DENVER – Counterterrorism officials are warning mass transit systems around the nation to step up patrols because of fears an Afghanistan-born immigrant under arrest in Colorado may have been plotting with others to detonate backpack bombs aboard New York City trains.
Investigators say Najibullah Zazi, a 24-year-old shuttle van driver at the Denver airport, played a direct role in a terror plot that unraveled during a trip to New York City around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. He made his first court appearance Monday and remained behind bars.
Zazi and two other defendants have not been charged with any terrorism counts, only the relatively minor offense of lying to the government. But the case could grow to include more serious charges as the investigation proceeds.
Zazi has publicly denied being involved in a terror plot, and defense lawyer Arthur Folsom dismissed as “rumor” any notion that his client played a crucial role.
Publicly, law enforcement officials have repeatedly said they are unaware of a specific time or target for any attacks. Privately, officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case said investigators have worried most about the possible use of backpack bombs on New York City trains, similar to attacks carried out in London and Madrid.
The investigation into Zazi’s role and how many others may be involved was ongoing. Two law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation told The Associated Press late Monday that more than a half-dozen individuals were being scrutinized in the alleged plot.
The FBI said in a statement that “several individuals in the United States, Pakistan and elsewhere” were being investigated.
Backpacks and cell phones were seized last week from apartments in Queens where Zazi visited.
In a bulletin issued Friday, the FBI and Homeland Security Department warned that improvised explosive devices are the most common tactic to blow up railroads and other mass transit systems overseas. And they noted incidents in which bombs were made with peroxide.
ATLANTA – Surging floodwaters ripped apart a west Georgia trailer home, drowning a 2-year-old boy swept from his father’s arms. In Atlanta, stranded motorists scrambled to the tops of their car as waters rose on one of the city’s busiest highways. To the north, crews worked furiously to shore up a levee holding a surging river back from an isolated town.
Storms that pounded the Southeast on Monday turned sleepy creeks into rivers, and rivers into raging floodwaters. Six people were killed across the region, including five in the Atlanta area. Aerial shots showed schools, football fields, even entire neighborhoods submerged by the deluge, sending some unlucky residents scurrying for higher ground.
“It’s a mess all over,” said Lisa Janak of the Georgia Emergency Management Agency.
At least two people were missing, including a Tennessee man who went swimming in an overflowing ditch on a $5 dare and a 15-year-old Georgia teen who never returned from a swim in the surging Chattooga River.
The storm came after days of rain pounded most of the region and saturated the soil. Some parts of Georgia have had more than 20 inches since Friday.
“Any rain that fell has no place to go,” said Georgia climatologist David Stooksbury. “This rainfall on top of already saturated soils really made the situation worse.”
Many parts of north Georgia have experienced “historic” amounts of rain well in excess of so-called 100-year predictions, which describe a storm with the likelihood of happening once every century, said Stooksbury. The downpours come just months after much of the region emerged from an epic drought that plagued the region since 2007.
As the storm front rumbled through west Georgia, it turned a normally docile creek into a surging headwater that tore apart 2-year-old Preston Slade Crawford’s mobile home around 2 a.m. The boy’s body wasn’t found until hours later, but his parents had been rescued as another son, age 1, clung to his mother’s arms in the county west of Atlanta.
“By the time we got into our vehicle, they were screaming at the back of our house,” said Pat Crawford, the boy’s grandmother, who watched as the family’s mobile home was whisked away. “We could see them, but the current was so bad, we couldn’t get to them.”
Crawford said she was on higher ground, unable to help her family members. Craig Crawford clung to his 2-year-old son, but the boy was pulled away in a strong undercurrent.
To the northwest, crews in the tiny Georgia town of Trion worked to shore up a levee breached by the Chattooga River and in danger of failing. The town evacuated more than 1,500 residents, and Red Cross workers quickly set up an emergency shelter able to help hundreds nearby.
“It’s a grave situation for us,” said Lamar Canada, Chattooga County’s emergency management director.
Most of the dead were motorists trying to navigate the treacherous roadways. Seydi Burciaga, a 39-year-old woman from Georgia’s Gwinnett County, was found dead in her vehicle after it was swept off a road by flooding, said Gwinnett County Fire Capt. Thomas Rutledge.
