Advertisement

Morning briefing

Share
Times Staff Writer

This is why you clean the filter

OneNewsNow.com, a Mississippi-based website committed to delivering “news from a Christian perspective,” has a strict policy to replace certain words deemed offensive. So imagine the surprise when readers learned Sunday that Tyson Homosexual -- not Tyson Gay -- had run the world’s fastest 100-meter dash.

The website ran the following altered Associated Press recap of Gay’s 9.68-second wind-aided sprint:

“Tyson Homosexual was a blur in blue, sprinting 100 meters faster than anyone ever has. . . . Homosexual qualified for his first Summer Games team and served notice he’s certainly someone to watch in Beijing.”

Advertisement

“It means a lot to me,” the 25-year-old Homosexual said. “I’m glad my body could do it, because now I know I have it in me.”

Fred Jackson, news director of OneNewsNow, told the Washington Post that the site has been fixed.

“We took the filter out for that word,” he said, without uttering the “G” word, the Post reported.

Trivia time

In 2007, Gay won the 100 and 200 at the world championships, becoming the third runner to win both in the same year. Who were the others?

Slow hand

The main event at the World Series of Poker begins today in Las Vegas, but it won’t finish until November.

A format change instituted this year calls for play to stop when all but nine players have been eliminated and then resume play with the final table Nov. 9.

Advertisement

Organizers said they hope the new format will create more suspense and hype, but critics say the four-month delay presents potential problems.

“What if somebody dies?” deadpanned 2004 champion Greg Raymer.

Well, Greg, that player would be drawing dead.

Sex doesn’t sell

Spain’s success in Euro 2008 kept soccer fans -- many of them men -- glued to television sets. It also kept them away from the annual erotic film festival in Barcelona.

About 15,000 people attended the festival this year, down from more than 50,000 in past years, according to Agence France-Presse.

“Football is one of the few things that can compete with sex,” festival director Juli Simon told TV station Telecinco.

Starred for life

The baseball Barry Bonds hit to break Hank Aaron’s home run record has been branded with an asterisk, and the Hall of Fame will not try to hide the mark when it displays the ball.

“We feel it would be disingenuous to accept the baseball and display it without the asterisk, so that’s what we’ll do,” Hall of Fame President Jeff Idelson said on the Dan Patrick radio show.

Advertisement

“The asterisk represents a one-week period in time in September of 2007 when 10 million votes were registered and the public spoke and the public said send this baseball to Cooperstown with an asterisk, so that’s the story we’ll tell and we’ll tell it well.”

Fairway robbery

Two golfers and a caddie turned over some money to an armed robber on the 16th hole at Brynwood Country Club in Milwaukee last weekend, then completed their rounds, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.

The club responded by issuing a memo to members requesting, among other things, “that all golfers carry their cellphones on the course and immediately report any suspicious activity to the receptionist.”

So what’s more unusual, that the players kept playing after the robbery or that the club requested golfers carry cellphones?

Trivia answer

Maurice Greene (1999) and Justin Gatlin (2005).

And finally

Lance Berkman of the Houston Astros recently struck out three times in a game against the Boston Red Sox but said that it was no big deal.

“I strike out 100 or more times a year, so three is not any insurmountable challenge.”

--

peter.yoon@latimes.com

Advertisement
Advertisement