Michael Phelps to Retire After Olympics

9:09 a.m. PDT, May 7, 2012
NEW YORK -- U.S. swimmer Michael Phelps says he'll make one more push in the pool at the Olympics in London this summer, but after that he's hanging up his Speedo.

Phelps told Anderson Cooper in an interview on "60 Minutes" on Sunday that while it took him quite some time to get back into training for London, he's ready to go for the gold again. If he can get three medals during the Summer Olympics he will be able to retire as the athlete with the most Olympic career medals.

Debbie Phelps, Michael's mother, still likes the idea of him going to Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Olympics, in part because she wants to travel there. His consolation for her: "We'll go watch."

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"Once I retire, I'm retiring," he said on "60 Minutes." "I'm done."

His coach, Bob Bowman, said he wasn't sure Phelps would even get to the Olympics. After a series of paparazzi photos showed the Olympic golden boy partying and Phelps slacked on practicing, everything was up in the air.

"I thought it was a 50-50," Bowman said. "I really didn't have a feel for whether he would come back or not come back."

In the fall of 2009, Bowman said, Phelps probably missed six weeks of practice. Phelps said he took a trip to Vegas, lounged around the house, played video games and did anything to distract himself from the pool.

"It was hard, because I didn't know if the passion or the fire was still inside of me," Phelps told Cooper. "And it took awhile for me to actually realize it myself. Bob couldn't tell me, my mom couldn't tell me. They couldn't help me find it."

But he's found it, he says, and is training harder than ever. Phelps talked about one of the interesting ways he's preparing for the Olympics to step up his endurance: sleeping in a chamber that simulates altitudes of 8,000 or 9,000 feet.

"It's just like a giant box," Phelps said. "So, it's like the boy in the bubble."

Bowman said despite Phelps' slow start to getting back into full training mode, he believes the icon of U.S. swimming can still nab several medals.

The question is, how many?

"I don't know," Bowman said. "That's up to him."

Phelps has no doubt he will contend and put on the best show he can during the Olympics across the pond.

"I kind of feel like my old self again," he said. "I'm swimming times like I used to. I'm swimming races how I used to."

But he may be even more excited about his life after the Olympics.

"I've been able to go to all these amazing cities in my travels and I haven't been able to see them at all," he said. "I see the hotel and I see the pool. That's it. And (after the Olympics) I'm just going to go and do whatever I want to do."

George Lindsey, Andy Griffith Show Costar, dies

By Stephen M. Silverman
George Lindsey, best remembered for his role of Goober Pyle – cousin of Gomer Pyle – on CBS's rural sitcom The Andy Griffith Show, died Sunday morning in Nashville, where he lived, after a lengthy hospitalization, reports The Tennessean. He was 83.

 Andy Griffith, 85, said in a statement that accompanied the Lindsay family's announcement of the death, "George Lindsey was my friend. I had great respect for his talent and his human spirit."

Griffith also said the two often spoke by phone. "Our last conversation was a few days ago. We would talk about our health, how much we missed our friends who passed before us and usually about something funny. I am happy to say that as we found ourselves in our 80s, we were not afraid to say, 'I love you.' That was the last thing George and I had to say to each other. 'I love you.' "

An Alabama native who was raised by his grandparents, Lindsey got the acting bug at 14 when he saw a performance of the musical Oklahoma!. He was a school athlete who also displayed a sharp sense of humor, and he went to college to become a teacher, according to the Tennessean.

While in the Air Force stationed in Orlando, Fla., he met and, in 1955, married Joyanne Herbert, and they had two children. The marriage lasted until 1991.

Before his long TV career, which also included another comic stint on CBS's Hee Haw, Lindsey studied acting in New York and played in stage productions there.

 His survivors, the newspaper reports, include son George Lindsey, Jr., daughter Camden Jo Lindsey Gardner, two grandsons and his companion of many years, Anne Wilson.

Rare Sacred White Buffalo Calf Found Dead

Article by: Associated Press
GREENVILLE, Texas - Authorities are investigating the death of a rare white buffalo on a North Texas ranch just days shy of its first birthday.

Lakota Ranch owner Arby Little Soldier says he found the buffalo, named Lightning Medicine Cloud, dead Monday. The buffalo's mother was found dead the next day.

Last year, thousands attended a naming ceremony to celebrate the calf's May 12 birth.

According to Lakota Sioux lore, the goddess of peace once appeared in the form of a white buffalo calf.

Arby Little Soldier says the calf "was the hope of all nations." He said a birthday celebration planned this month will be a memorial instead.

Hunt County Sheriff Randy Meeks said his agency is working with the Texas Rangers to determine "whom or what killed Lighting Medicine Cloud."

Ska pioneer Lloyd Brevett dies

Lloyd Brevett helped create an identifiably Jamaican sound

Jamaican double bassist Lloyd Brevett, whose band The Skatalites pioneered ska music and paved the way for reggae, has died at the age of 80.

The Skatalites formed in 1964 and combined jazz, R&B and mento to create ska and take a Jamaican sound around the world for the first time.

Their songs included The Guns of Navarone and they backed acts including The Wailers and Prince Buster.

Brevett suffered a stroke in March, two weeks after his son was murdered.

Thirty two-year-old Okine was shot outside the family's home in Kingston hours after he had accepted a Jamaican music industry award on his father's behalf.

Spokeswoman and friend Maxine Stowe told the AP news agency: "He took his son's death as stoically as he could, but you knew it was devastating for him. He deteriorated rapidly after that."