But the surging waters weren’t just dangerous for drivers. A 22-year-old Alabama man, James Dale Leigh, drowned when a pond’s rain-soaked bank collapsed beneath him, said Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin.
Among the hardest-hit areas was Georgia’s Douglas County, where as much as a foot of rain fell Monday. Flooding there was blamed for the deaths of a man and two women in three separate situations, said county spokesman Wes Tallon.
Emergency officials were often forced to improvise to rescue dozens of people stranded in their homes and cars.
“We’re using everything we can get our hands on,” Tallon said. “Everything from boats to Jet Skis to ropes to ladders.”
Other southeastern states were hit less severely.
In Kentucky, rescue crews went on more than a dozen runs to help stranded people after 4 inches of rain fell on parts of Louisville Sunday, said Louisville fire department spokesman Sgt. Salvador Melendez.
Water rose as high as window-level on some houses in North Carolina’s Polk County, forcing emergency officials to evacuate homes along a seven-mile stretch of road. Flooding in more than 20 counties in western North Carolina closed roads, delayed school and forced evacuations.
The forecast held little good news for Georgia: Another round of storms was expected to move in Tuesday from the west.
“Don’t remind me,” Carroll County Emergency Management Director Tim Padgett said of the forecast. “That’s the worst news we could hear.”
A tax holiday is a temporary reduction or elimination of a tax. Governments usually create tax holidays as incentives for business investment. The taxes that are most commonly reduced by national and local governments are sales taxes. In developing countries, governments sometimes reduce or eliminate corporate taxes for the purpose of attracting Foreign Direct Investment or stimulating growth in selected industries.
Tax holiday is given in respect of particular activities, and sometimes also only in particular areas with a view to develop that area of business.
- 1 Sales tax holidays in the United States
- 2 See also
- 3 References
- 4 External links
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[edit] Sales tax holidays in the United States
A statewide sales tax holiday was first enacted by the New York Legislature in 1996 and enabled the first tax-free week in January of 1997. Local governments in New York were given the option of whether or not to participate. [1] Since then, the initiative has been adopted by thirteen states. It commonly takes place as a form of tax-free weekend lasting Friday through Sunday, usually during a major shopping period for necessities, such as just before school starts. During that period, sales tax is not collected on selected items, such as clothing and school supplies. The items subject to the sales tax exemption may also be restricted by price (for example, clothing up to $100), but consumers are free to buy unlimited quantity of items.
As with other sales taxes, visiting residents of non-participating states who purchase tax-free goods (holiday or not) may still have to pay “use tax” on their goods that they take home.
| State (Or Capital) |
Items Included |
Period |
Days |
| Alabama |
clothing, computers, school supplies, books |
1st weekend in August |
3 |
| Connecticut |
clothing |
3rd week in August |
7 |
| District of Columbia |
clothing, school supplies |
August and November |
9 |
| Georgia |
clothing, school supplies, computers |
1st weekend of August |
4 |
| Iowa |
clothing |
1st weekend of August |
2 |
| Massachusetts[2] |
school supplies, computers, sports equipment, health & beauty aid |
2nd weekend of August |
2 |
| Missouri |
clothing, school supplies, computers |
1st weekend in August |
- |
| New Mexico |
clothing, school supplies, computers |
1st weekend of August |
3 |
| North Carolina |
clothing, school supplies, computers, sport equipment |
1st weekend of August |
3 |
| Oklahoma |
clothing |
1st weekend of August |
3 |
| South Carolina |
clothing, school supplies, computers |
1st weekend of August |
3 |
| Tennessee |
clothing, school supplies, computers |
1st weekend of August |
3 |
| Texas[3] |
Cd’s, DVD Movies,cigarettes, cigars, tobacco, clothing, diapers, backpacks , school supplies |
3rd weekend of August |
3 |
| Virginia |
clothing, school supplies |
1st weekend of August |
3 |
Seven states in the U.S. (Alaska, Hawaii, Delaware, Texas, Montana, New Hampshire and Oregon) do not impose general sales taxes at all (but may still tax gas, cigarettes, alcohol, meals, etc). See Sales taxes in the United States for details.
