Governor Christie Mayor Booker-> Gov. Chris Christie plays second fiddle to Newark Mayor Cory Booker when it comes to heroic antics in a parody video produced by the two Jersey pols. Booker upstages Christie at every turn as the pair channel the famous Seinfeld-Newman rivalry in the video, screened Tuesday night at the New Jersey Legislative Correspondents Club dinner. Looking for a way to amp up his image, Christie grabs a fire extinguisher and shows up at a New Jersey state troopers’ office to volunteer for duty.

“You guys got any problems you want me to handle, like a fire anywhere, people trapped?” he asks. “Like a bad automobile accident where you need me to help some folks?…Maybe a cat in a tree?” Christie is turned away – only to end up stewing as Booker saves the day again and again with a cool, “Governor, I got this!” The Democratic mayor is on hand with a jack when Christie’s tire blows out on the highway, supplies an emergency backup when Bruce Springsteen loses a guitar and materializes out of nowhere when a woman drops her baby off a state Capitol balcony – shoving the hapless governor out of the way to catch the infant and “Tebowing” with the tot in his arms.

Josh Powell Case Updates-> The Pierce County jury deliberating the v-o-y-eurism case against Steven Craig Powell left court Tuesday without delivering a verdict. The six men and six women are set to resume deliberations at 9 a.m. today. They got the case about 10:45 a.m. Tuesday after attorneys delivered their closing arguments. The case has attracted extraordinary attention because of the defendant’s connections to missing Utah mother and former Puyallup resident Susan Cox Powell.

Jurors twice knocked on the jury room door Tuesday afternoon to ask questions of Superior Court Judge Ronald Culpepper, who is presiding over the trial. The first time they wanted to know about the ownership of some boxes found in Steven Powell’s room during a police search in August 2011. Culpepper, after consulting with the attorneys, sent back a note telling jurors he couldn’t answer their question and to keep deliberating. They knocked again about 4 p.m. and asked to see a compact disc that contains photos of two neighbor girls taking baths or using the toilet.

Deputy prosecutors Grant Blinn and Bryce Nelson allege Powell took the photos for his sexual gratification. He’s pleaded not guilty to 14 counts of v-o-y-eurism. Culpepper’s judicial assistant lugged a laptop computer into the jury room so jurors could view the disc. They had it for about 30 minutes before deciding to call it quits and come back today.

Avenger Sequel Officially On, With “The Avengers” sequel officially confirmed by Marvel/Disney, comic book fans the world over will be contemplating which of the publisher’s other heroes could be added to the line-up, potentially getting their own solo movie as soon as 2014 – filling the popularly acknowledged gap in the schedule alongside Captain America 2 that summer.

Of course, we have to bear in mind that Marvel Studios do not own the film rights to characters as key to their comic book universe as Daredevil, Spider-Man, Wolverine or the Fantastic Four – all of whom have allied with or become members of the Avengers at one time or another – but with that consideration in place, here is another suggestion for Marvel’s Next Avengers Film:

Power Man (Luke Cage) and Iron Fist (Daniel Rand)
Why?: Because they are an awesome pairing and, whilst both characters could easily sustain their own solo movie, a combination of the two could lead to either a) a buddy comedy of sorts: mixing action and humour in much the same way Joss Whedon’s script for The Avengers has done to such winsome effect or b) a slightly darker exploration of Marvel’s seedy criminal underworld. The introduction of Luke Cage into the Avengers would also provide the one thing the current team sorely lack: a non-white member (seriously, if they don’t bring Cage, Black Panther or Falcon next time, they should at least invite Don Cheadle’s War Machine along!).

I’ll say right off the bat that my exposure to Luke Cage and Iron Fist has come via recent spells with Brian Michael Bendis’ New Avengers rather than through the original 1970s blaxploitation/Kung Fu-spolitation title Heroes for Hire, or even their perennial appearances in the world of Daredevil. The upshot is that I don’t honestly know very much about Luke Cage as the open-shirted tiara-sporting Power Man (above), a moniker that he has largely abandoned of late, with the character existing in my mind as a thoroughly down to earth (and intermittently reluctant) family man: romantic partner of Jessica Jones (AKA Jewel) and father of their baby daughter.

Center Parcs £249 Holiday TV Ad Banned, A TV ad for Center Parcs has been banned by the advertising watchdog for promoting a family deal that was only available in the middle of the week during school term time. Center Parcs: ad banned for omitting full information about offer’s available travel periods

The TV ad, created by Beattie McGuinness Bungay, aired on 23 January. It showed families taking part in outdoor activities and included a voiceover that said: “What would you like your children to inherit? A house? A clock? The family silver? Or something a little more valuable?

