■UNITED STATES
Jailer catches tennis balls
A New Orleans jailer has called game, set and match on six people who tossed drug-filled tennis balls into his prison yard. Sheriff Marlin Gusman had netting strung up around the recreation yard walls a couple years back to ward off smugglers. But the tennis balls — which can be hollowed out to hold illegal cellphones, weapons and drugs — kept coming. “They have all the time in the world to think about how to do things,” Gusman said on Friday. “Our job is to stay one step ahead of them.” So he set up an undercover operation that netted the six civilians and seven inmates captured orchestrating the scheme. They were booked on Thursday on various charges of introducing marijuana and illegal cellphones into a prison.
■UNITED STATES
Artist admits Obama mistake
Artist Shepard Fairey, who designed the famous Obama HOPE poster, said he was mistaken about which Associated Press photo he based his work on and that he tried to hide his wrongdoing. “In an attempt to conceal my mistake I submitted false images and deleted other images,” said Fairey, who has been involved in countersuits with the AP, which has alleged copyright infringement. Attorneys for Fairey told the AP they have withdrawn and, in papers filed on Friday in federal court in Manhattan, stated that he misled them.
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Body ignored for week
Residents of a Southern California apartment complex say they saw a lifeless body slumped on a neighbor’s patio, but didn’t call police because they thought it was part of a Halloween display. Mostafa Mahmoud Zayed had apparently been dead since Monday. Cameraman Austin Raishbrook, owner of RMG News, told the Los Angeles Times he was at the scene in Marina del Rey on Thursday when authorities arrived. The 75-year-old Zayed was slumped over a chair on the third-floor balcony of his apartment with a single gunshot wound to the eye. A Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigator said the case was an “apparent suicide.” Raishbrook said neighbors told him they noticed the body on Monday.
■UNITED STATES
Jackson’s ex-wife sues
Michael Jackson’s ex-wife Deborah Rowe said a Florida woman should be found liable for nearly US$500,000 in damages for statements she made in a TV interview. Rowe sued Rebecca White in July for her comments to the TV show Extra claiming Rowe didn’t want custody of her two children with Jackson, but was only interested in getting money from his family. Rowe, the mother of Jackson’s two oldest children, reached an agreement with the singer’s mother on custody in August. She has some visitation rights and no money is said to have changed hands for the arrangement.
■UNITED STATES
Jazz city mayor visits Cuba
The mayor of New Orleans flew to Cuba on Friday on a mission to study the island’s respected disaster preparedness methods in another sign of easing diplomatic relations. The visit comes a day after President Barack Obama promised New Orleans that the government would never repeat the “failure of government” seen after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the jazz city in 2005. Ray Nagin is the first US mayor to make a diplomatic visit to Cuba in 50 years, his office said. The State Department gave approval to the mission because Cuba has been recognized internationally as a leader in emergency management, Quiett said.
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