A powerful new type of Internet attack works like a telephone tap, except operates between computers and Web sites they trust.
Hackers at the Black Hat and DefCon security conferences have revealed a serious flaw in the way Web browsers weed out untrustworthy sites and block anybody from seeing them. If a criminal infiltrates a network, he can set up a secret eavesdropping post and capture credit card numbers, passwords and other sensitive data flowing between computers on that network and sites their browsers have deemed safe.
In an even more nefarious plot, an attacker could hijack the auto-update feature on a victim’s computer, and trick it into automatically installing malware pulled in from a hacker’s Web site. The computer would think it’s an update coming from the software manufacturer.
The attack was demonstrated by three hackers. Independent security researcher Moxie Marlinspike presented alone, while Dan Kaminsky, with Seattle-based security consultancy IOActive Inc., and security and privacy researcher Len Sassaman presented together.
They reached essentially the same conclusion: There are major problems in the way browsers interact with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, which is a common technology used on banking, e-commerce and other sites handling sensitive data.
Browser makers and the companies that sell SSL certificates are working on a fix.
Microsoft Corp., whose Internet Explorer browser is the world’s most popular, said it was investigating the issue. Mozilla Corp., which makes the No. 2 Firefox browser, said most of the problems being addressed were fixed in the latest version of its browser, and that the rest will be fixed in an update coming this week.
VeriSign Inc., one of the biggest SSL certificate companies, maintains that its certificates aren’t vulnerable.
Tim Callan, a product marketing executive in VeriSign’s SSL business unit, added that the “tap” won’t work against so-called Extended Validation SSL certificates, which cost more and involve a deeper inspection of a company’s application for a certificate.
The attack falls into a class of hacks known as “man-in-the-middle,” in which a criminal plants himself between a victim’s computer and a legitimate Web site and steals data as it moves back and forth.
Jeff Moss, founder of the Black Hat and Defcon conferences who this summer was appointed to the Homeland Security Department’s advisory council, said the fact a hacker has to actually break into a victim’s network for the attack to work can limit its usefulness.
“That’s the nice mitigating thing,” he said.
But he warned that “for targeted attacks it’s absolutely deadly. This is the way you can get everything. If you can get in the middle, you can get everything. It’s a big, giant wake-up call for the industry.”
SSL certificates are a critical technology in assigning trust on the Web.
Sites buy them to encrypt traffic and assure visitors it’s OK to enter confidential information. Companies that sell SSL certificates verify that someone trying to buy a certificate actually owns the site that certificate will be attached to.
The presence of an SSL certificate on a site is designated by a padlock in the address bar. But many people don’t pay attention to whether a padlock is present or not.
Browsers do care, though, which is why this week’s talks were significant.
Browsers are programmed to block sites that don’t have a valid SSL certificate, or have a certificate displaying a Web address that doesn’t match the address a Web surfer was trying to reach (which can indicate someone has hijacked a person’s Internet session). If the sites aren’t blocked, users are warned about potential danger, and have the option to click through.
The problems outlined by researchers center on a quirk in the way browsers read SSL certificates.
Many SSL certificate companies will allow people to attach a programming symbol called a “null character” into the Web address onto the certificates they receive. Web browsers generally ignore that symbol. They stop reading at that symbol when they’re checking the Web address on a certificate.
The trick in the latest type of attack is that all a criminal would need to do is put the name of a legitimate Web site before that character, and the browser will believe that the site it’s visiting – which is under the criminal’s control – is legitimate.
The criminal could then forward the traffic onto the legitimate site and spy on everything the victim does on that site. It’s a complicated attack, but it highlights a significant weakness in the very technology widely used to assure people it’s safe to navigate sensitive sites.
Jon Miller, an SSL expert and director of Accuvant Labs, said he expects significant attacks against corporations using this technique in the coming months. Criminals who run “phishing” scams, in which people are tricked into visiting phony sites, will also likely latch on.
“What kind of makes this earth-shattering is these aren’t the most sophisticated attacks in the world,” he said. “This is going to become a huge problem.”
There are signs it’s already starting.
