.co.uk

Does your taste suck?

Good taste is no longer defined by the upper class, but are we ready for the shock of the new U and non-U?

Years ago there used to be a dispute about the sex of some Eastern Bloc shotputters, leading to a scientific and ethical debate about what separates a man from a woman. Nowadays, of course, we would be able to determine the athlete’s sex in an instant with the simple question: “Here is a 50in flatscreen TV, would you like it for your living room?”
I am a man and would like such a TV. My wife is not a man and would not.
I have rejected her suggestion that I achieve the big-screen experience at a fraction of the price by just sitting nearer the telly. I said that that wouldn’t give me the flatscreen effect. She told me to close one eye. She was adamant: there will be no big TV in her home – it is bad taste.
How could Dolby Pro-Logic sound, dynamic picture control and, for the attention-span-challenged, the ability to watch two channels at once, ever be said to be bad taste, I argued? There’s no need to miss out on the football while you watch Schindler’s List.

“Peter Jones off Dragons’ Den has a large TV,” my wife said, as if that cleared up the argument. So? She then pointed out that his is concealed behind a painting that disappears at the click of a remote control. And that he has got his own coat of arms. Then I began thinking of those pillars outside his house that you see at the start of Dragons’ Den. In the end, I agreed, we’d stick with the portable in the kitchen.
Our conversation did get me thinking, though, about what exactly it means to be tasteful as we face 2008.
Years ago the division between the tasteful and the tasteless was characterised as between U and nonU – that is upper class and not upper class. However, the upper class are no longer the arbiters of taste.
This is, perhaps, a pity. Having had money for longer than the rest of us, they are in a better position to determine quality from tat. It’s why the Queen drives an old Land Rover, rather than a new Ferrari.
U and non-U originally concerned categories of language – the posh U types saying “sofa”, “scent” and “die”, the fearful non-U plebs saying “settee”, “perfume” and “pass away”. There are equivalents today. Is your house “spacious” or is it an honest “big”? Does your child have a buggy or a proper British pushchair? Do you like things or are you loving them?
Now our obsession is with looking fashionable, not posh. For instance, using the bone-chilling word “guys” for mixed groups of people – or adopting other faddish modes of expression – is more about an attempt to live up to some idea of being trendily informal than the wish to identify with the upper class. But you’re British, it’s not you.
It is the first error of bad taste to try to portray yourself as something you’re not. This is at the heart of our disdain for arrivistes – that they’re misrepresenting themselves. The other arriviste error of taste, at least as far as the established middle class is concerned, is of course greed. Having a 50in TV, a fleet of sports cars, or upping the bling just because you can are simply modern manifestations of a vice that has been with us since at least the Roman empire. What is new is how widespread this has become.
Greed for possessions was impossible for most people a couple of generations ago because consumer goods were much more expensive in relation to wages.

We can all splash out now. David Bland, category manager for large-screen TVs at Currys, says that one key reason people are buying bigger TVs is “a little bit of ego, saying look what I’ve got”.
The trouble is that items bought to give you prestige inevitably end up making you look ridiculous, from the conspicuous designer label, to the stupidly expensive car, to the enormous yacht.
The second category of tastelessness is that of convenience. This is nowhere more marked than in the world of e-mail.
For example, :-( makes the writer to abandon the challenge of language in favour of an Orwellian reduction of human feeling to a “one size fits all” symbol. Happy, elated, delighted or just pleased with that? No matter, just say you’re :-). That’s OK if you’re under 9 years of age, but you should grow out of it by the time you’ve reached double figures.

The very convenience of e-mail should mean we are even more on our guard for abuses. I once received a communication ending “Hugs” from a woman at a planning office. I’d like to believe she was being sarcastic, but she wasn’t. The hideous sugar-coating she used for her private e-mails had leaked into those of her professional life. It’s part of a modern incontinence of informality in which we hug business colleagues who we’ve known for a week, kiss people we’ve just met, and swear in front of strangers. Stop it now. It’s tasteless.
Contemplation of this horror leads us to the third category of tastelessness – that of the incongruous. To return to my example of the giant TV. When you consider that, according to Currys, 23 per cent are bought by the over 55s, then these modernist slabs are being jemmied into living rooms full of chintz and china. Still, you can see and hear the TV easily, so that’s OK, isn’t it?
Another word for this phenomenon is “grotesque”. That’s what a lot of our purchases, even our bodies, are becoming. Our cars have ballooned, our garages doubled, our houses have been extended, our muscles bulked up, our breasts inflated and our lips beestung. At the end of that we’ve had our teeth bleached bunny-rabbit white and hopped onto a sunbed. Is this new Texan-style sensibility necessarily bad taste, though? Definitions of good taste are notoriously difficult. It could be argued that the whole idea of good taste is in bad taste. Why do we need to be prescriptive? Isn’t that pretentious, divisive and arrogant? Well, yes, but it’s quite good fun.
Accordingly, I have come up with my own, modern categories in an attempt to update U and non-U.
I was tempted to call my new categories “them” and “us”. Instead, and with impeccable taste, I will be simpler. Items, attitudes and activities will be forced into only two camps: “yes” and “no”. Don’t blame me, that’s how life works.
There are, of course, items that don’t easily fall into either bracket.
“Silk” paint for wood, for instance. I have to admit, it looks better than gloss. But it’s called “silk”, and knowing that will ruin it for me. So it’s a “no”. But not very “no”, as, for instance, the Carlsberg DraughtMaster, which allows you to pull your own pints in your living room in a way undreamt of since the Seventies. That is appalling taste. I want one, but it’s terribly tasteless.
And this is the thing, when it comes down to it. It’s OK for things to be bad taste, good fun even, as long as you know they’re in bad taste – just as Peter Jones and I do.

Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/

The Spice Girls Get Their Own Plane

As if the masses of screaming fans and overwhelming demand for concert tickets wasn’t enough, the Spice Girls have been hooked up with their own plane for their reunion tour.
The “Spice One” is a Virgin Atlantic 747 jet in which the five UK superstars and their families will be frolicking around the world over the next couple of months.

With their American tour dates having been fulfilled, the Girls are off to Mother England, for a 17-show stint at London’s O2 Arena. But Emma “Baby Spice” Bunton may have some more recovering to do before she’s bounding around the stage.
During the group’s final US performance, Bunton injured her ankle. She told press, “I had a tumble on stage and unfortunately I have sprained my ankle, so I’m hobbling around on crutches. But I’m sure to make a speedy recovery and see you all at the O2.”

Source: http://www.celebrity-gossip.net/

'McCanns are guilty of neglect'

From ONLINE REPORTERS
Published: Today

THE mayor of the town where Madeleine McCann vanished yesterday accused her parents of negligence.
Manuel Domingues Borba even blamed them for her disappearance.
Meanwhile today, there were unsubstantiated claims that the McCanns' private investigators know who took Madeleine and are close to bringing her home. Metodo 3 private eye Francisco Marco is said to believe Maddie was snatched by a ring of paedophiles and is being held.
He is reportedly hoping to have Madeleine back by Christmas.
The detective said: "We know who kidnapped her. We believe she is in an area not very far from the Iberian peninsula and north Africa. And we have a fairly certain idea of who she is with."
Praia da Luz Mayor Mr Borba, 70, yesterday said the case had “stained” the reputation of the Portuguese tourist hot-spot.

He went on: “Luz is very safe. This tragedy occurred because of the parents.
“This case must be invest-igated to the last dregs. We in Luz cannot pay for what they created.”
He also said Gerry and Kate McCann – named by Portuguese police as official suspects – should not have been allowed home to Rothley, Leics. He told The Sun: “There was a total abuse of trust and extreme negligence.
“I would never leave my children in bed in a foreign country and go off to dinner. I consider the parents guilty of negligence at the very least.”

He added: “They did what they had said they would never do – leave, and in a great hurry.
“I don’t agree with them having been allowed to go back to England.” McCann spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: “We feel these comments are unrepresentative of the majority of Portuguese people.”
The only other official suspect in Maddie’s disappearance on May 3 is ex-pat Brit Robert Murat, 34.
He was staying with his mother Jenny in her villa near the McCanns’ holiday apartment.
Yesterday she accused the Metado 3 detective agency hired by the McCanns, both 39, of BRIBING witnesses to change their stories.
She also claimed she had been followed for a week, adding: “I am 71 and I am getting followed everywhere. It’s pretty scary.”

Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/

Don’t Blame Hip-Hop

Hip-hop has been making enemies for as long as it has been winning fans. It has been dismissed as noise, blamed for concert riots, accused of glorifying crime and sexism and greed and Ebonics. From Run-D.M.C. to Sister Souljah to Tupac Shakur to Young Jeezy, the story of hip-hop is partly the story of those who have been irritated, even horrified, by it.

Even so, the anti-hip-hop fervor of the last few weeks has been extraordinary, if not quite unprecedented. Somehow Don Imus’s ill-considered characterization of the Rutgers women’s basketball team — “some nappy-headed hos” — led not only to his firing but also to a discussion of the crude language some rappers use. Mr. Imus and the Rev. Al Sharpton traded words on Mr. Sharpton’s radio show and on “Today,” and soon the hip-hop industry had been pulled into the fray.
Unlike previous hip-hop controversies, this one doesn’t have a villain, or even a villainous song. The current state of hip-hop seems almost irrelevant to the current discussion. The genre has already acquired (and it’s fair to say earned) a reputation for bad language and bad behavior. Soon after Mr. Imus’s firing, The Daily News had Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, splashed on its cover alongside the hip-hop producer Timbaland, whose oeuvre includes some Imusian language. He had helped arrange a fund-raiser for her and apparently was now a liability. Oprah Winfrey organized a two-show “town meeting” on what’s wrong with hip-hop — starting with the ubiquity of the word “ho” and its slipperier cousin, “bitch” — and how to fix it. The hip-hop impresario Russell Simmons, who appeared on the show, promised to take action, but last Thursday a planned press conference with hip-hop record label executives was canceled at the last minute, with scant explanation.
On Monday, Mr. Simmons and Ben Chavis, leaders of the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network, released a statement that said, in part, “We recommend that the recording and broadcast industries voluntarily remove/bleep/delete the misogynistic words ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ ” and a third term, a common racial epithet. (That already happens on the radio; it seemed the two were suggesting that all albums be censored too.) Mr. Simmons helped create the hip-hop industry, and he has always spoken as a rap insider. Monday’s statement was remarkable partly because he was speaking as a hip-hop outsider, unable (so far) to persuade the executives to go along with him.
A different sort of criticism was voiced in this Sunday’s episode of “60 Minutes”: Anderson Cooper was the host of a segment arguing that hip-hop culture had popularized an anti-snitching ethos that was undermining the police and allowing criminals to operate with relative impunity. The rapper Cam’ron, who was shot in 2005, cheerfully told Mr. Cooper that cooperating with police would hurt his professional reputation and run counter to “the way I was raised.” Asked what he would do if he were living next door to a serial killer, Cam’ron merely shrugged and said he would move. The segment said remarkably little about the fear and anger that might help create such an anti-police culture. Even if Cam’ron is just doing what sells, the question remains: Why is this what sells?
None of these complaints are new exactly. Few rappers have used the words “ho” and “bitch” as enthusiastically — or as effectively — as Snoop Dogg, who has spent 15 years transforming himself into cuddly pop star from a menacing rapper, while remaining as foul-mouthed as ever. And rappers’ hostility toward the police has been a flashpoint since the late 1980s, when the members of N.W.A. stated their position more pithily than this newspaper will allow.
Nowadays, as all but the most intemperate foes of hip-hop readily admit, this is not a debate about freedom of speech; most people agree that rappers have the right to say just about anything. This is, rather, a debate about hip-hop’s vexed position in the American mainstream. On “Oprah,” Diane Weathers, the former editor in chief of Essence magazine, said, “I think Snoop should lose his contract — I don’t think he should be on the Jay Leno show.”
On “60 Minutes,” Mr. Cooper kept reminding viewers that hip-hop was “promoted by major corporations,” and he mentioned anti-snitching imagery on album covers. What he showed, though, was a picture taken from a mixtape, not a major label release.
That’s a small quibble, perhaps, but a telling one. In the wake of Mr. Imus’s firing, some commentators talked about a double standard in the media, though “double” seemed like an understatement. Like MySpace users and politicians and reality-television stars and, yes, talk-radio hosts, rappers are trying to negotiate a culture in which the boundaries of public and private space keep changing, along with the multiplying standards that govern them. This means that mainstream culture is becoming less prim (or more crude, if you prefer), and it’s getting harder to keep the sordid stuff on the margins.
This also means that just about nothing flies under the radar: a tossed-off comment on the radio can get you fired, just as a fairly obscure mixtape can find its way onto “60 Minutes” as an exemplar of mainstream hip-hop culture.
You can scoff at Mr. Simmons’s modest proposal, but at the very least, he deserves credit for advancing a workable one, and for endorsing the kind of soft censorship that many of hip-hop’s detractors are too squeamish to mention. Consumers have learned to live with all sorts of semi-voluntary censorship, including the film rating system, the F.C.C.’s regulation of broadcast media and the self-regulation of basic cable networks. Hip-hop fans, in particular, have come to expect that many of their favorite songs will reach radio in expurgated form with curses, epithets, drug references and mentions of violence deleted. Those major corporations that Mr. Cooper mentioned aren’t very good at promoting so-called positivity or wholesome community-mindedness. But give them some words to snip and they’ll diligently (if grudgingly) snip away.