The on-screen text read:”4 night breaks from £249 for 4 people”, while smaller text read “Subject to availability. Conditions apply. Book by 31 January 2012.”

But the Advertising Standard Authority(ASA) received a complaint a after a viewer argued it was misleading because it was not clear that the four-night, £249 break had to be taken in January, February or March, when most pupils are at school.

Mitch Swamp People, A Louisiana sheriff says a cast member of the reality TV show “Swamp People” has died. Assumption Parish Sheriff Mike Waguespack says Mitchell Guist was pronounced dead at a hospital Monday. He had fallen while aboard his boat on the Intracoastal Waterway, near Pierre Part.

Waguespack says initial reports from deputies in neighboring St. Martin Parish are that Guist was traveling on the waterway around 9 a.m. when he fell. The boat returned to a nearby landing in St. Martin and Guist was taken to a hospital. The cause of his fall is unclear, and there is no word yet on the official cause of death.

“Swamp People,” on the History cable television channel, features residents of Louisiana’s Atchafalaya swamp country during alligator hunting season.

X Factor: Britney And Demi, Britney Spears and former Disney Channel star Demi Lovato officially joined the U.S. version of The X Factor on Monday, leading creator Simon Cowell to pledge the second season would seriously kick butt when it returns in September. Spears, 30, the world’s biggest pop phenomenon of the 2000s, and Lovato, 19, will fill the judge’s slots left open by Paula Abdul and Nicole Scherzinger, who were both fired by Cowell after a disappointing first season in 2011.

Spears and Lovato appeared with Cowell and fellow judge Antonio “L.A” Reid at Fox television’s presentation of its new 2012-13 season programming to advertisers in New York.

The announcement ended months of speculation over the new faces on the singing contest, which offers a $5 million recording contract to a new star found from tens of thousands of ordinary Americans.

“We’ve delivered. Rumors are one thing but we’ve delivered,” a delighted Cowell said. Moments earlier he Tweeted a photo of himself with record producer Reid, Spears and Lovato, saying “Can’t believe it’s finally happening. Very exciting!”

Spears found fame as a 16-year-old in 1998 with her debut single “Baby One More Time” and went on to score multiple hits with songs like “Crazy”, “Oops I Did It Again” and “Womanizer.” She had a much-publicized personal and career meltdown in 2007, but made a comeback with her 2008 album “Circus” and a world tour.

“I’m so excited by this whole experience. It’s so different from anything I’ve ever done,” Spears said in New York.

Lovato starred in the Disney Channel’s TV series “Sonny With a Chance” before launching a career as a pop singer with hit singles like “Skyscraper”.

“Demi’s had an amazing career in music, TV and film for someone her age. She’s young, confident and enthusiastic. I think it’s really important that she speaks to our younger audience,” Cowell said in a statement.

London Olympics 2012, “It felt good to actually have a decent swim,” said Lochte, who swam in a regular suit for the first time this weekend.  American Lochte used a strong finishing kick beat Dwyer by nearly two seconds and set a meet record with a time of one minute, 57.63 seconds. Dwyer clocked 1:59.29 and Eric Shanteau finished third in 2:00.46. Sebastien Rousseau placed well back in fourth.

The win was a nice finish to a frustrating weekend for Lochte who failed to qualify for the finals of the 100m freestyle earlier in the day.

Lochte earlier finished sixth in the 200m freestyle, seventh in the 400m IM and eighth in the 100m backstroke. He failed to qualify for the main heat in the 50m backstroke.

“I hate to lose,” Lochte said. “I like winning. I had to keep reminding myself this isn’t the big picture. The big picture is the trials and Olympics.

Happy Mother’s Day 2012, Some consider them to be god’s greatest masterpiece while others call them the most magical human beings on earth. This Mother’s Day Sunday, Bollywood celebrities took to micro-blogging site Twitter to thank their moms.

This is what the Twitterati had to say:

Anupam Kher: No gift to your mother can ever equal her gift to you – life. Happy Mothers Day.

Prateik: All you lovely ladies that have mothered me over the years…Happy Mother’s Day ! Love and respect..

Amrita Arora: Wish my awesome mom and all the other lovely moms out there a very Happy Mothers day… Big Respect to each and every one of them.

Boman Irani: As a male parent, I say this with great pride that Mother’s Day is celebrated with much more passion than Father’s Day; and rightly so.

Vivek Oberoi: A mother is God’s greatest masterpiece… she’s strong, a multi-tasker, friend, motivator, nurturer and the rock of every family. Happy Mother’s Day to my amazing maa (mother) and all you wonderful mothers out there.

