| Today: Chen Offered University Fellowship , Mitt Wants 4 Percent Unemployment , Adam Yauch, a.k.a. MCA, the Beastie Boy Who Transcended Rap, Dead at 47 | | | | | | May 04, 2012 | | MANIA Football great Junior Seau, who was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound this week, was a ferocious warrior in a vicious game. The Daily Beast’s Buzz Bissinger on the tired “death by football” narrative that was pumped by the media immediately after his death—and why fans will never admit that violence is why we love watching the NFL. HIGHER ED In a deal that may bring an end to careful negotiations between the United States and China, blind activist Chen Guangcheng has been offered a university fellowship, American officials said Friday. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement Chen and his wife and children have been made an offer by an American university, and that the Chinese government should hold to its earlier indications that it would allow Chen to travel abroad for study. "The United States government expects that the Chinese government will expeditiously process his applications for these documents," Nuland said in the statement, adding that the U.S. would give his visa request "priority attention." GOALPOSTS Republican candidate Mitt Romney gave one big thumbs down to Friday’s jobs report, saying on Fox News that the 115,000 jobs added in April are “way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery.” Romney said he’d like to see half a million nonfarm payroll positions added to the economy each month. At an event in Pittsburgh Friday afternoon, Romney set the bar even higher, saying of the new unemployment rate of 8.1 percent, “Normally, that would be cause for celebration, but anything near 8 percent or over 4 percent is not cause for celebration.” Beastie in Peace Beastie Boy rapper Adam Yauch, 47, reportedly died Friday morning after fighting cancer for nearly three years, TMZ reports. Yauch, a.k.a. MCA, announced in July 2009 that he was being treated for cancer in his parotid gland and a lymph node, and has since undergone surgery and radiation. Yauch started the Beastie Boys in 1979 with Mike D, Mix Master Mike, and Ad Roc, and the band has won multiple Grammy awards over the years. The most recent sign that Yauch’s health was failing was his lack of attendance at the band’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland on April 14. LE SCANDALE Will le perp walk again? Investigators are examining fresh allegations that former IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted a prostitute at a Washington hotel in 2010, prosecutors in Lille told The New York Times. A Belgian prostitute has said that DSK and three of his associates gang-raped her after flying her and another escort working for a prostitute ring in France to the U.S. to participate in a sex party at the W Hotel in Washington, D.C. Strauss-Kahn has admitted to attending parties but denied that prostitutes were involved, though authorities believe the escorts were pimped out by a prostitution ring in Lille. | |
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