It’s not hard to figure out why some people are upset about the way Mr. Simmons’s three least-favorite words have edged into the mainstream. One of hip-hop’s many antecedents is the venerable African-American oral tradition known as toasting; those toasts are full of those three words. Hip-hop took those rhymes from the street corner to the radio, and those old-fashioned dirty jokes are surely meant to shock people like Ms. Winfrey. Once upon a time, such lyrics (if they had been disseminated) might have been denounced for their moral turpitude, but now they’re more likely to be denounced for their sexism. Both verdicts are probably correct, and each says something about mainstream society’s shifting priorities and taboos. Maybe dirty jokes never change, only the soap does.

Mr. Imus has one thing in common with rappers, after all. Like him, many rappers have negotiated an uneasy relationship with the mainstream: they are corporate entertainers who portray themselves as outspoken mavericks; they are paid to say private things (sometimes offensive things) in public. It’s an inherently volatile arrangement, bound to create blow-ups small and big. Mr. Simmons’s proposal could buy some rappers a few years’ reprieve. But it wouldn’t be surprising if the big record companies eventually decided that brash — and brilliant — rappers like Cam’ron were more trouble than they were worth. (Cam’ron’s last two albums haven’t sold well.) Why not spend that extra money on a clean-cut R&B singer, or a kid-friendly pop group?
The strangest thing about the last few weeks was the fact that hardly any current hip-hop artists were discussed. (All these years later, we’re still talking about Snoop Dogg?) Maybe that’s because hip-hop isn’t in an especially filthy mood right now. It sounds more light-hearted and clean-cut than it has in years. Hip-hop radio is full of cheerful dance tracks like Huey’s “Pop, Lock & Drop It,” Crime Mob’s “Rock Yo Hips,” Mims’s “This Is Why I’m Hot” and Swizz Beatz’s “It’s Me, Snitches.” (The title and song were censored to exclude one of the three inflammatory words — proof that this snipping business can be tricky.)
On BET’s “106 & Park,” one of hip-hop’s definitive television shows, you can watch a fresh-faced audience applaud these songs, cheered on by relentlessly positive hosts. For all the panicky talk about hip-hop lyrics, the current situation suggests a scarier possibility, both for hip-hop’s fans and its detractors. What if hip-hop’s lyrics shifted from tough talk and crude jokes to playful club exhortations — and it didn’t much matter? What if the controversial lyrics quieted down, but the problems didn’t? What if hip-hop didn’t matter that much, after all?

Source: The NY Times

No Jail for Willie Nelson on Drug Charge

ST. MARTINVILLE, La. -- Willie Nelson and his tour manager were spared jail time Tuesday after pleading guilty to a misdemeanor count of marijuana possession.
Nelson and tour manager David Anderson, along with Nelson's sister, Bobbie Nelson, and two drivers, were issued citations on Sept. 18 after state troopers said they found marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms on the country legend's tour bus during a commercial-vehicle inspection on Interstate 10.
State District Judge Paul deMahy fined Nelson and Anderson $1,024 each and put both on probation for six months. As part of a plea agreement, the citation against Bobbie Nelson was dismissed.
St. Martin Parish Assistant District Attorney Chester Cedars said he dismissed the citations against the two drivers because there was no indication they "had anything to do with the contraband."
Word spread quickly that Nelson was in this small southern Louisiana town, and a crowd of about 25 fans gathered outside to wait for the entertainer after his brief court appearance. When he emerged, Nelson obliged, shaking hands, signing scraps of paper and posing for photographs.
"Thank y'all," he said, waving as he climbed into a waiting car.

