ROCKTON, Mass. - Singer Bobby Brown will not face criminal charges after police said they found a small amount of cocaine in his possession.

Brown’s attorney said Tuesday a Brockton District Court clerk magistrate found no probable cause to issue a criminal complaint, but recommended that Brown volunteer to mentor young people, which Brown wanted to do anyway.

Brown agreed to a year’s community service and his attorney said if no other issues arise over the next year, the matter will be struck from the docket.

The case began when police responding to a disturbance at a Brockton hotel on Dec. 1. They said they found the 39-year-old Brown sitting in an SUV in the parking lot, with cocaine in his possession.

The Boston native is the former husband of singer Whitney Houston and stars in the CMT Network show “Gone Country.”

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DEUTSCHKATHARINENBERG, Germany - German treasure hunters began digging Tuesday for what they say may be plunder buried by the Nazis in a man-made cavern near the Czech border.

The area’s mayor, Hans-Peter Haustein, and a man who believes he found the coordinates for the buried booty in a notebook among his deceased father’s belongings, maintain that a scan of the spot has revealed that a large quantity of metal is about 20 meters below the surface.

They believe it to be either gold or silver, based on the scan with a sophisticated metal detector.

A drilling company began boring pilot holes at one-yard intervals trying to find the entrance of the cavern, about 100 yards from the Czech border in the eastern German state of Saxony. Once it is found, the searchers are to snake a camera down into the enclosure to determine exactly what they have found.

“It can’t be iron,” Haustein said as work progressed at the site. “The computer readout clearly indicates gold.”

By late afternoon, however, the most excitement for a crowd of onlookers from the tiny settlement was a short-lived geyser of water that shot up as one of the holes was drilled.

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HONG KONG — It turns out that train tracks in Tibet aren’t where the antelope play.

Earlier this week, Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency, issued an unusual public apology for publishing a doctored photograph of Tibetan wildlife frolicking near a high-speed train.

The deception — uncovered by Chinese Internet users who sniffed out a Photoshop scam in the award-winning picture — has brought on a big debate about media ethics, China’s troubled relationship with Tibet, and how pregnant antelope react to noise.

The antelope imbroglio began in the summer of 2006. The Chinese government was celebrating its latest engineering feat, and an enthusiastic wildlife photographer from the Daqing Evening News was camped out on the Tibetan plateau eating energy bars and waiting for antelope to pass.

On July 1, 2006, in an event scheduled to coincide with the Communist Party’s 85th birthday, Chinese President Hu Jintao hosted the launch of China’s train to the “roof of the world.” The $4 billion Qinghai-Xizang railway — a remarkable system that transports passengers to an altitude (16,000 feet) so high that ballpoint pens can explode en route from the air-pressure change — traverses 1,200 miles of rugged terrain to connect the rest of China to the remote Tibetan plateau.

The train, which soon brought many visitors to the pristine homeland of Tibetan Buddhists, became a flash point for China’s long simmering tensions with Tibet. During construction, it drew fierce protests from environmentalists who said it would threaten the breeding grounds of the chiru, an endangered antelope species found mainly in China.

When the train service began, a remarkable photograph appeared in hundreds of newspapers, and it eased environmental concerns. The picture, captioned “Qinghai-Tibet railway opens green passage for wildlife,” featured dozens of antelope galloping peacefully across the Tibetan landscape, unfazed as the gleaming silver train raced beside them.

The photo was the work of Liu Weiqing, a 41-year-old photographer who had been camped with his Jeep on the Tibetan plateau since March, as part of a highly publicized series by the Daqing Evening News, a regional newspaper, to raise awareness of the rare Tibetan antelope. Mr. Liu was also under contract with Xinhua to provide photos for China’s largest government-run news service.

“One man, one car, one year…and a campaign to protect Tibetan antelope,” he wrote on his blog describing the project.

Once nearly wiped out by poachers who made shawls from its wool, the chiru’s numbers have increased in recent years, and the knobby-kneed bovid has emerged as a symbol of China’s environmental-protection efforts. Yingying the Tibetan Antelope is one of the five official mascots of the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

Some antelope lovers knew from the start that something was wrong with Mr. Liu’s photo. “I was really shocked when I first saw the photo,” says Yang Xin, of the antelope protection group Green River. For starters, he says, many of the antelope in the picture appeared to be pregnant and there were no young with the herd. That was a tip-off because many antelope would have given birth before late June when the photo was supposedly taken.

In late 2006, Mr. Liu’s picture was declared a top 10 “photo of the year” by CCTV, China’s state-run television network. Mr. Liu appeared in fatigues on national TV and described waiting in a pit for eight days for the antelope to pass at precisely the same moment as the train.

“I wanted to capture the harmony among the Tibetan antelope, the train, men and nature,” he told the audience, standing on stage in front of a big projection of the photo.

Media critics say the photo’s deeper message was hard to miss. “It’s such a perfect propaganda photo,” says David Bandurski a researcher at the University of Hong Kong China Media Project. “They don’t tend to give journalism prizes to reports that rock the boat.”

