Copiapo, Chile (CNN) — In a desolate patch of Chile’s Atacama Desert, a world mesmerized by a 68-day tale of true grit expects a joyful ending Tuesday.

One by one, 33 miners, trapped in a gold and copper mine since the start of August, will put on green coveralls made of moisture-resisting material and personalized with names like Victor Antonio Segovia Rojas. Juan Illanes Palma. Alex Vega Salazar.

The oldest is 63. The youngest, only 19.

They’ll have on fresh underwear and socks when they climb into a claustrophobic capsule a little wider than the span of their shoulders.

They will be instructed on the communications equipment and the oxygen supply inside the rescue tube. And they will put on special goggles to protect their eyes, accustomed the vampiric darkness of the caved-in mine, to the lights up above.

Then the order to hoist will ring out and each man will begin a slow, bumpy, upward journey through half a mile of rock.

The men have been placed on liquid diets in case they vomit on the way to the surface and they have been exercising for an hour a day. One of the miners, Yonni Barrios, is a paramedic and has been weighing his fellow miners daily, taking blood tests and doing daily urine analysis.

It’s unclear exactly when the rescue will begin but it is likely to go from night into day. Some of the men will feel the intense chill of a desert night; others may come out to a searing sun burning high in a cloudless sky.

The rescue capsule will spin as it rises. It will be harrowing. And dark. Like a scary amusement park ride.

Except the thrill for these 33 men will lie at the end of the ride, when each will see the families they probably feared they would never see again.

“As he comes out he will be reborn,” said Nelly Bugueno about her son Victor Zamora Bugueno, a carrier pidgeon handler and a poet.

Nelly Bugueno has been camping out with the other families above the caved-in mine in this spartan area void of hotels, gas stations or any other amenities. They named it Camp Esperanza (Hope).

Tuesday, that hope was apparent as the families sang songs and could not contain the joy of long-awaited reunions.

Children played soccer in front of a red school house erected at the camp and 33 flags — 32 Chilean and a single Bolivian — representing the nationalities of the men buried underneath.

“God is in all places, At the same time your family loves you,” read a sign for Mario Nicolus Gomez Heredia, the oldest of the miners.

Gomez began mining at the tender age of 12. He became a spiritual leader for the trapped men and requested a crucifix and statuettes of saints so the men could construct a shrine.

But amid hope also lurked fear. What if something went wrong?

Claudio Lobos, brother of Franklin Lobos, 53, who once played soccer in a Chilean league, craved reassurance.

The cage looked small. Will his brother fit in there? Was it safe? he asked.

He was told the Chilean government has used every resource to save his brother. What more could a journalist say?

The first to come out will be five fit miners who possess the most technical know-how so that they can advise the rescue teams.

The next five will be the physically weakest, a term perhaps not appriopriate for anyone who has survived more than two months in the bowels of the earth. But one of the miners has diabetes; another has black lung.

The last to come out will be Luis Alberto Urzua Iribarren, 54. Like the captain of a sinking ship, the shift supervisor volunteered to stay behind until all his men were safe.

Once the men have been extracted, they will undergo about two hours of health checks at a field hospital set up at the mine. They will then be flown by helicopter to a hospital in the town of Copiapo — approximately a 15-minute flight.

Miners who are healthy enough will be allowed to visit briefly with family members in a reunion area before being taken to the hospital. Some have exhibited anxiety, according to Chilean Health Minister Jaime Manalich, and may experience psychological problems.

For the 33 men, the only contact with the outside world was through a small bore hole that sent them food, water and other supplies.

High above them, on a sweltering desert day, the buzz of electrical generators brought in by hordes of media began to drown out other sounds. About 1,500 journalists from 39 nations gathered hoping to tell a story survival.

But on this day, the entire world was watching with hope in their hearts for a very happy ending.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): GUARDIAN.CO, DAILYMAIL,

As Bishop Eddie Long poked through a salad in his church office one summer day in 1999, he shot a weary look at a person ticking off his ministry’s successes.

His Atlanta megachurch had already reached 25,000 members. He had been invited to the White House, built a global television ministry and drove around town in a $350,000 Bentley.

But Long told the visitor who had come to write about him that the pressures of being a high-profile pastor could be brutal.

“You don’t want any of this,” he said in a raspy baritone as he shook his head. “You don’t want any of this …”

Long didn’t get more specific about those pressures.

Today, the 57-year-old minister, known for his public crusades against homosexuality, faces serious allegations.

