Danny Puff

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star known more for his body piercings and tattoos than international diplomacy skills, said on Sunday he returned from North Korea with a message from its leader Kim Jong-un for President Barack Obama - "call me."

Rodman appeared on ABC's "This Week" program a few days after an unlikely meeting with Kim in the North Korea capital Pyongyang, where Rodman was working on a documentary about basketball.

With the international community concerned about North Korea's nuclear weapons program and continued belligerence, Rodman had extremely rare access to Kim. They attended a basketball game, where they were seen laughing and talking at courtside, and also had dinner together.

"He wants Obama to do one thing - call him," Rodman said. "He said, 'If you can, Dennis - I don't want (to) do war. I don't want to do war.' He said that to me."

Rodman said he told Kim, who followed his father and grandfather as leader of the isolated totalitarian nation in December 2011, that his love of basketball could serve as a foundation of a relationship with the U.S. president, who also is a basketball fan and plays regularly.

"(Kim) loves basketball. And I said the same thing. I said, Obama loves basketball.' Let's start there," Rodman said.

The U.S. government disavowed any connection to Rodman's trip. When asked about Kim's "call me" message, Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said on Sunday the United States already has communication channels with North Korea.

"We have urged the North Korean leadership to heed President Obama's call to choose the path of peace and come into compliance with its international obligations," Hayden said. "Instead of spending money on staging sporting events, the North Korean regime should focus on the well-being of its own people who have been starved, imprisoned and denied their human rights."

Last week, Rodman spoke warmly of Kim, 30, and described him as "an awesome kid."

On "This Week," he defended his new friendship with a man considered a violator of human rights and a threat to world peace by saying, "I'm not apologizing for him. You know, he's a good guy to me. Guess what? He's my friend. I don't condone what he does ... (but) as a person to person - he's my friend."

When pressed on North Korea's human rights record, Rodman said, "But as far as what he does, you deal with it."

Rodman, appearing in the interview wearing a jacket covered with images of U.S. dollars, a baseball cap and big sunglasses, dismissed Kim's comments about wanting to destroy the United States as rhetoric stemming from his father.

He called him a strong and "very humble" man who "loves power, he loves control."

Rodman said he intends to return to North Korea someday.

Rodman played on five NBA championship teams during his basketball career, which ran from 1986 to 2000. He played for five teams and in his peak years he was the league's top rebounder and one of its best defenders. He was chosen for the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011.

Rodman's basketball skills were matched by his flamboyance - party lifestyle, multi-colored hair, blankets of tattoos, piercings in his ears, nose, lips and eyebrows and showing up in a wedding gown, complete with veil, to promote his autobiography.

(Additional reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Will Dunham)

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SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) Bobby Rogers, a founding member of Motown group The Miracles and a collaborator with Smokey Robinson, has died. He was 73.

Motown Museum board member Allen Rawls says Rogers died Sunday morning at his home.

Rogers had been ill for several years. He lived in the Detroit suburb of Southfield.

Rogers formed the group in 1956 with cousin Claudette Rogers, Pete Moore, Ronnie White and Robinson. Their hits included "I Second That Emotion" and "The Tears of a Clown." Rogers and The Miracles were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

He shared songwriting credits with Robinson on The Temptations' "The Way You Do the Things You Do," The Contours' "First I Look at the Purse" and The Miracles' "Going to a Go-Go."

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LOS ANGELES (AP) George Lopez is taking over as master of ceremonies of the annual Playboy Jazz Festival.

The comedian was announced as the festival's new host Thursday at an event at the Playboy Mansion.

"This is iconic," said the former star of the ABC sitcom "George Lopez" and the TBS talk show "Lopez Tonight." ''I've never been here before. I was married for 17 years. I couldn't even have a Playboy air freshener."

Bill Cosby previously served as the festival's host for more than 30 years. Cosby was a fixture at the gathering of jazz luminaries since the first festival was held in 1979.

Lopez said Cosby called him to give him advice on the gig. His tips included not letting musicians in his dressing room "because they'll eat all your food and drink all your drink," joked Lopez.

This year's show will feature such artists as Herbie Hancock, Jeffrey Osborne, Sheila E. and Grace Kelly, who were on hand at Thursday's event.

