Gingrich surges to big win in South Carolina

By handing Newt Gingrich a victory in the South Carolina primary Saturday night, conservative GOP voters have flatly declared they are not yet satisfied with Mitt Romney as their nominee. They aren't sold, and want to hear and see more.
Republicans need to see Romney display the strength to defeat a serious candidate on neutral territory, unlike in New Hampshire. After all, if he can't win now, what does that portend for the fall?


Romney finished more than 10 percentage points behind the former House speaker Saturday, with Rick Santorum and Ron Paul a distant third and fourth, respectively.


Gingrich, flashing just an occasional smile, marked his victory with a sober address to supporters in Columbia, praising each of his opponents and returning to a favorite tack — bashing the media and "the elites in Washington and New York [who] have no understanding, no care, no connection, no reliability" and fail to represent the American people.


"It's not that I am a good debater," he said, ignoring the boisterous chants of supporters and delivering his remarks in the tone of a college lecture. "It is that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people."


His only criticism was of President Obama — "A president so weak he makes Jimmy Carter look strong" — and the inspiration that Gingrich said the Democrat draws from the radical left.

How Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary

Newt Gingrich lacks the moral character to serve as President, his second ex-wife Marianne told ABC News, saying his campaign positions on the sanctity of marriage and the importance of family values do not square with what she saw during their 18 years of marriage.


In her first television interview since the 1999 divorce, to be broadcast tonight on Nightline, Marianne Gingrich, a self-described conservative Republican, said she is coming forward now so voters can know what she knows about Gingrich.


Newt Gingrich stormed to victory in the South Carolina Republican primary on Saturday, coming from more than 10 points down in pre-election surveys taken just a week earlier. The CBS News exit poll of South Carolina Republican primary voters showed that his impressive debate performance during the last week of the campaign enabled him to assemble a coalition of tea partiers, evangelicals, and young white men. Mitt Romney, the frontrunner for much of the last month in South Carolina, was hurt by attacks on his role investment firm Bain Capital and his weak answers about why he does not want to release his tax returns.


Gingrich electrified debate audiences during the week with his confrontational exchanges and conservative rhetoric, and it showed at the polls. Nearly two-thirds of South Carolina Republican primary voters - 65 percent - said the recent debates were one of the most important factors in deciding whom to support, with 13 percent saying it was the single most important factor. Of those voters who said the debates were one of the most important factors in their decision, a whopping 50 percent cast a ballot for Gingrich, compared to 22 percent for Romney and 17 percent for Rick Santorum.

Gingrich wins South Carolina primary, beating Romney

Strong backing from conservative and religious voters and people fretting about the uncertain economy fueled Newt Gingrich's victory in South Carolina's Republican presidential primary, an exit poll of voters showed Saturday.
The data also showed that for the first time, the former House speaker grabbed two constituencies that his chief rival, Mitt Romney, prided himself in winning in the year's two previous GOP contests in Iowa and New Hampshire. Gingrich bested Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, among the nearly half of voters looking for someone to defeat President Barack Obama this November, 51 percent to 37 percent. And of the 6 in 10 who considered the economy the top issue in picking a candidate, Gingrich prevailed, 40 percent to 32 percent.


The results mark the end of a tumultuous week in politics that saw Gingrich erase and then overcome the lead former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney had in the Palmetto State following his victory in the Jan. 10 New Hampshire primary. Gingrich came on strong in the closing days of the campaign, looking to rally under his banner the many conservatives unwilling to get behind Romney, who had sought to posture himself as the eventual nominee.


"We don't have the kind of money at least one of the candidates has," Gingrich said in his victory remarks. "But we do have ideas and we do have people. And we proved here in South Carolina that people power with the right ideas beats big money."
VIEW full South Carolina primary results
Gingrich spent most of his speech Saturday night lashing out at "media elites" in New York and Washington, D.C., while castigating President Obama. He leaned on wonky explanations of policy to draw contrasts with the president, whom Gingrich accused of representing values antithetical to "classical" America.
"It's not that I am a good debater. It's that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people," said Gingrich, who admitted at a Thursday debate to sometimes thinking in grandiose terms.

Dirk Nowitzki ready for heavy work week

NEW ORLEANS — Dirk Nowitzki will sit out for at least four games for the Dallas Mavericks so the star forward can get in better game shape while strengthening his sore right knee.


"We just thought it was a good decision for everybody. I'm not happy right now anyway, so the guys are better off when I'm not out there," Nowitzki said. "This gives me time to really do some of the stuff that I couldn't do when my knee was bothering me the last couple weeks. I couldn't lift and run and do the things I needed to do."


Dallas coach Rick Carlisle said he and the Mavericks' training staff decided Nowitzki needed "an uninterrupted eight days of work to resolve some physical issues and conditioning issues," adding that Nowitzki had "no choice" in the matter.


"He's going to be busting his (behind) this week. We're going to be on him hard," Carlisle added.


Saturday, Lamar Odom scored 16 points in his first start as the Mavericks overcame the absence of Nowitzki by beating New Orleans 83-81.


Nowitzki said that playing in the Olympic qualifying tournament in late summer was, in retrospect, the wrong decision. But, he said it was a decision he made for the love of his country. He said the combination of the long championship run and the Olympic tournament burned him out -- "I was so fed up with basketball, I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t smell it, couldn’t go in the gym" -- and then uncertainty of the lockout further skewed his normal training schedule. Now, he said, he's paying the price.


"You saw it, I couldn’t go by anybody off the dribble and that’s part of my game; right now is just basically a pop-up shooter every time I caught it and if I didn’t have it [a shot] I had to swing it because I just couldn’t make a move, couldn’t go by anybody and just didn’t feel comfortable," Nowitzki said. "So, that’s something I have to work on this week, again, is putting the ball on the floor and really getting confidence in my leg strength and getting that back and then I’ll be back to my old self."


He continued: "I already worked out this morning. I’m going to work hard this week. The knee definitely feels better than it did two or three weeks ago, but by me continuously playing on it I guess it wasn’t getting better quick enough, so it’s better for me to take this week and really work hard and lift every other day and really get my leg strength. I’m looking forward to it."


Nowitzki averaged 17.5 points and 5.4 rebounds through the first16 games, good enough to lead the team in scoring and rank third in rebounding, but well off his career averages.


He added that he heads into this week of work away from the game floor with a little extra motivation. Nowitzki said that he's been reading that some are suggesting that at 33 and fresh off an NBA Finals MVP, he could be on the cusp of wearing down.

