Phew! Fan Saves Boy From Being Hit By A Flying Baseball Bat
The best play at this weekend’s spring training game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Atlanta Braves didn’t take place on the field — it was in the stands, where a man’s fast reflexes saved a young fan from being hit in the face after a bat hurtled into the stands.
In an instant that’s frozen in time, the barrel of the bat looms just inches away from the boy’s nose and eyes, with the man’s hand and forearm blocking its path.
It’s always dangerous when a batter loses his grip and sends a bat helicoptering into the stands. And from what we see of this incident, it might have done significant damage to the boy, who seemed to be caught completely off guard as he held a smartphone in his seat in the stands. We’ll remind you that in the majors, players use wooden bats that commonly weigh more than 2 pounds. （NPR）
Supreme Court Declines to Hear Apple’s Appeal in E-Book Pricing Case
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to review an appeals court’s determination that Apple had conspired with book publishers to raise the prices of digital books.
As is the court’s custom, its brief order turning down the case gave no reasons.
The case arose from Apple’s 2010 entry into the e-book marketplace, which had been dominated by Amazon and its Kindle reader. Publishers frustrated with Amazon’s low prices welcomed the new retailer, its iPad device and its willingness to let them set their own prices, with Apple taking a cut of each sale.
Last year, a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, said the terms Apple had offered to five big publishers allowed them to engage in a price-fixing conspiracy.
In urging the Supreme Court to hear the case, Apple Inc. v. United States, No. 15-565, the company said its actions had promoted competition.
“Apple’s launch of the iBookstore as a platform for tens of millions of consumers to buy and read digital books on the iPad dramatically enhanced competition in the e-books market, benefiting authors, e-book publishers, and retail consumers,” Apple said in its petition seeking a Supreme Court review. “Following Apple’s entry, output increased, overall prices decreased and a major new retailer began to compete in a market formerly dominated by a single firm.”
“If a new firm’s entry disrupts a monopoly and creates long-term competition, that is to be lauded, whether the previous prices were artificially high or artificially low,” the brief said.
The appeals court disagreed. “Competition is not served by permitting a market entrant to eliminate price competition as a condition of entry, and it is cold comfort to consumers that they gained a new e-book retailer at the expense of passing control over all e-book prices to a cartel of book publishers,” Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote for the majority.
The case began in 2012, when the Justice Department accused Apple and five publishers of conspiring to raise e-book prices above Amazon’s standard of $9.99 for new titles by introducing an agency model of pricing. The five publishers settled, but Apple went to trial.
Judge Denise L. Cote of United States District Court in Manhattan, ruled for the government, finding that the publishers had joined a price-fixing conspiracy and that Apple “was a knowing and active member of that conspiracy.”
Judge Cote relied in part on the words of Steven P. Jobs, the company’s co-founder, who died in 2011.
“I can live with this, as long as they move Amazon to the agent model too for new releases,” Mr. Jobs wrote to Eddy Cue, Apple’s senior vice president for Internet software and services. “If they don’t, I’m not sure we can be competitive.”
Judge Cote said that the company had no good explanations for that and other communications. “Apple has struggled mightily to reinterpret Jobs’s statements in a way that will eliminate their bite,” she wrote. “Its efforts have proven fruitless.” (NY Times)
Emotional Peyton Manning says goodbye, as he retires from the NFL
He had trouble even getting the words out.
Peyton Manning strode up to the podium, with a folder containing his retirement speech. If he wanted this to be like any other corporate speech he has given — and he’s given a ton —there was no chance. As prepared as Manning is for everything, there’s no way to script how you’ll feel walking away from a game you’ve given your life to.
Manning needed a few seconds before he even started his speech to compose himself.
With family, friends and former teammates looking on in the Denver Broncos meeting room, Manning had a news conference to officially announce his retirement after 18 NFL seasons with the Broncos and Indianapolis Colts. His voice was shaking most of the time as he thanked his hometown of New Orleans, the University of Tennessee, the Colts and Broncos, his old teammates and coaches, and his family. He thanked everyone, really.
He mostly held it together, but there were moments when it was obviously hard for him to realize he was saying goodbye to the NFL. It was an emotional day.
“There is something about 18 years … 18 is a good number,” Manning said. “Today, I retire from pro football.”
Manning talked about missing the game, the team dinners, the great defenders he went against and the great coaches he matched wits with. He said he’ll miss recapping the game with his dad, Archie, and calling his brother Eli from the team bus after games to discuss their respective games that day.
