Grab a cup of your favorite morning beverage and take a look at some stories that may have fallen through the cracks of the weekend news cycle.

A New Record Setter

CHICO, Calif. - Elsie McLean thought she might have lost her ball on the par-3,
100-yard fourth hole at Bidwell Park. Instead, the 102-year-old Chico woman became
the oldest golfer ever to make a hole-in-one on a regulation course.

Because of the slope of the green, McLean and her partners couldn’t see where her
ball landed after she teed off. “Where’s my ball?” McLean asked.Her friends, Elizabeth Rake and Kathy Crowder, found it in the cup.
“I said, ‘Oh, my Lord. It can’t be true. It can’t be true.’ I was so excited. And the
girls were absolutely overcome,” McLean said.

It was McLean’s first ace.

McLean, who used a driver, broke the age record of 101 set by Harold Stilson in 2001
at Deerfield Country Club in Florida.

McLean, who has been featured in golf magazines before, will appear on “The Tonight
Show with Jay Leno” on April 24 to celebrate her accomplishment.

“For an old lady,” she said, “I still hit the ball pretty good.”

Hurricane Forecaster Says Gore Is A “Gross Alarmist”

NEW ORLEANS - A top hurricane forecaster called Al Gore “a gross alarmist” Friday
for making an Oscar-winning documentary about global warming.

“He’s one of these guys that preaches the end of the world type of things. I think
he’s doing a great disservice and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” Dr.
William Gray said in an interview with The Associated Press at the National Hurricane
Conference in New Orleans, where he delivered the closing speech.

A spokeswoman said Gore was on a flight from Washington, D.C., to Nashville Friday;
he did not immediately respond to Gray’s comments. (nor does he need to)

Gray, an emeritus professor at the atmospheric science department at Colorado State
University, has long railed against the theory that heat-trapping gases generated by
human activity are causing the world to warm.

Over the past 24 years, Gray, 77, has become known as America’s most reliable
hurricane forecaster; recently, his mentee, Philip Klotzbach, has begun doing the
bulk of the forecasting work. Gray’s statements came the same day the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change approved a report that concludes the
world will face dire consequences to food and water supplies, along with increased
flooding and other dramatic weather events, unless nations adapt to climate change.

Rather than global warming, Gray believes a recent uptick in strong hurricanes is
part of a multi-decade trend of alternating busy and slow periods related to ocean
circulation patterns. Contrary to mainstream thinking, Gray believes ocean temperatures
are going to drop in the next five to 10 years.

“This Is Your Captain Swearing”

ROMULUS, Mich. - A Northwest Airlines flight was canceled because the pilot was
yelling obscenities during a cell phone conversation while people were boarding, and
cursed one passenger, a federal official said Saturday.

The pilot of the Las Vegas-to-Detroit flight was apparently in a heated cell phone
conversation in the cockpit, then went into a lavatory, locked the door and continued
the conversation, Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Saturday.

“Passengers who were boarding the aircraft could hear his end of it,” Gregor said.

Las Vegas police were sent Friday to McCarran International Airport to investigate,
Gregor said. Authorities were told that the pilot cursed one passenger who confronted
him, Gregor said.There were 180 passengers and five crew on the flight to Detroit
Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Northwest Airlines Corp. said in a statement.

The name of the captain, who Gregor described as a veteran pilot, wasn’t released.
Gregor said Northwest removed the pilot from the aircraft and returned him to his
home base in Detroit for an investigation. He said it was up to Northwest to
determine what would happen to the pilot.

The Stuff You Find On The Freeway

COVINGTON, La. - A boxed bathtub fell from the bed of a pickup truck and slid into a
motorcycle’s path, critically injuring the 72-year-old cyclist, state police said.

Charles S. Warren was traveling on Interstate 12 on Saturday when he was thrown from
his motorcycle after hitting the bathtub. Warren was being treated at St. Tammany Parish Hospital.

A spokesperson said the motorcycle, the box and the bathtub all ended up in the grass median.
The pickup’s driver, 32-year-old Shain Autumn Springfield, was booked with negligent
injury and driving with an unsecured load.

al-Sadr Calls For Uprising

BAGHDAD - Renegade cleric Muqtada al-Sadr urged the Iraqi army and police to stop
cooperating with the United States and told his guerrilla fighters to concentrate on
pushing American forces out of the country, according to a statement issued Sunday.

Stamped with al-Sadr’s official seal, the statement was distributed in the Shiite
holy city of Najaf on Sunday - a day before a large demonstration there, called for
by al-Sadr, to mark the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad.

“You, the Iraqi army and police forces, don’t walk alongside the occupiers, because
they are your archenemy,” the statement said. Its authenticity could not be verified.

If al-Sadr’s fighters will be wearing anything close to what’s in this photo, they won’t be hard to spot.

“YO! Taxi!”

NEW YORK - Betty and Bob Matas have retired and are moving to Arizona, but like many
New Yorkers they don’t drive, and they don’t want their cats to travel all that way
in an airliner cargo hold.

Their solution: “Hey, cabbie.”

They met taxi driver Douglas Guldeniz when they hailed his cab after a shopping trip
several weeks ago. They got to talking about their upcoming move, and “we said ‘Do you want to come?’” said Bob. “And he said ‘Sure.’”It was initially a gag, Matas said, but as they talked over the ensuing weeks it became reality.

They plan to leave Tuesday on the 2,400-mile trip to Sedona, Ariz., with Guldeniz
driving his yellow SUV cab 10 hours a day for a flat fee of $3,000, plus gas, meals
and lodging.

They’re getting a break. The standard, metered fare would be about $5,000 - each way,
according to David Pollack, executive director of the Committee for Taxi Safety, a
drivers’ group. But city Taxi and Limousine Commission rules direct drivers and
passengers to negotiate a flat fare for trips outside the city and a few suburban
areas.

It’s also a good deal for Guldeniz.

“This job is not easy, and I want to do something different,” said Guldeniz.
“I want to have some good memories.”

Goodbye To “B.C.” Cartoonist

Cartoonist Johnny Hart, whose award-winning “B.C.” comic strip appeared in more
than 1,300 newspapers worldwide, died Saturday while working at his home in Endicott.
He was 76.

“He had a stroke,” Hart’s wife, Bobby, said Sunday. “He died at his storyboard.”
“B.C.,” populated by prehistoric cavemen and dinosaurs, was launched in 1958 and
eventually appeared in more than 1,300 newspapers with an audience of 100 million,
according to Creators Syndicate Inc., which distributes it.

“He was generally regarded as one of the best cartoonists we’ve ever had,” Hart’s
friend Mell Lazarus, creator of the “Momma” and “Miss Peach” comic strips, said from
his California home. “He was totally original. ‘B.C’ broke ground and led the way for
a number of imitators, none of which ever came close.”

New York Auto Show (from the New York Times)

Some great looking cars and interesting article about some of the new models on the way.

Personally, I still fondly remember the day’s my father and I would go to the Chicago Auto Show at the Old Merchandise Mart. We no longer attend. I’m in California and Dad, now 90 years old, lives in Arkansas.

Monday Morning Editorial
from Yesterday’s Washington Post

“Stealing From The IRS”

Have a great week!
Jim

Al GoreIraqObituaries