The Playboy Jazz Festival is scheduled for June 15 and 16 at the Hollywood Bowl.

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SEFFNER, Florida (Reuters) - Florida rescue workers ended their efforts on Saturday to recover the body of a man who disappeared into a sinkhole that swallowed his bedroom while he slept and will demolish the suburban Tampa home due to its dangerous conditions, a rescue spokeswoman said.

Two nearby houses have been evacuated because the sinkhole has weakened the ground under them, and their residents probably will never be allowed inside again, said Jessica Damico of Hillsborough County Fire Rescue.

Jeff Bush, a 36-year-old landscaper, is presumed dead after vanishing into the sinkhole that opened suddenly beneath his room on Thursday night. Five other people in the house were getting ready for bed when they heard a loud crash and Jeff screaming.

His brother was rescued after jumping into the hole and furiously digging in an effort to find him.

Authorities used listening devices and cameras at the scene of the 30-foot (9-meter) wide hole in the ground but detected no signs of life.

"There's nothing compatible with life in this situation," Damico said. "There's no way of possible survival."

She said demolition of the home would begin early on Sunday.

"Our data has come back, and there is absolutely no way we can do any kind of recovery without endangering lives of workers," she said.

Jeff Bush's brother, 35-year-old Jeremy Bush, feared earlier on Saturday that his brother was lost forever. A small memorial of balloons and flowers for Jeff Bush had formed near the home on Saturday morning.

"I thank the Lord for not taking my daughter and the rest of my family," said Jeremy, who worked with his brother in landscaping.

'EVERYTHING WAS SINKING'

Jeremy himself was rescued from the sinkhole by the first responder to the emergency call, Douglas Duvall of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office. When Duvall entered Jeff Bush's bedroom, he saw a widening chasm but no sign of Jeff.

"The hole took the entire bedroom," said Duvall. "You could see the bed frame, the dresser, everything was sinking."

Norman Wicker, 48, the father of Jeremy's fianc e who also lived in the house, said "it sounded like a car ran into the back of the house."

Damico said the hole would be stabilized after the house is demolished to ensure the safety of the surrounding area. However, the residents of two neighbouring homes who were forced to evacuate are unlikely to return, she said.

Soil samples showed the sinkhole had compromised the ground beneath the homes, engineers and public safety officials said on Saturday.

The residents of those houses were allowed 20 to 30 minutes in their homes on Saturday to gather belongings. Fire-fighters and residents formed an assembly line to move items out of the houses and into SUVs and trucks.

"They'll most likely never be allowed back in their houses," Damico said.

Before demolishing the home where Jeff Bush lived, workers will try to move part of it to a safe space on the sidewalk to let family members retrieve some heirlooms and personal belongings on Sunday, she said.

The risk of sinkholes is common in Florida due to the state's porous geological bedrock, according to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

As rainwater filters down into the ground, it dissolves the rock, causing erosion that can lead to underground caverns, which cause sinkholes when they collapse.

(Additional reporting by Brendan O'Brien and Colleen Jenkins; Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Xavier Briand)

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NEW YORK (AP) Gay advocacy group GLAAD says Madonna will present CNN's Anderson Cooper with an award for openly gay media professionals.

GLAAD told The Associated Press on Saturday that the singer has been chosen to give Cooper the Vito Russo Award at the 24th annual GLAAD Media Awards in New York City on March 16.

GLAAD President Herndon Graddick says Madonna and Cooper are longtime friends who have both used their careers to support lesbian, gay and transgender people.

Cooper declined to speak publicly about his sexuality for years. But last July he gave blogger Andrew Sullivan permission to publish an email in which Cooper said he was gay and "couldn't be more happy."

Russo helped found GLAAD and wrote a book about gay people in the movies called "The Celluloid Closet."

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LOS ANGELES (AP) A judge has dismissed all but one count in a civil lawsuit by Michael Jackson's mother against concert giant AEG Live, which hired a doctor who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter in the singer's death.

Superior Court Judge Yvette Palazuelos' ruling Thursday means that Katherine Jackson will have a trial on her claim that AEG negligently hired and supervised former cardiologist Conrad Murray. The ruling dismisses claims that AEG could be held liable for Murray's conduct and breached its duty to properly care for the pop superstar.