Gul Panag: Happy Mothers Day to mummy. Big hug and big thank you for everything.

Bipasha Basu: Just one day is not enough to thank and salute my ma and all the mothers in the world! Motherhood is the most magical and amazing role of a woman! Total Respect!

Cisse Cinema Brawl With Fan, EPL star Djibril Cisse could face a police investigation after a fan was attacked by a gang outside a London cinema.  The QPR striker got in a dispute with Geoffrey Candia, who approached him at the box office asking for a picture.

When Candia, 20, and three pals began shouting the ace’s name, Cisse asked them to quieten down because he was taking his wife Jude to see “American Pie: Reunion.”

An hour into the movie, a burly stranger demanded that Candia leave the Vue Cinema in Park Royal, West London.

Candia said, “Outside we were surrounded by about eight men. They had been waiting in cars. They started shouting, saying they were going to break our legs and kill us.”

Candia claimed one man kicked him hard in the leg before they fled.

Michele Bachmann Becomes A Swiss Citizen, US congresswoman Michele Bachmann recently became a Swiss citizen thanks to her husband, who is of Swiss parentage from canton Thurgau. So just how easy is it for foreigners to gain Swiss citizenship?

News emerged this week that Marcus Bachmann, the Republican’s husband since 1978, was eligible for Swiss citizenship due to his parents’ nationality. Michele and Marcus Bachmann finalised a naturalisation process on March 19.

“My husband is a 100 per cent Swiss, and his parents were raised in Switzerland. They were married there, they came to the United States, they bought a farm in Wisconsin and raised their three sons there,” the Minnesota congresswoman told Swiss national television in Washington on Tuesday while with a group of Swiss parliamentarians According to the Politico online news site, Bachmann’s three youngest children are also now Swiss citizens and her two older children are eligible to apply for a fast-track citizenship process.

The congresswoman’s office confirmed she had received Swiss citizenship and attributed the decision to her children.

“Congresswoman Bachmann’s husband is of Swiss descent, so she has been eligible for dual-citizenship since they got married in 1978. However, recently some of their children wanted to exercise their eligibility for dual-citizenship so they went through the process as a family,” said Bachmann spokesperson Becky Rogness.

Facebook Launches App Store, Facebook is launching an App Center to recommend mobile applications based on demographic preferences as well as user ratings, just as long as they’re tied into users’ Facebook credentials – with a view to monetising the process eventually, of course.

The App Center won’t just recommend mobile apps, it will also showcase web-based applications embedded in Facebook and even other websites, as long as they are based around the Facebook logon. Listing will be free, and users will receive recommendations based on their demographic and history rather than blanket star ratings, so the Center will look different to every customer who enters.

Facebook won’t sell mobile applications – Apple would never permit such a thing – so users are directed to the appropriate app store (iTunes/Google Play, there’s no mention of BlackBerry World) but Facebook is the company telling them what to buy and is now open for submissions.

But Zuckerberg’s empire has commercial aspirations for its service, promising “a simple-to-implement payment feature that lets people pay a flat fee to use an app on Facebook.com”, which is taking applications for beta testing now. For mobile apps that will have to jump though the app-store hoops, this would probably involve a cut going to Google/Apple, but for applications within the Facebook site it could be a useful source of revenue.

$1 Billion Ghost Town New Mexico, A new town located near Hobbs, N.M., will be outfitted with nearly $1 billion worth of cutting-edge technology, from advanced wireless networks to self-flushing toilets. Too bad nobody will be living there to enjoy it.

According to the Associated Press, Pegasus Holdings will be building the town on 15 square miles just west of Hobbs, which has a population of around 43,000. It will be called the Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation, more ominously known as The Center, which sounds like a scary lab that might exist on Lost. Pegasus says it’s designed to be a giant sandbox for researchers:

The Center will provide the opportunity for “end-to-end” testing, evaluation and demonstration of new intelligent and green technologies and innovations emerging from the world’s public laboratories, universities, and the private sector with the goal of determining the direct and indirect benefits and costs the innovations tested would have on our existing infrastructure.

In normal towns, constantly changing the infrastructure and testing for “t*rror*sm vulnerability” are generally looked down upon by neighborhood homeowners associations. Here at The Center, researchers will be able to test things like self-driving cars without making anybody nervous.

Apparently the town is being modeled after Rock Hill, S.C., complete with houses outfitted with plumbing and appliances. The “smart city” will require an initial investment of around $400 million and will eventually cost around $1 billion to complete, according to Bob Brumley, senior managing director of Pegasus Holdings.

