Tiger Woods back into the dating scene with Alyse Lahti Johnston
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(CBS/WTSP) WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – Tiger Woods has apparently jumped back into the dating scene with a new girlfriend: 22-year old college student and budding West Palm Beach golfer Alyse Lahti Johnston.
Who is the woman who, according to news service AFP, was spotted with Woods on his yacht last week?
Johnston, it turns out, has more in common with Woods than just a love of golf. They’ev both been involved in embarrassing car accidents.
Johnston was arrested on DUI charges in Orlando in October 2010 after crashing her car into another vehicle.
The New York Post says that according to an arrest report that Johnston’s breathalyzer result was .210 – more than twice the legal limit. The paper also reports that she allegedly told arresting officers, “I am so humiliated. I want to die.”
She wound up pleading no contest to a lesser charge of improper change of lane, according to CBS affiliate WTSP.
Johnston’s stepfather, Alistair Johnston, is a high-ranking executive at IMG, the sports agency that represents Woods. According to RadarOnline.com, Johnston’s biological father is former St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Jeff Lahti.
The service reports that Johnston’s stepfather has denied that Woods and Johnston are dating, saying, “They are part of the same crowd that are the same age and go the gym and out to dinner together. Do they spend time together? Yes, but they are not going out with each other.”
Woods’ 5-year marriage to model Elin Nordegren ended last year after numerous women claimed to be having affairs with Woods. Nordegren recently purchased a $12.2 million waterfront mansion in North Palm Beach.
Source: cbsnews
Elizabeth Taylor funeral service to be held today
Elizabeth Taylor: 1932-2011
Screen legend Elizabeth Taylor will be laid to rest today.
The actress, who died Wednesday at the age of 79, will be buried this afternoon at Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks and Mortuaries in Glendale, Calif.
According to CNN, the service will take place at 2 p.m. PDT.
Forest Lawn is also the final resting place of Taylor’s friend Michael Jackson, who died in 2009.
Taylor’s family said in a statement Wednesday that the actress’ funeral would be a private affair and that a memorial service will be announced at a later date. Her family also asked that instead of flowers, that contributions be made to the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation.
Broadway theaters to dim lights in honor of Taylor
NEW YORK – Broadway will honor Elizabeth Taylor by dimming its lights on Friday.
The Broadway League, the national trade association, said Thursday that theater marquees will go dark at 8 p.m. for one minute in memory of the screen siren.
The actress died in Los Angeles on Wednesday at age 79.
Taylor made her first appearance on Broadway in the 1981 revival of Lillian Hellman’s “The Little Foxes” and was nominated for a best actress Tony Award.
Taylor returned to Broadway in 1983 as producer and star of Noel Coward’s “Private Lives” opposite her former husband, Richard Burton. She also produced “The Corn is Green” that year.
Known more as a film actress, Taylor brought to the screen stage classics such as Tennessee William’s “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.”
Source: Associated Press
US likely to keep combat role after Libya shift
WASHINGTON – U.S. warplanes will keep flying strike missions over Libya even after the U.S. relinquishes the lead command role to NATO as early as this weekend in the fight against Moammar Gadhafi’s forces, the Pentagon indicated Thursday.
As an anxious Obama administration pressed for a quick handoff, NATO’s governing North Atlantic Council was meeting in Brussels to try to finalize a deal for the alliance to take the lead. It has been meeting for nearly a week, but a series of disagreements, including questions of overall political control and how aggressive the mission should be, have so far blocked agreement.
Source: Associated Press
Gaza militants fire rockets deep into Israel
JERUSALEM – Palestinian militants in Gaza fired a new wave of rockets that landed deep inside Israel Thursday, defying Israeli retaliatory attacks and threats.
As the violence threatened to escalate the day after a deadly Jerusalem bombing, Israel got a boost from the visiting U.S. defense chief, who said no country could tolerate the “repugnant” attacks on its soil.
Police said Gaza militants fired 10 rockets and mortars toward Israel Thursday, including two rockets that exploded north of the city of Ashdod, a main Mediterranean port city about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of Gaza — a first since Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers reached an unofficial truce following a three-week war that ended in January 2009. Israeli airstrikes hit a number of Gaza targets in retaliation throughout the day.
Neither side reported injuries or said they wanted a new fight. But the new hostilities could easily spin out of control, especially if civilian deaths mount.
Wednesday’s bombing killed a British tourist, and five members of a Jewish family were slain while they slept in a West Bank settlement earlier this month. Israel has blamed Palestinians for both attacks.
Also this week, Israeli shelling killed three children and their uncle in Gaza. The army said it was targeting militants.
The fighting in Gaza has been the fiercest since Israel went to war there to try to curb years of rocket attacks. The fierce three-week offensive killed some 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians. Thirteen Israelis also died. The volatile border has remained largely calm since.
Israel says Hamas has used the lull to rearm with longer distance rockets that can reach as far as Tel Aviv, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) from Gaza.
Defense Minister Ehud Barak blamed Hamas for the rocket fire and vowed to strike back.
“Israel will not tolerate these terror attacks and we will not allow terror to rise once again in the region,” he said.
His tough stance was backed by visiting U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who said that no sovereign state could tolerate rockets fired at its people.
“Israel, like all nations, has the right to self-defense and to bring to justice the perpetrators of these repugnant attacks,” he said.
Citing gag orders, Israeli security officials have said little about the investigations into Wednesday’s bus stop bombing or the knife killings two weeks ago.
Officials identified the victim of the Jerusalem bombing as Mary Jean Gardner, a 59-year-old British tourist who had been taking courses at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. In Washington, the State Department said five of the wounded were Americans, one of whom remains hospitalized.
On Thursday President Barack Obama called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to offer condolences. The White House said Obama reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel’s security.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said Jerusalem and southern Israel remained on a heightened state of alert.
Israeli counterterrorism expert Boaz Ganor said the bombing and knifing attacks appeared to be individual initiatives, as opposed to the organized attacks by militant groups that Israel usually faces.
The former usually kill fewer people, but are more difficult to stop, he added.
“Israeli intelligence is quite good in thwarting suicide attacks,” he said. “It may be less able to deal with local and personal attacks.”
Israeli police officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the investigations, said that even if the attacks were individual acts, Israel believes Hamas guided and motivated the attackers.
Yitzhak Reiter, a Mideast expert at the Hebrew University, said Islamist groups are currently seeking an alternative to suicide bombings, which largely backfired in the last decade by turning world opinion against them.
Peace talks between Israel and Hamas’ rival, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, collapsed after the 2008 war, reviving only briefly for three weeks in September 2010.
Abbas, who rules on in the West Bank, has rejected violence and condemned Wednesday’s bombing.
Hamas, which violently wrested control of Gaza from Abbas loyalists in June 2007, sees the diplomatic standstill as proof that only an armed struggle will win the Palestinians a state.
Source: Associated Press