Will Drew Peterson watch movie about himself

People loved Drew Peterson, a cop in Bolingbroke, Ill., who wielded charm the way he wielded his nightstick. Women fell for him, even women half his age.
You remember Peterson. He stands accused of killing his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and staging her death to look like an accident, and then getting rid of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, so successfully that no trace of her has ever been found.
Lifetime exhumes Peterson's story for the ripped-from-old-headlines movie "Drew Peterson: Untouchable," starring Rob Lowe as Drew and Kaley Cuoco ("The Big Bang Theory") as Stacy. The result is an uncomfortable mixture of tragedy and comedy.
With blondish-gray hair and a bushy, blond mustache, Lowe is barely recognizable as the hot guy we know from (most recently) "Brothers and Sisters" and "Parks and Recreation." He camps it up as Peterson, helped by writers who give him such lines as, "I'm untouchable, bitch."
The movie follows Peterson from the end of his marriage to Kathleen through the beginning of his relationship with Stacy to the aftermath of her disappearance, in which Peterson enjoyed media celebrity. Real news footage from CNN and the "Today" show mix with drama, with the clear intent to show that Peterson is guilty and make us wonder how he got away with his crimes so successfully.


The Lifetime channel will air "Drew Peterson: Untouchable" at 7 p.m. on Saturday.


State's Attorney Jim Glasgow, the man trying to prosecute the real-life Peterson for Savio's murder, said he'll be tuning in, but not by choice.


He said his office has to be aware of any publicity in the case - "for obvious reasons." Glasgow said Lifetime's movie won't hurt his case, but he didn't want to talk about the footage he's seen so far. The case is on hold pending appeals.


"Untouchable" is based on the book "Fatal Vows: The Tragic Wives of Sergeant Drew Peterson" by former Joliet Herald-News reporter Joe Hosey. It stars Kaley Cuoco as Peterson's missing fourth wife Stacy Peterson, Cara Buono as Savio and Rob Lowe as Peterson.


Stacy Peterson was last seen on October 28, 2007. Drew Peterson is a suspect in her disappearance but has never been charged. He is being held in jail on charges he killed Savio and is awaiting trial.

Sitting Saturday in the Will County Jail, Drew Peterson watched a Lifetime movie about the five years leading up to his arrest and found it "hysterical."


His missing fourth wife's family, meanwhile, was stunned by the inaccuracies and jumbled timeline.


The cable TV movie, "Drew Peterson: Untouchable," depicts the retired Bolingbrook police sergeant as a loutish misogynist who killed his third wife, Kathleen Savio, and caused his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson, to disappear.


As with any Hollywood production, the film has a few fabricated parts, including a scene in which the Peterson character — played by a mustachioed Rob Lowe — opens his neighbor's garage, stares her down and declares: "I'm untouchable, bitch."


"He thought it was hysterical," said Peterson's lead defense attorney, Joel Brodsky. "He chuckled at all of the inaccuracies and things that never happened."


Brodsky said the movie could play an important role in jury selection and whether the defense asks for a change of venue.


The film, which is based on the nonfiction book “Fatal Vows: The Tragic Wives of Drew Peterson” by former Joliet Herald-News reporter Joe Hosey, looks at Peterson while he was married to his third wife, Kathleen Savio. It was during this time that he became lovers with Stacy (played in the movie by "The Big Bang Theory's" Kaley Cuoco), who was 30 years his junior.


Peterson has been behind bars since May 2009, charged with murdering Savio; he is awaiting trial. He is also suspected in the disappearance of his fourth wife, Stacy Peterson.


"I had followed the story for so long," Lowe said in recalling Peterson. "My trailer is always on CNN. I just thought he was a true eccentric -- among other possible things."


Lowe added that assuming the role of a real-life person was enticing as an actor: "For me, finding those places to make him fully dimensional was interesting. Here he is, this dark, threatening, potentially dangerous character who clearly had an ability to charm young, beautiful women."


Lowe said he spent "hours and hours and hours and hours" looking at film and listening to Peterson speak.


"The stuff he actually says you couldn't make up," he said. "So much so that I worry that when people see it, they'll think it's over the top. It's not. He said these things."


Back in July, Peterson's lawyers unsuccessfully made attempts to stop production on the movie, serving Lowe and Lifetime Entertainment with cease-and-desist letters. Peterson apparently isn't too impressed with the end result after watching a trailer for the two-hour movie.

Packers counting on young talent to step up

Mike Neal's Green Bay apartment does not look like the aftermath of a bar room brawl.


There are no holes punched in the wall, no shattered light fixtures, no doors ripped from their hinges, no tables or chairs reduced to kindling.
A beast on the playing field, when healthy, the Green Bay Packers' defensive end is able to separate real life from the game he plays, thank you.
So as shocked and despondent as fans were after last Sunday's 37-20 playoff loss at home to the New York Giants, no grief counseling was necessary for Neal and teammates.
"I'm fine," the Merrillville grad said.
The defending Super Bowl champs were 15-1 in the regular season, a franchise record, and considered the best team in the NFL. They were heavy favorites to repeat this year in Indianapolis.
New York never got that email, however.
"All good things must come to an end sometime," Neal said. "We just let one (game) slip away from us. It sucks for it to happen in the playoffs, but you can't mourn over it.
"I guarantee you we've put this behind us, and everybody already is looking forward to next year."
But not everybody will return, and that doesn't surprise Neal, who knows what a cold-hearted business this is. It's all about winning and production, whether you play or coach.


Green Bay’s roster is infused with youth. Including the eight practice squad players signed to futures contracts and those on injured reserve, the Packers have 41 players who are 25 years old or younger. The thinking is that players such as Vic So’oto, running back Brandon Saine, quarterback Graham Harrell, defensive end Mike Neal and others will mature this off-season.


"We have depth on our football team," McCarthy said. "We will always try to create as much competition as possible. The philosophy of drafting and developing, the philosophy of taking the best football player available. With that, that breeds competition in your program."


So’oto could be one wild card at arguably the team’s worst position - right outside linebacker. A tight end-turned-defensive end at Brigham Young, the 6-3, 263-pounder appeared in only six games this season. He couldn’t gain the coaches’ trust. Even as the pass rush squandered, So’oto wasn’t considered a serious option. In the regular-season finale, he got his shot and sacked Matthew Stafford.


Not much was expected out of Green Bay’s two undrafted outside linebackers - So’oto and Jamari Lattimore. Rather than sneak a couple of veterans onto the roster who could’ve helped in the short term, the Packers went young. The payoff presumably begins next season.

Nuggets outlast Anthony, Knicks in double-overtime

Initially, Bill Walker fueled the Knicks to a 39-28 lead early in the second quarter, connecting on three 3-pointers and a one-hand dunk in less than the first four minutes of the period. That was the kind of points separation the Knicks had for most of the game, until Nuggets sixth man Al Harrington scored 15 points in the fourth quarter and made it a two-point game. Melo had his moments at the end of the fourth quarter, and in the first and second overtimes, but the Nuggets played better team basketball to come away with the victory. In fact, Denver's entire starting five scored in double figures.