“I revere football. I love the game,” Manning said. “You don’t have to wonder if I’ll miss the game. Absolutely. Absolutely, I will.” (Yahoo)
NAKED WOMAN SHUTS DOWN HIGHWAY 290 IN HOUSTON
A bizarre rush-hour crash shut down Highway 290 in Houston Monday morning. After a wreck, a woman stripped down and got on top of the cab of a big rig.
That woman refused to come down for about two hours. The incident happened at Huffmeister Road.
At about 11 a.m., firefighters and police officers finally coaxed her into a ladder truck basket.
The details of the initial accident are not clear.
The woman, clearly agitated, stood up a few times, but then returned to sitting on the cab of the 18-wheeler.
Drivers were advised to avoid the area. （ABC）
Cancer kills N.Y. university president at helm 8 months
The first woman president of Cornell University, inaugurated in September, died Sunday after being diagnosed with colon cancer a month ago, university officials said Monday.
University President Elizabeth Garrett. 52, had undergone aggressive treatment at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell’s biomedical research unit and medical school in New York City, and had been released Feb. 19 from the intensive-care unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, according to the university’s acting president, Michael Kotlikoff.
“Beth was simply a remarkable human being — a vibrant and passionate leader who devoted her life to the pursuit of knowledge and public service and had a profound, positive impact on the many lives that she touched,” Robert Harrison, chairman of Cornell’s board of trustees, wrote in email to faculty, staff and students.
Garrett, who came to Cornell from her post as provost of the University of Southern California, was named as president Sept. 30, 2014, and started in her new job July 1. She spent four years as USC’s provost and also was the first woman in that position.
“I … think it’s important for strong women to be lifted up, because they can be role models, not only to younger women, but to all people,” she said in an October 2014 interview not long after she was chosen for the Cornell job. “There isn’t any reason that women can’t lead universities like Cornell, like Harvard, like Penn (the private Ivy League University of Pennsylvania), and it allows people to move forward understanding that the beliefs they had in the past about people’s capabilities being aligned with characteristics like gender are beliefs that are just wrong.”
Garrett was a lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall; was a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, the University of Virginia Law School, Central European University in Budapest and Interdisciplinary Center Law School in Israel; and became a faculty member at the University of Chicago Law School before going to USC, according to her online curriculum vitae, an academic resume.
Cornell’s previous president, David Skorton, announced in March 2014 that he would leave June 30, 2015, to lead the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. （USA Today）
Storm Slams Southern California With Downpours, Isolated Flooding
A fast-moving winter storm brought rain, lightning, thunder and isolated flooding Monday as the morning drive began in Southern California.
Severe thunderstorm warnings were issued for much of the region early Monday as the storm slammed Ventura County before moving east into Los Angeles during the morning commute. A severe thunderstorm warning was extended to 9 a.m. for parts of San Bernardino, Orange and Riverside counties.
Power was briefly knocked out in some areas, including Los Angeles International Airport as a strong cell moved through the area. The airport was running on backup power early Monday before power was restored to all areas except two parking structures. No flight cancelations were reported.
The main band of rain from the new storm, the second of the month, passed through the Los Angeles Basin by 7 a.m. Showers are still possible through late morning and early afternoon. Flash flood watches are in place for foothill neighborhoods underneath wildfire burn areas, triggering fears of possible mudslides.
Downed trees were reported in Inglewood, Oxnard and other locations. Firefighters in Santa Ana were checking on reports of a collapsed roof at an elementary school.
The storm will have cold air behind it, an instability factor that could trigger scattered heavy rain and thunderstorms.
Heavy snow could fall down to the 5,000-foot level and on major freeway passes at The Grapevine and Cajon Pass tonight and Tuesday morning.
There was good news from the City of Los Angeles’ watershed in the headwaters of the Owens River near Bishop. An estimated two feet of snow fell Sunday at Mammoth Lake, above the Los Angeles Aqueduct.
The rain from an earlier storm ending before dawn Sunday was heavy and constant in the Santa Monica Mountains. A fire station in Malibu Canyon got 2.71 inches of rain overnight, and the Malibu Civic Center got 1.3 inches.
Bel Air saw 1.65 inches, 1.22 inches fell at Century City and 1.57 inches dropped on Sherman Oaks. Los Angeles firefighters activated swiftwater rescue crews to evacuate a cluster of homeless people from the flood plain upstream of the Sepulveda Basin dam, but police did not close roadways. （NBC）