AEG Live was promoting a series of comeback concerts by Michael Jackson in London titled "This Is It." Jackson died in June 2009 while in final preparations for the shows after Murray administered a lethal dose of the anesthetic propofol in the singer's bedroom.

Katherine Jackson's attorney Kevin Boyle was not immediately available for comment but argued at a hearing Monday that AEG controlled Murray's actions and failed to properly investigate him before agreeing to pay him to work as the singer's physician.

He cited Murray's debt problems as a red flag that AEG should have spotted and contends the company created a serious conflict between his responsibility to Jackson and his own financial well-being.

Jackson died at age 50 before a contract that would have paid Murray $150,000 a month was finalized.

AEG attorney Marvin Putnam has said Murray was not employed by the promoter and he expects the company to win at trial. He said Katherine Jackson's lawyers will be unable to prove that AEG should have foreseen that Murray was a danger to the "Thriller" singer.

A trial is scheduled to begin April 2.

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP .

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CHICAGO (AP) Michelle Obama says it was "absolutely not surprising" to her that her satellite appearance at the Academy Awards ceremony provoked a national conversation about whether it was appropriate, after some conservative critics accused her of selfishly crashing the event in an attempt to upstage it.

She attributed the chatter to a culture shift that has spawned legions of bloggers, tweeters and others who talk about anything and everything all the time.

"Shoot, my bangs set off a national conversation. My shoes can set off a national conversation. That's just sort of where we are. We've got a lot of talking going on," the first lady said only somewhat jokingly Thursday before an appearance in Chicago, her hometown. "It's like everybody's kitchen-table conversation is now accessible to everybody else so there's a national conversation about anything."

In what was not the first-ever Oscar appearance by a first lady, Mrs. Obama was beamed live from the White House into Sunday's ceremony in Los Angeles to unseal the envelope and announce that the night's final award, for Best Picture, would go to "Argo." In 2002, Laura Bush appeared at the ceremony on videotape.

Americans have long been fascinated by their first ladies, scrutinizing everything from their clothes and hair to the issues they promote and how they raise their children. Mrs. Obama acknowledged that she and President Barack Obama have added appeal, and perhaps sometimes are subject to extra scrutiny, because they are the first black family in the White House but also a young couple (she turned 49 last month; he's 51) with young children (daughters Sasha, 11, and Malia, 14).

She said she doesn't give a second thought to critical comments about what she does as first lady.

Her strategy, she said, is to do things that further her larger goals and Oscar night fit with her support for the arts. She recently invited the director and cast members from the Oscar-nominated film "Beasts of the Southern Wild" to the White House to participate in a question-and-answer session with students from Washington and New Orleans who had seen the film at the executive mansion.

"I just don't think about that stuff," said Mrs. Obama, who was asked for her reaction to the criticism during an interview with a small group of reporters who were invited to accompany her on a three-city tour marking the third anniversary of her "Let's Move" campaign against childhood obesity.

She said she was astounded by the buzz about cutting her hair to add bangs, which she unveiled on her birthday, just before inauguration weekend.

Asked if she was surprised that the bangs made the news, Mrs. Obama said: "I was, I have to say. I'm like, 'it's a haircut.'"

In the interview, Mrs. Obama also revealed that she used a lot of salty language as a 10-year-old, which she said she didn't realize until the year it cost her the title of "best camper" at the day camp she and her brother, Craig, attended every summer. The experience taught her a lesson, she said.

"I was going through my cursing stage," she said. "I didn't realize until my camp counselor at the end came up and said, 'You know, you would have been best camper in your age group but you curse so much.' And I was thinking, 'Really. Was it that noticeable? And I thought I was being cool. Little did I know I lost 'best camper.' I didn't curse again."

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BERLIN (Reuters) - Protesters tried to stop demolition of one of the last remaining stretches of the Berlin Wall on Friday, decades after jubilant Berliners tore down sections of the hated symbol of the Cold War.

Blowing whistles and brandishing placards with slogans such as "Berlin is selling itself and its history", around 200 people gathered at a 1.3-km painted section of the wall known as the East Side Gallery, adorned with the work of artists such as Keith Haring and Gerald Scarfe.