Amare Stoudemire didn't score from 9:02 left in the first quarter until 8:40 remaining in the third. While Stoudemire had 11 rebounds tonight, he had one of his lowest point totals of the season (12 points). Give credit to the Nuggets' bigs Nene and Mozgov for defending him well, but STAT has to learn how to mix up his moves a little bit going to the basket. Unfortunately, that's never really been his forte. Also, he has to control his handle better driving through the lane. He had four turnovers tonight. On defense, he just has to care and be more aware sometimes. A few times Nene or Mozgov beat him down the court for the fastbreak jam, or from the backside in halfcourt sets. That's also on Tyson Chandler. They have to work together better to protect the paint.


Anthony lost the ball out of bounds with 0.3 seconds left, and the Knicks dodged a bullet when Miller's lob pass to an unguarded Corey Brewer hit the rim and bounced away, setting up another OT.
The Knicks led for the final time at 111-110 on Anthony's jumper with 1:38 to play, but Gallinari made two free throws and Harrington hit a three-pointer from the corner to make it 115-111 with 46 seconds to go.
Nene had 12 points and 13 rebounds for the Nuggets, who played without starting guard Arron Afflalo because of a groin injury. Miller started for him and had 14 points and 12 assists as Denver won its fourth in a row and improved to 7-0 against the Eastern Conference.
Anthony has been bothered by a sore left wrist for more than week, perhaps contributing to his awful shooting in that stretch. He was frustrated enough to get ejected from Friday's loss to Milwaukee, and he was booed in the second half of this one as jumpers kept clanging off the rim. He said afterward he would talk to the team doctors and decide if he needs to rest.
Besides Gallinari, the Knicks' lottery pick in 2008, the Nuggets also got Timofey Mozgov, Raymond Felton and Wilson Chandler, who all were among the Knicks' top six players. That's a lot to give up even for a potent scorer like Anthony — too much, many Knicks fans thought, and there were reports former team president Donnie Walsh did, too, but he was overruled by Madison Square Garden chairman James Dolan.
The lack of depth has been crippling this season, where the Knicks have no reliable scorer beyond Anthony and Amare Stoudemire. The Nuggets, meanwhile, thrive because of their balance, with a number of players capable of leading them in scoring.
And though Denver general manager Masai Ujiri said after the deal that the Nuggets "got killed," they've been much better since the deal. Denver is 30-12 in the regular season since the trade, while New York fell to just 20-24.

Newt Gingrich wins Anderson County

As soon as Newt Gingrich’s bus was visible was on the road from the window of the Chick-fil-A, the crowd gathered there inside burst into a cheer. Outside, camped on the sidewalk and in the parking lot, dozens more waited to catch a glimpse of the former speaker.


Weaving through the crowd, the Gingriches greeted supporters. Both seemed to be making an effort to say more than just hi at times. Noticing one woman’s Apple (iPhone or iPod) case, Callista Gingrich asked, “Is that Kate Spade?” (It was.) Newt, noticing one young man’s college sweatshirt, started talking to him about the school.


In his brief remarks, Gingrich looked beyond South Carolina. “After you get done making sure everybody you know votes, I want you to make a list of everybody you know in Florida,” he said. “Call them, send them an e-mail or put it on your Facebook.”


“This will be an extraordinary campaign,” he added later on in his remarks, “and if we win, it’ll be an extraordinary process of trying to get the country back on the right track..”


The former U.S. House Speaker handily won Anderson County, according to unofficial vote totals. He claimed 44 percent, or 11,924, of the 27,448 votes cast in the county in the state’s Republican Presidential Preference Primary. Mitt Romney finished second with 5,918 votes, or 22 percent. Ron Paul garnered 17 percent of the vote, or 4,691. Rick Santorum won 4,500 votes, or 16 percent. The elections office plans to certify the total Thursday.

Gingrich Wins in South Carolina

Newt Gingrich won today’s South Carolina Republican presidential primary, derailing rival Mitt Romney’s bid to quickly seal the party’s nomination and throwing the race into turmoil as it heads to Florida.
Gingrich had 41 percent of the vote, followed by Romney with 27 percent, with 95 percent of the precincts reporting, according to the AP.
Former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania had 17 percent and U.S. Representative Ron Paul of Texas had 13 percent.
Gingrich’s win means the Republican race has now produced a different first-place finisher in the first three nominating contests. Florida holds its primary Jan. 31.
Gingrich, in a message on the Twitter social networking site, said: “Thank you South Carolina! Help me deliver the knockout punch in Florida.”
In a speech to South Carolina supporters tonight, he thanked them for deciding “to be with us in changing Washington.”


Mr. Gingrich's win came just over a week after his back-of-the-pack finish in New Hampshire's primary, raising questions about his viability as a candidate. Now, he has scrambled the Republican nomination race and ended the prospects that the party would consolidate quickly around a nominee.


The win is a significant milestone for Mr. Gingrich, whose candidacy was severely damaged last summer when most of his top aides resigned en masse after they questioned whether he had the focus to be a viable candidate. He carried on with little staff or money afterward—and now has won in the state whose victor has been chosen the GOP nominee in every contest since 1980.


Speaking to a packed room of supporters in Columbia, the state's capital, Mr. Gingrich said his win was a rebuke to the "elites in Washington and New York." He also acknowledged that he was tilting against many of the elites within his own party.


"We want to run, not a Republican campaign, we want to run an American campaign," he said.


Foreshadowing the testy tenor of the race to come, Mr. Romney took aim at Mr. Gingrich after the polls closed, saying that "our party can't be lead to victory by someone who has never run a business and never run a state…That's a mistake for our party, for our nation.''


He also referred to Mr. Gingrich's attacks of Mr. Romney's work with Bain Capital, a private-equity firm. Those who "disparage" economic success "are not going to be fit to be our nominee," he said.


The nomination contest race now heads to Florida, a far larger and more expensive state for the candidates. Mr. Romney's rivals face a challenge in surmounting his superior organizational and financial edge in the Jan. 31 primary there.

Where does Mitt Romney go from here

Gingrich defeated Mitt Romney today to win today's South Carolina primary, boosted by a fiery debate performance this week that deflated the former governor's front-runner status overnight.


Rick Santorum will place third and Ron Paul will be fourth first-in-the-South contest.


Propelled by voters who were heavily influenced by the pre-primary debates, and a strong evangelical showing, Gingrich claimed a landslide victory, winning virtually every county in the Palmetto State save for a handful that went to Romney.


