STILLWATER, Okla. – Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy has signed a seven-year, $15.7 million contract that he agreed to in December.
The contract increases Gundy's annual salary from $1,053,000 to an average of more than $2.2 million per year. Gundy's first contract at Oklahoma State paid him $700,000 in 2005.
According to details of the contract, released Friday as the result of an Open Records request, Gundy will receive an annual base salary of $375,000 during the first year. His base pay will increase incrementally until it reaches $550,000 in 2015.
The university says Gundy is also entitled to bonuses, including $500,000 if his team wins the national championship and $100,000 for a BCS bowl game appearance or for a Big 12 title.
Gundy is 27-23 in four seasons with the Cowboys.
July 2009
SALZBURG, Austria – The huge musical puzzle that is Mozart is about to be expanded by two potentially important pieces.
More than two centuries after his death, two additional works have recently been identified as being composed by the Austrian master. While the pieces might have been played before, Sunday will be the first time they will be performed as compositions of the popular prodigy.
The venue is Salzburg, Amadeus' birthplace and the city that nurtured his early musical career. The International Mozarteum Foundation will officially present the piano pieces at a hotly awaited event that will feature a live performance by Austrian pianist Florian Birsak.
Officials, protecting the works like state secrets after officially announcing their discovery last week, have said only that they were created by a young Mozart and are contained in a manuscript owned by the Mozarteum for more than 100 years.
"These are two substantial pieces of piano music, composed before Mozart's 10th birthday," Ulrich Leisinger, the Mozarteum's head of research, said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
They were identified as part of a larger investigation of the foundation's Mozart-related materials that include letters and documents, but also more than a hundred music manuscripts some in the hand of the composer, others transcribed by contemporaries.
The foundation, established in 1880 and a prime source for Mozart-related matters, seeks to preserve the composer's heritage and find new approaches for analyzing him.
Posthumous discoveries of Mozart pieces are rare but not unheard of.
In September, Leisinger announced that a French library had found another previously unknown piece of music handwritten by Mozart.
That work, described as the preliminary draft of a musical composition, was found in Nantes in western France as library staff members were going through its archives. Leisinger says the library contacted his foundation for help authenticating the work.
There have been up to 10 Mozart discoveries of such importance over the past 50 years, Leisinger said at the time.
Still, experts are fascinated by news of the most recently announced find.
The Juilliard School's L. Michael Griffel called it "very exciting" and a "thrill for intellectuals."
"It's always so impressive when a new piece of Mozart is discovered because it adds to the total picture that we have of him and of his development as a composer," said Griffel, chair of the renowned institution's music history department.
Once the works are finally released, it will be important to closely examine both the technique and the substance for potential clues about later pieces, Griffel said.
"Sometimes, a little piece is transformed into something bigger."
Determining whether a work is authentic can be quite a challenge.
Charles McGuire, assistant professor of musicology at the respected Oberlin Conservatory of Music, said it involved carrying out handwriting and stylistic analyses among other things.
Sometimes, the hard work certainly pays off.
"Discoveries like this they put a thrill into classical music," McGuire said when asked to comment on the Mozarteum's announcement.
Mozart lived from 1756 to 1791.
He started playing the keyboard at age 3, and by his fifth birthday was already composing minuets. Between then and Dec. 5, 1791, when he died of rheumatic fever, he wrote 626 works.
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International Mozarteum Foundation: http://www.mozarteum.at/
NEW YORK – The mid-movie dash to the restroom can turn us into calculating Hussein Bolt wannabes: Ah, this looks like a lull time to dash.
When we return to our seats, we pray the answer to "What did I miss?" isn't "Darth Vader is really Luke's father" or "the girlfriend is really a guy."
The Web site RunPee.com can help with such anxious guess work.
The site provides recommended opportunities to race to the restroom. It tells you when the action or romance wanes, and gives you a cue ("Baby O.J. is taken from Bruno") for your exit.
The site tells you how long you've got and even summarizes what you missed. Since early July, RunPee.com is available as an iPhone app, too.
Launched last August, RunPee took off earlier this summer. It's been one of the season's runaway hits a clever idea that has spawned a lot of word-of-mouth from moviegoers.
"Helping your bladder enjoy going to the movies as much as you do," the site boasts.
It was created by Dan Florio, a 42-year-old Flash developer who got the idea during the three-hour-plus "King Kong" remake in 2005.
Florio, who lives in Orlando, Fla., with his wife, does everything for the site, though he gets some help from his wife and his mother. He's become a regular opening day attendee of movies, busily taking notes in the back row.
On Friday, he's planning a double-feature of "Funny People" which runs nearly 2 1/2 hours and "Aliens in the Attic."
"I never intended to refocus my energies on this," says Florio. "And I never thought that I'd be seeing every single movie that comes out, either."
