Chess player caught cheating with wireless device

An Indian chess player has been banned for 10 years for cheating after he was caught using his mobile phone's wireless device to win games, chess officials said on Wednesday.


The player, Umakant Sharma, had logged rating points at a rapid pace in the last 18 months and also qualified for the national championship, arousing the suspicion of officials and bemusing rivals.


Sharma was finally caught at a recent tournament when officials discovered that he had stitched a Bluetooth device in a cloth cap which he always pulled over his ears.


He communicated to his accomplices outside the hall, who then used a computer to relay moves to him, Indian chess federation secretary D.V. Sundar said on Wednesday.


"We have banned him for 10 years," he told Reuters. "We wanted to send a clear message to such people."


Chess officials were also probing whether another player had similar advantages through such illegal means, he added.


Copyright 2006 Reuters. All rights reserved.This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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50 Things We Know Now (That We Didn't Know This Time Last Year) 2006 Edition

You know how it is.


You go through life thinking you've got your head wrapped around the world and all of its knowable information.


Then one day you read that since 2005, scientists have discovered more than 50 new species of animals and plants on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo. These new members of the List of Animals We Previously Didn't Have a Clue About include a catfish with protruding teeth and suction cups on its belly that help it stick to rocks.


Go back for a second.


A bucktooth, rock-climbing catfish. With suckers.


We'll understand if at this point you wish that your brain were an Etch A Sketch so you could shake it clean and start over.


Even more mind-numbing: Tons of cool new discoveries wash ashore in the media tide each year but fall through the cracks, what with all the coverage of Britney Spears' undies and Tom Cruise's wedding.


Consider this list - culled from dozens of news stories from 2006 - your chance to catch up.


1. U.S. life expectancy in 2005 inched up to a record high of 77.9 years.


2. The part of the brain that regulates reasoning, impulse control and judgment is still under construction during puberty and doesn't shift into autopilot until about age 25.


3. Blue light fends off drowsiness in the middle of the night, which could be useful to people who work at night.


4. The 8-foot-long tooth emerging from the head of the narwhal whale is actually a type of sensor that detects changes in water temperature, pressure and particle gradients.


5. U.S. Protestant "megachurches" - defined as having a weekly attendance of at least 2,000 - doubled in five years to more than 1,200 and are among the nation's fastest-growing faith groups.


6. Cheese consumption in the United States is expected to grow by 50 percent between now and 2013.


7. At 68.1 percent, the United States ranks eighth among countries that have access to and use the Internet. The largest percentage of online use was in Malta, where 78.1 percent access the Web.


8. The U.S. government has paid about $1.5 billion in benefits to thousands of sick nuclear-weapons workers since 2001.


9. Scientists have discovered that certain brain chemicals in our tears are natural pain relievers.


10. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover wrote a drooling fan letter to Lucille Ball in 1955 to tell her how much he enjoyed an episode of "I Love Lucy." "In all the years I have traveled on trains," he noted, "I have often wondered why someone did not pull the emergency brake, but I have never been aboard a train where it was done. The humor in your program last Monday, I think, exceeded any of your previous programs and they have been really good in themselves."


11. Wasps spray an insect version of pepper spray from their heads to temporarily incapacitate their rivals.


12. A sex gene responsible for making embryos male and forming the testes is also produced by the brain region targeted by Parkinson's disease, a discovery that may explain why more men than women develop the degenerative disorder.


13. Ancient humans from Asia may have entered the Americas following an ocean highway made of dense kelp.


14. An impact crater 18 miles in diameter was found 12,500 feet under the Indian Ocean.


15. Americans spent almost $32 billion on toys during 2005. About a third of that was spent on video games.


16. A new planet described as a "super-Earth," which weighs 13 times as much as our planet, exists in a solar system 9,000 light-years away.


17. A gene for a light-sensitive protein in the eye is what resets the body's "internal clock."


18. Australian scientists discovered a polyrhachis sokolova, which is believed to be the only ant species that can live under water. It nests in submerged mangroves and hides from predators in air pockets.


19. Red wine contains anti-inflammatory chemicals that stave off diseases affecting the gums and bone around the teeth.


20. A substance called resveratrol, also found in red wine, protects mice from obesity and the effects of aging, and perhaps could do the same for humans.


21. Two previously unknown forms of ice - dubbed by researchers as ice XIII and XIV - were discovered frozen at temperatures of around minus 160 degrees Celsius, or minus 256 Fahrenheit.