"It's not that I am a good debater," Gingrich said in his victory speech tonight, surrounded by his family and an enthusiastic crowd of supporters. "It's that I articulate the deepest-felt values of the American people."


Praising all three of his rivals, Gingrich, who made more than $3 million in 2010, per his tax return, repeatedly berated Washington and New York "elites."


We're now three contests into a long primary season," Romney told his supporters. "We've still got a long way to go and a lot of work to do -- and tomorrow were gonna move onto Florida."


The candidate said he welcomed his relatively newfound competition, and said he'd be "fighting for every single vote" in "the coming weeks and months."




"I'll compete in every single state," he said.


He may well do that -- but for a candidate who just days ago seemed on the verge of walking away with the GOP nomination after just three primary contests, the news likely serves as the latest in a series of setbacks that has dogged the candidate since his arrival in the Palmetto state.


On Thursday, Iowa Republican Party officials belatedly announced that Rick Santorum, not Romney, had effectively won the state's January 3 caucuses. (They made it official on Friday.) On the same day, Texas Governor Rick Perry withdrew from the race and threw his backing to Gingrich. Later still, Romney delivered a weak debate performance, faltering when answering questions about releasing his tax returns. Meanwhile, the former speaker delivered yet another dominating performance in the CNN-sponsored debate.


"Lee Atwater used to say, 'They're for you, but are they really for you?' Nobody's really for Mitt Romney," said South Carolina Republican strategist Chip Felkel. "Romney has never generated that kind of enthusiasm, and I'm not sure he's capable of generating that kind of enthusiasm."

Ryan Braun accepts MVP

Braun, the winner of the 2011 National League Most Valuable Player award, attended the dinner hosted by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America on Saturday night, making his first public appearance and comments since reports emerged in December that he had tested positive for elevated levels of testosterone during the 2011 season.


After working his way through a long list of people to thank, he mentioned his appreciation of the players association “for supporting me through everything I’ve went through over the last couple of months.”


Braun continued his speech in a more serious tone, fumbling his words at one point.


The Milwaukee Brewers slugger accepted his National League MVP award Saturday night at the annual banquet for the New York chapter of the Baseball Writers Association of America. He was greeted with warm applause by a crowd filled with baseball glitterati, just two days after the appeal of his positive test was heard by a three-person panel in New York.


Unless his appeal is upheld, Braun will be suspended for the first 50 games of the 2012 season. His positive test was administered during the 2011 playoffs, just days after voting was completed for the NL MVP award. The BBWAA has said Braun will not be asked to relinquish the award.

Former coach Joe Paterno's health status serious

The reports of Paterno's death swept the internet and flooded Twitter and may have started when the Penn State student website Onward State reported that Penn State players were notified of longtime head coach Joe Paterno's passing via email, and CBSSports.com went on that report.


However, Paterno family spokesperson Dan McGinn told a New York Times reporter that the report of Paterno's demise is "absolutely not true." Onward State later retracted their report.


Late Saturday night, the managing editor of Onward State resigned and issued a retraction to earlier tweets reporting Paterno's death. Devon Edwards, who is a student at the university, was the one who first reported Paterno's apparent death. "I never, in a million years, would have thought that Onward State would be cited by the national media, and today, I sincerely wish it never had been. To all those who read and passed along our reports, I sincerely apologize for misleading you," she said. "In this day and age, getting it first often conflicts with getting it right, but our intention was never to fall into that chasm.


Paterno, 85, disclosed on November 18 that he had treatable lung cancer. He has been in and out of the hospital since then for treatment with radiation and chemotherapy, and after he fell at home in December and broke his pelvis.


The winningest coach in major college football history, Paterno was head coach at Penn State for 46 years. University trustees ousted him for failing to tell police what had been passed on to him about the alleged sex abuse.


Longtime Paterno assistant Jerry Sandusky faces 52 counts of sexual abuse of boys over a period of 15 years, including some incidents at the football complex on campus. Disclosure of the charges against Sandusky shocked the university and led to one of the biggest scandals in college sports history.


A Penn State graduate assistant testified to a grand jury that he told Paterno in 2002 that he witnessed Sandusky assaulting a boy in the showers at the football building. Paterno said he passed the information on to his boss, then Athletic Director Tim Curley. But no one told police, and the abuse continued for years, according to prosecutors.


Trustees of the university fired Paterno on November 9 with four games remaining in the football season. His ouster sparked demonstrations by students who felt he was treated unfairly, and anger among some alumni. The two top officers of the university trustees stepped down this week.


University President Graham Spanier was fired along with Paterno, and Curley and a former finance official in the athletic department face charges of lying to a grand jury about the alleged abuse.

Joe Paterno in serious condition

Longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, the 85-year-old patriarch of the storied but wounded program, was gravely ill Saturday night, according to his family, and loved ones were rushing to his hospital bed in State College, Pa., in anticipation that his battle against lung cancer would soon be coming to an end.


Despite media reports Saturday night of Paterno’s death, his son, Jay, said through his personal Twitter account at 9:21 p.m. that Paterno “is continuing to fight.” Paterno remained connected to a ventilator, according to individuals close to Paterno’s family, and his family was weighing whether to take him off the ventilator on Sunday.


The turn for the worse in Paterno’s condition on Saturday sent his scandal-scarred program, and the larger university community that seemed to revolve around that program, to yet another emotional nadir. Paterno, at one time perhaps the most beloved coach in America, had been fired by the school’s Board of Trustees on Nov. 9 in the wake of a child sex-abuse scandal involving longtime Penn State defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky. Nine days later, it was revealed Paterno had lung cancer.


Meanwhile, about 200 students and townspeople gathered Saturday night in State College at a statue of Paterno.


Some brought candles, while others held up their smart phones to take photos of the scene. The mood was somber, with no chanting or shouting.


Jay Paterno tweeted, "Drove by students at the Joe statue. Just told my Dad about all the love & support—inspiring him."


The statue is just outside a gate at Beaver Stadium.


The 85-year-old Paterno has been in the hospital since Jan. 13 for observation for what his family had called minor complications from his cancer treatments. Not long before that, he conducted his only interview since losing his job, with The Washington Post. Paterno was described as frail then and wearing a wig. The second half of the two-day interview was conducted by his bedside.


The final days of Paterno's Penn State career were easily the toughest in his 61 years with the university and 46 seasons as head football coach.


Sandusky, a longtime defensive coordinator who was on Paterno's staff in two national title seasons, was arrested Nov. 5 and ultimately charged with sexually abusing a total of 10 boys over 15 years. His arrest sparked outrage not just locally but across the nation and there were widespread calls for Paterno to quit.


