UPDATE 1-Spain's banks in focus ahead of Bankia rescue plan - Reuters UK
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Mortician discovers gunshot wound in body after man's death ruled natural - Detroit Free Press
Detroit police and EMS workers said Leslie Brooks died of natural causes during the weekend. But when his body arrived at a funeral home, the mortician saw it differently.
As she prepared to embalm the 59-year-old Brooks on Saturday morning, mortician Gail Washington peered at a small burned area on his skin, right above his heart. Her assistants had pointed it out, and Washington now agreed: This was no natural death.
Brooks had a small-caliber gunshot wound in his chest. And now Detroit police are scrambling to figure out what happened.
That may be tough, since their initial determination ruined a possible crime scene in the east-side basement where Brooks was found. Police technicians did not scour the room or take photos until later. There was no immediate preservation of possible clues. Visitors tracked in and out. His family took Brooks' cell phone. And, unless this was a suicide, a killer had precious hours to elude capture.
Even the clothes Brooks wore had been stripped off and discarded, as is customary when a funeral home picks up a body. The clothing was retrieved, but also is now most likely tainted as evidence.
"I am pissed off," Shakira Bonds, 20, one of Brooks' daughters, told the Free Press on Tuesday. "I don't know who to go to."
Police spokeswoman Sgt. Eren Stephens said Tuesday the case will be investigated by internal affairs, and Chief Ralph Godbee Jr. would not yet comment. Detroit Fire Department officials, who oversee EMS workers, did not respond to requests for their version of events. Al Samuels, the chief investigator for the Wayne County Medical Examiner's Office, said his office followed proper procedure.
Based on information gathered from the police, the family, witnesses, the mortician and the morgue, here's what happened:
Brooks was found dead about 12:17 a.m. Saturday in a basement room that he rented from friends in the 18700 block of Dean near 7 Mile and Ryan.
A friend, Alberta Rice, 64, said in an interview Tuesday that she did not see Brooks all day Friday, and when his cell phone rang in the basement, Rice sent her boyfriend down to check on him. The boyfriend found Brooks facedown on a rolled-up carpet, his arms stretched out in front, "like he laid down there and went to sleep." Yet Brooks was stiff and obviously dead when the boyfriend shook him.
Someone in the house called police and Yvonne Arrington, Brooks' sister. Arrington told the Free Press she arrived at the home to find EMS workers already gone after declaring Brooks dead of natural causes. Two uniformed police officers arrived. Homicide was contacted and so was the Medical Examiner's Office. Arrington said she asked one of the cops, "How do you know he died of natural causes? He said, 'We don't see ... trauma.' "
Arrington wondered, because her brother had confided in her recently that he owed two men money. He was scared, she said, but she thought he might just be paranoid.
She didn't mention the threats to police that night because officers told her EMS believed he died naturally, Arrington said. In a way, she was relieved he didn't die violently, she said.
"I said, 'Thank you, Jesus.' ... He just died of cardiac arrest," she said.
Police that night put Arrington in touch with the medical examiner's office, where an investigator told her to call a funeral home, that there was no need for an autopsy based on the opinion of officials at the scene.
She still wondered if she shouldn't push for the more thorough examination.
"I said, 'That's like me talking on the phone to you and you diagnosing me with cancer,' " she recalled telling the morgue investigator.
But she called the Cole funeral home, which sent a crew. Arrington went home.
At mid-morning, Washington prepared to embalm Brooks' body at the Cole funeral home on Schaefer at Puritan and made her discovery. She retrieved Brooks' clothes, saw holes and a small amount of blood and examined the wound.
"They probably missed it," she said, because "he had a black T-shirt on with a black shirt on top." She said the gun most likely was small caliber, leaving a smaller hole than the larger-caliber weapons common today, and most of the bleeding must have been internal.
She has seen such mistakes before. A mortician for 38 years, Washington said this is the fourth time she has discovered a fatal bullet wound on someone initially ruled a natural death.
Samuels, the morgue investigator, said his office checked with Brooks' doctor the night he was found dead and learned he had a history of cancer, high blood pressure and heart trouble. The decision not to autopsy Brooks was based on that opinion and the natural death ruling by EMS workers, Samuels said.