22. The hole in the earth's ozone layer is closing - and could be entirely closed by 2050. Meanwhile, the amount of greenhouse gases is increasing.


23. Scientists discovered what they believe to be football-field-sized minimoons scattered in Saturn's rings that may be debris left over from a collision between a comet and one of Saturn's icy moons.


24. At least once a week, 28 percent of high school students fall asleep in school, 22 percent fall sleep while doing homework and 14 percent get to school late or miss school because they overslept.


25. Women gain weight when they move in with a boyfriend because their diet deteriorates, but men begin to eat more healthy food when they set up a home with a female partner.


26. Some 45 percent of Internet users, or about 60 million Americans, said they sought online help to make big decisions or negotiate their way through major episodes in their lives during the previous two years.


27. Of the 10 percent of U.S. teens who uses credit cards, 15.7 percent are making the minimum payment each month.


28. Around the world, middle-aged and elderly men tend to be more satisfied with their sex lives than women in the same age group, a new survey shows.


29. The 90-million-year-old remains of seven pack-traveling carnivorous dinosaurs known as Mapusaurus were discovered in an area of southern Argentina nicknamed "Jurassic Park."


30. A group of genes makes some mosquitoes resistant to malaria and prevents them from transmitting the malaria parasite.


31. A 145-million-year-old beach ball-sized meteorite found a half-mile below a giant crater in South Africa has a chemical composition unlike any known meteorite.


32. Just 30 minutes of continuous kissing can diminish the body's allergic reaction to pollen, relaxing the body and reducing production of histamine, a chemical cell given out in response to allergens.


33. Saturn's moon Titan features vast swaths of "sand seas" covered with row after row of dunes from 300 to 500 feet high. Radar images of these seas, which stretch for hundreds of miles, bear a stunning likeness to ranks of dunes in Namibia and Saudi Arabia.


34. Scientists have discovered the fastest bite in the world, one so explosive it can be used to send the Latin American trap-jaw ant that performs it flying through the air to escape predators.


35. Janjucetus Hunderi, a ferocious whale species related to the modern blue whale, roamed the oceans 25 million years ago preying on sharks with its huge, razor-sharp teeth.


36. DNA analysis determined the British descended from a tribe of Spanish fishermen who crossed the Bay of Biscay almost 6,000 years ago.


37. Marine biologists discovered a new species of shark that walks along the ocean floor on its fins.


38. Most of us have microscopic, wormlike mites named Demodex that live in our eyelashes and have claws and a mouth.


39. The common pigeon can memorize 1,200 pictures.


40. The queens of bee, ant and wasp colonies that have the most sex with the largest number of males produce the strongest and healthiest colonies.


41. By firing atoms of metal at another metal, Russian and American scientists found a new element - No. 118 on the Periodic Table - that is the heaviest substance known and probably hasn't existed since the universe was in its infancy.


42. A "treasure-trove" of 150-million-year-old fossils belonging to giant sea reptiles that roamed the seas at the time of the dinosaurs was uncovered on the Arctic island chain of Svalbard, about halfway between the Norwegian mainland and the North Pole.


43. Sleeping in on Saturday and Sunday can disturb your body clock, leaving you fatigued at the start of the week.


44. Migrating dragonflies and songbirds exhibit many of the same behaviors, suggesting the rules that govern such long-distance travel may be simpler and more ancient than was once thought.


45. During the past five years, the existence of a peanut allergy in children has doubled.


46. Photos taken of Mars in 1999 and 2005 show muddy sand, indicating there may have been a flood sometime between those years.


47. A python was the first god worshipped by mankind, according to 70,000-year-old evidence found in a cave in Botswana's Tosodilo hills.


48. Red wines from southwest France and Sardinia boast the highest concentrations of chemical compounds that promote heart health.


49. One of the most effective ways for athletes to recover after exercise is to drink a glass of chocolate milk.


50. Researchers from the University of Manchester managed to induce teeth growth in normal chickens - activating genes that have lain dormant for 80 million years.