Paterno announced late on Nov. 9 that he would retire at the end of the season but just hours later he received a call from board vice chairman John Surma, telling him he had been terminated as coach. By that point, a crowd of students and media were outside the Paterno home. When news spread that Paterno had been dumped, there was rioting in State College.


Police on Saturday night had barricaded off the block where Paterno lives, and a police car was stationed about 50 yards from his home. A light was on in the living room but there was no activity inside. No one was outside, other than reporters and photographers stationed there.


Trustees said this week they pushed Paterno out in part because he failed a moral responsibility to report an allegation made in 2002 against Sandusky to authorities outside the university. They also felt he had challenged their authority and that, as a practical matter, with all the media in town and attention to the Sandusky case, he could no longer run the team.

Gingrich Forces GOP Into Grueling Debate

South Carolina is where insurgent, underdog candidacies go to die. McCain beats Huckabee. Bush beats McCain. Dole and Bush beat Buchanan. The challenger is retired, and the front-runner begins to look ahead to November.
But this time, instead of closing out the GOP nominating conversation, South Carolina voters have begun a new conversation. Instead of ending the game, they're sending it into overtime and the outcome is now up in the air.
By handing Newt Gingrich a victory in the South Carolina primary Saturday night, conservative GOP voters have flatly declared they are not yet satisfied with Mitt Romney as their nominee. They aren't sold, and want to hear and see more.


Now, the party cannot avoid a wrenching and perhaps lengthy nomination fight. It can cast its lot with the establishment's cool embodiment of competence, forged in corporate board rooms, or with the anger-venting champion of in-your-face conservatism and grandiose ideas.


It's soul-searching time for Republicans. It might not be pretty.


Romney still might win the nomination, of course. He carries several advantages into Florida and beyond, and party insiders still consider him the front-runner. And it's conceivable that former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum can battle back and take the anti-Romney title from Gingrich. After all, he bested Gingrich in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Romney damaged, but has edge heading to Florida

CHARLESTON, S.C. — Former House speaker Newt Gingrich scored an easy victory Saturday in the South Carolina primary, blowing a hole in Mitt Romney’s aura of inevitability.


The 12-point win represented a swift and extraordinary turnaround in Gingrich’s fortunes — thanks largely to strong performances in two debates. In those forums, he issued a stirring appeal to the state’s strident conservatism, convinced its voters he would be a formidable opponent against President Obama and threw Romney off his stride.


He also peppered his speech with dismissive references to “elites” in the media and in Washington and New York — a sign that he intends to continue the truculently populist tone that resonated with voters in South Carolina.


After disappointing distant finishes in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, Gingrich had limped into South Carolina more than 10 points down in most polls. So battered was his candidacy that Gingrich himself had conceded that his campaign might be over if he failed to turn in a strong performance.


Romney has been organizing in those states for months. Gingrich is far behind in doing so, and failed to even make the ballot in Missouri.


Beyond his organization, Romney has other advantages in the February contests. As a presidential candidate in 2008, he won Nevada easily with more than 50 percent of the vote. He grew up in Michigan, where his father, George, was a governor and auto executive.


Four of the states - Nevada, Maine, Colorado and Minnesota - are caucus states where get-out-the-vote campaign organizations can be critical.


"Momentum and excitement only take you so far," said Saul Anuzis, former chairman of the Michigan Republican Party.


"Gingrich's biggest challenge going forward is his record, but he also has an organizational challenge in that he has not put together a national campaign," he said.


In claiming victory late Saturday, Gingrich acknowledged as much.

South Carolina GOP primary races to dramatic

GREENVILLE, S.C.—Preparing for the long haul, Mitt Romney said Saturday's South Carolina presidential contest "could be real close" and he agreed to two more debates with his rivals ahead of the Florida primary.


In the face of questions about releasing his tax returns and struggling with a renewed threat from Newt Gingrich, Romney lashed out at the former speaker, calling on the former House speaker to better explain his contractual ties to Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage company. Gingrich served as a consultant to Freddie Mac over a period of eight years.


Romney said he would attend a debate Monday in Tampa, Fla., and his campaign confirmed he would be at one Thursday in Jacksonville, Fla., ahead of the state's primary Jan. 31. His planned appearances are an acknowledgment that the former Massachusetts governor will have to continue the battle with Gingrich longer than expected or hoped.


But Romney avoided confronting Gingrich, his chief rival in South Carolina's first-in-the South vote, at a stop at Tommy's Country Ham House.


Both men had scheduled campaign events for the same time on primary day. Romney stopped by the breakfast restaurant 45 minutes ahead of schedule. When Gingrich arrived at the restaurant -- just minutes after Romney's bus left the parking lot -- he said: "Where's Mitt?"


Romney avoided a run-in with Gingrich at Tommy's Country Ham House, where both had scheduled campaign events for the same time. Romney stopped by the breakfast restaurant 45 minutes ahead of schedule. When Gingrich arrived, just minutes after Romney's bus left the parking lot, he said: "Where's Mitt?"
Earlier, Gingrich had a message for voters during a stop at The Grapevine restaurant in Boiling Springs not long after the polls opened: Come out and vote for me if you want to help deny Romney nomination.
He told diners who were enjoying plates of eggs and grits that he was the "the only practical conservative vote" to the rival he called a Massachusetts moderate. "Polls are good, votes are better," he said.
Gingrich also said he would put a stop to federal actions against South Carolina's voter ID and immigration laws.
Romney's agreement to participates in Florida debates Monday in Tampa and Thursday in Jacksonville was seen as an acknowledgement of a prolonged battle with Gingrich.
"This could be real close," said Romney as he chatted on the phone with a voter Saturday morning and urged the man to go vote.
Before the ham house standoff that wasn't, Romney stood outside his Greenville headquarters and undertook a new attack on Gingrich. He called on Gingrich to further explain his contracts with Freddie Mac, the housing giant, and release any advice he had provided to the company. He has said the contracts earned two of his companies more than $1.6 million over eight years, but that he only pocketed about $35,000 a year himself.
'I'd like to see what he actually told Freddie Mac. Don't you think we ought to see it?" Romney said.
It was another response to pressure on Romney to release his tax returns before Republican voters finish choosing a nominee.
A day earlier, Romney had called on Gingrich to release information related to an ethics investigation of Gingrich in the 1990s. Gingrich argues that GOP voters need to know whether the wealthy former venture capital executive's records contain anything that could hurt the party's chances against Obama.

Barbour pardons mock judicial system

By Himanshu Ojha, Marcus Stern and Robbie Ward


Former Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour's grants of commutations or pardons to more than 200 prisoners, all but eight in his final days in office, disproportionately benefited white offenders among a predominantly black prison population, a Reuters analysis found.


Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman, stirred an uproar in Mississippi last week by the surprise grants of clemency, which numbered far more than any of his recent predecessors' in a state where law and order are hallmarks of political rhetoric.


The list included full pardons for four convicted murderers and an armed robber who worked at the governor's mansion on prison work release. Most of the pardons were granted to convicts who had completed their prison sentences.


Mississippi's attorney general has filed a complaint alleging that 156 of the pardons were unconstitutional. A state judge has scheduled a hearing for Monday.


Overlooked in the controversy has been the racial composition of the list of inmates and ex-convicts Barbour pardoned. Barbour granted 222 acts of clemency in his tenure to 221 individuals: one convict's sentence was initially suspended in 2008 and he then received a full pardon last week.


Readers now know that five inmates became trusties with Barbour and the range of convicted crimes by the five prisoners includes murder. Not to excuse other serious categories of crime, the pardons by the governor are alarming for many reasons.


Those people who suffered the initial victimization are being victimized again, including those jurors who were called upon to render a verdict at the end of a trial.


Over two hundred prisoners may receive some form of pardon-ship, which according to Barbour is based on the recommendations by the state Parole Board. The suspension of jail time is one option; a full pardon the other. Both options make a mockery of citizens' call to serve as a jurors, believing their duty to be fair in judgement of evidences - to say the least.


That an elected official is granted authority to intervene in the judiciary process when he is no longer accountable is a form of lawlessness. Barbour's actions make a mockery of any understanding of our legal house and our sense of mercy for all affected by individuals who commit crimes.

Haley Barbour pardons, Why were so many of pardoned white

The sheer number of pardons handed out by outgoing Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour – over 200 – left many Mississippians in shock. What may not have been so surprising is that white prisoners were four times more likely than black ones to get the gubernatorial benefit of the doubt.


Out of a total of 222 acts of clemency given by Barbour during his tenure – 156 of which Attorney General Jim Hood has subsequently argued may be constitutionally invalid because of public notice violations – two-thirds benefited white prisoners. Meanwhile, two-thirds of the state's prison population is black.


On its face, the disparities immediately raise questions about whether the Mississippi pardon system is inherently racist. Some critics have called on the US Justice Department to investigate Barbour's pardons on the racial disparities alone, since such broad inequalities could point to a violation of the Constitution's equal protection clause.


A recent investigation by ProPublica showed that white convicts in the federal justice system were four times more likely to receive a presidential pardon than black convicts – a trend that has continued under President Obama, who is African American.


In most such cases, including Barbour's, chief executives have denied any racial bias, noting that the pardon boards and attorneys do not note a person's race on their written recommendations to the executive.


"A majority of the clemency cases were reviewed by the Parole Board before being sent to Governor Barbour," Barbour spokesperson Laura Hipp told Reuters, which conducted an analysis of Barbour's pardons. "Race was not a factor in his decision. In fact, it wasn't even listed on the Parole Board's application."


Black-white incarceration disparities are highest in the Northeast and Midwest and, overall, lowest in the South. Iowa, for example, has a black-to-white incarceration of 13-to-1 while Mississippi's ratio is 3-to-1.


Nevertheless, suspicions linger most especially in the South about the extent to which racial prejudice persists in the justice system and throughout society. In December, the US Justice Department declined to approve a new Voter ID law in South Carolina, for example, saying the state failed to prove how it would not disenfranchise blacks, a greater percentage of whom don't have state issued IDs.


Perhaps more than incarceration rate disparities, however, pardon rate inconsistencies suggest that biases may be less individual and more systemic. In Mississippi, for example, black prisoners, on the whole, have fewer resources than white prisoners, including access to personal lawyers, which may have led to fewer black prisoners requesting a pardon in the first place.


But the “tests” applied by pardon boards and attorneys may also favor whites, critics say. In most such proceedings, lawyers consider “conduct, character and reputation” of applicants, the “need” of the applicant, the opinions of prosecutors and judges, and then gauge the level of remorse and atonement of the applicant.


If they key pardon players – judges, prosecutors, attorneys, and, ultimately, the chief executive – are for the most part white, cultural ignorance could come into play. Rather than relying on any kind of conscious bias, experts say, a pardon officer may misread the level of remorse exhibited by a black pardon applicant for cultural reasons, given that African-Americans may express contrition in different ways than whites.

Serena Williams advances to fourth round at Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia -- Serena Williams was so dominant in her 6-1, 6-1 third-round win over Greta Arn at the Australian Open that there's probably only one shot she'll remember more than most.


At 5-0 and a point from winning the first set, Williams lined up in the ideal position for an overhead but then completely shanked it, spraying the ball wide. She screamed and put a hand over her face.


"It was an awkward smash. Then she missed one and I felt a little better," Williams said. "I felt like, 'Am I losing my mind out here?'


"Everyone sometimes hits a shot that's a little bit insane -- you just got to allow yourself to get over it."


The 92nd-ranked Arn saved another set point before holding serve for the first time. Williams responded by winning the next five games before Arn held again. The match ended in 59 minutes Saturday, on consecutive double-faults by the Hungarian.


"I'm nowhere near where I want to be," said Williams, who has won her last 17 matches at Melbourne Park. "I'm just trying to play through it. A little rusty -- just trying to play through my rust."


The 92nd-ranked Arn saved another set point before holding serve for the first time. Williams responded by winning the next five games before Arn held again. The match ended in 59 minutes Saturday, on consecutive double-faults by the Hungarian.


"I'm nowhere near where I want to be," said Williams, who has won her last 17 matches at Melbourne Park. "I'm just trying to play through it. A little rusty — just trying to play through my rust."


Williams has won the Australian Open five times, including back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010. She didn't get to defend her title last year due to injury.


She badly sprained her left ankle in a warmup tournament at Brisbane two weeks ago, casting doubt again on her participation at Melbourne, but the 13-time major winner has shown no signs of being restricted in her first three matches — she has conceded only 11 games.


Next up she faces Ekaterina Makarova, who beat fellow Russian and seventh-seeded Vera Zvonareva earlier Saturday.


Williams is the only American left in the singles at the Australian Open after Vania King lost earlier to former French Open winner Ana Ivanovic — the last U.S. man exited the tournament Friday when John Isner lost in five sets to Spaniard Feliciano Lopez.


"I'm definitely going to keep representing the flag and doing the best I can," Williams said.


