Police: Chris Brown charged with assault in DC

FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2013 file photo, Chris Brown arrives at the 55th annual Grammy Awards, in Los Angeles. Brown was arrested early Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013 in Washington after a fight broke out near the W Hotel near the White House. District of Columbia Police spokesman Officer Paul Metcalf says 24-year-old Brown was arrested and charged with felony assault. Metcalf says 35-year-old Chris Hollosy also was arrested on felony assault charges after the incident. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In this Feb. 10, 2013 file photo, Chris Brown arrives at the 55th annual Grammy Awards, in Los Angeles. Brown was arrested early Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013 in Washington after a fight broke out near the W Hotel near the White House. District of Columbia Police spokesman Officer Paul Metcalf says 24-year-old Brown was arrested and charged with felony assault. Metcalf says 35-year-old Chris Hollosy also was arrested on felony assault charges after the incident. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

FILE - In a Friday, Aug. 30, 2013 file photo, Chris Brown performs on NBC's "Today" show in New York. R&B singer Chris Brown was arrested early Sunday, Oct. 27, 2013 in Washington after a fight broke out near the W Hotel near the White House. District of Columbia Police spokesman Officer Paul Metcalf says 24-year-old Brown was arrested and charged with felony assault. Metcalf says 35-year-old Chris Hollosy also was arrested on felony assault charges after the incident. (Photo by Charles Sykes/Invision/AP, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chris Brown was charged with assault after a fight broke out early Sunday near a Washington hotel, the latest problem for the Grammy Award-winning R&B singer with a snarled legal history.

Brown and another man were charged with felony assault in the altercation that started just before 4:30 a.m., D.C. police spokesman Paul Metcalf said.

The man who was attacked received treatment for his injuries at a local hospital and was released Sunday. Police wouldn't elaborate on his injuries but said the felony charge was based in part on the extent of the injuries. The victim's name wasn't released.

Christopher Hollosy, 35, was also charged with felony assault, police said. Police wouldn't say how Brown and Hollosy may have known each other.

Brown and Hollosy were being held pending a court hearing Monday, Metcalf said.

Neither Brown's publicists nor his attorney Mark Geragos responded to messages left Sunday.

Brown was in Washington to perform Saturday night at an event billed as a "Homecoming Weekend" party at a downtown club. Howard University was celebrating its homecoming, though a university spokeswoman said the party was not sponsored by or affiliated with the school.

Brown remains on probation for assaulting his on-again, off-again girlfriend Rihanna just before the Grammy Awards in 2009. The photos of Rihanna's bruised face caused outrage among many fans.

Brown pleaded guilty to one count of felony assault and received five years' probation.

His probation was briefly revoked earlier this year after a traffic accident. A hit-and-run charge was dropped against him, but the judge gave him 1,000 more hours of community service when he reinstated his probation.

Brown, who lives in Los Angeles and is originally from Virginia, has been involved in other altercations since 2009. Police have said a 2012 brawl at a New York nightclub began when members of the rapper Drake's entourage confronted Brown on the dance floor. Neither was charged in the fight that turned into a bottle-throwing free-for-all.

Brown also tussled with singer Frank Ocean and others during an argument about a parking space outside of a recording studio in Los Angeles, according to witness accounts given to deputies at the time. Ocean said he suffered an injured finger, but no charges were filed.

Brown's arrest could affect his probation in the Rihanna assault case. Brown is due back in court Nov. 20 in Los Angeles to update a judge on his probation. Prosecutors could seek a revocation of his probation or ask a judge to impose additional penalties.

Steve Cron, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, said prosecutors and a judge may wait to see how the Washington case plays out before taking any action against Brown.

"Just the fact that some guy says 'he hit me' doesn't mean he's in violation" of his probation, Cron said.

The potential penalties would depend on the exact wording of Brown's sentence, he said.

___

Associated Press writers Chris Talbott in Nashville, Tenn.; Anthony McCartney in Los Angeles; and Oscar Gabriel in Washington contributed to this report.

Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/4e67281c3f754d0696fbfdee0f3f1469/Article_2013-10-27-Chris%20Brown%20Arrest/id-ba960876d8384f6ea7f28329c80bac6c
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Lou Reed, Beloved Contrarian, Dies

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  American rock singer-songwriter Lou Reed performs at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1975. He is playing a transparent, plexiglass guitar. Reed died Sunday at the age of 71.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Reed and Nico perform with Velvet Underground in 1972.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Reed, Mick Jagger and David Bowie share a joke at a party at Cafe Royal thrown by Bowie in 1973.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Reed performs at the Regent Theater in Melbourne, Australia, in 2000.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Maureen Tucker, Martha Morrison (wife of Sterling Morrison), John Cale and Lou Reed pose for photographers shortly after The Velvet Underground was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jan. 17, 1995.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Reed performs his album Berlin at the CCH Congress Center in Hamburg in 2008.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Reed presents his photography exhibition at the Matadero cultural center in Madrid on Nov. 16, 2012.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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  Reed attends an event for the photography book Transformer, by Mick Rock, in New York City on Oct. 3.