Sources: The Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, U.S. Journal of Dental Research, Comte News, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, National Space Biomedical Research Institute, Bereavement Magazine, James Cook University, U.S. National Institutes of Health, The New York Times, University of Oregon, Current Biology, Hartford Seminary, University of Nottingham, LucyLibrary.com, Pew Internet /&/amp; American Life Project, Junior Achievement, Physorg.com, University of Chicago, Newcastle University, Forbes, National Geographic, University of Minnesota, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, MSNBC.com, Daily Record, Oxford University, New Scientist, Glasgow Daily Record, The San Jose Mercury News, Flinders University, Biology Letters, The Washington Post, University of Oslo, The Times of London, Indiana University, University of Manchester, Discovery.com

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Britney Skewered as 2006's "Most Controversial" Celebrity

Pop princess Britney Spears has been named the most controversial celebrity of the year. The singer, whose wild antics have raised eyebrows in recent weeks since her split with husband Kevin Federline, beat out competition from other potential candidates - including Mel Gibson for his drunken, anti-Jewish rant, comedian Michael Richards for spewing racial epithets, and model Naomi Campbell for abusing her personal staff - to land the title on the Showbiz Tonight programme on CNN Headline News.


In addition to club-hopping while wearing short skirts and no panties, inadvertently flashing paparazzi in the process, Spears hit the headlines earlier in the year for incidents including driving with her infant son on her lap, having social services investigate reports that the boy fell out of this high chair, and posing nude on the cover of Harper's Bazaar while pregnant with her second child.

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Paris Hilton Started Taking Acting Classes

Paris Hilton has been attending acting classes to prepare for her latest film.


The hotel heiress - who starred in horror movie ‘House of Wax’ and has had a string of cameos including parts in ‘Zoolander’ – wants to prove her critics wrong with her latest movie ‘The Hottie and the Nottie’.


A source told the New York Post newspaper: “Paris has been going to acting classes in Beverly Hills. She arrived looking very serious with a script clamped under her arm.”


The new film, directed by Tom Putnam, is about a woman who refuses to marry her long-term boyfriend until he finds a suitor for her ugly friend.


Earlier this week, Paris was branded a dumb blonde by Joan Rivers.


The sharp-tongued comedienne wrote a letter to her university alumni appealing for donations to her old sorority and bitchily used Paris and fellow blonde Jessica Simpson as examples of stupid young women.


According to reports, Joan wrote to Barnard alumni: “We must support women who have a sense of confidence and self-worth.


“Where have all the smart girls gone? That is a hard question to answer in an age where Jessica Simpson and Paris Hilton pass as intellectuals.”

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Priest tackles burglar

BOB SEGALL

Eyewitness News

A historic downtown church is turned into a crime scene, the target of a burglary just hours after Christmas! But these burglars had no idea what they were getting themselves into.

Police say a couple of young men will have a lot to talk about their next confessional. They are behind bars right now thanks to a priest who foiled their plans.

Investigators say the two teenagers broke into St. John's church through a window around 1:30 Tuesday morning. That's when Father Noah Casey walked in and saw the two young men.

Marion County Sheriff Department Captain Doug Scheffel says what happened next is something you might not expect from a priest.

"Once the individuals saw the priest, they attempted to get out through the window. One succeeded in doing that but as the second individual tried to do that, the priest caught him and tackled him," Scheffel said.

Eventually both suspects got away. But police say the priest got a good look at both suspects and slowed them down enough that it was easy for them to make arrests just a short while later.

Eyewitness News was there as the suspects were taken into custody at nearby hotel, where IPD officers tracked down the burglars and recovered a computer taken from the church.

Now Eyewitness news has learned from police, these same two teenagers are also suspects in a series of church burglaries in their home state of Florida.

Tuesday at noon, services were held as usual at St John's Catholic Church. The message was one of being thankful for the blessings of the season.

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Today in History - Dec. 27


The Associated Press

Today is Wednesday, Dec. 27, the 361st day of 2006. There are four days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On Dec. 27, 1831, naturalist Charles Darwin set out on a round-the-world voyage aboard the HMS Beagle. (Darwin's discoveries during the almost five-year-long journey helped to form the basis of his theories on natural selection and evolution.)

On this date:

In 1822, scientist Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France.

In 1904, James Barrie's play "Peter Pan: The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up" opened at the Duke of York's Theater in London.

In 1906, American composer, musician, actor and wit Oscar Levant was born in Pittsburgh.

In 1927, the musical play "Show Boat," with music by Jerome Kern and libretto by Oscar Hammerstein II, opened at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York.

In 1932, Radio City Music Hall opened in New York.

In 1945, 28 nations signed an agreement creating the World Bank.

In 1949, Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed an act granting sovereignty to Indonesia after more than three centuries of Dutch rule.

In 1968, Apollo 8 and its three astronauts made a safe, nighttime splashdown in the Pacific.