The Associated Press

Lynch, Tillman's brother: U.S. military lied

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Pfc. Jessica Lynch and the brother of Army Ranger Pat Tillman told a House panel Tuesday that the U.S. military lied about Tillman's death and Lynch's capture.
After her vehicle was attacked in Iraq in March 2003, Lynch suffered a mangled spinal column, broken arm, crushed foot, shattered femur and even a sexual assault.
But it only added insult to injury, literally, when she returned to her parents' home in West Virginia, which "was under siege by media all repeating the story of the little girl 'Rambo' from the hills of West Virginia who went down fighting," Lynch said. (Watch Lynch set the record straight )
"It was not true," she said before gently chiding the military. "The truth is always more heroic than the hype."
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform invited the two to testify on how the Pentagon spread false stories about Tillman and Lynch. The committee chairman, Henry Waxman, D-California, went as far as to say that the military "invented" tales.
"The bare minimum we owe our soldiers and their families is the truth," Waxman said. "That didn't happen for two of the most famous soldiers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars."
An equally blunt Kevin Tillman, Pat Tillman's brother, told the panel that the military tried to spin his brother's 2004 death to deflect attention from emerging failings in the Afghanistan war.
As the tide was turning in the U.S. battle against Afghan insurgents -- and as media outlets prepared to release reports on detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq -- the military saw Pat Tillman's death as an "opportunity," Kevin Tillman told the panel.
Brother calls tale 'calculated lies'
Though it was clearly a case of fratricide, the military released a "manufactured narrative" detailing how Pat Tillman died leading a courageous counterattack in an Afghan mountain pass, Kevin Tillman said. (Watch Kevin Tillman accuse the military of lying )
Even after it became clear the report was bogus, the military clung to the "utter fiction" that Pat Tillman was killed by a member of his platoon who was following the rules of engagement, the brother said.
"They never felt threatened and they still shot up the village unprovoked," Kevin Tillman said. "This was not some fog of war; they simply lost control."
Tillman bristled at the military claim that the initial report was merely misleading.
Clearly resentful, he told the panel that writing a field report stating his brother had been "transferred to an intensive care unit for continued CPR after most of his head had been taken off by multiple .556 rounds is not misleading."
"These are deliberate and calculated lies," he said.
Pat Tillman, who became a national hero after he gave up a lucrative contract with the NFL's Arizona Cardinals to join the Army's elite Rangers force, was awarded the Silver Star, the military's third-highest combat decoration, after the Army said he was killed leading a counterattack.
The Army later acknowledged not only that Tillman was killed by his fellow soldiers, but that officers in Tillman's chain of command knew the counterattack story was bogus.
Though the military blamed the erroneous report on an inadequate initial investigation, Mary Tillman told ESPN Radio last month that everyone involved in the shooting knew immediately that her son had been shot three times in the head by a member of his platoon.
"That was not a misstep; that was not an error," she said. "This was an attempt to dupe the public and to promote this war and to get recruitments up, and that is immoral."
The Defense Department said last month that nine military officers, including four generals, would face "corrective action" in connection with Tillman's death.
The Tillman family released a statement calling the corrective action a slap on the wrist and saying, "Once again, we are being used as props in a Pentagon public relations exercise."
Waxman took the Tillman family's side even before the late Ranger's brother and mother testified.
"The Tillman family was kept in the dark for more than a month," Waxman said. "Evidence was destroyed. Witness statements were doctored. The Tillman family wants to know how all of this could've happened."
Lynch: Truth 'not always easy'
Lynch's testimony began with a recollection of the March 23, 2003, attack and her purported rescue nine days later.
As she and her fellow 11 soldiers drove through Nassiriya, Iraq, they noticed armed men standing in the streets and on rooftops. Three soldiers were quickly killed when a rocket-propelled grenade slammed into their vehicle, Lynch said.
The other eight died in the ensuing fighting or from injuries incurred during the fighting, she said. Lynch later woke up at Saddam Hussein General Hospital.
"When I awoke, I did not know where I was. I could not move. I could not call for help. I could not fight," she said, explaining she had a 6-inch gash in her head and numerous broken bones. "The nurses at the hospital tried to soothe me, and they even tried unsuccessfully at one point to return me to Americans."
On April 1, U.S. troops came for her.
"A soldier came into the room. He tore the American flag from his uniform, and he handed it to me in my hand and he told me, 'We're American soldiers, and we're here to take you home.' And I looked at him and I said, 'Yes, I'm an American soldier, too,' " she recalled.
She was distraught to come home and find herself billed as a hero when two of her fellow soldiers had fought bravely until the firefight's end and another had died after picking up soldiers and removing them from harm's way.
"The American people are capable of determining their own ideals for heroes, and they don't need to be told elaborate lies," she said. "I had the good fortune to come home and to tell the truth. Many soldiers, like Pat Tillman, did not have that opportunity.
"The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype," she said.
Lynch became a celebrity after U.S. troops filmed what they said was a daring raid on the hospital. Lynch, the Army claimed, was shot and stabbed during a fierce gunbattle with Iraqi troops that left 11 of her comrades dead.
Hospital staffers, however, said there were no Iraqi troops at the hospital when the purported rescue took place.
It was later learned that Lynch never fired a shot during the firefight because her gun was jammed with sand.
Before hearing Lynch's testimony, Waxman promised her and her family that the committee would find "the source of the fabrications you had to endure."

CNN.com

Lucie 'robbed' of justice

THE father of murdered British woman Lucie Blackman said his daughter had been robbed of justice today after a court cleared a Japanese businessman of involvement in her death.
Property developer Joji Obara, 54, was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of a series of rapes and the death of an Australian woman.
But the Tokyo District Court acquitted him of all charges relating to Miss Blackman, 21, from Sevenoaks, Kent, who disappeared in July 2000 while working as a bar hostess in Tokyo.