  
  

  
  
  
  
  

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One of rock's most beloved and contrarian figures has died. Lou Reed epitomized New York City's artistic underbelly in the 1970s, with his songs about hookers and junkies. He was 71.

Reed died Sunday morning on Long Island of complications from a liver transplant earlier this year, his literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said.

The famous iconoclast actually got his start as a staff songwriter pumping out pop tunes in a wannabe hit factory called Pickwick Records. Reed recalled his days as a frothy pop lyricist in a 1989 NPR interview.

"When I first started out I really liked the spontaneity of it, cause you know I've got a B.A. in English — not that that means I should be good at it, but it gives me some kind of background in it," he said. "I thought I was pretty fast."

Lou Reed was fast. In more ways than one. He went from hit factory to Andy Warhol's Factory, the epicenter of trashy, avant-garde experimentation in '60s New York. Warhol mentored Reed and his band, The Velvet Underground. He urged them to keep things gritty. The band's Welsh co-founder, John Cale, told NPR in 2000 that the band was never easy listening.

"We were not user-friendly at all," he says. "Anyone listening to a bass guitar and regular guitar coming out of the same amp — it couldn't have been a really great listening experience."

Beyond their sound, The Velvet Underground disturbed even hard-core scenesters with graphic songs about debauchery and doing drugs. In an interview on WHYY's Fresh Air, drummer Moe Tucker remembered performing the song "Heroin": "We got fired from the Cafe Bizarre," she said. "The woman came rushing up to us and said, 'If you play one more song like that you're fired.' "

They did, and they were, and the band's albums did not sell very well. Reed left and embarked on a spotty solo career that reflected his up and down life enthralled with New York's darker corners and the hustlers who hid there.

"Walk on the Wild Side" became Reed's only Top 40 hit, partly because a number of radio station programmers had no idea what it was really about. The album it came from, Transformer — co-produced by David Bowie — brought Reed critical acclaim and attention. Which Reed, in characteristic fashion, hated. That played out in interviews, including one in 1989 with NPR's Bob Edwards, who asked Reed about his choice of subjects.

"I mean, it might be harder to write about a chair," he said. "As a matter of fact, it would be harder to write about a chair. I mean, I could write a song about a chair: Who sat in this chair. Who built this chair. How long had this chair been here. You could do that."

And a few years later, while promoting his album The Raven, Reed vented to another NPR host, who wanted to know how other journalists had somehow mixed up Reed's original lyrics with the writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

"Well, if you're deaf, dumb and retarded, it's easy. I can't believe people interview me for this stuff and don't notice," he says. "I grade them and I put them on my website when they fail really badly, to warn other people, other musicians: 'Watch out for this interviewer.' It's like talking to a squirrel."

As ornery as Reed was with journalists, he was often supportive of other artists. He influenced REM, The Replacements and Talking Heads, and he collaborated with musicians ranging from Metallica to a young woman he met at a concert.

"I just said, 'Hey, hey Lou Reed. This is Emily Haines.' " Haines talked to NPR in 2012 about her band, Metric. She said Reed asked her if she would rather be in The Beatles or The Rolling Stones. She said The Velvet Underground. Then she asked if he would sing on her album. "I just asked him, and he said, 'Yes.' "

When Reed was not onstage or working with other artists, he was happiest in New York City, where he mellowed into a Lower Manhattan elder statesman, riding his bike, practicing tai chi and taking photos. He could get cranky about his own composition.

"I did not place that stupid bird there," he said in an interview he gave Weekend Edition in 2006, walking around his neighborhood with his camera. "The light comes and goes so quickly when it's perfect. You know that. There's a certain time in the morning, certain time around dusk, where the light is golden."

An ephemeral moment, like Warhol's Factory. Or a city sunset. "And I wanted to catch that," he said. Lou Reed caught it — on celluloid and vinyl.