In 1979, Soviet forces seized control of Afghanistan. President Hafizullah Amin, who was overthrown and executed, was replaced by Babrak Karmal.

In 1985, Palestinian guerrillas opened fire inside the Rome and Vienna airports; a total of 20 people were killed, including five of the attackers, who were slain by police and security personnel.

Ten years ago: In Belgrade, Yugoslavia, about 60,000 opposition supporters defied riot police and rallied in celebration of an international report backing their triumph over Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic in recent local elections.

Five years ago: U.S. officials announced that Taliban and al-Qaida prisoners would be held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Bush extended permanent normal trade status to China. India and Pakistan engaged in diplomatic tit-for-tat, ordering half of each other's embassy staffs sent home and banning overflights by each other's national airlines.

One year ago: Grass fires burned in drought-stricken Texas and Oklahoma (over three days, nearly 200 homes were lost and the fires blamed for at least four deaths). Indonesia's Aceh rebels formally abolished their 30-year armed struggle for independence under a peace deal born out of the 2004 tsunami.

Today's Birthdays: Former U.S. Sen. James A. McClure, R-Idaho, is 82. Rockabilly musician Scotty Moore is 75. Western swing musician John Hughey (The Time Jumpers) is 73. Actor John Amos is 67. ABC News correspondent Cokie Roberts is 63. Singer Tracy Nelson is 62. Actor Gerard Depardieu is 58. Jazz singer-musician T.S. Monk is 57. Singer-songwriter Karla Bonoff is 55. Rock musician David Knopfler (Dire Straits) is 54. Actress Maryam D'Abo is 46. Country musician Jeff Bryant is 44. Actress Theresa Randle is 42. Actress Eva LaRue is 40. Rock musician Guthrie Govan (Asia) is 35. Musician Matt Slocum is 34. Actor Wilson Cruz is 33. Singer Olu is 33. Actress Emilie de Ravin is 25. Christian rock musician James Mead (Kutless) is 24.

Thought for Today: "Why must all the churches be closed at night? How often has the wanderer groaned in front of those closed doors?" — Paul Claudel, French author (1868-1955).

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Former President Gerald Ford dies at 93


JEFF WILSON,

Associated Press Writer

Gerald R. Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon's scandal-shattered White House as the 38th president and the only one never elected to nationwide office, has died. He was 93.

"My family joins me in sharing the difficult news that Gerald Ford, our beloved husband, father, grandfather and great grandfather has passed away at 93 years of age," former first lady Betty Ford said in a brief statement issued from her husband's office in Rancho Mirage. "His life was filled with love of God, his family and his country."

He died at 6:45 p.m. Tuesday at his home in Rancho Mirage, about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, his office said in a statement. No cause of death was released. Funeral arrangements were to be announced Wednesday.

Ford had battled pneumonia in January 2006 and underwent two heart treatments — including an angioplasty and a pacemaker implant — in August at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

"The American people will always admire Gerald Ford's devotion to duty, his personal character and the honorable conduct of his administration," President Bush said in a statement Tuesday night. "We mourn the loss of such a leader, and our 38th president will always have a special place in our nation's memory."

Ford was the longest living president, followed by Ronald Reagan, who also died at 93. Ford had been living at his desert home in Rancho Mirage, Calif., about 130 miles east of Los Angeles.

"I was deeply saddened this evening when I heard of Jerry Ford's death," former first lady Nancy Reagan said in a statement. "Ronnie and I always considered him a dear friend and close political ally.

"His accomplishments and devotion to our country are vast, and even long after he left the presidency he made it a point to speak out on issues important to us all," she said.

Ford was an accidental president, Nixon's hand-picked successor, a man of much political experience who had never run on a national ticket. He was as open and straightforward as Nixon was tightly controlled and conspiratorial.

Minutes after Nixon resigned in disgrace over the Watergate scandal and flew into exile, Ford took office and famously declared: "Our long national nightmare is over."

But he revived the debate over Watergate a month later by granting Nixon a pardon for all crimes he committed as president. That single act, it was widely believed, cost Ford election to a term of his own in 1976, but it won praise in later years as a courageous act that allowed the nation to move on.

The Vietnam War ended in defeat for the U.S. during his presidency with the fall of Saigon in April 1975. In a speech as the end neared, Ford said: "Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. But it cannot be achieved by refighting a war that is finished as far as America is concerned." Evoking Abraham Lincoln, he said it was time to "look forward to an agenda for the future, to unify, to bind up the nation's wounds."