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WASHINGTON - China has agreed to a long-standing U.S. request for access to sensitive military records that Pentagon officials believe might resolve the fate of thousands of U.S. servicemen missing from the Korean War and other Cold War-era conflicts, a Pentagon official said Monday.

The arrangement is scheduled to be publicly announced Friday in Shanghai after a final set of talks to work out certain details, according to Larry Greer, spokesman for the Pentagon’s POW-MIA office.

The deal marks a modest step forward for U.S.-China military relations, which have been strained in recent years, in part by sharp U.S. criticism of China’s military buildup. China has periodically cooperated with the Pentagon on matters related to the search for MIAs, but it has balked at repeated requests to open its military archives for documents of interest to the Pentagon.

Peter Rodman, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who dealt with the Chinese on the military archives issue when Donald H. Rumsfeld was defense secretary, said in an interview that the agreement is a positive step.

“It has special meaning to our military,” Rodman said, because it could answer lingering questions about the fate of servicemen whose families have waited for decades to learn more. Rodman said the significance of the deal will depend on exactly what China has agreed to provide and how it is done.

China entered the Korean War on North Korea’s side in the fall of 1950 and succeeded in driving U.S. forces out of the north. Chinese troops killed and captured thousands of American troops; the Chinese also managed many of the POW camps established in North Korea during the war.

More than 8,100 U.S. servicemen are still unaccounted for from the Korean War.

Greer said that at least initially, the arrangement to be announced on Friday will not give U.S. researchers direct access to Chinese records. Instead, Chinese archivists with security clearances acceptable to the People’s Liberation Army will do the document searches and turn over relevant records to U.S. analysts.

“Our people, obviously, would prefer to have their own access,” Rodman said.

Details such as the frequency and volume of the document searches, as well as expenses, are yet to be worked out, Greer said.

Charles A. Ray, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW-MIA affairs, was en route to Shanghai Monday to participate in the signing ceremony Friday, the spokesman said.

China has consistently maintained that all POW questions were settled at the end of the war, but nearly every U.S. administration since then has prodded Beijing to provide information on missing servicemen. The requests include cases of U.S. airmen who went missing after being shot down by the Chinese.

Declassified U.S. Army records from the 1950s make clear that the United States knew of hundreds of American prisoners in China during the Korean War, closely tracked their movements and feared for their lives.

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HAVANA - Cuba’s parliament named Raul Castro president on Sunday, ending nearly 50 years of rule by his brother Fidel but leaving the island’s communist system unshaken.

In a surprise move, officials bypassed younger candidates to name a 77-year-old revolutionary leader, Jose Ramon Machado, to Cuba’s No. 2 spot — apparently assuring the old guard that no significant political changes will be made soon.

The retirement of the ailing 81-year-old president caps a career in which he frustrated efforts by 10 U.S. presidents to oust him.

Raul Castro, 76, stressed that his brother remains “commander in chief” even if he is not president and proposed to consult with Fidel on all major decisions of state — a motion approved by acclamation.

Though the succession was not likely to bring a major shift in the communist government policies that have put Cuba at odds with the United States, many Cubans were hoping it would open the door to modest economic reforms that might improve their daily lives.

Raul Castro indicated at least one change is being contemplated: the revaluation of the Cuban peso, the national currency most people use to pay for government services such as utilities, public transportation and the small amount charged for their monthly food ration.

Cubans complain that government salaries averaging a little more than $19 a month do not cover basic necessities — something Raul Castro acknowledged in a major speech last year. But he said any change would have to be gradual to “prevent traumatic and incongruent effects.”

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 YORK (Reuters Health) - Cutting calories helps people lose weight, but doing so by filling up on whole grains may be particularly heart-healthy, new research suggests.
In a study of obese adults at risk of heart disease, researchers found that those who trimmed calories and increased their whole-grain intake shed more belly fat and lowered their blood levels of C- reactive protein or CRP.
CRP is a marker of chronic, low-level inflammation in the blood vessels, and both abdominal fat and CRP, in excess, are linked to heart attack and stroke.
In contrast, dieters in the study who mainly ate refined grains, like white bread, were able to lose weight, but they trimmed less fat from the middle and showed no change in CRP.
The findings offer yet more incentive for Americans to opt for whole grains over highly processed versions, according to the researchers.
“This is the first clinical study to prove that a diet rich in whole grains can lead to weight loss and reduce the risk of several chronic diseases,” Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton, the senior researcher on the study, said in a statement.
She and her colleagues at Pennsylvania State University report the findings in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. (more…)

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ATLANTA - The picture of the smiling little girl on the flier was more than Laura Bolan could take.

The 8-year-old on the pamphlet needed a kidney transplant, and Bolan knew she could help. She did a quick Web search on the surgery and talked it over with her husband. Then she made a phone call to offer one of her kidneys to Sarah Dickman.

The suburban Atlanta girl was born with the genetic disease juvenile nephronophthisis, which slowly destroys the kidneys. Without treatment, it can kill a child before the age of 15.

Bolan, 34, had never met Sarah when she agreed to donate the organ.

“It breaks your heart to know there’s a little girl sick out there who you could help,” Bolan said earlier this week.