Source: http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/10/27/240819314/lou-reed-beloved-contrarian-has-died?ft=1&f=10001
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The White House Is Foundering

By Kathleen Parker, Washington Post - October 27, 2013

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Source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2013/10/27/the_white_house_is_foundering_318672.html
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NYPD: Cousin admitted fatally stabbing mom, 4 kids

NEW YORK (AP) — A Chinese immigrant who neighbors said struggled to survive in America was arrested Sunday on five counts of murder in the stabbing deaths of his cousin's wife and her four children in their Brooklyn home — using a butcher knife.

The suspect, 25-year-old Mingdong Chen, implicated himself in the killings late Saturday in the Sunset Park neighborhood, police said.

"They were cut and butchered with a kitchen knife," said Chief of Department Philip Banks III.

Two girls, 9-year-old Linda Zhuo and 7-year-old Amy Zhuo, were pronounced dead at the scene, along with the youngest child, 1-year-old William Zhuo — all attacked in a back bedroom, police said. Their brother, 5-year-old Kevin Zhuo, and 37-year-old mother, Qiao Zhen Li, were taken to hospitals, where they were also pronounced dead.

Chen is a cousin of the children's father and had been staying at the home for the past week or so, Banks said.

Chen came to the United States from China in 2004, the chief said, but neighbors say he could never hold down a job.

"He made a very soft comment that since he came to this country, everybody seems to be doing better than him," the chief said. "We're not really sure what that means."

The chief said Chen still speaks only Mandarin Chinese despite being in the U.S. for almost a decade.

On Saturday night, Chen apparently had been acting in a "suspicious" way that concerned Li, Banks said. She tried to call her husband, who wasn't home, but couldn't reach him.

Banks said Li then called her mother-in-law in China, who also was unsuccessful in reaching her son. The mother-in-law reached out to her daughter in the same Brooklyn neighborhood, Banks said.

She and her husband came to the house and banged on the door. When it opened, they faced a grisly sight: a man they didn't know, covered with blood. The couple called 911, and officers investigating another matter nearby responded quickly, Banks said.

"It's a scene you'll never forget," he said. The victims had wounds in their necks and torsos.

Chen was in custody and not immediately available to comment; it was not clear whether he had a lawyer. Banks said he had at first resisted arrest and, while being processed, assaulted a police officer.

Bob Madden, who lives nearby, was out walking his dog Saturday night when he saw a man being escorted from the two-family brick house by police. He was barefoot, wearing jeans, and "he was staring, he was expressionless," Madden said.

Yuan Gao, a cousin of the mother, came by the house Sunday and stood on the street, along with the neighborhood's mostly Chinese residents.

Some said that at Chen's latest temporary home, days before the brutal killings, late-night arguments were loud enough to be heard outside.

Gao said Chen was emotionally unstable. "He's crazy," she said.

Gao also said Chen kept getting fired from various restaurant jobs after only a few weeks.

Fire department spokesman Jim Long said emergency workers responded just before 11 p.m. to a 911 call from a person stabbed at the residence in Sunset Park, a working-class neighborhood.

Neighbor May Chan told the Daily News it was "heartbreaking" to learn of the deaths of children she often saw running around and playing.

"They run around by my garage playing. They run up and down screaming," Chan said.

Other neighbors said they had heard loud arguments emanating from the home late on several nights before the murders.

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/nypd-cousin-admitted-fatally-stabbing-mom-4-kids-175319699.html
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Holocaust survivor makes symphony debut with Ma

BOSTON (AP) — A 90-year-old Holocaust survivor made his orchestral debut with renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma on Tuesday to benefit a foundation dedicated to preserving the work of artists and musicians killed by the Nazis.

Ma and George Horner received floral bouquets and a standing ovation from their audience of about 1,000 people in Boston's Symphony Hall. They appeared to enjoy their evening, chatting briefly between numbers and walking off the stage hand-in-hand after taking a bow together.

Before the performance, Ma and Horner met and embraced ahead of a brief rehearsal. Ma thanked Horner for helping the Terezin Music Foundation, named for the town of Terezin, site of an unusual Jewish ghetto in what was then German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Even amid death and hard labor, Nazi soldiers there allowed prisoners to stage performances.

They played music composed 70 years ago when Horner was incarcerated.

"It's an extraordinary link to the past," said concert organizer Mark Ludwig, who leads the foundation.

Horner played piano and accordion in the Terezin cabarets, including tunes written by fellow inmate Karel Svenk. On Tuesday, Horner played two of Svenk's works solo — a march and a lullaby — and then teamed up with Ma for a third piece called "How Come the Black Man Sits in the Back of the Bus?"

Svenk did not survive the genocide. But his musical legacy has, due in part to a chance meeting of Ludwig, a scholar of Terezin composers, and Horner, who never forgot the songs that were written and played in captivity.