Ford also earned a place in the history books as the first unelected vice president, chosen by Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew, who also was forced from office by scandal.

He was in the White House only 895 days, but changed it more than it changed him.

Even after two women tried separately to kill him, the presidency of Jerry Ford remained open and plain.

Not imperial. Not reclusive. And, of greatest satisfaction to a nation numbed by Watergate, not dishonest.

Even to millions of Americans who had voted two years earlier for Richard Nixon, the transition to Ford's leadership was one of the most welcomed in the history of the democratic process — despite the fact that it occurred without an election.

After the Watergate ordeal, Americans liked their new president — and first lady Betty, whose candor charmed the country.

They liked her for speaking openly about problems of young people, including her own daughter; they admired her for not hiding that she had a mastectomy — in fact, her example caused thousands of women to seek breast examinations.

And she remained one of the country's most admired women even after the Fords left the White House when she was hospitalized in 1978 and said she had become addicted to drugs and alcohol she took for painful arthritis and a pinched nerve in her neck. Four years later she founded the Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, a substance abuse facility next to Eisenhower Medical Center.

Ford slowed down in recent years. He had been hospitalized in August 2000 when he suffered one or more small strokes while attending the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.

The following year, he joined former presidents Carter, Bush and Clinton at a memorial service in Washington three days after the Sept. 11 attacks. In June 2004, the four men and their wives joined again at a funeral service in Washington for former President Reagan. But in November 2004, Ford was unable to join the other former presidents at the dedication of the Clinton presidential library in Little Rock, Ark.

In January, Ford was hospitalized with pneumonia for 12 days. He wasn't seen in public until April 23, when President Bush was in town and paid a visit to the Ford home. Bush, Ford and Betty posed for photographers outside the residence before going inside for a private get-together.

The intensely private couple declined reporter interview requests and were rarely seen outside their home in Rancho Mirage's gated Thunderbird Estates, other than to attend worship services at the nearby St. Margaret's Episcopal Church in Palm Desert.

In a long congressional career in which he rose to be House Republican leader, Ford lit few fires. In the words of Congressional Quarterly, he "built a reputation for being solid, dependable and loyal — a man more comfortable carrying out the programs of others than in initiating things on his own."

When Agnew resigned in a bribery scandal in October 1973, Ford was one of four finalists to succeed him: Texan John Connally, New York's Nelson Rockefeller and California's Ronald Reagan.

"Personal factors enter into such a decision," Nixon recalled for a Ford biographer in 1991. "I knew all of the final four personally and had great respect for each one of them, but I had known Jerry Ford longer and better than any of the rest.

"We had served in Congress together. I had often campaigned for him in his district," Nixon continued. But Ford had something the others didn't: he would be easily confirmed by Congress, something that could not be said of Rockefeller, Reagan and Connally.

So Ford it was. He became the first vice president appointed under the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

On Aug. 9, 1974, after seeing Nixon off, Ford assumed the office. The next morning, he still made his own breakfast and padded to the front door in his pajamas to get the newspaper.

Said a ranking Democratic congressman: "Maybe he is a plodder, but right now the advantages of having a plodder in the presidency are enormous."

It was rare that Ford was ever as eloquent as he was for those dramatic moments of his swearing-in at the White House.

"My fellow Americans," he said, "our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works. Our great republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule."

And, true to his reputation as unassuming Jerry, he added: "I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your president by your ballots. So I ask you to confirm me with your prayers."

For Ford, a full term was not to be. He survived an intraparty challenge from Ronald Reagan only to lose to Democrat Jimmy Carter in November. In the campaign, he ignored Carter's record as governor of Georgia and concentrated on his own achievements as president.

Carter won 297 electoral votes to his 240. After Reagan came back to defeat Carter in 1980, the two former presidents became collaborators, working together on joint projects.

Even as president, Ford often talked with reporters several times a day. He averaged 200 outside speeches a year as House Republican leader, a pace he kept up as vice president and diminished, seemingly, only slightly as chief executive. He kept speaking after leaving the White House, generally for fees of $15,000 to $20,000.

Ford was never asked to the White House for a social event during Reagan's eight years as president.

In office, Ford's living tastes were modest. When he became vice president, he chose to remain in the same Alexandria, Va., home — unpretentious except for a swimming pool — that he shared with his family as a congressman.

After leaving the White House, however, he took up residence in the desert resort area of Rancho Mirage, picked up $1 million for his memoir and another $1 million in a five-year NBC television contract, and served on a number of corporate boards. By 1987, he was on eight such boards, at fees up to $30,000 a year, and was consulting for others, at fees up to $100,000. After criticism, he cut back on such activity.