VeriSign’s Callan said within hours of the talks, his company got a number of applications for SSL certificates featuring null characters, but they were denied.
We’re not going to lie. A man boasting abs chiseled to perfection and biceps that pop just enough when flexed (without shredding shirts He-Man style) will no-doubt turn our heads. And even if caught mid check-him-out glance, we’re not about to look away. Fit, toned bodies are the result of hard work and dedication to a healthy lifestyle. We certainly pay homage to that. But for a man to achieve a skyrocketing score on the sexiness scale there’s got to be more to him than physical assets. Throw in these seven traits and he’s guaranteed irresistible.
1. He Has Mastered The Wink. We don’t know how they learn the technique but some guys really have the Richard-Gere wink down pat. There’s an art to this wink and getting it right can be tricky. It’s more suave and smoky than cheeky and laughable. He’s comfortable giving this signal and has the timing to the tee. Done right, this move is pure sexy. Caveat: The wink can be tricky to pull off. Practice first.
2. He Radiates Calm. It’s sending shivers up our spine just thinking about how powerful a man’s calm presence can be. Neurotic or hyper or frenzied is stressful, no matter how busy the man or what his excuse. But if he’s got cool written all over his face and his gaze is pure steady and peaceful his sex appeal will shoot through the roof (think old-school James Dean). We women can unwillingly fall into the trap of over-worrying about things we can’t control. A man who sets us at ease by reminding us how things always manage to work out in the end is absolutely hot. Read: 3 Secrets To Exuding Sexy
3. He Takes Care Of Himself. Look, we’re not saying it’s a certain height or build that matters. If he keeps his body in relatively good shape this shows us he knows how to take care of himself. It also clues us in that he sets health as a priority. What’s more, if he’s active, working out even a few times a week, the endorphins his body is producing during gym sessions are sure to keep him in good spirits and energized. The bottom line: If he takes good care of himself he’s likely to take good care of his partner (or at least help keep her motivated to do so). That’s a turn-on. Read: Play Together: Top Sports For Couples
4. He’s Got Style. We don’t want to give the wrong idea here. This is not to say he has to be one certain type of style, and that mimicking a prescribed “it” style is a surefire path to sexy (whether that’s clean-cut, tattooed-up or punked-out). Not at all. Rather, what’s attractive in a guy is that he has a style at all, a way of dressing that reflects in some way who he is and what he’s into. A guy who wakes up hum-drum and throws the same dingy shirt and pair of jeans on every day? Not sexy. At all.
5. He Has A Manly Scent. Sounds so animalistic, we know. No man can control his natural scent, and it turns out our DNA compatibility dictates who smells good to us, anyway. But, every guy can augment his essence with a spritz (one will do just fine) of cologne. As long as it’s not overdone, a man with a strong scent has the potential to drive women wild.
6. He Is Affectionate. Though we women try not to let on, affection (be it an arm around the shoulder or hand on the leg) lights us up like fireflies. Consider it your secret weapon. By affection, we do mean to include expressing your feelings through words, such as “I love you.” It’s amazing how many hot men fall short of sexy just for lack of articulating and showing their love. Let’s put it this way: There are guys who reach out to their partner while driving, and there are guys who keep both hands on the wheel and eyes straight ahead. The lads of the former group qualify for sexy.
7. He Laughs Loud, Hard, Often. No news flash here. Comedy is highly enticing. It’s worth noting though that there are different types of humor. The insecure comedy that’s based on putting others down or calling them names doesn’t gibe with us. But give us fun-loving, belly-jiggling jokes and laughter and you’ll head straight to the top of the sexiness charts.
NAPA, Calif. (AP)-For most of the Oakland Raiders, the first few days of training camp under coach Tom Cable are like nothing they’ve been through before as football players.
Quarterbacks are forbidden to pass the ball in seven-on-seven drills. They practice barking out audibles in the corner of the field while their teammates do other drills. The whistle blows almost as soon as the ball is handed off as coaches make sure each player is in the right spot. And then the process repeats itself.
“It seemed like it was weird at first when he talked about the concept, but you go through it and it’s a great concept,” linebacker Isaiah Ekejiuba(notes) said. “We’re doing a lot of learning, get all the mistakes out the way.”