Click here to watch Lucie Blackman verdict

Speaking after the hearing, her father Tim Blackman blamed Obara’s acquittal on failures by prosecution lawyers, and demanded an appeal in the case.
“I’m afraid to say the lack of justice for us today has been the failure of the prosecution team to develop the case adequately,” Mr Blackman said.
“There is nothing that will change that Lucie is dead, but in many respects Lucie has been robbed of her justice.
“We believe our family deserves to get proper justice for Lucie, and that prosecutors should strongly consider an appeal.”
Earlier Lucie's mother Jane Steare said she was today "absolutely heartbroken" after the man accused over her death in Japan was cleared.
Obara was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted at Tokyo District Court of eight rapes and one count over the rape and death of Australian Carita Ridgway.
Mrs Steare could not cope with coming face to face with Obara and decided to stay at home in Kent.
She said: "I'm heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken. I just can't believe this verdict.
"My worst fears have come true."
Miss Blackman, from Sevenoaks, Kent, disappeared in July 2000 while working as a bar hostess in Tokyo.
The dismembered body of the former British Airways flight attendant was discovered in a cave seven months later.
Her father, Tim and 27-year-old sister, Sophie, were sitting a few feet behind Obara and remained composed as the verdict was translated by a British Embassy interpreter.
Mrs Steare said: "As for my darling Lucie, I miss you so much.
"This aching void in my heart feels like it will never go away, but I truly believe that one day we will hug each other again.
"I love you so much and always will. Your mummy will never give up hope of finding justice and the truth."
She also attacked her ex-husband for accepting £450,000 from Obara's friend.
She said: "Lucie's father must surely now have to explain why his signature appears on a document which questions key elements of the prosecution case, a case he himself has described as 'circumstantial'.
"He is also now in possession of money paid on behalf of a convicted killer and rapist."
Defendants in Japan who admit their guilt can pay compensation to their victims or their grieving families as part of the court process and as a way of expressing remorse.
Judges then take the payments into consideration when passing sentence.
Obara offered 500,000 Australian dollars (£200,000) to the grieving relatives of Ms Ridgway, who died after being drugged and raped by him in 1992.
This offer was rejected but Obara is believed to have paid around £10,000 to at least one of his rape victims.
Mrs Steare, who is the legally appointed executor of Miss Blackman's estate, refused two offers of 40 million yen (around £168,000) and 100 million yen (around £420,000) from Obara's defence team.
She said: "Giving up is not an option for me, as any mother will understand.
"Because I did not accept any condolence money, I understand that under Japanese law, I retain the right to pursue an appeal.
"As Lucie's mother and the sole legal representative of my daughter's estate, I will be consulting the authorities and my legal advisers to understand what options are available to me in my continuing search for justice.
"As a mother, I cannot begin to comprehend how money can compensate for the loss of a child.
"The safety of all our children depends not on a cold calculation of their worth, but on creating societies where justice and truth can prevail over material greed.
"I believe that we must all remember the importance of enduring moral values in our lives."
Miss Blackman went to work as a nightclub hostess in the Roppongi bar district of Tokyo.
She vanished in July 2000 and her decomposed remains were discovered in a cave in February 2001, after a seven-month search, just 100 yards from Obara's apartment in a four-storey block.
The prosecution alleged that Obara drugged and raped Miss Blackman before she died. It was then alleged that he chopped up her body into 10 pieces and encased her head in concrete at his luxury apartment.
Australian news website Perth Now reported that Judge Tsutomu Tochigi said: "There is nothing to prove that he was involved in the rape and her death. The court cannot prove he was single-handedly involved in her death.
"What is clear is that the victim acted together with the accused and then vanished and, following that, she was found dead."
The 1,600 days Obara has already served will be deducted from his sentence and he may be eligible for parole after 10 years.
Matt Searle, from the Lucie Blackman Trust, said: "This is not what we were expecting."
Meanwhile, it was reported that Ms Ridgway's family is calling for an independent inquiry into Tokyo Police's handling of the investigation into her death.
In a statement, the family said: "It is imperative that there should be an inquiry into the lack of action on the part of the Japanese police in 1992, and also in 2000, when Lucie Blackman went missing."
The statement, reported in The Times, added: "He has only been brought to trial for the rapes of 10 of those victims. There were scores of victims."

