By JANIE McCAULEY
The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO - Barry Bonds hit No. 756 over the right-center field wall Tuesday night, and hammered home the point: Like him or not, legitimate or not, he is baseball’s new home run king. Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s storied record in the fifth inning, connecting on a 3-2 pitch from Washington’s Mike Bacsik.

Three days earlier, Bonds tied the Hammer with a shot to left-center in San Diego.

Conspicuous by their absence were the commissioner and Aaron himself.

Bud Selig was on hand for the tiebreaking homer, deciding to put baseball history ahead of the steroid allegations that have plagued the San Francisco Giants slugger. On this night, he sent an emissary, Major League Baseball executive vice president Jimmie Lee Solomon.

As for Aaron, he said all along he had no interest in being there whenever and wherever his 33-year-old mark was broken. He was true to his word, but he did offer a taped message of congratulations.

Absent, too, were the fans who held up asterisk signs, sure that Bonds wasn’t the real deal and that his power came from steroids.

Bonds didn’t face such suspicions at AT&T Park, in front of a loyal, home crowd that included his godfather, Hall of Famer Willie Mays. Bonds has always denied knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.

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Associated Press

ST. PAUL, Minn. - When conventional medical professionals refused to remove a 62-year-old local man’s testicles, police said he turned to mysterious “professionals” to relieve what he called chronic pain.

Now police want to find the fly-by-night surgeons.

“I have never in my life seen anything quite like that,” said St. Paul police spokesman Tom Walsh.

According to a search warrant affidavit filed Monday, the man complained of chronic pain and turned to conventional medical personnel to remove his testicles.

When they refused, the 62-year-old man said he hired other “professionals” to do the surgery. He would not tell officers who they were, saying he didn’t want to get them into trouble.

Police said a couple of weeks ago, two or three people operated on the man in his home. He was unconscious. When he woke up, his testicles were gone. So were his “professionals.”

His groin area was bleeding heavily, so he called his daughter. She called for help.

Police found an improvised operating room in the man’s house, with bright lights, an apparent operating table, a camera and various medical supplies and equipment. There was also blood in several rooms of the house.

The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Matt Damon is Hollywood’s best investment, says Forbes. com.

For every dollar he was paid for his last three roles, Damon brought in $29 of gross income, the site calculated.

That put the 36-year-old “Bourne” star atop a Forbes list of 22 film heavyweights, ranked by the same financial formula.

The first two “Bourne” movies grossed an estimated $850 million at the box office and in DVD sales, Forbes said. The third installment, “The Bourne Ultimatum,” opened last weekend and raked in $70.2 million at the box office. It was the biggest August film opening ever.

Brad Pitt took second place on the list, with a gross income return of $24 for each dollar of his pay, and Vince Vaughn tied with Johnny Depp for third with $21.

Pitt’s ex-wife, Jennifer Aniston, is the most profitable actress with a gross income return of $17. Pitt’s current significant other, Angelina Jolie, ranked sixth with $15.

“The biggest stars in Hollywood are not the actors that deliver the biggest returns,” Forbes senior editor Michael Ozanian said in a statement Monday.

Russell Crowe is at the bottom of the list. His last three films - “A Good Year,” “Cinderella Man” and “Master and Commander” - averaged just $5 in gross income for every dollar spent on the Oscar winner, Forbes said.

Movies starring the two Toms - Hanks and Cruise - averaged $12 and $11 of gross income, respectively. Will Smith and Denzel Washington each brought in $10.

On the comedic front, Adam Sandler brought in $9 per dollar earned, Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey $8 each).

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By JESSE J. HOLLAND
The Associated Press

CHICAGO - Democratic rivals accused Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of being too cozy with Lobbyists and Wall Street Tuesday, but the party’s presidential front-runner portrayed herself as a champion of working people and commonsense policies, drawing cheers from a crowd of union activists.

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, running second to Clinton in most polls, leveled some of the criticism but was forced to defend his own recent statements on Pakistan during the 90-minute debate sponsored by the AFL-CIO at Chicago’s Soldier Field.

“You will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune magazine,” said former senator John Edwards of North Carolina, a dig at Clinton, who recently was featured on the business publication’s cover.

Obama said U.S. trade agreements have tilted against workers because “corporate lobbyists” have had too much influence, a theme he has developed in recent days, especially when alluding to Clinton, the New York senator and former first lady.

Clinton, who appeared content with her front-runner status, replied: “The other campaigns have been using my name a lot.”

“For 15 years, I’ve stood up against the right-wing machine,” she said, as many in the crowd cheered. “If you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I’m your girl.”

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By PAUL FOY
The Associated Press

HUNTINGTON, Utah - Seismic activity has “totally shut down” efforts to reach six miners trapped below ground and has wiped out all the work done in the past day, a mine executive said Tuesday.

