Never too old to go for gold: Bearded barefoot runner and 100-year-old shot-putter competing at the World Masters Games
By Richard Shears
Last updated at 2:03 PM on 11th October 2009
With a puff, a heave and a ho, 100-year-old Ruth Frith tossed a 9lb shot an astounding 14ft to win a gold medal at the World Masters Games yesterday.
It must be said, though, that Mrs Frith was the only shot-put competitor game enough to turn up for the event in the women aged 100-104 category.
Her possible competitors were too old to get to the Sydney stadium or didn't have the strength to lift the weight. She was one of 28,292 competititors from 95 countries ranging in age from 24 to 101 who were taking part in the world's biggest multi-sport event.
Ruth Frith launches her winning throw at the World Masters Games which saw a record 28,292 competititors from 95 countries ranging in age from 24 to 101 compete
Canada's Olga Kotelko, left, prepares for lift-off and a fellow competitor grimaces with effort
'I only had to turn up to win the medal, but that wasn't going to be good enough for me,' said the great-grandmother. 'I had to show everyone that I could still do it.'
Loud cheers echoed around the Olympic Athletic Centre stadium when Mrs Frith tossed the weight, rivaling many amateurs who were decades younger.
'This calls for a celebration drink,' an official told her, but Mrs Frith replied: 'No thanks - I don't drink and I don't smoke. This modern way of celebrating isn't for me.'
So this suggests she leads a very healthy life style, with plenty of vegetables, it was suggested to her.
One competitor takes a tumble while another strides on in the 60-64 year category of the 100m heats. And it was 'no shoes for me, please' as athlete Santa Claus (yes that is his name) of Australia ran full pelt in the 100m heats of the men's 80-84 years category
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Another Aussie competitor and again no shoes. Osmo Millridge, 77, makes the water jump during the mens' steeplechase for the 70 plus age range
Earl Fee of Canada, centre, leads out his 80-84 age group in the 100m at the games
'Oh goodness no - I haven't eaten vegetables since I was a kid. I don't like the taste. Bread, meat, fine, but no vegetables, thank you.'
What she misses out on in the healthy eating stakes, she makes up for with her training. She walks everywhere and does bench presses five days a week with 80lb weights.
Her performance with the shot put inspired 90-year-old Canadian Olga Kotelka, who broke a nine-year-old world record in her age group.
Mrs Frith has been labelled one of the most inspirational athletes at the Games, an international multi-sport event held every four years and is open to sports people of all ages and abilities. It runs until October 18
However, the minimum age varies depending on the sport but ranges from 25 to 35.
The first World Masters Games were held in Toronto in 1985.
When they were staged in Melbourne in 2002, they attracted almost 25,000 competitors, more than double those who took part in the Sydney 2000 Olympics and five times more than those competing in the 2006 Commonwealth Games held in Melbourne.
As for Mrs Frith, does she think she'll be competing in the next World Masters four years from now? 'I'm just taking each day as it comes,' she said.
'Each year is just another year, but I don't think "oh, I'm going to be 99 or I'm going to be 100".
'You just enjoy each day and let the years go by.'
Man Who Held Woman in Casket Faces Life in Prison
Saturday, October 10, 2009
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — A California man accused of kidnapping a woman, holding her in a makeshift casket and demanding $140,000 ransom has been convicted and faces up to life in prison.
Mark Herbert Warren, of Victorville, was convicted Friday of kidnapping for ransom, burglary and assault with a deadly weapon in the 2007 attack.
Prosecutors say the 50-year-old contractor attacked the woman with a stun gun at her Riverside home, handcuffed her, covered her head with a hood, and placed her in a casket-like box inside his van.
The victim's husband returned home to find a ransom letter and photographs of her being restrained.
Warren was arrested and the woman was rescued about seven hours later after a resident spotted a suspicious van.
Warren returns to court for sentencing Nov. 12.
McCanns: Find girl in Swedish photo
By ANTONELLLA LAZZERI
Published: 10 Oct 2009
DETECTIVES were last night desperately hunting a girl who was photographed in Sweden - after computer-matching showed she could be missing Madeleine McCann.