Rice told the newspaper she never heard a gunshot from her basement. She and Arrington both said they saw no gun at all that night.
Only a dead man with a mystery.
Contact Jim Schaefer: 313-223-4542 or jschaefer@freepress.com. Staff writer Gina Damron contributed to this report.
Villa absence a hard blow, say Spain players - Football
Published: 23 May 2012 - 14:46:53
Spain's players on Wednesday rued the absence of star striker David Villa from their Euro 2012 campaign but said they were still geared up to become the first country to win three major titles in a row.
"David Villa's absence is a hard blow, especially when you think of his contribution during the World Cup," Malaga's Santiago Cazorla told journalists after a first training session in the western Austrian resort of Schruns.
"If he hadn't been in the Euro or the World Cup, we probably wouldn't have been champions," he said.
Defender Alvaro Dominguez, however, said La Roja cannot afford to dwell on Villa's absence.
"It's a difficult loss but we can't feel sorry for ourselves. We have to make sure we can make up for it and get on with it as well as possible," he said.
"He's an excellent player who brings a lot to the team... (but) there are very good players at this camp and in this team and hopefully we can compensate for this loss," added Jesus Navas, part of the successful Euro 2008 and World Cup 2010 squad.
Spain's football federation announced late Tuesday that Villa would not take part in Euro 2012 in Poland and Ukraine, as he had failed to get back to full fitness after breaking a leg in December.
Spain are looking to become the first nation to win three international trophies in a row.
But with key players like Villa and defender Carlos Puyol injured -- and stars from Barcelona and Athletic Bilbao getting ready for the King's Cup final on Friday -- there are many new faces at this year's training camp.
Atletico Madrid's Dominguez, however, said blending old hands with young blood could still benefit the team.
"We're all very eager. The important thing is to win the title and hopefully we can contribute to that," he added.
Cazorla added: "The philosophy is still the same. We have the same approach and we have very good players to help us with that."
La Roja are in Schruns until May 29, with two friendlies planned on May 26 in St. Gallen, Switzerland, against Serbia, and May 30 in Bern against South Korea.
Related Spain News
Facebook shares rebound above $32 amid SEC probe - CBC
Facebook is facing a lawsuit from angry shareholders and multiple probes from regulators over the disappointing handling of its initial public offering last week.
In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan late Tuesday, a group of Facebook shareholders are suing the Menlo Park, Calif.-based company, claiming insiders were selectively given secret information about the company's true financial projections from underwriters, while retail investors and other investment houses were left in the dark.
"The revised figures were only passed along to some investors who were therefore able to make profits by selling their IPO shares Friday while shares were on the rise," New York law firm Levi & Korsinsky alleges in the suit.
Facebook executives are shown ringing the bell to open Nasdaq trading on Friday. The shares have sunk since opening to the public last week. (Reuters)Morgan Stanley, the investment bank that shepherded the company through its highly publicized initial stock offering last week, is also facing a regulatory probe from the self-policing Financial Industry Regulatory Authority over whether or not the bank selectively withheld information about a negative analyst report ahead of the IPO.
FINRA head Rick Ketchum that the question is "a matter of regulatory concern" for his organization and the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Similarly, the top securities regulator for Massachusetts, William Galvin, said his office will subpoena the company to pursue its own investigation of whether Morgan Stanley divulged to only some clients that one of its analysts had cut his revenue estimates for the social media giant.
The bank said late Tuesday that it "followed the same procedures for the Facebook offering that it follows for all IPOs," referring to initial public offerings of stock. It said that its procedures complied with regulations.
The questions about the role played by Morgan Stanley, the lead underwriter for the deal, add to the confusion surrounding Facebook's IPO. In the most hotly anticipated stock debut in years, the offering raised $16 billion for the social networking company, valuing it at $104 billion.
Nasdaq CEO Robert Greifeld told shareholders of the exchange's parent company that "clearly we had mistakes within the Facebook listing."
Shares in the Nasdaq itself have dropped more than $2, or 10 per cent, from where they were before Facebook's IPO on Friday, as negative fallout from the underwhelming debut — and a lengthy trading delay on Friday while the exchange struggled to process an order backlog — is dragging on shares.