The Raiders spent Saturday participating in their third straight day of what Cable has called a “learning-intensive” approach to football, eschewing pads, contact and running actual plays in favor of drilling fundamentals in this outdoor classroom in wine country.
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Fullback Lorenzo Neal(notes) told Cable he hadn’t seen anything like it in 17 years in the NFL. The approach is in stark contrast to what the Raiders’ cross-bay rivals are doing under coach Mike Singletary. The 49ers opened camp Saturday with two contact practices in pads as Singletary tries to instill a physical mentality with his team.
Cable says there is plenty of time for hitting later in camp, in preseason games and the regular season. So for the first four days of his camp, he’s focusing on the mental part of the game.
“When you hand them a set of pads and it’s time to go do that, they get into that part of it rather easily. That’s the way they’re wired,” Cable said. “Remember now, the NFL season starts now and it hopefully ends sometime in February for you. The human body can only take so many car crashes.”
For the Raiders, those crashes won’t begin until Monday, the fifth day of training camp. For now, they have one more day of drills that may look mundane but are ones Cable says are vital for the Raiders to reverse a six-year slide of losing.
In seven-on-seven passing drills, the quarterbacks drop back, survey the field as receivers run their patterns, then stop without making a pass. JaMarcus Russell(notes) pleaded with his coaches to be able to show off that strong arm of his to no avail, although defensive coordinator John Marshall did shout out at one point, “It’s time for a pick.”
Later in practice, the quarterbacks line up near a fence, calling signals and taking simulated snaps. They bark out audibles, hand signals and all, as quarterbacks coach Paul Hackett calls out different defensive looks.
Defenders practice their run fits, going to a particular spot to fill a gap in the defense even though no plays are being run.
Then when the team lines up for 11-on-11 drills, the quarterback takes the snap and hands off the ball, only for a whistle to blow after the blockers and defenders take just a step. That’s repeated over and over again, as coaches watch footwork and other small details.
“You’re really trying to get their mind into the who and the how part,” Cable said. “When you throw pads on, you add that combative part of it, and that really changes everything. … You’ve trained them, and now it’s just handling it the right way.”
Cable says one benefit of the approach that he first used as a college coach at Idaho is that younger players can get more practice time as the first and second teams are on separate fields, with no fear of injuries.
The players say the back-to-basics drills have been helpful, reinforcing what they learned in offseason workouts and allowing them to get back up to speed without the risk of injury.
“I think it’s great,” offensive lineman Mario Henderson(notes) said. “In my opinion, at camp when you get out the first day, you sometimes are not really focused on trying to do the right things. You’re just focused on going out there and trying to win the starting job. Sometimes that can be bad because you are going fast, but you’re not really doing your assignments. Now we have four days where we get everything down pat so then when it comes time Monday to earn a job, it’s not your assignments slowing you down.”
While the players like the approach, they’re also eager to put on the pads and hit each other like football players again.
“They are like, `Come on coach, let’s go play,”‘ Cable said.
FORT MYERS, Fla. – The Vangelakos’ southwest Florida condominium has marble floors, a large pool overlooking a river and modern furnishings that speak of affluence and luxury. What they don’t have in the 32-story building is a single neighbor.
The New Jersey family of five purchased their unit four years ago, when Fort Myers was in the midst of a housing boom and any hints of an impending financial crisis were buried in lofty dreams of expansion and development. They made a $10,000 down payment and eagerly watched as builders transformed an empty lot into an opulent high rise, one that now symbolizes the foreclosure crisis.
“The future was going to be southwest Florida,” said Victor Vangelakos, 45, a fire captain who planned to eventually retire and live permanently in the condo.
Most of the other tenants in the 200-unit condo didn’t close on their contracts, and the few that did have transferred to an adjacent building owned by the same company because more people live there.
The Vangelakos’ mortgage lender will not allow them to do the same.
That leaves them as the sole residents of the Oasis Tower One.
“It’s a beautiful building,” said their attorney, John Ewing, who is representing 27 others who made deposits on units. “The problem is, it’s a very lonely building.”