The girl, who was pictured at a car show, bears a strong resemblance to Maddie, who would now be six.
Her jawline is identical and her eyes are the same colour as Maddie's. 
After the snap appeared on a website, Swedish police were inundated with calls from the public saying how much it looked like Maddie.
They also received a spate of calls from visitors who believed they had seen Maddie at the car show.
Face-mapping technology used by British police identified the girl as a possible match, and Maddie's parents Kate and Gerry have now asked for an urgent investigation.
Maddie - snatched from her family's holiday villa on Portugal's Algarve coast in May 2007 - has a distinctive mark in her right eye. 
But the photo of the girl in Sweden is not clear enough to show if she has the same characteristic.
The girl was with a man and a woman at the car show, held in Sweden's capital Stockholm in August.
The man was Swedish but the girl spoke perfect English.
The woman remained silent, and the snapper said both adults refused to be photographed.
Kate and Gerry, both 41, of Rothley, Leics, have seen the photo and believe it should be investigated.
A source close to the couple said: "They feel it bears a resemblance to what Maddie would look like now.
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"They can't be certain but feel it can't be dismissed. It should be looked into.
"The girl does look quite like Madeleine, especially around her jaw.
"It is enough of a similarity for the investigators to look into it further."
The couple's official spokesman Clarence Mitchell said: "Kate and Gerry and their investigators are aware of the picture and are liaising with the relevant authorities.
"The investigation team are looking into it."
Swedish police are now liaising with British cops and the private detectives hunting Maddie.
The photographer failed to note the girl's name, and Swedish police have so far been unable to find her. 
The photo is not the first time the search for Maddie has been linked to Sweden.
The Sun told in August how a Victoria Beckham lookalike asked a man at a marina in Barcelona, Spain: "Are you here to deliver my new daughter?"
One of the yachts linked to the woman came from Sweden.
The luxury cruiser was one of six recorded as having left the Algarve port of Portimao the morning after Maddie vanished.
All the other boats have been traced and eliminated from the investigation.
But all efforts to find the Swedish yacht have failed.
An investigator revealed: "It has apparently vanished without trace.
"The captain told port authorities he was going to the Algarve port of Albufeira, but the boat never arrived and has not been found since."
Detectives hunting the Posh Spice lookalike, who spoke with an Australian accent, believe it is possible that Maddie was whisked away from Portugal by boat.
Gerry McCann this week spoke at an international legal conference in Madrid, where he told delegates: "We will never give up hope, we will never give up searching for Madeleine."
Mom of Columbine Killer Didn't Know Son was Suicidal
Saturday, October 10, 2009
DENVER — In the first detailed public remarks by any parent of the two Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold's mother says she had no idea her son was suicidal until she read his journals after the 1999 high school massacre.
Susan Klebold's essay in next month's issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, says she is still struggling to make sense of what happened when her son and Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher in the shooting rampage at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. Twenty-one people were injured before Klebold and Harris killed themselves.
"For the rest of my life, I will be haunted by the horror and anguish Dylan caused," she wrote. "I cannot look at a child in a grocery store or on the street without thinking about how my son's schoolmates spent the last moments of their lives. Dylan changed everything I believed about myself, about God, about family, and about love."
The killers' parents have repeatedly declined to talk about the massacre. They gave depositions in a lawsuit filed by families of the victims, but a judge in 2007 sealed them for 20 years after the lawsuit was settled out of court.
In her essay, Susan Klebold wrote that she didn't know her son was so disturbed.
"Dylan's participation in the massacre was impossible for me to accept until I began to connect it to his own death," she wrote in excerpts released by the magazine ahead of Tuesday's publication. "Once I saw his journals, it was clear to me that Dylan entered the school with the intention of dying there. And so in order to understand what he might have been thinking, I started to learn all I could about suicide."