On Tuesday, two young men who were members of Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church filed lawsuits claiming he used his position as their spiritual counselor to coerce them into sexual relationships.

The men — Anthony Flagg, 21, and Maurice Robinson, 20 — allege Long used a private spiritual ceremony to mark a “covenant” between them, with both becoming his “spiritual son.”

Flagg alleges that Long then used that relationship to take him on overnight trips where they shared a bedroom and engaged in kissing, masturbation and “oral sexual contact.”

Robinson, who claimed Long engaged in oral sex with him, said the pastor would cite Scripture to justify their relationship.

“We categorically deny the allegations,” Art Franklin, Long’s spokesman, said in a written statement. “It is very unfortunate that someone has taken this course of action.”

Franklin said “our law firm will be able to respond once attorneys have had an opportunity to review the lawsuit.”

The men’s lawyer, Brenda Joy (B.J.) Bernstein, would not make them available for comment.

Long’s crusades against homosexuality

The allegations against Long run contrary to his public image.

He is a celebrity preacher in the black church world and a star in the evangelical world as well. His church is one of the largest in the country.

In the pulpit, Long seamlessly blends muscle and ministry.

He wears tight shirts that display his weight-lifter arms. He writes books such as “Gladiator, the Strength of a Man,” that teaches men how to be warriors for God. He says he has a special calling to reach out to men.

He’s a married man who preaches about the sanctity of the union between a man and a woman. He denounces homosexuality. In 2004, he led a march in Atlanta against gay marriage. He once declared that his church had created a ministry that “delivered” people from homosexuality.

His public statements about gays and lesbians have helped reinforce homophobia in the black church, says Shayne Lee, a sociologist and author of “Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace.”

“The homophobic atmosphere he helped perpetuate,” Lee said, could “come back to possibly harm him.”

Long’s controversial ministry

Long has been the center of public controversy before.

In 2005, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that a charity Long created to help the poor and spread the Gospel had made him its biggest beneficiary.

An examination of the nonprofit’s tax returns and other documents revealed that the charity provided him with at least a million dollars in salary over four years, and the use of a $1.4 million home and the $350,000 Bentley.

A frequent critic of black preachers (he once said they “major in storefront churches”), Long responded by saying he was a CEO of a global business who deserved his lifestyle.

“You’ve got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that’s supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering,” Long said, explaining the compensation he received from his charity.

In 2007, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, of the Senate Finance Committee, sent a letter to Long asking detailed questions about his financial operations. Long was one of six televangelists who Grassley targeted.

After an initial flurry of publicity following Grassley’s request, the investigation appeared to peter out.

In recent years, Long seemed to become more humble, says Rev. Tim McDonald, senior pastor of First Iconium Baptist Church in Atlanta.

In private talks, McDonald said, Long told him about the pressures of leading a megachurch. He said he no longer had as many close friendships and yearned to return to the more intimate relationships that McDonald seemed to have with his much smaller congregation.

“He said, ‘Tim, I may have the numbers, but you have the love,’ ” McDonald said.

God’s ’scarred leader’

For all his outward confidence, Long also displayed a vulnerable side.

He built an intimate bond with many members of his church by talking about his private failings: his divorce from his first wife; being rejected by his father; and being fired from a job in corporate America.

He called himself God’s “scarred leader.”

He also became known for his generosity. He would give out cars and money to strangers at church services. He built ministries to help the poor, AIDS patients and young people.

He talked proudly about his ability to reach young men. He called himself a “spiritual daddy” to many of the young men he mentored at New Birth.

He would pay the college tuition for some men, give business suits to others and play basketball and lift weights with his male ministers.

Once, he even boasted to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that some mothers at New Birth trusted him enough to bring their wayward teenage boys to him for paddling.

“When I say bend over, even on Sunday, they bend over,” he said, referring to the boys he paddled. “Why? Because they respect me. Because I first died for them…”

The two men who filed suit against Long, though, said he used their relationships to instruct them, as “spiritual sons,” to follow their “master.”

They also say Long enticed them “with cars, clothes, jewelry, and electronics.” Robinson claims the pastor paid for his college tuition.

In Flagg’s suit, he claimed that when some young men found girlfriends, Long would attempt to block those relationships by “increased contact and spiritual talk” about “the covenant between the Spiritual Son and himself.”