When the Vangelakos’ travel from Weehawken, N.J., to spend a week or a few days in their Florida home, they have exclusive use of the pool, game room and gym, but they miss having a few tenants around.
“Being from the city, it’s very eerie,” Vangelakos said. “It’s almost like a scary movie.”
A large, circular fountain in front of the building is dry. The automatic glass doors that lead to the front lobby are locked. On the front desk is a guest sign-in sheet. The last entry: Feb. 13, 2009.
“It’s like time froze here six months ago,” Ewing said.
Vangelakos said they closed on the apartment in the fall, unaware the other tenants had failed to follow through. When they visited around Christmas, they didn’t think much of the emptiness. They were just happy to be there.
“We wanted to believe,” Cathy Vangelakos said. “We were looking for what we were offered.”
On subsequent visits, however, the building grew more deserted.
The lights on the pool and palm trees were off. Their garbage shoot was sealed, a trash bin placed in front of their unit instead.
Despite the empty units, they faithfully parked in their assigned spot on the second story of the parking garage. Then those lights went off, too.
Then there were security concerns. One night, someone pounded on their door at 11 p.m. They called the front desk at the next door building, which contacted police. A search turned up no one, though a pool entrance was open.
Another morning they awoke to find lounge chairs in the pool.
The parents and their children sleep with their cell phones by their beds.
“I’m not a chicken, but this is a big building,” Cathy Vangelakos said.
Betsy McCoy, vice president and associated general counsel with The Related Group, which sold the family their unit, said they have tried to help find a solution – even offering them a unit in the building next door, free of cost, while the situation is resolved.
“They haven’t wanted to take us up on that,” McCoy said Friday. “They frankly rejected every solution and offer and proposal that we’ve come up with.”
McCoy said some of the interested buyers who put down deposits lost their jobs, others were unable to get mortgages and some were just nervous when the financial collapse came.
The Cape Coral-Fort Myers metropolitan area in Lee County has some of the worst economic stress – a combination of foreclosures, unemployment and bankruptcies – in the country, according to The Associated Press’ monthly analysis of more than 3,100 U.S. counties.
The latest AP Economic Stress Index, which assigns each county a score from 1 to 100 with higher numbers reflecting the greatest stress from the recession, found Lee County had a score of more than 20. Anything above 11 is considered stressed.
Victor Vangelakos said they don’t want to move to the tower next door because they would still be paying the mortgage and maintenance costs on the condo they own. They paid $430,000 for the unit and took out a $336,000 mortgage – essentially spending their life savings.
He’d like for The Related Group to buy them out.
“They want us to be refugees in Tower II,” Victor Vangelakos said. “That’s not how I expected us to live here.”
The family’s attorney said he has filed two lawsuits on behalf of would-be tenants because the building wasn’t finished as promised. He said they expected a clubhouse, marina, private cinema and restaurants.
McCoy said those amenities could be developed, but were never promised.
On Friday evening, the pool area was dark, most of the doors locked. Cathy Vangelakos and her 19-year-old daughter, Amanda, stepped into an elevator to head up to their unit. “Going up,” an automated voice chimed.
“Going up,” Cathy Vangelakos said. “That’s all we hear.”
Jack White’s latest band, the Dead Weather, isn’t Jack White’s band — at least not the way the White Stripes is. When the quartet made its D.C. debut Monday night at a sold-out 9:30 club, the singer-guitarist stayed behind the drum kit for all but one song, while Alison Mosshart (of the Kills) handled most of the lead vocals.
Yet the show provided much evidence of White’s vision, from the two-tone lighting scheme (blue and white) to the style of minimalist blues-rock. Instrumentally, the band resembled the White Stripes, only with a thicker, more epic sound that relied on keyboards almost as much as guitar. Both were played by Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age); he was supplemented on guitar occasionally by Mosshart and once by White, who stepped forward for “Will There Be Enough Water?”
Performed live, most of the material from the Dead Weather’s debut album, “Horehound,” seemed interchangeable. The band had only a few solid songs and didn’t manage to put two of them back-to-back until the encore set, which segued from “Hang You From the Heavens,” the album’s standout, to Bob Dylan’s “New Pony.”