In a statement with the essay, Oprah Winfrey wrote that Susan Klebold has turned down repeated interview requests but finally agreed to write an essay for O. A spokeswoman for the magazine said Klebold was not paid for the essay, and there were no plans for her to appear on Winfrey's television show.
A spokeswoman for the Klebold family said there would be no further statements.
In the essay, Klebold said her son left early for school on the day of the shootings.
"Early on April 20, I was getting dressed for work when I heard Dylan bound down the stairs and open the front door. Wondering why he was in such a hurry when he could have slept another 20 minutes, I poked my head out of the bedroom. `Dyl?' All he said was `Bye.' The front door slammed, and his car sped down the driveway. His voice had sounded sharp. I figured he was mad because he'd had to get up early to give someone a lift to class. I had no idea that I had just heard his voice for the last time."
She said she had "no inkling" how sick her son was.
"From the writings Dylan left behind, criminal psychologists have concluded that he was depressed and suicidal. When I first saw copied pages of these writings, they broke my heart. I'd had no inkling of the battle Dylan was waging in his mind."
Grandmother, 72, has leg amputated after hospital wrongly diagnoses cancer
By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 10:56 AM on 11th October 2009
A 72-year-old grandmother had her leg amputated after being told she had cancer only to find out her leg was healthy all along.
Doreen Nicholls underwent the surgery in 2007 and now needs a wheelchair to get about.
According to the Sunday Telegraph, the grandmother was wrongly diagnosed with an extremely rare form of cancer and was told that without a leg amputation, she would die.
Doreen Nicholls had her left leg amputated below the knee after being wrongly diagnosed with cancer
Tests carried out after the operation revealed that her left leg, which had been cut off below the knee, was in fact healthy.
Mrs Nicholls told the newspaper that the misdiagnosis, at Birmingham's Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, has destroyed her life.
Despite refusing to accept it was negligent in its treatment of Mrs Nicholls, the specialist hospital has agreed to pay her an out of court settlement which her lawyers described as a 'substantial six-figure sum'.
Since being awarded the money, Mrs Nicholls has been able to buy a new prosthetic leg.
Mrs Nicholls, of Halesowen, near Birmingham, told the Sunday Telegraph: 'I shall never forgive the hospital for what they've done to me.
'I just want my leg back, money doesn't mean a thing.
Mrs Nicholls told how the hospital called her to go back after the operation and said they had made a mistake and she didn't have cancer.
She told the BBC: 'They called me back after the operation and the surgeon said: "I've got a bombshell to tell you - I'm very sorry, but we shouldn't have taken the leg off."
'I cried for days. It really was the worst part, worse than being told I had cancer, because I couldn't do anything, there was no treatment I could try,' she told the Sunday Telegraph.
'Every night I look back down and it's never going to change.
'It's ruined my life, I used to be active, go swimming, do gardening and walk a lot, now I can't do that any more.
'My little granddaughter asked me when it's going to grow back so we can dance and play together again, but it never can.'
Mrs Nicholls was referred to the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in August 2007 due to a swelling on her left foot.
A biopsy was carried out and the pathology results appeared to show the grandmother had an aggressive tumour.
It was thought to be an extremely rare soft tissue cancer, sclerosing epithelioid fibrosarcoma.
According to the newspaper, other clinical signs did not suggest cancer and the hospital team treating Mrs Nicholls was not unanimous in the diagnosis.
But on October 10, 2007, her left leg was removed below the knee.
Tests done after the operation showed that she was in fact suffering from a rare benign condition, pigmented villonodular synovitis.
Mrs Nicholls told the Sunday Telegraph: 'I still get so much pain. It's like pins and needles all the time at the stump where they cut the nerve endings.
'I've definitely lost faith in the medical profession. I'd never have another operation; I think I'd rather suffer the pain.'
A spokesman for the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital told the newspaper: 'The trust is deeply sorry about the outcome of Mrs Nicholls' treatment.
'We have been completely open and honest with Mrs Nicholls throughout and she has been fully informed of our findings.
'Our specialist teams are still regularly reviewing her progress.'