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Restraint: Joshua Beadle appears in a Memphis court wearing the bizarre mask
Beadle was also gaining a reputation in prison as a spitter - so officials decided it was time to take precautions.
He was fitted with a special nylon-and-mesh beekeeper-style face mask rather reminiscent of the muzzle that actor Anthony Hopkins wore while playing the cannibal doctor Hannibal Lector in the hit film The Silence of the Lambs.
Beadle has had to wear the bizarre-looking mask for his court appearances ever since.
He is representing himself in court after having trouble retaining representation.
His lawyer, Larry Sargent, was excused from the case after telling the court that Beadle had threatened to add him to the list of people he intended to kill when he got out of jail. Chilling: Beadle's mask is reminiscent of the one Anthony Hopkins wore as Hannibal Lecter
A man has been forced to wear a Hannibal Lecter-style head-dress to court after spitting at the judge.
Joshua Beadle, 24, who is on trial in Memphis, Tennessee for a 2005 burglary, was forced to wear the bizarre headgear after he spat at a judge last year, barely missing him but dousing a clerk's computer. Beadle was also gaining a reputation in prison as a spitter - so officials decided it was time to take precautions.
He was fitted with a special nylon-and-mesh beekeeper-style face mask rather reminiscent of the muzzle that actor Anthony Hopkins wore while playing the cannibal doctor Hannibal Lector in the hit film The Silence of the Lambs.
Beadle has had to wear the bizarre-looking mask for his court appearances ever since.
He is representing himself in court after having trouble retaining representation.
His lawyer, Larry Sargent, was excused from the case after telling the court that Beadle had threatened to add him to the list of people he intended to kill when he got out of jail.
Mr Watt was less than complimentary about Prime Minister Gordon Brown's style of government
Seat of power: Mr Watt, left, takes his parents, Sandra and David, to No 10 while Tony Blair was Prime Minister
Damning: Former Labour chief Peter Watt reveals all in his memoirs
* PM’s inner circle don't like him, claims Brown's closest aide * No10 is ‘completely dysfunctional’ under Brown * Brown walked out of dinner party with US politicians because they sat down without his permission
Gordon Brown is facing a new crisis after the man who once ran the Labour Party launched a devastating attack on his leadership and backed calls for him to step down.
Former Labour General Secretary Peter Watt said Mr Brown was not fit to be Prime Minister, had reduced No 10 to a shambles and was derided even by some of his closest Cabinet allies.
Mr Watt’s bombshell allegations come just four days after a bid to oust Mr Brown led by ex-Ministers Patricia Hewitt and Geoff Hoon.
And they come on the day that Mr Brown revealed that nothing would force him to quit and he dismissed the attempted coup as 'silliness'.
In an interview in the News of the World Mr Brown also said that Nelson Mandela's favourite poem in which the author says that his 'head is bloody but I remain unbowed' had inspired him.
But Mr Watt paid tribute to the ‘bravery’ of those rebels last night and urged Mr Brown to make way for a new leader ‘for the sake of Labour’.
But he denies the publication of his memoirs, serialised in today’s Mail on Sunday, is part of a carefully timed ‘second wave’ assault on the Prime Minister.
Mr Watt's attack comes as a new poll in today's Sunday Telegraph gave Labour supporters some cause for comfort, suggesting the Tories still only enjoyed a 10-point lead.
The ICM survey found that the Tories had flatlined at 40 per cent while Labour was up one on 30 per cent, despite the recent bout iof in-fighting. The Liberal Democrats were down one on 18 per cent.
However, Mr Watt's damaging charges of tantrums, treachery, cowardice and incompetence by Mr Brown are bound to raise doubts as to whether he can survive until the General Election, due by June 3.
The behind-the-scenes account is unprecedented.
Mr Watts is the first general secretary to write his memoirs, as the most senior officials in all main parties customarily observe a strict and permanent code of silence about controversial events during their term of office. Those described by Mr Watt occurred just two years ago.
Moreover, nearly all the leading figures named and shamed in his book, Inside Out: My Story Of Betrayal And Cowardice At The Heart Of New Labour, are still in office.