The musical gestures were broader than in the tighter (and better) duos that brought White and Mosshart to prominence. Although the Dead Weather never stretched out in the manner of Led Zeppelin, clearly a major inspiration, the group did rely on arena rock’s dramatic pauses and grand flourishes. These didn’t always enhance the songs, whose thin melodies were easily trampled. Whatever White meant when he sang “I cut like a buffalo,” “I move like a buffalo” would have been more accurate.
One band isn’t enough for Jack White, or even two. The co-founder of the White Stripes and the Raconteurs is the driving force behind yet another project, dubbed Dead Weather. Whereas he sings and plays guitar in his two other groups, White largely confines himself to drumming in Dead Weather, with Kills’ singer Alison Mosshart handling most of the lead vocals and Dean Fertita (of Queens of the Stone Age) on guitar. But the project has White’s distinctive fingerprints all over it. His production and songwriting once again embrace a raw, fuss-free vibe, with robust guitar riffs and drums that force the action. “Horehound” (Third Man Records/Warner Brothers) has a you-are-there immediacy, with dramatic swings in volume and density and touches of sci-fi keyboard atmosphere. Obsession permeates lyrics that could serve as a B-movie script or the outline for a pulp novel: “I like to grab you by the hair/And sell you off to the devil.” The music grinds and lurches, as if writhing through a fever dream or crawling through glass. It’s tense and claustrophobic, with Mosshart sounding appropriately misbegotten, while Fertita’s guitar jabs in and out. The low end positively vibrates at times, the rock equivalent of a gangsta-rap rumble. All that’s lacking are truly great songs. Beneath the noir garage-rock and prickly attitude, the melodies are just ho-hum.
Chris Daughtry became the most successful fourth-place finisher in “American Idol” history in 2006 when his debut album sold 4 million copies. Tucking “Idol” ballad bombast inside a rock-band chassis turned the North Carolina singer-guitarist into a shaven-headed star, the first rocker to emerge from Simon Cowell’s diva-maker franchise. On the follow-up album (on RCA), Daughtry co-writes with a host of mainstream rock hitmakers, including members of Lifehouse, Three Days Grace and Nickelback. First-album producer Howard Benson returns to buff every hook to stadium-rock proportion and jacks up every arrangement until the arrangements sound uniformly shrill, devoid of dynamics or drama. The femmes fatales in these songs leave the narrators howling, usually in gang-style choruses that start to blend together after a few listens. Maybe that’s because emotional power plays combined with sanitized rock riffs makes for a hit-single formula that’s been around since the dawn of REO Speedwagon. “Leave This Town” is what happens when a formula turns into a cliché.
WIMBLEDON, England – As American Andy Roddick plotted and perspired over the years to get back to the place and the round where he once belonged, the opponent he visualized across the net in the Wimbledon final was always Roger Federer of Switzerland.
“It’s the only thing I’ve known in a Wimbledon final,” Roddick said. “It’s expected that it’s Roger. Pretty much, if you want to win a Slam, it’s got to go through him.”
Roddick was surprisingly measured, even mellow Friday evening after experiencing the high of defeating Andy Murray of Scotland at the All England Club in the semifinals.
“You spend the better part of three hours stressing out, high drama and the whole deal,” Roddick said. “I think afterward you’re just kind of trying to maybe calm down a little bit.”
Calm down and come up with a good plan, which is what will presumably be required if Roddick is finally to beat Federer on a big occasion. Federer comes into today’s Wimbledon final with an 18-2 lead over Roddick.
“It’s clear that it helps me to have this record against him,” Federer said after his practice Saturday. “But if I don’t win, it’s not going to help me. So I have to remain concentrated and, above all, not underestimate him, because things can go quickly.”
Federer beat Roddick in the 2004 and 2005 Wimbledon finals.
Federer is seeking his 15th major title, which would snap a tie with American Pete Sampras for the most of all time.
Federer is seeking his sixth Wimbledon title and a victory in the final would vault him over Rafael Nadal of Spain for the No. 1 ranking in the world.
“Records are part of this great match right now,” Federer said, “so it’s obviously even more of an incentive to try really hard.”
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