Leo- Thursday, May 6, 2010
This is a tough time to make decisions and indeed you’d be wise to avoid making any permanent choices now. If you must, that’s fine. Something things can’t wait. Certain moments must be seized when they arise in case they never come back again. But if you do reach a final verdict on something, be warned that it’s not really final. It will be up for revision later. This is a work-in-progress period of time. Concentrate. Focus. And you’ll get it exactly right….eventually!
Video Gamer Wins $1M for Perfect Score
24-Year-Old Alabama Man Pitches Flawless Baseball Game, Plans to Pay Off Mortgage, Start Family with $$
An Alabama man is $1 million richer because of his skillful pitching -- in a video game.
Two months ago, Wade McGilberry, 24, of Semmes, Ala., entered a contest to be the first person to pitch a perfect baseball game in the video game "MLB 2K10."
McGilberry told "Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith he didn't play video games for hours at a time before the contest. He said he only played about a half-hour to an hour every day -- "until his wife (got) home."
And he didn't play sports games. He said he previously played only first-person shooter games, such as "Halo 3" and "Call of Duty."
But that changed when he learned about the contest.
McGilberry said, after he got his wife Katie's permission to compete, he even talked with her about missing work to devote his time to the game.
As it turns out, he didn't have to miss work at all.
McGilberry tried several times to pitch the perfect game, getting stuck repeatedly on the fifth inning. In addition to the stress of playing online, McGilberry had to verify he was playing the game by videotaping his play.
However, after five tries and finally reaching the seventh inning, he knew he was onto something.
He said, "I was thinking, 'I've made it this far, you know, why not just, you know, hit, get everybody one more time.'"
He pitched the perfect game on his sixth try. But ever since, McGilberry has yet to repeat the feat.
He told Smith, "I've tried several times."
McGilberry's reward came as a total surprise. The video game company 2K Games called McGilberry under the subterfuge that he was a "finalist" in the contest.
He explained, "They actually called me on Sunday afternoon and told me they were going to come and they had to check out my Xbox because I was one of the finalists and they had to make sure that I didn't have the Xbox rigged."
But instead, they showed up with an oversized check for $1 million.
McGilberry said his wife was speechless.
The couple plans to pay off their mortgage, and with the money left over, he said they plan to start a family.
McGilberry said, "We were waiting for our finances to get in order to do that."
Russian Destroyer Frees Hijacked Oil Tanker
By Alan Cowell
Published: May 6, 2010
PARIS — The crew of a Russian destroyer engaged in a “robust” firefight with pirates early Thursday and freed 23 merchant seamen who had been taken hostage on a Russian oil tanker a day earlier, the European anti-piracy naval force said on Thursday.
The tanker had been on its way from Sudan to China with a cargo of crude oil when it was hijacked Wednesday morning abut 350 miles east of Socotra, an island in the Gulf of Aden. The seizure seemed a setback for the European Union Naval Force, which has recently been claiming successes for its new strategy of intercepting pirate vessels far out at sea before they can attack shipping lines.
Cmdr. John Harbour, a spokesman for the European force, said Thursday that the Russian warship had freed the tanker, the Moscow University, after its crew members locked themselves into the rudder compartment of the ship.
Commander Harbour said a helicopter from the Russian destroyer, the Marshal Shaposhnikov, approached the tanker “and was fired upon by pirates.” The destroyer, knowing the merchant crew was locked down and safe, turned its guns onto the superstructure of the tanker as the pirates put up resistance. The Russian sailors offered a “robust” response, Commander Harbour said, and the pirates, thought to be from Somalia, eventually surrendered to a boarding party.
The British-based naval force in a statement called the operation “a dramatic rescue.”
In a statement on Wednesday, the naval force, which is made up of units from nine countries, had said the 106,474-ton Moscow University was heading east into the Indian Ocean when it was seized. The ship, carrying 86,000 tons of crude oil, was flying the Liberian flag but was operated by a Russian company with an all-Russian crew. The cargo was worth an estimated $52 million.
“According to the master, a group of people armed with automatic weapons opened fire and tried to board the vessel using two speedboats,” the Novorossiysk Shipping Company said on its Web site on Wednesday. The master of the tanker then alerted the Russian destroyer, which sped to the scene.
Piracy has flourished in Somalia as the country has descended into chaos, penury and conflict between a weak United States-backed government and radical Islamist groups seeking its ouster.
The threat became more complex last weekend when radical Islamist insurgents overran Xarardheere, one of Somalia’s best-known pirate havens, raising a possibility that militants with links to Al Qaeda could threaten the sea lanes and tap into the lucrative business of holding ships and crews for ransom. According to maritime experts, ship owners have paid Somali pirates more than $100 million in ransom in recent years — a vast sum in a land of such grinding poverty.
The potential rich pickings have encouraged pirates to prey on vessels both in the busy Gulf of Aden and up to 1,200 miles offshore in the Indian Ocean.
Somali pirates carried out a record number of attacks and hijackings last year, despite the deployment of international warships. The Piracy Reporting Center of the International Maritime Bureau said pirates operating across the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia attacked 214 vessels in 2009.
In recent weeks, the European force has made public several episodes in which warships thwarted pirates either before or during attacks. On Tuesday, the force said, a Greek warship, the Elli, closed on a high-speed skiff with seven people aboard 50 miles south of Mukalla in Yemen. When the skiff refused to stop, “Elli used her main gun which had the effect of stopping the skiff and the persons on board surrendered.”
In another incident on Thursday morning, a Swedish aircraft attached to the European force spotted a suspicious whaler and two skiffs about 400 miles northwest of the Seychelle Islands. The force refers to such vessels as a Pirate Action Group, with the whaler typically acting as a “mother ship” for smaller and speedier attack craft.
A French warship, the Lafayette, was dispatched to the position, the force said, and as one of the skiffs tried to flee, a French sniper disabled its engines with rifle fire. Twelve pirates were reported to have been apprehended, along with a variety of weapons and ladders, with the assistance of a Dutch warship, the Johan De Witt.
In a statement on Wednesday, the European force said a 39,833-ton South Korean vessel, Ocean Trader, came under attack by Somali pirates 200 miles northwest of the Comoros Islands. But the crew “managed to evade the attack and all personnel are reported to be well,” the force said.
Last month, in another large and brazen seizure, Somali pirates grabbed a supertanker carrying a cargo of crude oil worth as much as $170 million. The South Korean-operated Samho Dream was en route from Iraq to the United States. The South Korean Foreign Ministry said the pirates are still holding the ship about 4 miles off the Somali coast, with a South Korean warship nearby.
According to news reports, Somali pirates are currently holding almost 20 vessels and about 300 crew members seized in recent months.
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