Source: The Sun

In Search of the Man Who May Have Created Jazz

NO one is really sure what this city’s first “cornet king,” Charles (Buddy) Bolden, sounded like 100 years ago, much less what made him tick. The lore says a single wax recording of Bolden’s namesake ensemble was demolished with the old shed in which it was stored in the early 1960s. What is probably the most reliable rendering of his trademark tune, “Buddy Bolden’s Blues,” came from Jelly Roll Morton, who had heard it performed and put it on a record years after the master’s death. But even the song’s own lyrics warn against trusting too much. “I thought I heard Buddy Bolden say,” runs the remarkably tentative opening line.
Yet this elusive character, who some aficionados say invented jazz before lapsing into ultimately fatal insanity before the age of 30, has been coming into focus in recent weeks as a troupe of seasoned filmmakers and impassioned amateurs struggle to capture Bolden and his world in not one but two, related, movies.
Eccentric in concept, ambitious in scope and not cheap — backers put the cost at more than $10 million — the twin pictures will probably stretch the limit of what independent film can do by the time they are seen on festival or commercial screens next year.
Dan Pritzker — a billionaire’s son best known as founder of and guitarist for the off-center soul-rock band Sonia Dada, and an important investor in the project as well as its director — has never made a movie. Yet that neophyte status has not kept him from attracting an impressive group of actors and behind-the- camera talent, including members of the Marsalis clan, to tell the story of a man Pritzker likens to “a shaman who flipped on the lights.”
The first picture, currently titled “Bolden,” is a musical biography with Anthony Mackie (“We Are Marshall”) in the lead role and Wendell Pierce (“The Wire”) and Jackie Earle Haley (an Oscar nominee this year for “Little Children”) among the supporting cast. The second is an hourlong silent film called “The Great Observer,” in which a young boy named Louis, recalling Bolden’s more celebrated successor Louis Armstrong, dreams of playing the horn while becoming entangled with the denizens of New Orleans’s red-light district, played by a company of ballerinas.
The films, which have no distributor yet, are meant to make their debuts in tandem. If all goes according to Mr. Pritzker’s plan, the second will play over a live performance by Wynton Marsalis, who is executive producer of the movies and has written original music that is meant to evoke the man Armstrong, Morton, Kid Ory, Sidney Bechet and other early jazzmen described as both influence and shadowy myth.
“There’s a fine line between guts and stupidity,” Mr. Pritzker said of his project last month. At the time, he was simmering in the spring heat with 100 mostly local players on a shoot that will end on locations and sets in Wilmington, N.C. The day’s work took the group to the Carrollton cemetery in an Uptown neighborhood, where a row of small frame houses had been painted blue-gray and modestly changed to stand in for the city of Bolden’s late-19th-century youth.
“This is a city that lives its history but doesn’t always know it,” explained Mr. Mackie, 28, who grew up here before leaving to attend arts school in North Carolina and then the Juilliard School. In character as Buddy Bolden, the actor wore a heavy blue band uniform with red piping and spent much of the day sweating through a scene in which notes from his horn jump the expected musical tracks at the end of a funeral, triggering a boisterous exit parade.
In and out of the clouds, the sun has only slightly annoyed the director of photography, Vilmos Zsigmond, a film veteran (“The Black Dahlia,” “The Witches of Eastwick”) who suggested that weathermen should be as competent to predict cloudy and bright as cinematographers are to deal with uncertain light. As things settled on the bright side, Mr. Pritzker mulled a replay of the funeral parade on the video monitor, then set up another take, this time with Mr. Marsalis’s music blaring from a loudspeaker. Arms started swinging. Handkerchiefs waved. Sun umbrellas pumped in time as locals picked up the Bolden spirit.
“If this music doesn’t make you move around, something’s wrong,” said Mr. Pritzker, 47, speaking later over lunch in his cramped trailer. With long, dark, gray-flecked hair, he wore jeans and green clogs and showed obvious discomfort only when the subject turned to the settling of a family dispute over the Pritzker financial empire, himself among the contentious heirs. “We’re all done with that; relationships are all back together,” Mr. Pritzker said of the wrangle, which had been simmering even before his father, Jay, died in 1999. Among other things, its resolution left Dan free (and with enough money) to pursue a notion that had dogged him since 1995, when a radio executive in Boulder, Colo., happened to ask if he had ever heard about Buddy Bolden and the birth of jazz.
“That he impacted my life so deeply and I didn’t know who he was, that was unbelievable to me,” said Mr. Pritzker, a professional musician who considers himself a connoisseur of American music. He was to find that hard facts about Bolden are in short supply. That he was born to a working-class family in 1877 is firmly established. By the testimony of others who played with or around him, Bolden was among the first to break through accepted musical forms, pushing his group into the raucous improvisational style that would become known as jazz. In the first decade of the 20th century, he ruled the musical roost in New Orleans. By 1907, however, dementia, probably induced or assisted by alcohol, left him unable to function. That year he was committed to an insane asylum in Jackson, La., where he played his cornet only rarely with ensembles made up of patients, and where he remained until his death in 1931.

Lacking the factual base for conventional biography on the order of “Ray,” about Ray Charles, or “Walk the Line,” about Johnny Cash, Mr. Pritzker and his collaborators — including the writers Derick and Steven Martini (who have written for the television series “South Beach”) — have chosen to develop the myth. Their telling imagines Bolden, in the last year of his life, hearing a radio broadcast in which Armstrong, who became the public face of New Orleans jazz, paid tribute to the music’s supposed birth with Bolden.
That vision, in fact, may be only slightly exaggerated. “If you look at oral histories from the musicians, they all basically talk about Bolden when they talk about where jazz came from,” said Bruce Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archive at Tulane University. According to Mr. Raeburn, those who heard Bolden agreed, first, that he was loud, and, second, that his music opened the door to improvisation. “His combination of charisma and playing style is what put it over,” he said.
(Donald M. Marquis, whose “In Search of Buddy Bolden: First Man of Jazz” was first published in 1978, remained cautious enough about claims that Bolden invented jazz to include in a 2005 edition an epilogue noting that his text made no such assertion, and that the book’s title had not been his preferred choice.)
More surprising than Mr. Pritzker’s quest is its contagious quality. The New Orleans-born Mr. Marsalis became involved after a query from Mr. Pritzker’s producer, Jonathan Cornick, a production veteran whose credits range from studio films like “Super Mario Brothers” to independent features like David Mamet’s “State and Main.” Both Ellis Marsalis, the family patriarch, and Delfeayo, Wynton’s brother, have also contributed to the film.
The Marsalis presence may eventually bestow event status on the relatively small films if, as Mr. Pritzker envisions, they play at a major festival or at Lincoln Center, with Wynton Marsalis, artistic director of the center’s jazz program, leading a live musical performance in time with the silent picture. Mr. Marsalis said that such a performance was possible but that he had no firm plan at this point.
Mr. Pritzker said that idea was inspired about seven years ago by a similar show, during which a symphony in Chicago performed behind Charlie Chaplin’s “City Lights.” The experience, he said, was “jaw-dropping.” Mr. Pierce, who plays an important role as a music and events promoter in the movie, has a more than professional connection to the project, as a longtime friend of the Marsalis family and an alumnus of the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts, which has been the spawning ground for local performers, including Mr. Mackie.
“We live culture,” said Mr. Pierce, one of several Louisiana natives who talked of the attempt to recapture Bolden with near missionary fervor. Speaking by phone from Baltimore, where he is in production on the HBO series “The Wire,” he said he found it exhilarating to plumb his hometown’s musical heritage “at a time when we’re kind of questioning American aesthetic values.”
Extending that enthusiasm to a film audience that has never really warmed to jazz biography (movies like Clint Eastwood’s “Bird” haven’t performed that well at the box office) will be tough. Yet Wynton Marsalis is hopeful. “The world is always ready for everything,” he said. “All you have to do is play music with passion and feeling, and people will connect.”
For Mr. Pritzker, perhaps the greater risk lies in going public with a figure many aficionados may have preferred as a more private image. Mr. Marsalis, for instance, has expressed reservations, the director said, about his tendency to lift the street player Bolden to the realm of the mythic, ballerinas and all.
“I don’t want to demystify him,” Mr. Pritzker said. “I think it’s where it should be.”

