LAKE FOREST, Ill. (AP)—Chicago Bears cornerback Charles Tillman is back and defensive tackle Tommie Harris says he won’t be far behind.

Tillman practiced Wednesday for the first time in organized team activities following January surgery to repair a shoulder injury he suffered Sept. 28 against the Philadelphia Eagles.

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AP) A Maine man has been charged with operating under the influence after he and a friend made a beer run on a riding lawn mower.

Police say 51-year-old Danforth Ross of Vassalboro was charged May 29.

Trooper Joe Chretien had been flagged down by several motorists warning of a wayward mower and made the arrest after Ross and his friend emerged from a variety store with two cases of beer.

Ross’ driver’s license had been revoked, so the pair opted for the lawn mower.

Ross couldn’t be reached for comment.
Who goes for a beer run on a lawn mower?

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(AP) A 90-year-old suburban Chicago woman who dropped out of school to help her family during the Great Depression now has her high school diploma.

Eleanor Benz left Chicago Public Schools’ Lake View High in 1936 during her senior year to take a job. Over the following decades she moved to the suburb of Gurnee and had 15 children, 54 grandchildren and 37 great-grandchildren.

Benz attended night school for typing and bookkeeping, but she recently told one of her daughters that never completing high school was one of her greatest disappointments. Her children contacted Lake View, and the school approved Benz’s diploma.

This week, at her 90th birthday party, Benz’s family presented her with the diploma and a 2009 gown and cap with a 1936 tass

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An Israeli woman mistakenly threw out a mattress she said had almost $1 million inside, setting off a frantic search through tons of garbage at a number of landfill sites on Wednesday. The woman told The Associated Press that she bought her elderly mother a new mattress as a surprise present on Monday _ and threw out the old one.

The next day, she said, she remembered that she had hidden her life savings inside the old mattress. “I woke up in the morning screaming, when it hit me what happened,” said the Tel Aviv woman, who asked not to be identified.

She went to look for the mattress, but it had already been hauled away by garbage collectors, she said. Searches at three different landfill sites turned up nothing.

She said the money was in U.S. dollars and Israeli shekels. She refused to say how she acquired such a large sum. “It was all my money in the world,” she said. There was no way to verify her claims, and she refused to disclose key details.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said he was not familiar with the case and no report had been filed.

The Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot published a picture of the woman searching through garbage at a dump in southern Israel. The picture shows the woman, dressed in a white top and black pants with her back to the camera, picking through a huge pile of trash that fills the frame about 10 feet (3 meters) in all directions.

Yitzhak Borba, the dump manager, told Army Radio that his staff was helping the woman, saying she appeared “totally desperate.” He said the mattress was hard to find among the 2,500 tons of garbage that arrives at the site every day.

He said he increased security at the site to keep would-be treasure hunters away.

The woman said the money had been stashed in a mattress because she had had “traumatic experiences with banks” in the past. She would not elaborate.

Story on: CBSNEWS.COM

SPIN magazine is going crazy with its July issue, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Prince’s “Purple Rain” with a comprehensive oral history of the film and album and a free downloadable tribute that features nine bands doing song-for-song covers of the record’s classic tracks.

Dubbed “Purplish Rain,” the nine song tribute album boasts a real coup: Apollonia, the one-time Prince protege who starred in the film, contributes a cover of “When Doves Cry” that she recorded with Greg Dulli and his band, the Twilight Singers. Other cover versions on the album include Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings doing “Take Me With U,” Of Montreal’s take on “Computer Blue,” a punk-mariachi version of “I Would Die 4 U” and Lavender Diamond’s rendition of the title track.

The Apollonia/Dulli duet is currently streaming at SPIN.com, and the full downloadable album will be available when the magazine hits the streets on June 23. The album download is free, but a clue from the magazine article will be required for access.

“We approached a bunch of bands, and we got nine who were really into it,” Doug Brod, SPIN’s Editor told Billboard.com. “All these bands did it for free – they paid for all of their recording time and they mastered all the tracks themselves.” Unlike several other Prince cover records that have run afoul of The Artist’s wishes, SPIN cleared all of the tracks and are covering the royalty expenses.

The 10-page oral history was compiled and written by Brian Raftery, who spoke to most of the key participants in the original project, including Wendy and Lisa, other members of the Revolution and the Time, Bob Cavallo (the film’s producer and Prince’s manager at the time), director Albert Magnoli, and the original screenplay writer William Blinn. Prince and the Time’s main man Morris Day did not participate.

“We did a full court press to get Prince himself involved,” said Brod. “He’s a pretty tough guy to get a hold of, and he doesn’t dwell much on nostalgia.”

Story on: Billboard.com