In addition to Long, the lawsuits name as defendants his church and a youth academy where Long was pastor and mentor. Both suits seek unspecified punitive damages on counts ranging from negligence to breach of fiduciary duty.

Lee, the Tulane sociologist who has written about Long, says he expects him to mount a fierce counterattack.

“He’ll demonize the accusers,” Lee said, “and couch it in terms of how the enemy Satan is trying to hurt the ministry.”

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (pictures): DJBLAKMAGIC, POPCRUNCH, CBSNEWS

SANTA ANA, Calif. — An 81-year-old man has been charged with the murder of his 94-year-old roommate at a Southern California rehabilitation center where the two were recovering from hip surgeries, authorities said.

Prosecutors said Monday that William McDougall became angry with 94-year-old Manh Van Nguyen, who was singing in their room in Vietnamese at the Palm Terrace Health Care Center in Laguna Woods.

A nurse saw the attack and employees of the rehabilitation center restrained McDougall, prosecutors said according to the Orange County Register.

McDougall is accused of taking a metal rod from the closet and hitting Nguyen multiple times on the head. Nguyen died at a hospital of blunt-force trauma to the head, the Register said.

The Register also reported that workers at Palm Terrace Health Care Center said the two men had not had any trouble previously.

McDougall faces 25 years to life in state prison if convicted of the Oct. 1 attack. He is being held at Orange County Jail on a $1 million bail, the Register said.

He is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday in Santa Ana.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (picture): BLOG.CAMERA.ORG

NEW YORK - Chasing his first U.S. Open championship, Rafael Nadal was so dominant, so determined, so defiant, his face curling into a sneer with every wallop of the ball.

With two marvelous weeks at Flushing Meadows capped by victory in a thrilling final Monday night, Nadal fashioned an emphatic answer to all those questions about whether he could grab the only major trophy missing from his collection.

Now owner of a career Grand Slam at age 24, champion at three consecutive major tournaments and nine overall, the No. 1-ranked Nadal is suddenly chasing something else: recognition as the greatest tennis player in history.

Approaching perfection for stretches - the guy played more than 40 points in a row without making an unforced error - Nadal beat Novak Djokovic 6-4, 5-7, 6-4, 6-2 in a match filled with fantastic shotmaking by both men and interrupted by a thunderstorm a day after it was postponed by rain.

“For the first time in my career, I played a very, very good match in this tournament,” said Nadal, who never had been past the semifinals at Flushing Meadows. “That’s my feeling, no? I played my best match in the U.S. Open at the most important moment.”

Once seen as Roger Federer’s nemesis, Nadal has made his own greatness quite clear - and is more than halfway to Federer’s career record of 16 Grand Slam titles. Nadal’s total already is one more than Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi or Ivan Lendl won.

It’s clear where Nadal stands on the matter. He said “talk about if I am better or worse than Roger is stupid, because the titles say he’s much better than me.”

Djokovic, understandably, had a different take on Nadal.

“He has the capabilities already now to become the best player ever,” said Djokovic, who lost the 2007 U.S. Open final to Federer, but upset him in Saturday’s semifinals. “I think (Nadal is) playing the best tennis that I’ve ever seen him play on hard courts. He has improved his serve drastically - the speed, the accuracy. And, of course, his baseline (game) is as good as ever.”

Nadal is a year younger than Federer was when he got to No. 9, and about 3 1/2 years younger than Federer was when he completed his career Grand Slam at the 2009 French Open. Nadal is the seventh man in history with at least one title from each of tennis’ four most important tournaments.

Bjorn Borg was the only other man to have nine major championships by 24.

“It’s too far; 16, for me, is too far to think about right now,” Nadal said, with his typical humility. “My goal, all my life, was the same: keep improving.”

He takes that task seriously. When he started on tour his forehand was feared, his backhand wasn’t, so he worked on that. Then he got better at volleying. He says he decided a couple of days before the start of the U.S. Open to tweak the way he holds his racket to serve.

That added zip to his serves, now regularly faster than 130 mph, which helps him earn some easy points - important given the way he hustles so much and hits so hard, those booming forehands looking like uppercuts. He won 106 of 111 service games in the tournament, a key reason he finally came through in New York.

Everyone, even Nadal himself, used to try to explain why he kept leaving the U.S. Open without a trophy, why it was the only Grand Slam tournament he hadn’t conquered.

“The hard court,” he said, “always was the most difficult surface … for me.”