Source: NY Times

Mel B. Names Baby Daughter After Murphy

NEW YORK -- Melanie Brown has given her baby daughter the surname of ex-boyfriend Eddie Murphy, the former Spice Girl said in a statement Tuesday.
Brown, 31, gave birth to Angel Iris Murphy Brown on April 3 in Santa Monica, Calif. She listed Murphy's name on the birth certificate.
She said the name was inspired by a number of things.
"Angel, as she was my little angel through my pregnancy. Iris, as it's my grandma's name, Murphy because he's the dad, and Brown, because I'm the Mum!" the statement said.
Murphy, 46, has said he's not sure he's the father.
Brown, known as Scary Spice when she was in the megahit group of the '90s, has an 8-year-old daughter, Phoenix Chi.
Murphy, whose screen credits include "Dreamgirls," has five children from his marriage to Nicole Mitchell Murphy.

The Associated Press

Cranberries singer says reunion possible

HONG KONG - Dolores O'Riordan of The Cranberries says a reunion of the Irish band is possible, although for now she's enjoying her solo work.

The 35-year-old singer was in Hong Kong on Tuesday to promote her new album, "Are You Listening?"
O'Riordan said she's happy with the album because it was completed in a relaxed setting. She worked on it over four years while she was spending time with her family, even volunteering at her children's school.
"A lot of these songs just came from day-to-day experiences. And it was a very natural, kind of organic process," she said.
Asked if The Cranberries, whose last studio album was released in 2001, will work together again, O'Riordan said: "Maybe in the future."
But asked whether she missed working with her band mates, she said, "Not yet. This is pretty good fun."
O'Riordan said her new album has a more experimental sound than her work with The Cranberries because she tries different instruments and beats.
___

David Halberstam, US writer on Vietnam, dies in car crash

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Pulitzer prize-winning author and Vietnam war journalist David Halberstam died in a car accident in northern California on Monday, authorities said.

Halberstam, 73, author of 15 bestsellers but perhaps most famous for his epic 1972 book on the origins of the Vietnam war "The Best and the Brightest," was killed in a car crash in Menlo Park, the San Mateo County Coroner's Office told AFP.
He died of internal injuries at the scene after the car in which he was traveling was struck at a high rate of speed another vehicle, said fire chief Harold Schappelhouman.
The front seat passenger's side, where Halberstam was seated and wearing his safety belt, bore the brunt of the impact, Schappelhouman said. The driver, a journalism student, was injured.
The New York-based Halberstam, who authored a total of 21 books during his life, had been working on a book about the Korean War at the time of his death.
Halberstam spoke Saturday night at the University of California Berkeley on "Turning Journalism into History."
He reported from Vietnam for the New York Times, in the process angering then president John F. Kennedy, who asked the Times to remove him.
Still, the war coverage won Halberstam a Pulitzer Prize at age 30.
"The Best and the Brightest" refers to the military loss in Vietnam that was engineered by the top minds Washington had to offer.
The book swayed many Vietnam war hawks to rethink the conflict, which ended in a US withdrawal, despite upbeat forecasts from the military.
After graduating from Harvard in 1955, Halberstam worked at the Daily Times Leader in West Point, Mississippi.
While writing for The Tennessean in Nashville, Tennessee, Halberstam covered the early Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
Once in Vietnam, Halberstam found material for "The Making of a Quagmire: America and Vietnam during the Kennedy Era."
His books marveled at the arrogance of the "whiz kids," from academia and industry, whom Kennedy had assembled in Washington, but whose "brilliant policies that defied common sense" were put into place despite the warnings of senior staff.
In 500 interviews for "The Best and the Brightest," Halberstam identified the faulty decision-making process that led to the US involvement in Vietnam.
He found that an anti-Communist witch hunt by senator Joseph McCarthy had removed many government experts on Vietnam, and left Democrats cowed by claims that they had "lost China" to communism.
Further, government studies showed that a million US troops would be needed to defeat the Vietnam communists, but the United States' choice of a gradual escalation meant Vietnam could train and field troops faster than US solders could kill them.
Halberstam also wrote "Summer of '49," a baseball book about the 1949 pennant race between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Box.
His latest book, "The Education of a Coach," focused on on New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick.
He wrote another bestseller, "Firehouse," about a New York city fire station which lost 12 of the 13 men who responded to the World Trade Center attack on September 11, 2001.
Halberstam, who is survived by his wife and daughter, reflected on his life in journalism during a 1993 interview with the California-based Mercury News.
"It's been a wonderful life," he said. "Actually, when I think about my career I am sometimes stunned. I'm stunned by the richness of it. It gave me all the things I ever wanted. I loved being a reporter."