In his book, Mr Watt, who resigned as Labour general secretary in 2007, claims:
* Mr Brown’s Cabinet ally Douglas Alexander said the PM’s inner circle wanted an early Election partly because even they didn’t like him – and they feared the British public would soon form the same view. * The day Mr Brown called off the 2007 Election, denying he had ever intended to hold one, Labour chiefs had a fleet of limousines circling Parliament Square ready to take Ministers on the campaign trail, and had 1.5million leaflets ready to be posted. * No10 is ‘completely dysfunctional’ under Mr Brown, who runs the country ‘by making it up as he goes along’. * Sulking Mr Brown walked out of a Downing Street dinner party with US politicians because they sat down without his permission.
Mr Watt also reveals for the first time the inside story of the ‘Donorgate’ scandal which led to his resignation when The Mail on Sunday exposed how tycoon David Abrahams had secretly given £600,000 to Labour in other people’s names, in breach of electoral laws.
Mr Watt claims the scandal was not his fault and alleges Mr Brown ‘stabbed him in the back’ by pledging to stand by him, hours before branding him a criminal in public.
In the book, he writes: ‘“Ha bloody ha,” I thought. The PM has just publicly called me a criminal. Why doesn’t he just ring the Met himself?
'No10 badly wanted me charged, since it would cement their politically expedient characterisation of me as a renegade.’
Last year, the Crown Prosecution Service ruled there would be no charges against Mr Watt.
His book provides a damning insight into the on-off Election fiasco of autumn 2007, when Mr Brown had planned to use his political honeymoon after taking over from Tony Blair to call a snap poll but changed his mind at the last minute.
Mr Watt claims International Aid Minister Douglas Alexander, one of Mr Brown’s closest allies, told him one reason for wanting an early poll: ‘The truth is, Peter, we have spent ten years working with this guy, and we don’t actually like him.
'We have always thought the longer the British public had to get to know him, the less they would like him as well.’
Mr Watt said Mr Alexander used those words, or ‘very similar’, adding: ‘The sentiment was repeated many times [by] senior Labour figures.’ He also reveals the chaos caused when Mr Brown made his U-turn on the Election during a TV interview.
‘As he spoke, the fleet of limousines ordered at No10’s behest was circling Parliament Square.
'They had come . . . to collect Ministers and whisk them off on the campaign trail. They were sent away on a pretext, to spare us the humiliation of anyone spotting them lined up outside our offices.
‘We had already spent £1.2million. Somewhere in a mail depot were hundreds of sacks of personalised letters to voters in marginal seats – 1.5million envelopes waiting to go.’
Mr Alexander berated Climate Change Minister Ed Miliband for failing to prepare a manifesto.
Mr Watts says Mr Alexander complained: ‘You’d imagine that after ten years of waiting, and ten years complaining about Tony, we would have some idea of what we are going to do but we don’t seem to have any policies.’ Mr Watt paints a withering portrait of Mr Brown’s style of government. ‘Downing Street was a shambles. There was no vision, no strategy, no co-ordination.
'It was completely dysfunctional. Gordon had been so desperate to become Prime Minister that we all assumed he knew what he was going to do when he got there.
‘I imagined there was some grand plan, tucked away in a drawer. But if any such document existed, nobody seemed to know about it. Gordon was simply making it up as he went along.’
Mr Watt also highlights Mr Brown’s ‘weird’ behaviour. He recalls the moment the Prime Minister threw a tantrum at a No10 dinner party for US Democrat politicians after guests sat down without his permission.
Mr Watt said: ‘For the rest of the meal he was monosyllabic, sulking because he had lost control of the seating plan.
'The plates had not even been cleared when quite suddenly, without saying anything, he just got up and left. “He’s bonkers,” Vilma [Mr Watt’s wife] whispered. She was right.’
In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, Mr Watt said Labour’s best chance of avoiding Election disaster is to get rid of Mr Brown.
‘It was very brave of Geoff Hoon and Pat Hewitt to put their heads above the parapet,’ he said.
‘Labour should have replaced Gordon six months ago. We have to have this out – and fast.
'It’s true that divided parties don’t win Elections, but leaders as unpopular as Gordon Brown don’t win them either.’
Blairite Mr Watt said it was nonsense for Mr Brown’s camp to claim there were no alternative leaders.
‘David and Ed Miliband, Alan Johnson, James Purnell and Andy Burnham all have great potential,’ he said.
‘Gordon is a big political figure but he lacks the emotional intelligence required by a modern leader.
'If you cannot connect to people you will fail. Gordon just doesn’t have those skills.'
Mr Watt remains bitter at the way he was treated by Mr Brown and Deputy Leader Harriet Harman over ‘Donorgate’.