“We are back to square one underground,” said Robert E. Murray, chairman of Murray Energy Corp., owner of the Crandall Canyon mine.

Still, “we should know within 48 to 72 hours the status of those trapped miners,” Murray said. Rescue crews are drilling two holes into the mountain in an effort to communicate with the miners - provided they are still alive.

Meanwhile, unstable conditions below ground have thwarted rescuers’ efforts to break through to the miners, who have been trapped 1,500 feet below the surface for nearly two days, Murray said.

The seismic activity and other factors “have totally shut down our rescue efforts underground,” he said.

“There is absolutely no way that through our underground rescue effort we can reach the vicinity of the trapped miners for at least one week,” Murray said.

The National Earthquake Information Center in Colorado said 10 seismic shocks have been recorded since the collapse, but only one since 3 a.m. Tuesday. That one struck at 3:42 p.m. with a magnitude of 1.7.

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Hank Williams, Jr.
“That’s How They Do it in Dixie”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Airlines sued by victims of the September 11 attacks filed complaints with a U.S. court on Tuesday to compel testimony from FBI and CIA agents in a bid to make the federal government more culpable for not preventing the attacks.

In separate complaints filed in the U.S. Court for the Southern District of New York, seven U.S. airlines sought testimony from two members of a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency unit that investigated Osama Bin Laden and five current and former FBI agents who investigated al Qaeda.

Some relatives of the victims of September 11 have filed suit against the seven airlines - including AMR Corp.’s American Airlines and UAL Corp.’s United Airlines - seeking damages for personal injury and wrongful death.

The airlines said they needed the agents’ testimony to prove their actions were reasonable.

More at Reuters

By SALLY BUZBEE
The Associated Press

That troop surge just keeps workin’ great, doesn’t it, George? - JS

BAGHDAD - Four more U.S. troops and a British soldier have died in attacks, military officials said Tuesday, in a possible sign that extremists are regrouping after a drop in American deaths last month.

The spate of recent U.S. deaths - 19 so far in August - seems certain to intensify the debate over U.S. progress to calm Iraq and gain ground against militants ahead of a key September report to Congress.

U.S. deaths had dropped slightly in July to 79 - the lowest monthly tally since 70 were killed in November. Before July, more than 100 American forces died each month in the April-to-June period as the U.S. military struck out at insurgents on dangerous streets and cities across Iraq.

But U.S. commanders say rogue Shiite militias have stepped into the gap left as Sunni insurgents have been pushed back, and are now responsible for most attacks on Americans in Baghdad and surrounding districts. Such a trend would elevate fears that Iraqi forces are not yet able to maintain security even when insurgents are beaten back. Large numbers of Iraqi police are believed also to hold allegiances to Shiite militia groups.

The spike in deaths comes as the overall number of U.S. troops in Iraq has temporarily peaked at its all-time high - nearly 162,000 - as new units arrive to replace those on the way out, the Pentagon said.

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Associated Press

NEW YORK - Charlie Sheen claims ex-wife Denise Richards wants him to father a third child.

“There was a request for a donation,” Sheen tells syndicated TV show “Entertainment Tonight” in an interview that was to air Tuesday night. “Without getting into it here … there is a specific document relating to this that I am going to reserve for a court.”

When asked if he would ever consider such a possibility, the 41-year-old actor says: “I would sooner, in exactly what I’m wearing, walk on the surface of the moon. Does that answer it?”

A spokeswoman for Richards, 36, wasn’t immediately available for comment.

Sheen and Richards divorced last year. They have two daughters, 3-year-old Sam and 2-year-old Lola.

Sheen, who is nominated for an Emmy Award for his role in the CBS sitcom “Two and a Half Men,” is engaged to real estate investor Brooke Mueller, 29. His screen credits include “Platoon” and the “Hot Shots!” movies.

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By ROHAN SULLIVAN
Associated Press

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said Tuesday that talk of U.S. military strikes against al-Qaida in Pakistan only hurts the fight against terrorism, and his troops bombarded militant hideouts in their strongest response yet to a month of anti-government attacks. Ten suspected militants were killed.

The assault by artillery and helicopter gunships “knocked out” two compounds in Daygan village in the tribal belt near the border with Afghanistan that were being used as staging posts for attacks on security forces, said Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, the army’s top spokesman.

Ten militants were killed and at least seven were wounded in the operation, about 10 miles west of Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan region, he said.

No ground troops were used in the operation, and the report on militant casualties was based on information from “local sources,” he said without elaborating.

There were at least four smaller’scale bombings and shootings in the border region Tuesday, the latest in almost daily violence that has intensified pressure on Musharraf to crack down on militants in the area.

Musharraf, a key ally in Washington’s war against terrorism, told visiting Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., that comments by senior U.S. officials and presidential hopefuls about the possibility of unilateral U.S. strikes within the country were not helpful. Musharraf met Durbin in the southern city of Karachi.

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