US Marine Corps Drill Instructor Vs US Army Drill Sergeant, On March 10, 1958, a civilian went down to the Marine Corps recruiting office and enlisted. The recruiter seemed like a comely and personable fellow. He was a Staff Sergeant, and wore modified dress blues: Blue trousers with red NCO stripes down each leg, a tropical shirt, a field scarf (necktie) and a chest full of ribbons. He wore spit-shined shoes and polished brass.

He was a real “poster-boy” for the Marine Corps. At that time you could enlist for two, three, or four years. This Civilian signed up for four. This Civilian figured that in four years, he could learn to be like John Wayne and all the other war movie heroes he had been raised-up on. The recruiter beamed. He assured this civilian that he was bound for Sea School, after successfully completing recruit training.

This civilian departed home for boot camp on February 2, 1958. Away this Civilian went, aboard a Greyhound Bus, bound for the Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD), located in San Diego, California.

There were six of us, and this Civilian was designated to be in charge. This Civilian was given a bundle of paper, which contained everyone’s Service Record Book (SRB). This Civilian was directed to give the SRB’s to the USMC Drill Instructor, when we arrived at the Greyhound Station, in San Diego, California.

This Civilian doesn’t remember our time of arrival, at the Greyhound Station, but it was well after dark. As we got off the bus, we saw another bus (a green one) parked nearby, that had “USMC” and a serial number stenciled in yellow paint on its side.

Inside the green bus, three of the meanest, toughest looking thugs this civilian had ever seen, appeared to be awaiting us. One of them was in the entryway of this green bus and was conversing with the driver. Well, since this Civilian was in charge of these aforementioned six guys, he went right ahead and stepped up into the bus, to hand over the parcel of SRB records.

Little did this sextet of civilians know, but they had just crossed-over into Mother Green’s event horizon. The “thug,” at the front of the green bus, turned around and looked at me as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. His face got red, and this Civilian watched the veins in his neck stand out.

I thought, “Uh, oh”, just as he kicked me in the chest, screaming: “Who the [expletive deleted] told you to get on my bus?”

As this Recruit landed on the pavement at the bottom of the stairs, with all the civilian bystanders edging away, this Recruit realized, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that this was the dumbest thing he had ever done. This Recruit picked himself up off the greasy bus-ramp and limped into formation with the rest of the other twenty or so terrified victims that were already waiting there – waiting to be turned into United States Marines.

Bird Flu Study, After endless toing and froing over whether two studies that demonstrated how bird flu, also known as avian H5N1 influenza, or avian flu, should be published, one of them has appeared in the latest issue of the journal Nature in its entirety. The studies show how the bird flu virus could become transmissible from mammal-to-mammal; as humans are mammals, the same would apply to humans.

This is the end of a marathon debate, mainly between infectious disease experts versus influenza and public health researchers who stressed that not only was publication important, but also vital. To properly develop influenza surveillance and preparedness for a pathogen that could turn into a global, human pandemic, the scientists insisted that publication had to occur.

University of Wisconsin-Madison flu researcher, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, whose study of H5N1 virus transmissibility was at the center of the controversy, said:

“Our study shows that relatively few amino acid mutations are sufficient for a virus with an avian H5 hemagglutinin to acquire the ability to transmit in mammals. This study has significant public health benefits and contributes to our understanding of this important pathogen.

By identifying mutations that facilitate transmission among mammals, those whose job it is to monitor viruses circulating in nature can look for these mutations so measures can be taken to effectively protect human health.”

Arthritis Anxiety Study, A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, found that people with arthritis have high rates of depression and anxiety, that the conditions are underdiagnosed and that many of those affected don’t receive mental health treatment – which could potentially help with their physical symptoms.

The study was conducted by phone with almost 1,800 people, ages 45 and older, who had been doctor-diagnosed with a form of arthritis or related condition, such as lupus or fibromyalgia. Based on their responses to a questionnaire to determine emotional well-being, 31 percent of respondents were found to have anxiety and 18 percent had depression. There was significant overlap between the two conditions: 84 percent of those with depression also had anxiety, and 50 percent of those with anxiety also had depression.

However, only half of the people with these mental health issues sought treatment for them over the past year.

The correlation between depression and arthritis, especially rheumatoid arthritis, is well known, but this study suggests anxiety may be even more common than previously believed.

Louise Murphy, PhD, lead author of the study and director of the Arthritis Program in the Division of Population Health at the CDC, says she and colleagues were surprised to find that the rates of anxiety were so high.

“If we are focusing only on depression, we are missing a whole group of people with emotional distress,” she says.

Not everyone was surprised. Michael Clark, MD, director of the chronic pain treatment program in the department of psychology and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University, says this new study only adds to what is already understood by experts in the field.