The site averages 3,000-6,000 visitors a day, Florio says. The iPhone app is available on iTunes for $1. It's not a huge moneymaker (Florio estimates he'll make $800 this month) but is providing him a little extra cash.
He believes that not only do moviegoers benefit from the service, but theater owners do, too.
"Lots and lots of people comment: `Ah! I can get that 64-ounce drink now!'" Florio says.
Florio designed the site to be wiki-based with break times submitted by users, but it's turned out that he's done most of the work. Finding the right moments and recording the correct time is more work than it might sound most moviegoers leave their stopwatches at home.
"It's not fun," says Florio. "I would literally have to pay someone to do this."
Generally, the better the movie is, the harder it is to find a break. The 96-minute "Up," for example, is one film where no bathroom break is advisable. But there are suggested options after all, movies that children flock to are the kind where bathroom breaks are often unavoidable.
There are, of course, limits to the usefulness of RunPee. But it's also found friends in cyberspace like WhereToWee.com, a site in the works that tells you where the nearest restroom is.
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On the Net:
http://runpee.com
LOWELL, Mass. – Police responding to a report of a 3-year-old being locked in a sweltering, filthy attic were told by other children, "Mommy does this when she gets angry," a prosecutor said Friday.
Kristen Paquette, 27, was charged with reckless endangerment to a child and assault and battery on a child and was being held on $10,000 bail after arraignment Friday in Lowell District Court. Her family and attorney portrayed her as an overwhelmed mother dealing with an especially unruly child.
Police said the boy was naked, covered in urine and feces, and had several minor bumps on his forehead when officers acting on a tip went to Paquette's Lowell apartment Thursday. They estimated the temperature inside the attic at over 100 degrees. The door to the room was locked, and the only window inside was nailed shut, said prosecutor Dan Harren. Feces-covered child-size fingerprints were on the wall, he said.
Outside the attic was a similarly filthy mattress, surrounded by hundreds of flies, Harren said. Health officials condemned the apartment afterward.
Officers said another boy and a girl at the home told them Paquette took the 3-year-old by his arms "and dragged him upstairs to the attic." The children told officers such things happened "a lot."
Harren said the children told authorities, "Mommy does this when she gets angry." One boy told police his sibling "was bad, so Mommy put him upstairs and changed the door handle," according to the police report.
The prosecutor added in court, "When asked how long the child had been upstairs, the defendant admitted, `About an hour,' in a nonchalant manner." She said she had punished the child because he would "interrupt cleaning."
Court records show Lowell police also arrested Paquette in 2004, on a charge of assault and battery with a knife. The arrest in the same apartment came after Paquette allegedly cut a man with a knife; she claimed he had thrown her to the floor.
The woman's father, Alfred Paquette, attended the arraignment and said afterward that police were misrepresenting the situation. He said his daughter is a single mother who is overwhelmed by her four children a daughter and three sons.
Alfred Paquette said the first floor of the home is clean, and the four children seem happy and never appeared abused.
"I was in the apartment yesterday morning. ... I didn't smell nothing. It just smelled like a home," he said. "My daughter isn't some evil monster that she's being portrayed to be. She's just a regular mom, and she has a child that needs special services. She's been trying to get him help and nobody's helping her."
Paquette said the boy in the attic was born three months premature, has chronic lung problems and exhibited behavioral problems despite reassurances from doctors who have examined him.
"He's like a child with ADHD on steroids. He's very hyperactive," Paquette said.
He said his daughter was raised in Lowell and is unemployed. She has been abandoned by the fathers of her boys, he said, and only has contact with the father of the girl.
He said his ex-wife is attempting to gain custody of the children and that other relatives have offered to take in his daughter.
Richard Paquette, the woman's uncle, told reporters there was nothing wrong with disciplining out-of-control children.
"You've got to try to get some kind of control. There's no abuse, no abuse whatsoever," he said.
Paquette's defense attorney, Kathleen Moore, told Judge Neil Walker, "It is clear this is a woman who needed help and didn't know how to ask for it and didn't ask for it."
Two of the other children, ages 6 and 9, were placed in state custody, as was a third child who wasn't home at the time. Alfred Paquette said he was with the child at Fenway Park, watching the Boston Red Sox defeat the Oakland Athletics.
The police report for the 2004 assault charge said Paquette told officers she cut the man "so as to fend him off." The man, 26-year-old Andrew Jackman, gave the same address as Paquette.
The report added: "At the hospital, Mr. Jackman stated that he would not be pressing charges and was very angry that Ms. Paquette was arrested."
The case was continued without a finding, although Paquette did receive probation and was ordered to attend the anger-management classes.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) –
Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd said on Friday he had been diagnosed with early stage prostate cancer but that he was confident he would recover and still planned to run for reelection next year.
Dodd, a key player pushing for U.S. healthcare reform, said he would have surgery during the August Senate break but planned to continue regular work activities.
