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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Casey Kasem, the internationally famous radio broadcaster with the cheerful manner and gentle voice who became the king of the top 40 countdown with a syndicated show that ran for decades, died Sunday. He was 82.

Block Communications Inc. said it will lay off 136 people at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and 131 at the Blade of Toledo, a decision that will help cut costs at the two money-losing dailies where the company has been wrangling with unions for more than a year over concessions. [snip] Negotiations with the unions over a new contract have been ongoing for a year, with Block asking for wage and benefit concessions after years of losses. In March, members of the Newspaper Guild “celebrated” their 3,000th day without a raise with a pie party in the newsroom. Block told employees in...

Our Lady’s Request: Pray for the Dying! R. Jared Staudt“Pray, pray very much. Make sacrifices for sinners. Many souls go to hell, because no one is willing to help them with sacrifice.”-Our Lady of Fatima, July 13, 1917Today is the anniversary of the first apparition of Our Lady at Fatima, Portugal. It is also the anniversary of the assassination attempt on Pope St. John Paul II, when Our Lady of Fatima intervened at what seemed the moment of his death to save his life.This is fitting as Our Lady at Fatima appealed to us to assist those at the...

He’s been dead for eight years, but try telling that to the NYPD. Cops have barged into James Jordan Sr.’s family home looking for him more than a dozen times since he died in 2006 — prompting his exasperated relatives to finally post his death certificate on the front door. “I tell them over and over, ‘James isn’t here! He’s dead! It’s that simple. What’s so difficult to understand about that?’ ” the Brooklyn security guard’s widow, Karen, told The Post on Monday. James Jordan Sr., who died from diabetes at age 46, was last arrested in 1996 — for turnstile-jumping,...

Two teenage boys were killed after attempting to burglarize a home along Arcade Boulevard. Sacramento Police responded to a burglary just after midnight on Sunday morning. When they arrived, they found two suspects had been shot and killed by the occupants. Neighbors said the owner is an elderly woman, who has been a victim of several burglaries since her husband passed away. “This Easter, she was robbed, and so she had replaced her deadbolt locks with double locking deadbolts and they still got in after that,” friend and neighbor, Celeste Gawehn said. Gawehn said her the woman asked a family...

HELENA, Mont. -- A western Montana man charged in the shooting death of a 17-year-old exchange student in his garage is receiving death threats and is afraid to leave his home, the man's attorney said Tuesday. Markus Kaarma, 29, was released from jail Monday after posting a $30,000 bond on a charge of deliberate homicide in the death of Diren Dede of Hamburg, Germany. Since then, Kaarma, his partner Janelle Pflager and their 10-month-old baby won't leave their Missoula home after receiving the threats, attorney Paul Ryan said. "They're really on edge about what's going to happen to them and...

Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction espouses the same ideology of destroying Israel as Hamas, with which it signed a unity deal last Wednesday, according to newly revealed video segments of a senior Fatah official. Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi last week posted a video to YouTube of his comments from a pro-terrorist ceremony in Gaza. In his speech mere days before the unity deal, Tirawi said Gaza "will return to the bosom of legitimacy." Tirawi added "the homeland...is...all of Palestine, from its [Jordan] River to its [Mediterranean] Sea," describing a map that effectively wipes out the...

An Italian man was crushed to death on Thursday by a giant crucifix dedicated to the late Pope John Paul II, just days before the Polish pontiff will be made a saint in a ceremony at the Vatican. In a bizarre coincidence, the 21-year-old man was reported to have been living in a street named after Pope John XXIII – who will also be canonised in the ceremony on Sunday, in an event that is unprecedented in the 2,000 year history of the Catholic Church. The man, named as Marco Gusmini, was posing for a photograph with a group of...

The Illinois Medicaid program paid an estimated $12 million for medical services for people listed as deceased in other state records, according to an internal state government memo. The memo dated Friday, which The Associated Press obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, says the state auditor compared clients enrolled in the Medicaid database with state death records dating back to 1970. Auditors identified overpayments for services to roughly 2,900 people after the date of their deaths... Republicans have pressed for the state to use a private company to verify Medicaid eligibility. Maximus Health Services was hired to scrub...

Texas executed by lethal injection on Wednesday a Mexican citizen who was convicted of bludgeoning a man to death and repeatedly raping the man's wife. Ramiro Hernandez, 44, was pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m. CDT at the Texas state death chamber in Huntsville after receiving a dose of lethal drugs, the Texas Department o Texas executes Mexican national for murder and rapef Criminal Justice said. Hernandez was the sixth convict executed in Texas this year and the 16th in the United States.