Here’s how the thinking went: His grinding style exhausts him. The wind plays havoc with his spin-lathered strokes. The courts are too hard and too fast. The balls are too soft. And so on.

Seems sort of silly, huh?

“Now no one can say he can’t win here,” said Toni Nadal, Rafael’s uncle and coach. “It’s very important for us to know that Rafael has learned so much, because players said Rafa could never win on hard courts, because he played too much topspin (or) he’s too physical. And now I believe there’s not much that the players he plays against can argue with.”

Well put.

Nadal is first left-hander to win the U.S. Open since John McEnroe in 1984, and the first Spaniard since Manuel Orantes in 1975.

Nadal first burst onto the scene as the so-called King of Clay, compiling a record 81-match winning streak on that surface and starting his French Open career 31-0. His five titles at Roland Garros have earned him accolades as the best clay-court player in history, but now he has become so much more.

He won on the grass at Wimbledon in 2007, edging Federer 9-7 in the fifth set as darkness descended, then again this year. He won on the hard courts at the Australian Open in 2009, again besting Federer in five sets.

All that was left was the U.S. Open. After complaining of fatigue in 2008, coming off his gold medal from the Beijing Olympics, then dealing with bad knees and a torn abdominal muscle in 2009, he set out to make this trip to Flushing Meadows different.

He curtailed his schedule a bit in the spring, to save some wear and tear. He took extra time off after Wimbledon, getting treatment on his knees and skipping the Davis Cup quarterfinals.

It all worked. Nadal only had one blip all tournament: The second set Monday evening. Perhaps bothered by some pro-Djokovic supporters yelling between serves - earning an admonishment from the chair umpire - Nadal fell behind 3-1 by making four mistakes, including a double-fault, to get broken at love.

When Nadal pushed a backhand long to close a 19-shot point, 2008 Australian Open champion Djokovic screamed, “Come on!” It was part of a run of 11 consecutive points for Djokovic, who went ahead 4-1.

As quickly as Nadal lost his way, however, he gathered himself, his strokes gaining steam, his footwork as good as ever. A violent backhand on a 23-stroke exchange allowed Nadal to break back, and he held to 4-all, which is when there was a two-hour rain delay.

Djokovic took that set - the only one of 22 played by Nadal in New York this year that he lost. He came oh-so-close to being the first man in a half-century to win this tournament without dropping a set.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (pictures): NBCSPORTS

Officers scoured the Discovery Communications building overnight after a hostage-taker claiming to have “several bombs” was shot dead, but did not find any “active devices” at the scene, NBC News reported Thursday.

Montgomery County, Md. police told NBC News that they had given the “all-clear,” but were still treating the building — where a man who identified himself as James J. Lee had held three people hostage — as a crime scene.

It remained closed overnight after Wednesday’s standoff; police did not indicate whether or not employees would be permitted to return to work Thursday, NBC News added.

Police shot to death the man Wednesday at the building in suburban Washington, D.C. Authorities said the hostages were safe.

At least one device on the man’s body went off when he was shot inside the building in suburban Washington, D.C., Montgomery County police Chief Thomas Manger said. Police had been trying to determine whether two boxes and two backpacks the gunman had also contained explosives.

Manger said SWAT officers shot the gunman about 4:50 p.m. EDT because officials “believed the hostages were in danger.” The hostages — two Discovery Communications employees and a security guard — were unhurt after the four-hour standoff.

An NBC News producer who called the building to find out what was going on had a brief telephone conversation with the man when he came on the line unexpectedly. He said, “I have a gun and I have a bomb. … I have several bombs strapped to my body ready to go off.”

NBC News informed Montgomery County authorities of the conversation as the producer spoke to the man for about 10 minutes. NBC News did not report the conversation until the hostage situation had been resolved.

Speaking to reporters, Manger would not release the man’s identity, but numerous law enforcement authorities gave NBC News the same name: James J. Lee.

Lee, 43, was a longtime protester at the building who was sentenced to six months of supervised probation for disorderly conduct in March 2008.

Manger said the suspect held the hostages in the lobby area of the first floor. He said police spent several hours negotiating with the armed man after he entered the suburban Washington building about 1 p.m.

The building in the close-in suburb of Washington was safely evacuated, including the Discovery Kids Place day care center, and none of the 1,900 people who work in the building were hurt.

‘The planet does not need humans’
Lee appears to have posted environmental and population-control demands online, saying humans are ruining the planet and that Discovery should develop programs to sound the alarm.

