Police: Chiefs' Belcher accused in murder-suicide

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) ? Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher fatally shot his girlfriend early Saturday, then drove to Arrowhead Stadium and committed suicide in front of his coach and general manager.

Authorities did not release a possible motive for the murder-suicide, though police said that Belcher and his girlfriend had been arguing recently. The two of them have an infant child.

Belcher thanked general manager Scott Pioli and coach Romeo Crennel before shooting himself in the parking lot outside the team's practice facility, police spokesman Darin Snapp said. Police had locked it down by mid-morning and reporters were confined to Arrowhead Drive just outside the gates.

The news cast a pall over the organization as it prepared to play the Carolina Panthers on Sunday. There was no official word whether the game would be played as scheduled.

Belcher was a 25-year-old native of West Babylon, N.Y., on Long Island, who played college ball at Maine. He signed with the Chiefs an undrafted free agent but had stuck around for four years, moving into the starting lineup. He'd played in all 11 games this season.

"I struggle a little bit, obviously, because Jovan Belcher's profile elevates the subject," Kansas City Mayor Sly James said. "I hope people will look at the situation and try not to judge the person. There are a lot of people hurting. There's a young baby right now without parents."

Authorities reported receiving a call Saturday morning from a woman who said her daughter had been shot multiple times at a residence about five miles away from the Arrowhead complex.

"When we arrived, a lady informed us that her daughter had been shot multiple times by her boyfriend, by the daughter's boyfriend," Snapp said.

Snapp said a call was then received from the Chiefs' facility.

"The description matched the suspect description from that other address. We kind of knew what we were dealing with," Snapp said. The player was "holding a gun to his head" as he stood in front of the front doors of the practice facility.

"And there were Pioli and Crennel and another coach or employee was standing outside and appeared to be talking to him. It appeared they were talking to the suspect," Snapp said. "The suspect began to walk in the opposite direction of the coaches and the officers and that's when they heard the gunshot. It appears he took his own life."

The coaches told police they never felt in any danger, Snapp said.

"They said the player was actually thanking them for everything they'd done for him," he said. "They were just talking to him and he was thanking them and everything. That's when he walked away and shot himself."

Snapp described the girlfriend as in her early 20s and that she and the player had a child together. He said the woman's mother told police they had recently been arguing.

"We can confirm that there was an incident at Arrowhead earlier this morning," the Chiefs said in a statement. "We are cooperating with authorities in their investigation."

James said that he spoke to Pioli after the incident, and while he refused to discuss the GM's emotional state, the mayor said Pioli was "extremely concerned that fans of this team are not disappointed and not left in the cold."

"I think they think there's an obligation to the people of this city, the fans of the team and the fans of the other team to play the game," James said.

The season has been a massive disappointment for the Chiefs, who were expected to contend for the AFC West title. They're just 1-10 and mired in an eight-game losing streak marked by injuries, poor play and fan upheaval, with calls for Pioli and Crennel to be fired.

The Twitter account for a fan group known as "Save Our Chiefs" recently surpassed 80,000 followers, about 17,000 more than the announced crowd at a recent game.

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Associated Press Writer Heather Hollingsworth contributed to this report.

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Online: http://pro32.ap.org and http://twitter.com/AP_NFL

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/police-chiefs-belcher-accused-murder-suicide-185900606--nfl.html

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Saudi Arabia's Pre-Islamic History Revealed (Voice Of America)

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60-Million-Year Debate on Grand Canyon?s Age

Richard Perry/The New York Times

The new research into the age of the Grand Canyon used a dating technique based on the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium atoms.

How old is the Grand Canyon? Old enough to be gazed on by dinosaurs, which died out 65 million years ago, or closer to six million years old, formed about when the earliest human ancestors began walking upright?

A bitter controversy among geologists over this question edged into the open on Thursday, when a report published in the journal Science offered new support for the old-canyon hypothesis, which is not the prevailing one. In the report, Rebecca M. Flowers of the University of Colorado and Kenneth A. Farley of the California Institute of Technology used an improved dating technique based on the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium atoms into helium atoms in a mineral known as apatite. They said this yielded a thermal record of these rocks under the canyon floor, hot at great depths but cooler the closer they were to the surface.

An analysis of the data, the geologists said, revealed where surface erosion had gouged out canyons and how much time had passed since there was significant natural excavation in the Grand Canyon region. They concluded in the report that the western segment of the canyon was carved to within a few hundred yards of modern depths by about 70 million years ago.

The more ancient origin would put much of the canyon in place in the last epoch of the dinosaurs. Publicity for the journal report duly noted that one of nature?s wonders, dinosaurs, might well have stood and gawked at another wonder, one of today?s most majestic tourist attractions.

This was only one of the immediate objections to the findings raised by geologists favoring the young-canyon school of thought. They said that the research results had been hyped. One critic, Karl E. Karlstrom of the University of New Mexico, noted that the early-canyon model had been proposed before and was ?now in what I think will be a short-lived revival.?

If the interpretation of the findings proves to be correct, it contradicts the prevailing hypothesis that the entire canyon was formed as recently as five million to six million years ago, advocated by many of the notable authorities on Grand Canyon geology. These dates were drawn from an examination of pebbles and other sediments from upstream reaches of the Colorado River system that washed up at the western exit of the canyon.

Dr. Flowers said that when she started this research seven years ago, she had not expected to find the canyon?s presumed age to be so ancient. But the first set of experiments with the radioactive helium technique in 2008 was followed up with a new round of tests and more sophisticated levels of analysis.

In their paper, Dr. Flowers and Dr. Farley wrote that their findings implied a dichotomy in the late eastern and early western canyon origins. This history, they said, ?supports a model in which much of Grand Canyon incision was accomplished by an ancient Cretaceous river that flowed eastward from western highlands,? not from northeast to west, as today?s Colorado River does. This was followed by a ?reversal of the river?s course as topography rose in the east and collapsed in the west,? in consequence of the rising Rocky Mountains.

Dr. Flowers said in an interview that the findings supported the ancient-origin hypothesis advanced in recent years by Brian P. Wernicke, a Caltech geologist, who had proposed such a chain of events. It is still not clear when the eastern and western canyons merged into the canyon as it is seen today.

She also said she foresaw ?a fair amount of controversy? over the research results. That turned out to be an understatement, even before the official publication date.

Dr. Karlstrom of the University of New Mexico is a leader among geologists who have devoted much of their careers to Grand Canyon studies. When reporters called this week, he was prepared with four pages of criticism of the new research. He pointed out that at a meeting two years ago of the most active Grand Canyon researchers, ?a near consensus view was expressed? in support of the young-canyon hypothesis.

As a rule of thumb, he defined the Grand Canyon as ?the canyon you see from the rim today.? How fragments of paleocanyons and paleorivers contributed to the Grand Canyon?s origin is not established, he said.

Dr. Karlstrom was not entirely negative in his assessment of the research. He praised the thermochronology method the researchers used, saying it ?offers one of the few ways we may be able to reconstruct past landscapes in rocks that have long since been eroded away.? The Flowers-Farley team, he added, ?is pushing welcome new advances? in this dating technology.

?Less welcome to me,? he continued, ?is their attempt to push the interpretation of their new data to their limits without consideration of the whole range of other geologic data sets.?

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 29, 2012

An earlier version of this article misstated the direction in which the Colorado River flows. It flows from northeast to west, not from west to northeast.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/30/science/earth/study-sees-older-grand-canyon-stirring-controversy.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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