Still, Ludwig found it hard to ask Horner to perform pieces laden with such difficult memories.

"To ask somebody who ... played this in the camps, that's asking a lot," said Ludwig.

Yet Horner, a retired doctor who lives near Philadelphia, readily agreed to what he described as a "noble" mission. It didn't hurt that he would be sharing the stage with Ma — even if he thought Ludwig was joking at first.

"I told him, 'Do you want me to swallow that one?'" Horner recalled with a laugh. "I couldn't believe it because it's a fantastic thing for me."

Ma said before the performance that he hoped it will inspire people to a better future.

"I grew up with the words, 'never again,'" said Ma, who was born 10 years after the end of World War II revealed the scope of the Holocaust. "It is kind of inconceivable that there are people who say the Holocaust didn't exist. George Horner is a living contradiction of what those people are saying."

He said Horner was able to survive "because he had music, because he had friends, because the power of music could fill in the empty spaces."

"To me George Horner is a huge hero, and is a huge inspiration," Ma said. "He is a witness to a window, and to a slice of history, that we never want to see again, and yet we keep seeing versions of that all over the world. I hope we are inspired by that and we keep that memory forever."

Horner was 21 when he was freed by Allied soldiers in 1945 after being imprisoned at Terezin, Auschwitz and Buchenwald. His parents and sister perished in the camps.

And though his back still bears the scars of a Nazi beating, he remains spry and seems much younger than his 90 years.

When Horner found out about the duet with Ma, Ludwig said, "He was so excited, to me he sounded like a teenager."

___

Associated Press writer Kathy Matheson contributed to this report from Newtown Square, Pa.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/holocaust-survivor-makes-symphony-debut-ma-002101100.html
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'Sockpuppets' Lurking On Wikipedia

People using online identities to deceive Wikipedia users, according to the Wikimedia Foundation. Several hundred user accounts have been suspended because of suspicions that these "sockpuppets" were using the site to promote clients and/or give misleading information. Host Rachel Martin talks to foundation executive director Sue Gardner.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=241145305&ft=1&f=1019
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Inhabitat's Week in Green: Amazonian biosphere, 3D-printed coral reefs and an 11-acre portrait

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

Architects and designers are increasingly looking to nature for inspiration -- and the results are spectacular. Amazon just got the green light to bring an Amazonian rainforest to downtown Seattle -- and it will be contained within a sparkling set of biosphere greenhouses. Meanwhile scientists discovered particles of gold growing in Australian eucalyptus trees, and Reef Arabia used 3D printing technology to develop artificial reefs to restore coral ecosystems in the Persian Gulf. Artist Jorge Rodríguez Gerada turned a field in Belfast into an incredible 11-acre portrait that can be seen from space, and MIT students developed a thermoelectric bracelet that keeps your body warm or cool to reduce the need for air conditioning and heating.

Unfortunately, not all interactions between humans and the environment are positive -- and some are so infuriating they'll make you flip your lid. This week we learned that the world's most isolated tree in Nigeria was inexplicably knocked down by a drunk driver, and a Spanish winemaker announced plans to clear-cut a whopping 154 acres of California redwoods. In Utah, a group of Boy Scout leaders destroyed a 200-million-year-old rock formation by pushing it back and forth -- and then they posted a video of the act on Facebook.

Inhabitat also reported on the most exciting clean tech developments around the world. A team of NASA engineers developed a revolutionary new SolarVolt generator that uses lighthouse glass to capture the power of 20 suns, while Israel unveiled plans to build a massive 121-megawatt solar thermal plant in the Negev Desert. Not to be outshone, Ethiopia signed a $4 billion dollar check to build a 1,000-megawatt geothermal power plant, and German scientists found that simple straw could be used to power millions of homes. Smog from dirty energy sources paralyzed a Chinese city of 11 million people this week -- but air pollution woes could be a thing of the past if this smog-sucking electric vacuum cleaner gets built.

Space tourism is starting to take off -- but rocket-powered shuttles blast a whole lot of emissions into the atmosphere. World View has developed a gentler, low-impact way to lift travelers into space via soaring high-altitude helium balloons. In other green transportation news, this week California officially broke ground on the first high-speed railway in the United States, and UK-based company Pro-Teq unveiled a glow-in-the-dark paving material that can turn any road into a sparkling pathway of stars. Fuel cell vehicles were also a hot topic -- General Motors' hydrogen-powered Equinox logged a whopping 100,000 miles this week, while Hyundai unveiled the world's first aquaponics farm powered by a fuel cell car.

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/27/amazonian-biosphere-3d-printed-coral-reef-11-acre-portrait/?ncid=rss_truncated
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