LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Actor Mel Gibson, who is going through a divorce from his wife of 28 years, said on Monday his Russian girlfriend is expecting their baby.

“This is true,” Gibson said during an appearance on “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” after the host asked him to confirm speculation that musician Oksana Grigorieva was pregnant.

Gibson, 53, who already has seven children, gave away few details, replying jokingly, “A human being, I think,” when Leno asked about the baby’s gender.

Celebrity gossip websites said the baby was due in the autumn.

Click here for more on this story from Reuters

LOS ANGELES — Beatrice Arthur, the tall, deep-voiced actress whose razor-sharp delivery of comedy lines made her a TV star in the hit shows “Maude” and “The Golden Girls” and who won a Tony Award for the musical “Mame,” died Saturday. She was 86.

Arthur died peacefully at her Los Angeles home with her family at her side, family spokesman Dan Watt said. She had cancer, Watt said, declining to give further details.

“She was a brilliant and witty woman,” said Watt, who was Arthur’s personal assistant for six years. “Bea will always have a special place in my heart.”

Arthur first appeared in the landmark comedy series “All in the Family” as Edith Bunker’s loudly outspoken, liberal cousin, Maude Finley. She proved a perfect foil for blue-collar bigot Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), and their blistering exchanges were so entertaining that producer Norman Lear fashio’ “Brighton Beach Memoirs” and “Biloxi Blues.” One of his Tony nominations was for “Mame.”

In 1999, Arthur told an interviewer of the three influences in her career: “Sid Caesar taught me the outrageous; (method acting guru) Lee Strasberg taught me what I call reality; and (’Threepenny Opera’ star) Lotte Lenya, whom I adored, taught me economy.”

In recent years, Arthur made guest appearances on shows including “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and “Malcolm in the Middle.” She was chairwoman of the Art Attack Foundation, a non-profit performing arts scholarship organization.

Arthur is survived by her sons and two granddaughters. No funeral services are planned.

Source: Fox News

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia - A bomb has blown a large hole in one of Russia’s best-known statues of the founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin.

The blast hit the towering statue in the square outside Finland Station in St. Petersburg.

The bronze statue, portraying Lenin with his arm raised, commemorates a speech he gave outside the station when he returned to Russia from exile in April 1917, a few months before the Bolshevik Revolution.

No one hurt after explosion damages memorial in St. Petersburg

City police spokesman Vyacheslav Stepchenko says no one was injured in the blast that took place before dawn Wednesday. The bomb had the power of about 400 grams of TNT, he says.

St. Petersburg was the cradle of the revolution, which overthrew the tsarist system and allowed the formation of a communist state that lasted until 1991.

The city was renamed Leningrad in Lenin’s honor in 1924 but the name was switched back to St. Petersburg after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Lenin’s remains are still on display in a mausoleum beneath Moscow’s Red Square. He died in 1924.

Source: MSNBC

A DNA test showed a 13-year-old boy in Britain is not the father of a baby born to a 15-year-old he had unprotected sex with once, The Mirror reported.

Chantelle Stedman told Alfie Patten, who was 12 when he slept with her, he was her newborn daughter Maisie’s father.

The story caused a worldwide media frenzy, while politicians criticized what they called Britain’s declining morals.

At first Stedman said Patten was the only boy she had ever slept with, but soon after other teens came forward saying they too could be the baby’s father, because they claimed to have had sex with the girl.

Last month a friend of the Stedman family claimed Patten was scammed by the girl’s parents who wanted to cash in on the sensational story.

It is still not clear who the baby’s father is.

Source: Fox news

Calling it a visual vote for climate action, organizers of an “Earth Hour” initiative expect 2,800 cities, dozens of companies and hundreds of millions of individuals worldwide to turn off or dim their lights for an hour Saturday night.

Commitments have come in from 84 countries, according to the World Wildlife Fund, which organized the event because of its concerns about warming’s impact on humans and wildlife.

“With Earth Hour, millions of people from all walks of life will demonstrate their commitment to take action on climate change,” WWF CEO Carter Roberts said in a statement. “Turning off the lights is just the beginning. We’re asking everyone to also make commitments to reduce their energy use during the rest of the year and to ask their elected representatives to do the right thing because we need climate legislation now.”