He said: ‘A political decision was taken to circle the wagons – with me on the outside – to deflect the arrows coming Gordon and Harriet’s way.’
He added: ‘When Gordon became leader, nobody ever stopped to ask could he actually do the job.
'He soon defined himself as remote and a ditherer who was not up to the job.
‘Like everyone in the party I had great hopes for Gordon.
'But it quickly became apparent he had no plans, and it descended into shambles.’
A van carrying the body of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad leaves the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009. Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, prison spokesman Larry Traylor said.
Cheryll Witz, daughter of sniper victim Jerry Taylor of Tucson Ariz., listens to a question as she speaks about witnessing the execution of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009. Cheryl Wits traveled from Tucson to Virginia. Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m., prison spokesman said.
Corrections officers man the front entrance to the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009. Convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad is scheduled to be executed Tuesday night for the sniper attacks in 2002 that left 10 dead in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C.
Virginia Rovnyak of Charlottesville, Va. stands in protest outside Greenville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., just before the scheduled time of DC sniper John Muhammad's execution on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009.
Abraham Bonowitz of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty rings a bell in protest outside Greenville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., just before the scheduled time of DC sniper John Muhammad's execution on Nov. 10, 2009.
Cheryll Witz, daughter of sniper victim Jerry Taylor of Tucson Ariz., listens to a question as she speaks about witnessing the execution of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009. Cheryl Wits traveled from Tucson to Virginia. Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m., prison spokesman said.
Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor, announces the execution of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad at the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009. Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m., Traylor said.
Marion Lewis, whose daughter Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera was killed by D.C. snipers John Allen Muhammad and Lee Malvo, sits in Jarratt, Va. after witnessing Muhammad's execution at the Greenville Correctional facility on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009
Darick Lane, background, and son Desmond Lane of Richmond, Va. hold candles outside Greenville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va. "protesting his execution and remembering the victims" before Muhammad's scheduled 9 p.m. execution on Nov. 10, 2009.
Convicted DC sniper John Muhammad's ex-wife, Carol Williams, walks back to her car outside Greenville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va. before Muhammad's scheduled 9 p.m. execution on Nov. 10, 2009.
Family members of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad pray outside Greenville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., at the scheduled time of Muhammad's execution on Nov. 10, 2009. Muhammad was executed for sniper attacks that killed 10 people in Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. during a 3-week spree in 2002.
Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor, at podium, announces the execution of convicted sniper John Allen Muhammad outside the Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt, Va., Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009. Muhammad died by injection at 9:11 p.m. at the prison, Traylor said.
John Allen Muhammad, the mastermind behind the sniper attacks that left 10 dead, was executed Tuesday as relatives of the victims watched, reliving the killing spree that terrorized the Washington, D.C., area for three weeks in October 2002.
The 48-year-old Muhammad looked calm and stoic, but was twitching and blinking, tapping his left foot as the injections began, defiant to the end, refusing to utter any final words. Victims' families sat behind glass while watching, separated from the rest of the 27 witnesses, who were quiet, looking straight forward, intent on what was happening.
"He died very peacefully, much more than most of his victims," said Prince William County prosecutor Paul Ebert, who witnessed Muhammad die by injection at 9:11 p.m. at Greensville Correctional Center, south of Richmond.
Muhammad was executed for killing Dean Harold Meyers, who was shot in the head at a Manassas gas station during the spree across Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C.
Nelson Rivera, whose wife, Lori Ann Lewis-Rivera, was gunned down as she vacuumed her van at a Maryland gas station, said that when he watched Muhammad's chest moving for the last time, he was glad.
"I feel better. I think I can breathe better," he said. "I'm glad he's gone because he's not going to hurt anyone else."
Muhammad never testified or explained why he directed the shootings, and his secrets died with him.
Meyers' brother, Bob Meyers, said watching the execution was sobering and "surreal."
"I would have liked him at some point in the process to take responsibility, to show remorse," Meyers said. "We didn't get any of that tonight."
J. Wyndal Gordon, one of Muhammad's attorneys, described his client in his final hours as fearless and still insisting he was innocent.
"He will die with dignity — dignity to the point of defiance," Gordon said before going inside to witness the execution.
Victim after victim was shot down while doing everyday chores: shopping, pumping gas, mowing the lawn. One child was shot while walking into his middle school.