A mere two weeks since former JPMorgan banker, Kenneth Bellando jumped to his death, Bloomberg reports that the former CEO of Dutch Bank ABN Amro (and his wife and daughter) were found dead at their home after a possible "family tragedy." This expands the dismal list of senior financial services executive deaths to 12 in the last few months. The 57-year-old Jan Peter Schmittmann, was reportedly discovered by his other daughter when she arrived home that morning. Police declined to comment on the cirumstances of his (and his wife and daughter's) death. This is not the first C-level ABN Amro...

German woman, dead six months, found in front of TV BERLIN (Reuters) - The corpse of a 66-year-old German woman who died more than six months ago was found in her apartment, in front of a television set that was still on, the Frankfurter Neue Presse newspaper reported on Tuesday. The woman, in the town of Oberursel near Frankfurt, died of natural causes in a nightgown while watching TV. There was a program guide from September nearby, the newspaper said, describing the body as "partially mummified". Police said residents in the 30-apartment block had noticed an unpleasant smell in the...

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LifeNews has repeatedly chronicled cases of people who were prematurely declared dead or said to be in supposedly persistent vegetative states who ultimately recovered. Now comes the story of Lexi Hansen, a BYU student who suffered critical head injuries last week after being hit by a car. Hansen, 18, was alert and breathing on her own Tuesday, though she was still listed in critical but stable condition. She even tried to get out of her hospital bed. While she has a long road to recovery ahead, her family believes they have witnessed a miracle. lexihansen“When they brought her in, the...

LEXINGTON, Miss. - Workers at a Mississippi funeral home say they found a man alive and kicking when they opened a body bag. Holmes County Coroner Dexter Howard calls it a miracle that 78-year-old Walter Williams is alive. The coroner was called to Williams' home in Lexington, a community north of Jackson, where family members believed he had died. Howard says Williams had no pulse and was pronounced dead Wednesday at 9 p.m. Early Thursday, workers at Porter and Sons Funeral Home were preparing to embalm Williams when he started to kick in the body bag.

  The dismal trail of dead bankers continues. As The Journal Star reports, a successful Lincoln businessman and member of a prominent local family died last week. Former National Bank of Commerce CEO James Stuart Jr. was found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say what caused the death. This brings the total of banker deaths in recent weeks to 9 as Stuart is sadly survived by three sons and four daughters.  Mr Stuart's background (via The Journal Star), Stuart was a native of Lincoln and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with...

Recent English information on the mission is scarce, but it’s been widely reported that the mission will include a lander in a six-wheeled rover. This Chinese news agency notes that planners expect to put up an astronomical telescope, test remote control between the moon and the Earth, and explore areas around the landing location. You can also read (dated) background information on the mission on the Chinese National Space Administration’s website.

CENTENNIAL, Colo., Feb. 7 (UPI) -- The death of the chief of the American Title Co., under investigation by state insurance regulators, was a suicide, the Arapahoe County, Colo., coroner said. Richard Talley, 57, was found dead in the garage of his Centennial, Colo., home, earlier this week, the result of self-inflicted wounds from a nail gun, the Denver Post reported Friday. Talley, and the company he founded and led as chief executive officer, are under investigation by the Colorado Division of Insurance, a part of the state Department of Regulatory Agencies which regulates title companies, an agency spokesman confirmed...

In response to Three Prominent Bankers Found Dead From Apparent Suicides Inside A Week: On Monday I reported on the odd rash of suicides by financial execs in just the span of a week. There's one more rather grisly death to add to the growing list. Following the apparent suicides of 2 London bankers and a former Fed economist in the US, the Denver Post is reporting that Richard Talley, founder and CEO of American Title, was found dead in his home from self-inflicted nail-gun wounds.

The ugly rash of financial services executive suicides appears to have spread once again. Following the jumping deaths of 2 London bankers and a former-Fed economist in the US, The Denver Post reports Richard Talley, founder and CEO of American Title, was found dead in his home from self-inflicted wounds - from a nail-gun. Talley's company was under investigation from insurance regulators. Via The Denver Post, Richard Talley, 57, and the company he founded in 2001 were under investigation by state insurance regulators at the time of his death late Tuesday, an agency spokesman confirmed Thursday. It was unclear how...