“I want Discovery Communications to broadcast on their channels to the world their new program lineup and I want proof they are doing so. I want the new shows started by asking the public for inventive solution ideas to save the planet and the remaining wildlife on it,” the alleged manifesto reads, adding:

“Nothing is more important than saving … the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans.”

Court records show that Lee was arrested Feb. 21, 2008, on the sixth day of a protest at the Discovery building. At the time of his conviction in March 2008, he was identified as being from San Diego.

Police were called to the scene when a crowd that had gathered began growing “unruly” as Lee threw thousands of dollars of cash into the air, some of it still in shrink-wrapped packages, police said at the time. (Lee was found not guilty of littering.)

Lee said at the time that he experienced an “awakening” when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

Nathaniel Harrington, a former Discovery employee, told msnbc TV’s Peter Alexander that he saw Lee outside the building during the 2008 protest.

“He was seen as something of a joke,” Harrington said. “I hate to say it, but at the time we kind of half-joked about it because he could come back shooting. Nobody took it very seriously.”

“As soon as I heard” the news Wednesday, “I knew it’s got to be Lee,” he said.

Lee had been active in other online arenas, too, in pursuing his causes:

While his main domain, savetheplanetprotest.com, is now a single page presenting his complaints, archives show that in the past he has used it to promote a contest to give away money and property in Hawaii “for the best TV show idea to save the planet.”

In early 2008, a message board called Save the Planet Protest was set up by a man calling himself Lee who uses a profile picture very similar to other photos of James Lee.

In a January 2008 post, the man, using the screen name misterfifteen, explains that he specifically targeted Discovery because he believes its identification with environmentalism was a sham:

“Discovery is hugely responsible for what is happening and their ineffective programming must be protested and dealt with. The time for pussy-footing around the subject is done. It’s time to protest them until they start changing their stupid message. They ARE glorifying the damned fishermen who are overfishing the planet and I would think that you would see that for yourself instead of defending them.”

‘Save the Planet’ TV show pitch
The man goes on to say that he approached Discovery with programming ideas at one point “even though I had a feeling that they were working for their own greedy ends.” Discovery officials “didn’t do anything,” he writes.

The nature of that proposed programming can be gleaned from an undated pitch letter Lee sent to Discovery.

Calling himself “Mister Lee” and giving a Silver Spring address, Lee proposes “an idea for a reality-game show called ‘Race to Save the Planet.’”

According to the letter, which msnbc.com retrieved from archives of unlinked material on his website, Lee says contestants “would come from all over to compete with each other and come up with ideas to save the planet. The idea here is to use human inventiveness to save the planet from the environmental destruction it’s facing. People competing can either have completely new ideas on how to save the planet, or they can build on another person’s idea and make that original idea better.”

He concludes: “‘Race to Save the Planet.’ This show could very well save the planet.”

Also pulled down sometime in the past two years was a page set up to protest Discovery. On it, he writes:

“If their ‘environmental’ shows are actually working, then why is the news about the environment getting worse? It should be getting better if they were doing their job and we should be seeing that reflected on the nightly news. But NO! The Discovery Channel is actually not about saving the planet, they are just another ‘green’ corporation whose real interests lies in MONEY! Products! Junk! Trash!”

‘Chaotic’ scene described
Wednesday’s drama likewise played itself out online as scores of Discovery employees sought and gave information on Twitter and other social media services.

At the scene itself, helicopters and dozens of police cars patrolled the area, and most of the streets were blocked off.

“Someone over the P.A. said there’s a situation in the lobby, go back to your desks,” Melissa Shepard, a Discovery employee, told msnbc TV. “So we all went to offices and crammed into offices and shut the lights off and listened to the news. Then someone knocked on the door and said we need to evacuate.”

Shepard described initial confusion over the evacuation plan.

“The scariest was when they were telling us to go upstairs, then downstairs, then upstairs. I don’t know if it was safe,” she said.

“The thing is we were hearing there were two people, then explosives, then hostages, then that people were shot. We kept hearing different stories. It was one thing after another.”

“It’s pretty chaotic,” Tariq Warner, a photographer for NBC station WRC-TV, said on msnbc. He said a woman ran past him screaming.

Discovery Communications reaches about 1.5 billion subscribers in more than 180 countries with the Discovery Channel, TLC, Animal Planet, Science Channel and Planet Green networks.

Source (article): MSNBC

Source (pictures): WXYZ, CBSNEWS