Developers plan to build luxury apartments close to the open air gallery but builders had to stop tearing down the wall on Friday due to protests and local police said they had removed their machinery by late afternoon.

"We need this part of the wall because with its paintings by international artists it symbolises the way in which we managed to defeat dictatorship peacefully," said Peter Flenz, a 72-year-old retired civil servant.

Communist authorities in the former East Germany built the wall in 1961 as an "anti-fascist protective barrier". The 3.6-metre-high concrete structure divided Berlin for 28 years and an estimated 1,000 East Germans were killed trying to escape to the west after its construction.

Most of the wall was pulled down or chiselled away after it was breached on November 9, 1989, when ecstatic crowds of East and West Germans surged through checkpoints and on to the wall, hacking bits off it and dancing on top of the structure that for so long had symbolised their division.

The East Side Gallery, on the banks of the River Spree, was declared a historic monument in 1992 and has since become one of Berlin's main tourist attractions.

One section features a giant image of East German leader Erich Honecker and his Soviet counterpart Leonid Brezhnev kissing each other on the lips.

By Friday, the wall's rounded top had been removed from around a 20-metre stretch, a section which formed part of a mural depicting Berlin's Brandenburg Gate was missing and another part, attached to a crane, was ready to be torn down.

Berliners appealed to the city's mayor, Klaus Wowereit, to halt the demolition.

"Mr Wowereit, don't tear down this wall," a message scrawled on the wall said in a reference to a 1987 speech by the then U.S. President Ronald Reagan, who begged the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev to "tear down this wall!".

Protesters jostled with police as they tried to insert a full-size painted replica of the missing section of the wall into the gap.

"It's crucial that we keep this memorial so that history cannot repeat itself," said Lisa Baur, 29, a graphic designer. "It's also important from an economic point of view because lots of tourists come here to see it."

Critics said the demolition and development of luxury flats were symptoms of what they see as the gentrification of Berlin, a city that Wowereit once branded "poor but sexy".

Berlin-based investment group Living Bauhaus has planning permission to build a 14-storey luxury apartment block featuring floor-to-ceiling glass fronts behind the open air gallery.

"Berlin attracts a lot of people from all over the world. With Living Levels we are accommodating the demand from flat hunters, owners and investors for affordable living space," Living Bauhaus said in a statement.

The group said an escape route from a riverside stretch of park was being cut through the East Side Gallery for safety reasons and would have been built even without their apartment block. Planning authorities were not available for comment.

(Reporting by Michelle Martin; Editing by Stephen Brown and Rosalind Russell)

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NEW YORK (AP) Sean Hannity's cable television showdown this week with a Democratic congressman has become more than just a verbal schoolyard brawl. It's an opportunity for money, attention and ratings.

Democratic and Republican advocates are using Tuesday's Fox News Channel appearance by Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison for fundraising, even as the newly minted feud continues. Hannity continued a discussion about Ellison's career on his show Friday.

Ellison opened his appearance on Tuesday's show by calling Hannity "the worst excuse for a journalist that I've ever seen," and their discussion descended from there. Hannity, who accused the congressman of "ranting," ended the gripping back-and-forth after eight minutes because "our audience deserves better."

The congressman appeared upset by a Hannity commentary just before his appearance that ridiculed President Barack Obama's speeches about fiscal negotiations.

Video clips of the confrontation spread online, and it swiftly became a partisan talking point. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin tweeted that Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, waged a "verbal jihad," or holy war, against Hannity. Martin Bashir, on his liberal MSNBC talk show, called the appearance "the utter evisceration of Sean Hannity on his own broadcast."

The lobbying group Progressive Change Campaign Committee sent out a solicitation to its supporters, urging them each to donate $3 to Ellison's campaign account or send him a thank you note. By Friday afternoon, the solicitation had raised $21,600, co-founder Adam Green said, with an additional $3,000 for a foundation supporting liberal congressional candidates.

Another liberal group, Democracy For America, also sent out an email to its supporters seeking donations in Ellison's name, spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.