Music Memorabilia Auction Raises $2.4M

NEW YORK -- A fundraising auction of music memorabilia from Jimi Hendrix, The Edge, Bono, Paul McCartney and others smashed expectations and brought in $2.4 million, some of which will go to a charity that replaces musical equipment lost to hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
"It was the best sale we've ever done," said Darren Julien, president and CEO of Julien's Auctions, which ran the event benefiting Music Rising.
A guitar owned by Jimi Hendrix was sold for $480,000.
Music Rising was co-founded by The Edge, the U2 guitarist who donated his favorite instrument, a 1975 Gibson Les Paul that he has played for years. The guitar had been expected to bring $60,000 to $80,000, but it went for $288,000, including the commission.
Other highlights included a pair of sunglasses donated by Bono that went for $24,000, a guitar from Bob Dylan that sold for $192,000 and a guitar from Paul McCartney that brought in $81,600.
The event Saturday night at the Hard Rock Cafe was so popular that bidding went on for three hours after the scheduled conclusion, Julien said.
The final amount going to the charity had not been tallied yet, he said. For some items, the total selling price goes to Music Rising, while other items designated a portion of the proceeds.
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On the Net:
Julien's Auctions:
http://juliensauctions.com/
Music Rising:
http://musicrising.org/
U2:
http://www.u2.com/

The Associated Press

Arsenal get royal seal of approval from Britain's queen

LONDON (AFP) - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has secretly been a lifelong supporter of English Premiership football giants Arsenal, The Sun newspaper said Monday.

"Her Majesty has been fond of Arsenal for over 50 years," a senior royal source told the tabloid, adding that Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother was also fond of the north London club.
"Her late mother was a self-confessed Gooner, due largely to her admiration of their former player Denis Compton," the source said.
The monarch has presented a string of top football trophies, including the 1966 World Cup, but her club allegiance had never been revealed until now.
The Sun printed a mock-up picture of how the monarch would look in a Gunners scarf and with a red-and-white home jersey pulled over an evening dress.
The sovereign, who turned 81 on Saturday, hosted Arsenal players and officials at Buckingham Palace in February to make up for her having to forfeit opening their new Emirates Stadium last November due to a bad back.
"It seems the queen follows football and she told us she was an Arsenal fan," the Gunners' Spain midfielder Francesc Fabregas, 19, was quoted as saying.
"She appeared to definitely know who I was and we exchanged a few special words."
As the crow flies, Chelsea is the nearest club to Buckingham Palace, the queen's official London residence.
However, the queen considers Windsor Castle, west of London, to be her home -- which would make lowly Wycombe Wanderers and Brentford her nearest league clubs.
The first match the queen attended was the 1953 FA Cup final. The game is considered an all-time classic and was dubbed the "Matthews Final" after legendary England winger Stanley Matthews, who inspired Blackpool to come from behind to beat Bolton Wanderers 4-3.
Arsenal count Queen Elizabeth's youngest grandson Prince Harry among their fans and were indeed called Royal Arsenal between 1886 and 1891.
Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother, who died in 2002, revealed her love of Arsenal to a schoolboy in 1955.
Chatting about Compton, an England football and cricket international, she said: "I'm an Arsenal supporter! Didn't you know?"
Harry's brother Prince William, second in line to the throne, supports Aston Villa. He is the president of the Football Association, English football's governing body.

Chemical Romance lose Way

My Chemical Romance have announced that bass player Mikey Way is to leave the band temporarily.
The group's singer Gerard Way, Mikey's brother, revealed the news over the weekend in a posting at their official website. But he insists the band's future is not in doubt.
While admitting the decision is "upsetting", Way has assured fans that Mikey will return to the group once he has spent some time with his new wife.
He and fiancé Alicia Simmons were married at Orleans Arena in Las Vegas last month, with Gerard serving as best man.
In a statement, Gerard said: "The band has decided to give him and his wife a much needed break from the road to start a life and have a proper honeymoon and do all the things a newlywed couple should do.
"I'm very proud to announce my brother's recent marriage. Watching him grow up into a man and finding love makes me the happiest brother alive.
"I know this is upsetting news, as it is for us, but we will continue to tour with a temporary replacement until he has situated himself in his new life."
There is currently no confirmation on Way's stand-in.

Boris Yeltsin dead: Kremlin

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russia's former president Boris Yeltsin has died, a Kremlin spokesman told AFP Monday. He was 76.

Eric Bana uninjured in rally car crash

HOBART, Australia -
Eric Bana crashed his painstakingly restored 1974 Ford XB Coupe into some trees during an around-the-state rally this weekend but emerged uninjured along with his co-driver.

The 38-year-old actor and co-driver Tony Ramunno walked away from the crash during the Targa Tasmania rally Saturday, where they had been in 53rd place in field of 115 cars in the Outright Classic competition.
Initially, Bana hoped that the car, which he has owned since he was 15, could be repaired to continue the final day of racing Sunday. But a closer inspection by his support crew showed that the front right-hand steering and suspension were too badly damaged.
"We had been having a great day until then," Bana said. "But I misjudged a tight left-hander and we went in a little too fast — the car understeered off the road and got onto the gravel and we went into a couple of trees at a fairly low speed."
"The car is a little battered on the driver's side which is a real shame, as many hours had been spent reshaping its original panels to get it just right," he said. "It's a real shame, but that's motor racing."

Bana has starred in movies such as "Hulk" and "Munich." His most recent film is "Lucky You," with Drew Barrymore and Robert Duvall.