Novak Djokovic won the last Australian title at the beginning of a 41-match unbeaten run and finished 2011 with the No. 1-ranking after winning three of the four major titles. He next plays two-time Grand Slam winner Lleyton Hewitt, who reached the round of 16 in his 16th Australian Open after beating No. 23-seeded Milos Raonic of Canada, 4-6, 6-3, 7-6 (5), 6-3, on his third match point in the night match.

Yu Darvish exudes confidence

ARLINGTON, Texas – Yu Darvish leaned over and looked at his name and the No. 11 on the back of his Texas Rangers jersey. Then he looked up and smiled.


"Excited, that's all I feel right now," Darvish said through a translator. "Just excited going forward."
Japan's best pitcher is now officially a member of the two-time defending American League champions, with his formal introduction Friday night in Texas coming two days after the right-hander agreed to a six-year contract that guarantees him $56 million.


The 25-year-old Darvish, who exceled in Japan's Pacific League the past seven seasons, said he wasn't prepared to go into specifics about the several different reasons why he decided to make the move to United States now.


From all indications, Yu is a different kind of dude, whether we're talking about the apparent reddish-brown highlights in his hair or the scruffy patch of black hair on his chin -- think Shaggy from "Scooby-Doo."


During the news conference, when he wasn't being self-deprecating, he provided a few pithy comments.


When asked what he thought about Texas, Yu pointed at co-owner Bob Simpson and said, "Everyone seems to wear Cowboys boots."


When asked if he could've gotten the final out of Game 6 of the World Series, he said, "I probably would've given up a home run last year. This year, I would get a strikeout."


When asked what he thought about Albert Pujols, who's now a division rival, he said, "He looks like a player who can hit the ball very far."


Nothing wrong with that.


Oh, and when he visited earlier this month, he asked general manager Jon Daniels if the right-field fence could be moved back a few feet because it seemed too close.


How's that for a sense of humor?


The Rangers love his attitude and his competitiveness and his drive, but what they love most is that intangible called makeup. It's hard to describe, but we know it when we see it.


Athletes either have it. Or they don't. The Rangers think Darvish has oodles of it.


And that's why they paid $51.7 million for the right to negotiate with him. If you truly understand the Rangers' organizational philosophy, then you understand why they signed Yu.


The Rangers are in a never-ending quest for players with star potential and the makeup to be a star. When they find players with those qualities, the Rangers will sell their soul to acquire them.


After the news conference ended and Yu posed for a multitude of photographs with everyone from co-owners Simpson and Ray Davis to Josh Hamilton to manager Ron Washington and pitching coach Mike Maddux, he walked down to the field for some more photos while wearing his white No. 11 jersey.


The video boards showed highlights of his best performances while his name flashed in English and Japanese.

Tuskegee Airmen Honored At 'Red Tails' Screening In Los Angeles

Laurence Fishburne leads Airmen's stellar ensemble cast, which includes Malcolm Jamal-Warner, Allen Payne, Courtney B. Vance, Andre Braugher, Mekhi Phifer, John Lithgow, Christopher McDonald and Cuba Gooding Jr., who also plays a Tuskegee airman in Red Tails. Vance plays one of their training officers, a World War I vet who flew for Canada and is the only person on the base with actual combat experience. Braugher portrays historical figure Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the Tuskegee Airmen and the first African-American Air Force general.
The film opens with Fishburne's character, Hannibal Lee, as an Iowa boy lying in a field of grass, gazing at the sky and dreaming of flying. The scene shifts to Lee as man, about to leave home for Tuskegee, Ala., where he'll join other college graduates in an experimental government training program aimed at seeing if blacks can be trained as pilots. They'll face open hostility from many government officials and some training officers, and will question themselves about serving in a segregated military for a country that denies them the rights they will be risking their lives to protect.


Los Angeles resident Levi Thornhill was one of the Tuskegee Airmen who came. He had been part of the original 332nd Fighter Group, who served with distinction as airplane escorts for bomber planes on strategic missions in Europe. After the film, he praised Lucas for his attention to detail and gave "Red Tails" a ringing endorsement.


"I'm wondering where in the world [Lucas] found all those P-51s, the Red Tails," said the 89-year-old Thornhill. "I think he did a very good job, a very good job. And I've seen a lot of movies with airplanes in it!"


As a crew chief at the all-black Ramitelli airfield in Italy, Thornhill was in charge of making sure the planes were kept in the best possible shape for combat. While racist policies shaped and limited his early years in the military, he said it was easy to keep a clear head about the Red Tail missions while in Italy.


"The great thing was that there wasn't much interaction between whites and Negroes because we were segregated," Thornhill said bluntly. "We could pay attention to what the hell we were supposed to do and didn't have to deal with all that other crap."


Still, he kept tabs on the burgeoning civil rights movement back home with help from family and friends. "I used to get newspaper clippings from home with stuff that I needed to know -- good and bad stories about what was happening between the races," he recalled


After his original service ended, Thornhill re-enlisted in the Army because he couldn't find another job. The re-enlistment eventually turned into an Army career, during which he saw a multitude of changes, including the desegregation of the military. He retired in 1965 with the rank of major and went on to become an airline engineer.

Quantum Tech Could Secure the Cloud Through 'Blind' Data Processing

Have computer hackers met their match? Not quite yet. But new research suggests that so-called quantum computers now in development could lead to data transfer that is "perfectly secure."


Quantum computers may sound like a dream, promising to make massive calculations atblazing speeds, but some experts have dreaded them. To a computer security specialist, the fact that a quantum computer can break encryption codes is exciting, but it's also scary; how are you supposed to keep quantum data safe? A paper published in the latest issue of Science appears to fill this major gap in quantum computers' defenses before any hackers are able to take advantage of it.


Even after quantum computers become advanced enough to be useful, not everyone's going to have their own. There will may be just a few of them in the world, and users will connect with them to use their computational power the same way you might log onto Dropbox to get a file. With so many users on the system, it could be a disaster if someone compromised the security.


The idea behind blind quantum computing is that the computer processing data doesn't know anything about the input, the computation it performs on that input or the resulting output.


In conventional schemes, by contrast, the computations -- in this experiment's case, measurements -- are known to the quantum computer, so it knows what algorithm it's running.


The methodology Barz's team used has the client preparing qubits "in a state only known to himself, and [tailoring] the measurement instruction to the state of the qubits," Barz said. "The server does not know the state of the qubits and thus cannot interpret the measurement instructions. The server gets zeroes and ones as outcomes, but cannot interpret the values, whereas the client can."


In addition to providing greater security, blind quantum computing might help cut costs for law enforcement agencies, which need to store vast amounts of data.


"A number of law enforcement agencies have been researching cloud computing as a way to reduce the costs of maintaining vast quantities of digital evidence, but security has been a major consideration," Darren Hayes, CIS program chair at Pace University, told TechNewsWorld. "Quantum security may quell their fears."