After briefly trading above $42, the IPO plummeted through the trading day on Friday, closing at the IPO price of $38 after a furious defence of the level by lead underwriter Morgan Stanley. Trading Monday and Tuesday saw the shares fall below the $31 level before a slight rebound Wednesday had the stock trading just north of $32.
Some brokerages were still sorting out the aftermath of the trading delay on Tuesday.
'There are issues that we need to look at specifically with respect to Facebook.'—SEC chair Mary Schapiro
"Unfortunately, our clients continue to feel the effects of this in some cases," said Stephen Austin, a spokesman for Fidelity Investments, one of the country's largest brokerages. Fidelity was still waiting for some Facebook stock orders that it placed on Friday to be executed. Fidelity's systems had performed normally, Austin said.
Reuters reported Tuesday that a Morgan Stanley analyst, Scott Devitt, cut his estimate for Facebook's revenue this year to $4.85 billion from more than $5 billion earlier. The news agency reported it was unclear whether Morgan Stanley had told only select clients about the reduced estimate.
Reuters reported that the analyst cut his figures for Facebook while the company's executives, including founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, were shopping the stock to potential investors in the weeks ahead of the IPO, a process known in investing as a road show.
Filing said shift to mobile might limit revenue growth
Morgan Stanley, in its statement, did not specifically address which clients might have been told about a reduced estimate from one of its analysts. It said that "a significant number" of analysts, including those from other firms underwriting the stock issue, had reduced their estimates for Facebook to reflect publicly available information about the company.
That was a reference to a May 9 regulatory filing in which Facebook said a shift by many Facebook users toward mobile devices might limit its revenue growth. Social media companies have struggled to make as much money as they would like from mobile advertising. Advertising accounts for more than 80 per cent of Facebook's overall revenue.
Morgan Stanley also said that revised analyst views were taken into account in setting the stock offering price at $38 per share. Facebook, working with Morgan Stanley, first set a range of $28 to $35 for the offering price, then raised the range to $34 to $38 before setting it at $38 on the night before the IPO.
Reports suggest Facebook's chief financial officer, David Ebersman, along with Morgan Stanley decided to increase the size of the offering by 25 per cent early last week. Selling too many shares at too high a price has the appearance or trying to let insiders cash out at the public's expense. That perception is what has led to the heightened regulatory scrutiny.
When the stock started trading Friday, it jumped several dollars, but quickly fell back toward $38. It never crossed below that level on its first day, and outside analysts said that was probably because Morgan Stanley, eager to avoid the embarrassment of a first-day decline in the stock price, had rushed in with thousands of buy orders at $38.
A spokesman for Facebook Inc., which is based in Menlo Park, Calif., said late Tuesday that the company had no comment.
The SEC had already said on Friday that it was looking into problems surrounding the IPO. On Tuesday, the agency's chairman, Mary Schapiro, said: "I think there is a lot of reason to have confidence in our markets and in the integrity of how they operate, but there are issues that we need to look at specifically with respect to Facebook."
With files from The Associated PressLambert: My focus is on Norwich - Football
Published: 23 May 2012 - 15:47:03
Paul Lambert has no intention of letting speculation over his future at Norwich deflect focus from plans to take the Norfolk club forwards next season.
Lambert reacted angrily to questions over links with the Aston Villa vacancy following Tuesday night's testimonial for long-serving defender Adam Drury against Celtic at Carrow Road.
The 42-year-old has transformed the fortunes of the Canaries since taking charge three seasons ago, guiding them up from npower League One and on to retaining Barclays Premier League status with a creditable 12th-placed finish. He said: "I don't think being a manager ever stops. I try to prepare Norwich for next season the best I can."
He added: "[Assistant manager] Ian [Culverhouse] and I have had a chat and we have in mind what we would like to bring to the football club.
"Hopefully we can get those lads in and keep progressing the club. I have told the club and [chief executive] David [McNally] knows the lads I want to bring.
"If we get them, then hopefully we will be okay."
Lambert, however, appreciates it will be another test to secure the type of player who fits in both to the current squad's work ethic and wage structure.
"The higher you go the more the challenge it is to bring in players, but it is something I enjoy," he added.
"We have been abroad to look at games numerous times and there are some terrific footballers out there, but they will demand an awful lot of money. But there are lads we have identified."
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