How Robin Williams dodged death and returned to the stageAfter heart surgery and seven years away from the stage, comedian Robin Williams is ready to storm Broadway with his one-man showVanessa Thorpe The Observer, Sunday 22 November 2009 Article history Robin Williams, 58, was forced to postpone his comedy comeback earlier this year when a heart problem required surgery. Photograph: Reed Saxon/AP It takes some confidence to extend the Broadway run of your one-man show before opening night, especially a few months after undergoing heart surgery. But then Robin Williams has never been short of nerve. His lengthy career is due in equal measure to the fearless nature of his comedy and to the frenetic energy of his performance: he has a reputation as an entertainer that is built as much on his nerve as it is on his nerves.Now, after seven years away from the stage, a relapse into alcoholism, a divorce and an emergency operation to replace a faulty valve in his chest, Williams is returning to live stand-up. His comeback show, which opens on Monday, is already one of New York's hottest tickets, and then later in the week a Disney film, Old Dogs, in which Williams co-stars with John Travolta, opens in cinemas across America. What will follow that, the star now promises, is a series of wiser, more sensitive choices.Rather like the legendary Fisher King, the character he once played on screen for Terry Gilliam, our dishevelled hero has returned, ruined by life but still searching for that grail. "It's the idea of going, 'Relax, you got the gig, what do you want to do now?'" Williams has explained to his fans.Williams, who studied drama at the renowned Juilliard School of Music and Drama with fellow student and close friend Christopher Reeve, first made his name on the comedy circuit in the late 1970s alongside such emerging beacons of the alternative scene as John Belushi, Bill Murray and Richard Pryor. Once he made it to Hollywood his fortunes rose steadily, riding on the success of his Oscar-nominated portrayal of the DJ in Good Morning, Vietnam, until the point came in 1993, with the release of the hit family comedy Mrs Doubtfire, that Williams could justly claim to be one of the biggest box office draws in the world.In the late 1990s a dangerous relationship with drink, coupled with an unsteady selection of maudlin film roles, served to rub some of the shine off Williams' star, but he kept on working. This spring he was set to return to Broadway for a short live engagement and the appetite of his audience was clear. Tickets reportedly sold out in less than 10 minutes.But then fate struck. Williams, who had been feeling a little out of breath and could not shift a persistent cough, was given an angiogram that uncovered a serious problem with a heart valve, a valve that was, in the comic's words, "just blown". The tour was put on…

   Pursuing death penalty in Fort Hood shooting may be difficult By MICHAEL A. LINDENBERGER / The Dallas Morning News
\n This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  If history is any judge, the Army will find it difficult to impose the death penalty on the accused killer in the bloodiest mass shooting on a U.S. military base in history. Military experts say Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is almost certain to face capital charges before an Army court-martial. But they warn that death penalty cases are so rare in the military, and so prone to big mistakes, that death sentences rarely stick. And executions themselves are almost nonexistent. The last American serviceman to be executed was hanged in 1961. Since 1984, when Congress revamped military law regarding the death penalty, the United States has sought to execute 49 service members, though never an officer. Fifteen of those defendants were convicted and sentenced to death. That leaves five condemned soldiers, Marines or sailors sitting on death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Of those, only a single soldier has exhausted his military appeals and been ordered to die by the president, as required. And his case has been held up by a last-minute habeas corpus appeal in a civilian U.S. district court in Kansas, even though the military has done all it can to send him to the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Ind. "Death penalty cases are so rare that almost everyone who tries a death military case is new," said Dwight Sullivan, a Marine Corps Reserve colonel and civilian appellate attorney for the Air Force. He has succeeded in having death sentences for three condemned servicemen overturned or commuted. "Almost everyone involved – from the commander to the judge to the jurors to the defense attorneys – is doing it for the first time," Sullivan said.  Added layer of scrutiny  The investigation into what happened Thursday has only just begun, and military officials have said they have not ruled out the possibility that Hasan had help from civilians in planning his attack. Experts said it's far more likely that the military will prosecute its own, but the U.S. attorney's office could bring capital charges in federal district court as part of a broader conspiracy prosecution. Eight times, service members sentenced to die have seen their cases or convictions overturned by appellate courts, as judges – both military and civilian – have found fault with the handling of their trials. The mistakes have included inadequate defense counsel, tainted juries and bad decisions by military judges – a litany of blunders that offers a cautionary tale for commanders at Fort Hood, who probably will face significant pressure to move quickly in meting out justice in the slaughter. The extra degree of scrutiny that comes with capital cases adds one more layer of complexity to a system that differs…

  Some Newspapers, Tracking Readers Online, Shift CoverageBy JEREMY W. PETERS Because of technological advances, newspapers can make more scientific decisions about allocating their resources.Read Article     

   Found: 'missing link between apes and man' Exclusive: new species of hominid to be revealed as two-million-year-old skeleton of a child is unveiled. Read Article    

  Obama in AsiaPresident meets lost half-brother in Beijing   "The younger Obama was born in America and raised in Kenya. He graduated from Brown University in Rhode Island with two undergraduate degrees and obtained a masters degree in physics from Stanford. He moved to Shenzhen, a bustling commercial and industrial hub an hour’s train ride from Hong Kong, seven years ago."