The pair underwent successful surgeries Thursday at hospitals across the street from each other in Atlanta. Surgeon Dr. Thomas Pearson said both patients were doing well on Friday, and initial tests of Sarah’s new kidney showed it was working normally.

Sarah was expected to be in intensive care for at least a day and then spend up to a week at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston. She said she was looking forward to being free from a dialysis machine so she can spend the night at her best friend’s house.

And when doctors remove her catheter, she can take bubble baths again because there will no longer be the risk of infecting the skin around the tube.

Best of all, she can go to Kangaroo Bob’s, a children’s recreation center with inflatable slides, mazes and obstacle courses.

“I’ll get to go there on my birthday because I won’t have this anymore,” she said, pointing to the catheter.

Bolan was expected to return home after a few days at Emory University Hospital. She first saw a flier about Sarah in September at the elementary school where two of her children are students. Sarah attends the same school.

Bolan knew she had the same blood type as the little girl, so she called the number on the flier that evening.

Sarah’s parents, Lori and Joe Dickman, had added Sarah’s name to a national waiting list for transplant recipients after learning that neither parent was a match to donate a kidney. The flier was just a shot in the dark.

The Dickmans received two calls from people interested in donating a kidney. Both were tested, and Bolan was the better match. The Dickmans were relieved because Sarah’s condition was quickly deteriorating.

She was put on dialysis in September, the same month the flier went up. She often left school early because her failing kidneys made her exhausted and irritable.

“We definitely need more people like Laura in the world,” Lori Dickman said.

Joe Dickman wants to add his name to living donor lists so that he can help someone else. It’s the least he can do to repay Bolan for saving his daughter, he said.

“A thank-you doesn’t fit for what she’s doing,” Joe Dickman said of Bolan. “She can call me at four in the morning for a gallon of milk. I don’t care. I’m indebted to her for life.”

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PRISTINA, Kosovo - Kosovo is counting on NATO to secure the new nation’s borders and help provide stability as Serbia angrily challenges its statehood, the president said Thursday in his first interview since Kosovo declared independence.

President Fatmir Sejdiu said in an interview with The Associated Press that NATO’s promise not to abandon Kosovo provided a “powerful guarantee” for stability. He warned Serbia that any attempts to partition the fledgling country along ethnic lines would bring “grave consequences.”

Sejdiu spoke before a massive protest turned violent in the Serbian capital, with riot police firing tear gas at Serb rioters who broke into the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade and set fire to the interior. Serbs have protested daily since Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian leadership declared independence on Sunday.

“There is a part of society that wants to destabilize Kosovo and create alarming, hopeless situations and scare the international community,” Sejdiu told the AP. “Any change of borders brings extremely grave consequences for the region, and someone then has to be held accountable.”

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LONDON - In an embarrassing reversal, Britain admitted Thursday that one of its remote outposts — the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia — had twice been used by the United States as a refueling stop for the secret transfer of two terrorism suspects.

The CIA admitted that previous data given to America’s strongest ally “turned out to be wrong.” British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told Parliament that recent talks with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice showed two suspects had been on flights to Guantanamo Bay and Morocco in 2002 that stopped on Diego Garcia, a U.S. base on British soil.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair came under heavy criticism for Britain’s close alliance with Washington in the war in Iraq and its part in the U.S.-led war on terrorism. The latest disclosure could pressure the U.S. to identify other countries used in extraordinary renditions, a practice of transferring suspects without formal extradition proceedings that human rights groups say opens the door for third-party countries to torture and interrogate suspects outside international standards.

Miliband told lawmakers he was “very sorry” to have to correct statements made by the government in 2005, 2006 and 2007 that there were no such transfers involving Britain.

He and Rice “both agree that the mistake made in these two cases are not acceptable, and she shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light,” said Miliband, who has sometimes broken ranks with the British government over military action in Iraq and policies in the Middle East.

The CIA acknowledged that the information previously provided to the British “turned out to be wrong,” despite earlier U.S. assurances that none of the secret flights since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks had used British airspace or soil.

The agency, which said that neither of the two suspects was tortured or held on Diego Garcia, reviewed rendition records late last year and discovered that in 2002 the CIA had refueled two separate planes.

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Finally, LeBron James has a supporting cast.
In an 11 player three-team blockbuster trade, the Cavaliers acquired Chicago’s Ben Wallace and Joe Smith, Seattle’s Wally Szczerbiak and Delonte West before the trade deadline closed on Thursday, two league sources confirmed.
The Cavaliers sent Larry Hughes, Drew Gooden, Shannon Brown and Cedric Simmons to the Bulls, and Donyell Marshall to the Sonics. Seattle also gets the expiring contracts of Chicago’s Adrian Griffin and Cleveland’s Ira Newble.
The trade marks the end of the Wallace experiment in Chicago, where the $60 million signing two years ago never fulfilled expectations. He’ll try to revive his career alongside James, who has been desperate for an improved supporting cast. Smith, a 6-foot-10 forward, has been one of the Bulls’ most consistent players, and Szczerbiak gives the Cavs a consistent outside shooting threat to go with Daniel Gibson.

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