Dodd, who faces a tough reelection battle in Connecticut next year, said he was definitely still running. "I'll be a little leaner and a little meaner, but I'm running," he said.
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) –
A divorced Saudi man with four children has shocked Saudi Arabia, one of the most conservative countries in the world, with details of his sexual exploits on an Arabic television show.
Mazen Abdul-Jawad, 32, has gone into hiding after appearing two weeks ago on Lebanese channel LBC -- mainly owned by Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal -- where he spoke to camera from his bedroom in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah about how couples can spice up their sex lives.
"Everything happens in this room," he said on an episode of the salacious show "Ahmar Bilkhat al-Areed" (Wide Red Lines), before launching into descriptions of foreplay techniques and tricks for cruising women on the streets of Jeddah.
Clips of the racy confessions from the TV show, which can be seen via satellite in Saudi Arabia, have had nearly half a million hits on Youtube.
Saudi Arabia follows an austere form of Islam where religious police patrol the streets to enforce a strict moral standard including no mixing of unrelated men and women, as well as no drugs and alcohol.
Public beheadings are regularly carried out for a range of crimes, from murder to rape, witchcraft or insulting Islam.
But many young Saudis find ways around the draconian system to make contact with each other, and the clerics have tried in vain to limit mobile phone and other technology.
Men have been prosecuted for taking pictures of young women with phones in malls and many reports say such photographs are often used as blackmail.
STARTED AT 14
Abdul-Jawad said sex became an important part of his life at age 14, following his first sexual encounter with a neighbor.
He demonstrated how he would cruise girls in his red convertible or in supermarkets, often making use of Bluetooth mobile phone technology, and produced sex toys and lubricants from his bedroom cupboard.
"While I'm driving I turn my Bluetooth on. It has the description of my car and my mobile number... I get calls from girls... and in some cases I call back and she goes out with me," he says in the Youtube clips.
Newspapers and bloggers have said the young man should face legal action for spreading vice in what has been dubbed by media as the "frank with filth case."
"He confessed before the world that he committed fornication and continues to fornicate," an anonymous user wrote on al-Medina newspaper's web forum this week.
"It is for that reason that he deserves to be stoned to death, as Islamic law stipulates."
Hashim Adnan, a 24-year-old from Jeddah, said Abdul-Jawad deserved at least some form of censure. "He must be punished and become an example for all. We Saudis are not used to and will not accept such behavior," he said.
It was not possible to contact Abdul-Jawad who has made only one public comment since the controversy erupted.
"I offer my apologies to everyone and I am ready to accept the consequences," he said in an interview with the daily Okaz last week. It carried a photograph of him in traditional Saudi robes but with his face concealed.
(Writing by Asma Alsharif and Andrew Hammond; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Iran's human rights activists say they live in dread of the midnight knock on the door or the car that pulls up next to them on the street, fearing that at any moment they might be arrested in the government's post-election clampdown.
They take precautions: moving only in small groups of two or three and positioning themselves near corners where there are several routes to make a dash for safety. They avoid telephones, purge e-mails and frequently change passwords.
"We fear for our lives. We can be detained at any moment," said Zahra Saeidzadeh, a human rights activist, in a telephone interview from Tehran.
"There's not much more we can do," she said, adding that the government is intent "on silencing us."
The crackdown unleashed after the disputed June 12 election went far beyond the young protesters who took to the streets crying fraud in the vote. The government has used the opportunity to target a wide range of figures who have long been a thorn in its side pro-reform politicians, critical writers and the community of activists who have long pressed for greater civil liberties and rights for women.
They have been picked up from their homes or offices in nighttime raids, or off the street, sometimes during protests but often not.
Several thousand people have been arrested in the nearly 7-week-old crackdown. The number still in prison is unclear. Several weeks ago, authorities put the figure at 500, but since then there have been more arrests. In recent days, officials have made several large releases and moved to put others on trial.
Leaders of grass-roots civic campaigns in Iran are no strangers to government pressure. For years they have been subject to surveillance, intimidation and imprisonment.
For example, the "Million Signature" campaign a group pressing for changes in Iran's laws on women regularly sees its leaders and workers arrested, hit with huge bail amounts and barred from travel abroad. But still they were able to build their networks.
The post-election crackdown, however, feels different, and activists fear this time the government intends to completely crush them.
"They're trying to instill fear in the movement to make us give up the fight," said Mahboubeh Abbasgholizadeh, a women's rights activist who has been detained repeatedly in the past.
"They raid homes after midnight and take away people. When you go to bed, you don't know if it's your turn, you just wait for that knock on the door," she said.
The detentions take away important organizing skills from activist groups. Also, several well-known human rights lawyers who usually represent jailed activists have themselves been imprisoned since the election.