The terror ended on Oct. 24, 2002, when police captured Muhammad and his teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, while they slept at a Maryland rest stop in a car they had outfitted for a shooter to perch in its trunk without being detected.
Malvo, who was 17 when carrying out the attacks, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing Linda Franklin, a 47-year-old FBI analyst who was shot as she and her husband loaded supplies at a Home Depot in Falls Church, Va.
The men also were suspected of fatal shootings in other states, including Louisiana, Alabama and Arizona.
The U.S. Supreme Court turned down Muhammad's final appeal Monday, and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine denied clemency Tuesday.
Muhammad's attorneys had asked Kaine to commute his sentence to life in prison because they said Muhammad had brain damage and neurological problems, as well as psychotic and delusional behavior, exacerbated by the Gulf War Syndrome he suffered as a sergeant in the first Iraq war.
"I think crimes that are this horrible, you just can't understand them, you can't explain them," said Kaine, a Democrat known for carefully considering death penalty cases. "They completely dwarf your ability to look into the life of a person who would do something like this and understand why."
A small group of death penalty opponents gathered on a grassy area near the prison and had a sign reading, "We remember the victims, but not with more killing."
Muhammad was born John Allen Williams and changed his name after converting to Islam. He had been in and out of the military since he graduated from high school in Louisiana and entered the National Guard. He joined the Army in 1985. He did not take special sniper training but earned an expert rating in the M-16 rifle — the military cousin of the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle used in the D.C. shootings.
The motive for the attacks remains murky. Malvo said Muhammad wanted to extort $10 million from the government to set up a camp in Canada where homeless children would be trained as terrorists. Muhammad's ex-wife said she believes they were a smoke screen for his plan to kill her and regain custody of their three children.
Sonia Hollingsworth-Wills, the mother of Conrad Johnson, the last man slain that October, sat in the back seat of a car outside the prison before the execution, which she chose not to witness. But she said she wanted to be there and was counting the minutes until Muhammad's death.
"It was the most horrifying day of my life," she said. "I'll never get complete closure but at least I can put this behind me."
Gimme a 'C': Cambridge University's first cheerleading squad in 800 years are making history by proving that beauty and brains go hand in hand
The Tab's 'Totty' section featuring 'Beautiful Becky' sparked controversy on campus at Cambridge University
From left: Robin Best, Cally Humphrey, Sarah Reid, Rebecca Grant, Tanya-Lucy Bell, Marieluise Lercher and Catherine Vincent
Their outfits, at least, are in the university's traditional colours.
But everything else about the appearance of these energetic young women is likely to have the dons of Cambridge spluttering on their port.
For the first time in its 800-year history, Cambridge University has its own cheerleading squad.
The Cambridge Cougars entertain crowds at sporting fixtures and this year cheered the Varsity rugby league team to victory against Oxford.
They have also supported the university in volleyball, basketball and hockey, belting out chants such as: 'Cambridge, Cambridge, crank it up. Cambridge, Cambridge, we're on top.'
The 45-member squad is made up predominantly of Britons but also boasts some from the U.S. Germany, Israel, Austria and Ireland.
They include four men whose strength is useful for flinging the girls into the air.
The club president, Cally Humphrey, said: 'It helps students relax and forget about their work for a while.'
Oxford's own prize-winning team, the Sirens, was founded in 2004.
Among the Cambridge girls hoping to emulate Oxford's success are the seven pictured here:
Robin Best, 21, from Ilkley, West Yorkshire. Natural sciences student at Gonville and Caius. Ambition: Environmental work.
Cally Humphrey, 23, from Devon. Cougars president. Materials science PhD student at Corpus Christi College. Ambition: Scientist.
Sarah Reid, 20, from Oxford. Music student at Homerton, specialising in the flute. Ambition: Professional musician.
Rebecca Grant, 19, from Bishops Stortford, Hertfordshire. Medicine student at Trinity. Ambition: Doctor.
Tanya-Lucy Bell, 21, from Holywood, Belfast. English with education student at Homerton. Ambition: Primary school teacher.
Marieluise Lercher, 20, born in Austria, lives in Germany. Natural sciences at Peterhouse. Ambition: Surgeon.
Catherine Vincent, 20, from Woodford Green, North-East London. Classics student at Trinity. Ambition: Primary school teacher.
The emergence of the cheerleading squad comes a week after a row erupted over Cambridge students setting up an online tabloid newspaper complete with Page Three.