Former Jamaican Prime Minister and one-time Skatalites tour manager PJ Patterson said it was "Brevett who quietly provided the mesmerising backbone to the Skatalites' sound".

"To say that Brevett was a creator of both ska and dub is not to use hyperbole," he said in a statement.

Bunny Wailer, a member of the original Wailers with Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, told AP: "He was there from the beginning. All my bass lines from all my recordings have been attributed to bass lines from Lloyd Brevett."

Grammy nominations

The Skatalites were only together for 18 months in the 1960s. On New Year's Eve 1964, trombonist Don Drummond stabbed and killed his girlfriend and vocalist Marguerita.

The other band members disbanded in July 1965, with Brevett and other members forming the Soul Brothers, later becoming the Soul Vendors.

In 1975, most of the Skatalites reunited to record Brevett's solo album African Roots. They continued to reconvene periodically before reforming in the 1980s.

In 1996, their album Hi-Bop Ska: The 30th Anniversary Recording, earned a Grammy nomination, with a second nomination coming the following year for Greetings From Skamania.

Brevett left the group in the mid-2000s after a dispute with his bandmates. Saxophonist Lester Sterling is now the only surviving member of the original line-up.

Actor Gary Sinise supporting veterans in Illinois concert

LISLE, Ill. (AP) -- Hollywood actor Gary Sinise is helping promote a summer concert in suburban Chicago that will benefit veterans.

The "Forrest Gump" star helped kickoff ticket sales for "Rockin' for the Troops" on Thursday at the Navistar headquarters in Lisle.

The concert is planned for July 21 in nearby Wheaton. Sinise is slated to perform with his Lt. Dan Band, which is named for his character in the Oscar-winning movie.

The Daily Herald reports that proceeds will benefit Operation Support Our Troops America. The Naperville-based charity has raised $2 million for projects benefiting veterans, including research on post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury.

Sinise says "we all enjoy what the military provides for us."

Officials from Navistar and other companies also announced efforts to hire returning veterans.

Norwegian Swimming Star Dies in Arizona

by Mark Memmott

Swimming star Alexander Dale Oen, one of Norway's top gold medal hopes in the upcoming Summer Olympic Games in London, died Monday at a training facility in Flagstaff, Ariz.

The 26-year-old world champion in the 100-meter breaststroke suffered an apparent heart attack, according to Norway's Olympic Committee

According to The Associated Press, Norway's Swimming Federation "said Dale Oen had only a light training session on Monday and played golf that day. But teammates became worried when the swimmer spent an unusually long time in the shower and entered his bathroom when he failed to respond to their knocks on the door. The federation said 'they found Dale Oen laying partly on the floor, partly on the edge of his bathtub.' "

Reuters adds that "Dale Oen won his world title last year in the immediate aftermath of the massacre of 77 people by far right fanatic Anders Behring Breivik in central Oslo and on the island of Utoeya. He had struggled with his emotions after attacks that sent Norway into national mourning, touching the Norwegian flag on his swimming cap every time he entered the pool deck."

Following that victory at the world championship in Shanghai last July, Dale Oen said "we need to stay united. ... Everyone back home now is of course paralyzed with what happened but it was important for me to symbolize that even though I'm here in China, I'm able to feel the same emotions."

The Wall Aquatic Center at Northern Arizona University is a popular training facility for elite swimmers because of the area's high altitude (about 7,000 feet above sea level). As All Things Considered has previously reported, high altitude training is said to "stimulate red blood cell production, which improves muscle endurance."

Dale Oen was among swimmers from eight nations who trained at the facility before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. He won the silver medal in the 100-meter breaststroke at those Games.

According to The Norway Post, Dale Oen has recently been dealing with "an infection in a shoulder."

US Returns Smuggled Art To Italy

Carolyn Presutti | Washington
U.S. Homeland Security officers returned some precious artwork to their rightful owners Thursday.  Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano presented seven cultural antiquities to the Italian ambassador and to the people of Italy.

It's a beauty--Zeus, seen as a swan, seducing a woman.  A rare oil-on-copper painting from the 16th century artist Lelio Orsi.  Auctioned off in Manhattan for $1.6 million. But Leda and the Swan was smuggled into the U.S. through false customs documents.  Thursday, at Italy's embassy in Washington, Orsi's renaissance painting was returned to the Italian people.

"Criminals should have no illusions. Italy and the United States are fully together in this effort and are strongly committed to combating these crimes," said Italian Ambassador Claudio Bisogniero.

Orsi's artwork wasn't the only treasure. Italy's national police force, the Carabinieri, tipped off U.S. Customs agents to six more antiquities, each priceless to Renato Miracco, the embassy's cultural attache. 

One was a double-faced marble is from the 1st century. "This kind of sculpture you can put in your front door.  When you have a lucky day, you put a young face. When you don't have a lucky day, you can see the other part of the sculpture," said Miracco.

Someone ripped pages from choirbooks dating back to 13th century churches and monasteries. Ceramic urns, looted from archeological sites, are some 2,500 years old. 
"So many times, these kind of items you can find just broken, but they're really rare, just totally intact," Miracco.said

Officials link the sculpture and urns to a retired antiquities dealer accused of running an international smuggling organization.  The pages were found on a rare book website based in the northwestern state of Oregon. 

"On behalf of the United States government and personally, as the granddaughter of immigrants from a small town near Naples, it gives me great pride to return them to you," said Napolitano.

In 10 days, Italian Carabinieri will escort these pieces back to Italy.  They will fly on their own cargo plane, solely for the art, as they return to the small villages and museums where they were once originally displayed.