"We don't know if we're going to win or lose this battle. We feel a great sense of insecurity. We also have immense anger. We are very, very angry," Abbasgholizadeh said.
But she said the opposition was unarmed "while they have batons, tear gas and guns. It's an unequal war."
The mass protests erupted over claims that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election victory was fraudulent, but they have turned into an unprecedented expression of anger at Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his clerical leadership.
Rights activists joining the marches said they take special precautions, because they know they might be targeted.
They stand near street corners to have open escape routes and wear sunglasses, Abbasgholizadeh said. Security forces often identify protesters by their loose pants and running shoes, so activists wear ordinary clothes and carry shopping bags to avoid looking like they're part of the protest.
One well-known documentary filmmaker even put on an all-enveloping chador so she could hide her camera to film the protests, Abbasgholizadeh said, declining to identify the woman for fear she would face government reprisals.
Another activist, who asked not to be identified for fear of arrest, said her colleagues participate in demonstrations in small groups of two or three rather than together.
Before joining a protest, they change their Facebook usernames, make sure their e-mail inbox is empty and computers are clear and reformatted. They give power of attorney to close relatives or friends to use their bank accounts to post bail or deal with other financial matters.
Activists who are arrested are often forced by police to give up their e-mail passwords so authorities can scrutinize their contacts. So colleagues will step in and change the password of anyone who's been caught.
In addition, activists use two or three cell phones with temporary SIM cards to communicate with one another and even then, only rarely, since they fear the phones are tapped. E-mail is the preferred method of communication, but only on a secure server.
During a demonstration earlier this month, veteran rights lawyer Shadi Sadr was snatched off the street. A car pulled up to her and plainclothes men beat her and dragged her into the vehicle, according to her mother.
Sadr was released on June 28. Friends say she told them this imprisonment was much more difficult than past detentions. She refused to comment to the media on her detention a sign of the fear among activists about talking in the current atmosphere.
Human rights activists are not involved in organizing the mass protests or connected to opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi or other reform politicians, said Abbasgholizadeh. But since the election, activists who may have been focused on a particular issue like women's rights have broadened their role, issuing statements and writing articles on the general political turmoil, she said.
Women, who by law must wear the Islamic headscarf and live under other restrictions, have played a major role in Iran's human rights community and in the post-election upheaval. Under Ahmadinejad's presidency, a government order limited the number of female students to half the university places, instead of the 65 percent they previously had occupied.
"If women weren't so oppressed, they wouldn't now be at the forefront of this movement. They have been suffering for years from imposed veil, from the fact that they cannot study their university courses, and cannot participate in many public places and events," said Abbasgholizadeh.
LOCKPORT, N.Y. – Police say a western New York tow truck driver was texting on one cell phone while talking on another when he slammed into a car and crashed into a swimming pool.
Niagara County sheriff's deputies say 25-year-old Nicholas Sparks of Burt admitted he was texting and talking when his flatbed truck hit the car Wednesday morning in Lockport, which is outside Buffalo.
The truck then crashed through a fence and sideswiped a house before rolling into an in-ground pool.
Police say the 68-year-old woman driving the car suffered head injuries and was in good condition. Her 8-year-old niece suffered minor injuries.
Sparks was charged with reckless driving, talking on a cell phone and following too closely. It couldn't be determined Thursday whether he has a lawyer.
Opponents of sun cultivation say environmental problems such as deforestation, pesticide pollution, habitat destruction, and soil and water degradation are the side effects of these practices. The American Birding Association has led a campaign for "shade-grown" and organic coffees, which it says are sustainably harvested. However, while certain types of shaded coffee cultivation systems show greater biodiversity than full-sun systems, they still compare poorly to native forest in terms of habitat value.
Japanese convenience stores and groceries also have a wide availability of bottled coffee drinks, which are typically lightly sweetened and pre-blended with milk. Bottled coffee drinks are also consumed in the United States.[62] Liquid coffee concentrates are sometimes used in large institutional situations where coffee needs to be produced for thousands of people at the same time. It is described as having a flavor about as good as low-grade robusta coffee and costs about 10 cents a cup to produce. The machines used can process up to 500 cups an hour, or 1,000 if the water is preheated.[63]
AUSTIN, Texas – So much for the stereotype. Texas librarians are baring their skin and revealing their tattoos all to raise disaster relief money to help damaged libraries.
Photos of the librarians and their body art appear in a new calendar sold by the Texas Library Association. Librarian Shawne Miksa says it's a way to get people to notice library issues. As the model for November 2010, she shows off Chinese characters on her lower back that mean "wisdom" and "desire."
The "Tattooed Ladies of TLA" 18-month calendar is a follow-up to the successful "Men of Texas Libraries" calendar, which raised $9,000 to help libraries damaged by hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The TLA says libraries thrive on promoting diversity and free expression and the calendar exhibits that spirit.
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Texas Library Association: http://www.tla.org