At a joint session after becoming president, Ford addressed members of Congress as "my former colleagues" and promised "communication, conciliation, compromise and cooperation." But his relations with Congress did not always run smoothly.

He vetoed 66 bills in his barely two years as president. Congress overturned 12 Ford vetoes, more than for any president since Andrew Johnson.

In his memoir, "A Time to Heal," Ford wrote, "When I was in the Congress myself, I thought it fulfilled its constitutional obligations in a very responsible way, but after I became president, my perspective changed."

Some suggested the pardon was prearranged before Nixon resigned, but Ford, in an unusual appearance before a congressional committee in October 1974, said, "There was no deal, period, under no circumstances." The committee dropped its investigation.

Ford's standing in the polls dropped dramatically when he pardoned Nixon unconditionally. But an ABC News poll taken in 2002 in connection with the 30th anniversary of the Watergate break-in found that six in 10 said the pardon was the right thing to do.

The late Democrat Clark Clifford spoke for many when he wrote in his memoirs, "The nation would not have benefited from having a former chief executive in the dock for years after his departure from office. His disgrace was enough."

The decision to pardon Nixon won Ford a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001, and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), acknowledging he had criticized Ford at the time, called the pardon "an extraordinary act of courage that historians recognize was truly in the national interest."

While Ford had not sought the job, he came to relish it. He had once told Congress that even if he succeeded Nixon he would not run for president in 1976. Within weeks of taking the oath, he changed his mind.

He was undaunted even after the two attempts on his life in September 1975. Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a 26-year-old follower of Charles Manson, was arrested after she aimed a semiautomatic pistol at Ford on Sept. 5 in Sacramento, Calif. A Secret Service agent grabbed her and Ford was unhurt.

Seventeen days later, Sara Jane Moore, a 45-year-old political activist, was arrested in San Francisco after she fired a gun at the president. Again, Ford was unhurt.

Both women are serving life terms in federal prison.

Asked at a news conference to recite his accomplishments, Ford replied: "We have restored public confidence in the White House and in the executive branch of government."

As to his failings, he responded, "I will leave that to my opponents. I don't think there have been many."

Ford spent most of his boyhood in Grand Rapids, Mich.

He was born Leslie King on July 14, 1913, in Omaha, Neb. His parents were divorced when he was less than a year old, and his mother returned to her parents in Grand Rapids, where she later married Gerald R. Ford Sr. He adopted the boy and renamed him.

Ford was a high school senior when he met his biological father. He was working in a Greek restaurant, he recalled, when a man came in and stood watching.

"Finally, he walked over and said, `I'm your father,'" Ford said. "Well, that was quite a shock." But he wrote in his memoir that he broke down and cried that night and he was left with the image of "a carefree, well-to-do man who didn't really give a damn about the hopes and dreams of his firstborn son."

Ford played center on the University of Michigan's 1932 and 1933 national champion football teams. He got professional offers from the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers, but chose to study law at Yale, working his way through as an assistant varsity football coach and freshman boxing coach.

Ford got his first exposure to national politics at Yale, working as a volunteer in Wendell L. Willkie's 1940 Republican campaign for president. After World War II service with the Navy in the Pacific, he went back to practicing law in Grand Rapids and became active in Republican reform politics.

His stepfather was the local Republican chairman, and Michigan Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg was looking for a fresh young internationalist to replace the area's isolationist congressman.

Ford beat Rep. Bartel Jonkman by a 2-to-1 margin in the Republican primary and then went on to win the election with 60.5 percent of the vote, the lowest margin he ever got.

He had proposed to Elizabeth Bloomer, a dancer and fashion coordinator, earlier that year, 1948. She became one of his hardest-working campaigners and they were married shortly before the election. They had three sons, Michael, John and Steven, and a daughter, Susan.

Ford was the last surviving member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.

Clifford, an adviser to presidents since Harry Truman, summed up his legacy: "About his brief presidency there is little that can be said. In almost every way, it was a caretaker government trying to bind up the wounds of Watergate and get through the most traumatic act of the Indochina drama.

"Ford ... was a likable person who deserves credit for accomplishing the one goal that was most important, to reunite the nation after the trauma of Watergate and give us a breathing spell before we picked a new president."

___

Associated Press writer Harry F. Rosenthal, who retired from the AP Washington bureau, contributed to this report.

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