"If you attack a hero of our movement, we're going to come back even stronger," Sroka said.

Meanwhile, the Minnesota Republican Party posted a clip of the appearance on its website and asked for contributions. According to the website, nearly $47,000 of a fundraising goal of $50,000 had been pledged.

Hannity returned to the issue on his show Wednesday and Thursday, referring to an "epic meltdown" by the "incoherent congressman." A "Hannity" report Thursday explored Ellison's ties to polarizing personalities such as Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan.

"If I'm called a yellow journalist, immoral, a liar as a matter of fair play, I did a little research on him, and he's got some views and friendships that have not been fully vetted," Hannity said in an interview Friday. "He sparked it. He initiated it."

He denied that he was out for revenge.

"I follow my gut and instincts on what interests me," he said. "The fact that a congressman wants to start a fight with me, that's his business. I have the ability to fight back, and I will."

The spat could prove a welcome jolt of interest for Hannity when cable news ratings are sagging months since the presidential election. Hannity's average viewership of 1.9 million people in February was down 11 percent from February 2012, with a much sharper decline among young viewers, the Nielsen ratings company said.

Hannity said his ratings have been stabilizing. His Thursday night show, which featured Washington Post writer Bob Woodward, drew 2.5 million viewers.

Media critic Howard Kurtz, of The Daily Beast, said it was Ellison who had picked the fight and suggested he may have been trying to seek attention.

Ellison was unavailable for comment Friday, his spokesman said. In a statement issued Thursday, Ellison criticized Hannity's "personal attacks."

"Representative Ellison was invited to appear on 'Hannity' to discuss the sequester, an issue that will harm thousands of his constituents and the American economy, and accepted the invitation for that reason," spokesman Jeremy Slevin said.

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MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) Residents of the southern Vermont town that was once the home-in-exile of former Soviet dissident and writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn are considering whether to convert an historic church into an exhibit to honor the Nobel laureate's 18 years in Cavendish.

At Town Meeting the locals' annual decision-making gathering and the venue where Solzhenitsyn once addressed his neighbors when he arrived in 1977 voters will be asked whether they should take ownership of a small stone Universalist Church and use it to honor him.

Solzhenitsyn, who spent eight years in prison and labor camps for criticizing Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, said he chose Cavendish for its resemblance to his homeland and its small-town personality.

"I dislike very much large cities with their empty and fussy lives," he told his new neighbors. "I like very much the simple way of life and the population here, the simplicity and the human relationship. I like the countryside, and I like the climate with the long winter and the snow, which reminds me of Russia."

Solzhenitsyn wrote his best known works, "One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" and "The Gulag Archipelago," based on his years imprisoned, and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.

If the town decides at the meeting Monday to take over the deed to the church, plans call for some repairs and later an exhibit that would include videos of Solzhenitsyn, talking about his years in Cavendish where he lived until 1994 and where his son, Ignat, a pianist and conductor, still lives with his family.

The town, which prided itself on protecting Solzhenitsyn's privacy, hopes to find the sign that once sat in a store window warning that the proprietors offered no directions to his home.

Visitors still ask, and townspeople still decline.

"That's been our legacy is to let people do what they need to do, and let people be as best we can. I love our town's history of being a place of refuge, and I love the fact that when Solzhenitsyn was here he extended that to other people ...," said Margo Caulfield, coordinator of the Cavendish Historical Society.

The impetus for the project came when the town had little to offer a group of Russian tourists last summer who expected a monument in their countryman's honor, Caulfield said.

Built in 1844 under the leadership of renowned abolitionist Rev. Warren Skinner, the church was decommissioned in the 1960s. Caulfield said church leaders last year offered to donate the building to the town.

"He just did an incredible job of showing that a person can sustain unbelievable horrors and go on to live a remarkable life and just really thrive," Caulfield said of the town's famous resident. "Our focus is clearly we want to make sure our schoolchildren know about the work that he did and the importance that it played."

In 1994, just before he and his family moved back to Russia, Solzhenitsyn spoke again at Town Meeting, bringing tears to people's eyes. And after he died in Russia in 2008, the town held a memorial service to honor him at the elementary school.

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Online: http://cavendishhistoricalsocietynews.blogspot.com

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