Quantum computing could head to 'the cloud', study says

Security professionals would balk at the notion of a computer code so perfectly unbreakable that you couldn't crack it entering, exiting, or even performing its operations on a system, but a team of scientists says they've accomplished exactly that with what's called "blind quantum computing."
The researchers, led by Stefanie Barz of the University of Vienna's Center for Quantum Science and Technology, reported in Friday's issue of Science that they are able to transmit an algorithm to a computer, run it, and receive it back even as the computer's operator is completely unable to snoop on those operations.
Quantum computing is still highly theoretical, with experiments in the science and its cousin, quantum cryptography, limited to laboratory settings—there are no practical quantum computers, just experimental ones. The basic concept is to use the odd nature of the entangled quantum bits, or qubits, that one uses to build a quantum computer to perform computational tasks much faster and much more securely than is possible on digital computers that use silicon transistors.


One of the peculiarities of the branch of physics called quantum mechanics is that objects can be in more than one state at once, with the states of different objects tied together in ways that even Albert Einstein famously referred to as "spooky".


Instead of the 0 and 1 "bits" of digital computing, quantum computing aims to make use of these mixed and entangled states to perform calculations at comparatively breathtaking speeds.


Other quantum trickery comes in cryptography, the art of encrypting data. Data is encoded in delicately prepared states - most often those of single particles of light called photons - and the data cannot be "read" without destroying them.


Quantum cryptography uses this feature to send the "keys" to decrypting messages with high security.


However, the quantum computing approach is still in its formative stages, able to carry out only simple calculations - and quantum cryptography is, for the most part, limited to the laboratory setting.


The world in which both are accessible to consumers has seemed distant.

Heidi Klum & Seal Filing For Divorce

One-time Blue Peter host Tim Vincent found himself at a loss after covering the Golden Globe awards in Los Angeles for his latest employers, American TV network NBC.
Despite his credentials - he presents NBC’s Access Hollywood show - Tim found that he was denied entry to the after-award’s parties.
He was particularly peeved to discover his name wasn’t down on the list for the InStyle magazine bash, one of three being held at the Beverly Hilton.


“It’s true and it’s a sad end to the fairytale,” sources told Access on Saturday.


Adding, “They love each other very much, but they have had a very tense time in the last year.”


Heidi, 38, and Seal, 48, tied the knot in May 2005 and are known for renewing their vows in extravagant ceremonies each year.


The couple have three biological children together – Henry, 6, Johan, 5 and 2-year-old Lou.


Heidi has a 7-year-old daughter, Leni, from a previous relationship, whom Seal adopted.


Reps for the couple were not immediately available for comment on the reported split when contacted by Access on Saturday.

HEIDI KLUM To File for Divorce From Seal

Supermodel Heidi Klum is saying auf wiedersehen to hubby Seal after more than six years of marriage, sources tell TMZ, though neither the couple nor their reps have confirmed it.


The "Project Runway" judge, 38, is planning on filing divorce papers in L.A. County court next week, citing "irreconcilable differences," the website said.


After first meeting at SoHo's Mercer Hotel in 2004, the two got hitched in Mexico in 2005 and have three children together, Henry Günther, 6, Johan Riley, 5, and Lou, 2.


Klum has a daughter, Leni, 7, from a previous fling with Italian businessman Flavio Briatore.


Things looked rosy for the couple as recently as late December, when the German stunner tweeted out a photo of the two canoodling atop a mountain during a ski trip in Aspen.


The couple married May 10, 2005. They have 3 biological kids. Seal adopted Heidi's eldest girl from a prior relationship.


The couple is famous for renewing their vows every year on their anniversary ... in a lavish ceremony.


As for splitting up the goodies, there's a lot on the line. According to Forbes, in the last year alone, Klum raked in $20 million. It's unclear how much Seal made.


Heidi attended last Sunday's Golden Globes without Seal. The last photo she tweeted with him was back on December 26.


The last time TMZ filmed Seal and Heidi together, we asked her what the key to a successful marriage is. She didn't answer the question.

Hamas political chief to step down

Gaza Strip — Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal has decided not to seek another term, the movement said Saturday, paving the way for a possible leadership contest at a time when the anti-Israeli Islamic group faces far-reaching decisions on whether to stay the course of militancy or moderate.
However, Hamas suggested Mashaal could be asked to stay on, in what would be a boost for his more pragmatic line.
Mashaal could not be reached for comment Saturday, but his decision not to seek another term as head of Hamas' political bureau was confirmed in a Hamas statement. Mashaal, who like other top Hamas leaders is based in Syria, has led the 15-member bureau since 1996, or nearly twice as long as permitted under Hamas rules.
Hamas said Saturday the final decision on Mashaal's future will be left to the 55-member Shura Council, which oversees the political bureau and authorizes key decisions. Mashaal was last reaffirmed in his post in April 2009, and it is not clear if and when the Shura Council would appoint a successor.
Word of Mashaal's decision comes at a time of change in Hamas' relationship with its parent movement, the pan-Arab Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood has scored election victories in Egypt and Tunisia following the pro-democracy protests of the Arab Spring over the past year, and has urged Hamas to moderate.
Brotherhood leaders have encouraged Mashaal to pursue reconciliation with Palestinian rival Fatah, led by Western-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and to abandon violence, according to several Hamas figures.
In discussions within Hamas, Mashaal has praised the pragmatism of the Brotherhood and proposed that Hamas take steps toward becoming a strictly political movement, rather than also maintaining a parallel military wing. This would eventually require a decision to halt attacks on Israel, something Hamas has so far avoided.


Meshaal's decision to step down may indicate that the Hamas leadership within Gaza has won a power struggle.


Meshaal had also been pushing for Palestinian reconciliation and the formation of a national unity government ahead of elections. However, he was reported to be frustrated with the slow and uncertain progress, and few observers believe elections will take place this year.


The Hamas leader was also looking for a new base for the organisation amid the ongoing revolt in Syria. Hamas had refused to back the regime of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, infuriating the Iranian government, which had sponsored both it and the Syrian leadership.


The exiled leadership of Hamas now appears to be fragmenting geographically. Meshaal's family has reportedly moved to Amman, and his deputy, Mousa Abu Marzouk, has relocated to Cairo. The military operations leader, Emad al-Alami, has moved his family to Gaza, it has been reported. Many other officials have also left Damascus, ostensibly to move their families to safety.


Abu Marzouk is expected to be in contention to succeed Meshaal, although Ismail Haniyeh, the de facto prime minister of Gaza, could also stand for the political leadership. The post is meant to be limited to two terms, although Meshaal's period at the helm was twice extended.