Most electricity is produced by burning fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, a process that emits carbon dioxide, a key greenhouse gas tied to warming. While renewable energy sources like solar and wind have no direct carbon emissions, they have yet to displace fossil fuels due to costs and efficiencies.

McDonald’s will even soften the yellow glow from some Golden Arches as part of the time zone-by-time zone plan to dim nonessential lights between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. to highlight global climate change.

Key landmarks expected to go dark or dim include:

• New York City’s Broadway theater signs, Rockefeller Center and the Empire State Building
• The Las Vegas strip
• The Opera House in Sydney, Australia
• The Eiffel Tower and Elysee Palace in Paris
• The Acropolis in Athens, Greece
• The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
• Niagara Falls
• The Great Pyramids and Sphinx in Egypt
• The London Eye Ferris wheel
• The Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

For the full story, go to MSNBC

RAMADI, Iraq – Spc. George Graham spends most nights driving the dangerous streets of northern Iraq, riding in an armored vehicle as his 81st Brigade Combat Team unit escorts supply trucks between military bases.

The Tacoma native knew a deployment to Iraq was likely when he joined the Washington National Guard last June to help pay for tuition at Clover Park Technical College, where he studies landscape management.

Graham plans to leave the Guard when he returns home this summer – but not because he wants to get out the military.

The 27-year-old father, now serving in Mosul, plans to switch to active-duty status with the Army, driven in part by the promise of financial security for his two sons and himself.

“It’s a stable living,” said Graham, who grew up on Tacoma’s Hilltop. “And the Army is a better life than where I came from.”

As the nation’s economic woes drag on, more local guardsmen are choosing to continue military service by re-enlisting, extending their stay in Iraq or transferring to active-duty status.

The reasons for continuing service are varied and often complex; incentives range from tax-free bonuses to sure-fire promotions, from camaraderie to patriotism. But a reliable paycheck during an economic recession is an increasingly important factor, according to guardsmen whose job is to retain soldiers.

CASH AND CAMARADERIE

Sgt. 1st Class Jerry Frazier is a 42-year-old Fircrest resident serving as the brigade’s noncommissioned officer in charge of retention. He has processed paperwork for more than 375 soldiers during the Iraq deployment – more than 10 percent of the brigade’s total personnel.

For the full story, go to The News Tribune

DENVER — A 31-year-old man who worked in the library of a Denver middle school was charged Wednesday with having a sexual relationship with a student.

Roberto Rodriguez worked as a para professional and was a girls soccer coach at Lake Middle School, said Lynn Kimbrough with the Denver District Attorney’s Office.

The charges alleged that Rodriguez began having a sexual relationship with a female student last December.

School administrators learned of the relationship and called police to report it. Rodriguez was arrested on March 11 on charges of sexual assault on a child and sexual assault on a child by a person in a position of trust.

He is being held in the Denver County Jail on a $100,000 bond.

Editor Note: While the article is not really Front Page material, I could not help myself after seeing the mugshot photo, and the caption (courtesy of Toby) was just priceless!

Source: Denver Channel

MOBILE, Ala. - A jobless shrimper who killed four young children by throwing them off  an 80-foot-high Alabama bridge was sentenced to death by a jury Friday.

The jury deliberated for about an hour before recommending that Lam Luong be executed. He was convicted Thursday of capital murder, which is the only charge in Alabama in which a death sentence is possible.

Circuit Judge Charles Graddick, who presided over the weeklong trial, was not bound by the jury’s decision. The court said a sentencing hearing is scheduled for April 30.

Luong’s defense urged the jury to be merciful on the 38-year-old Vietnamese refugee, contending he had a mental breakdown and snapped before the killings. But prosecutors said Luong deserved to be executed for dropping the children — ages 3 years to 4 months — from the top of the bridge after arguing with his common-law wife, Kieu Phan, 23.

Prosecutors say children killed after argument with common-law wife

Luong fathered three of the victims — Hannah Luong, 2; Lindsey Luong, 1; and Danny Luong, 4 months — and one, Ryan Phan, 3, was Phan’s child with another man.

Luong, who once entered a guilty plea but later retracted it, did not testify at the trial or during Friday’s sentencing phase.

But a psychiatrist for the defense described Luong, who emigrated from Vietnam when he was 14, as having a major depression disorder and that drug use exacerbated his condition. He said Luong reached a critical point when he had no job or money.

Prosecutors had presented Phan family members who shared memories of the children.

For the full story, go to MSNBC