'The Tab', which provides the latest celebrity gossip and sport news, proved hugely popular with 80,000 hits in its first week.
But the university's traditional student press hit out at its trenchant style and the student union called for the 'Tab Totty' section to be axed. -------- RELATED POSTS:-
Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley, far left, listens as a multiracial group of officers and union leaders, including Cambridge Police Patrol Officers Union President Steve Killion, foreground right, hold a news conference in Cambridge, Mass. Friday, July 24, 2009 to show support for Crowley, who was the arresting officer of Harvard Prof. Lewis Gates at his home. At center is Sgt. Leon Lashley, who was with Crowley at the scene of the arrest, said later he supports "100 percent" how Crowley handled the situation.
In this photo taken by a neighbor Thursday July 16, 2009, Henry Louis Gates Jr. center, the director of Harvard University's W.E.B. DuBois Institute for African and African American Research, is arrested at his home in Cambridge, Mass. Cambridge police officers attending are, Sgt. James Crowley, right, and Sgt. Leon Lashley, front right.
President Barack Obama smiles as he talks to the media in the briefing room at the White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
FILE - This Aug. 23, 2006 file photo shows Harvard University Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., during a book signing moments before the screening of a segment of the Spike Lee documentary called "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts," at the Old Whaling Church in Edgartown, Mass., on Martha's Vineyard.
President Barack Obama pauses as he talks to the media in the briefing room at the White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
President Barack Obama gestures as he talks to the media in the briefing room at The White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
President Barack Obama pauses as he talks to the media in the briefing room of the White House in Washington, Friday, July 24, 2009.
Cambridge Police Sergeants James Crowley (L) and Leon Lashley stand together at a news conference with representatives of various police unions in Cambridge, Massachusetts July 24, 2009. Sergeant Lashley was on the scene last week when Sergeant Crowley arrested prominent black scholar and Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. after responding to a call about a break-in at Gates' home in Cambridge.
The police union's combative press conference Friday was an example of how the profession closes ranks in times of trouble.
Mere hours after the police union of Cambridge, Mass., brazenly demanded an apology from the president of the United States, it – in essence – got it.
While President Obama's unscheduled appearance at a routine White House press conference was not an explicit apology, Mr. Obama acknowledged that he now regretted his choice of words in a Wednesday night press conference. He had said that Sgt. James Crowley "acted stupidly" for arresting Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. on his own front porch.
Hours earlier, a multiracial group of police officers had stood with Crowley in Massachusetts and said the president should apologize.
Obama conceded his words had been ill-chosen, but he stopped short of a public apology. He personally telephoned both Gates and Sgt. James Crowley, hoping to end the rancorous back-and-forth over what had transpired and what Obama had said about it. Trying to lighten the situation, he even commiserated with Crowley about reporters on his lawn.
Knocked off stride by a racial uproar he helped stoke, President Barack Obama hastened Friday to tamp down the controversy. Obama, who had said Cambridge, Mass., police "acted stupidly" in arresting black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., declared the white arresting officer was a good man and invited him and the professor to the White House for a beer.
t was a measure of the nation's keen sensitivities on matters of race that the fallout from a disorderly conduct charge in Massachusetts — and the remarks of America's first black president about it — had mushroomed to such an extent that he felt compelled to make a surprise appearance in the White House briefing room to try to put the matter to rest. The blowup had dominated national attention just as Obama was trying to marshal public pressure to get Congress to push through health care overhaul legislation — and as polls showed growing doubts about his performance.
"This has been ratcheting up, and I obviously helped to contribute ratcheting it up," Obama said of the racial controversy. "I want to make clear that in my choice of words, I think I unfortunately gave an impression that I was maligning the Cambridge Police Department and Sgt. Crowley specifically. And I could've calibrated those words differently."
"The fact that this has garnered so much attention, I think, is testimony to the fact that these are issues that are still very sensitive here in America," Obama said.
"I don't know if you've noticed, but nobody's been paying much attention to health care," the president said.
There were signs both that Obama's statement had helped to ease tensions and that his critics were not about to let that be the end of it: A trio of Massachusetts police organizations issued a statement thanking the president for his "willingness to reconsider his remarks." And a Republican congressman from Michigan, Thaddeus McCotter, said he would introduce a House resolution calling on Obama to apologize to Crowley.
He said the police officer "wanted to find out if there was a way of getting the press off his lawn."
"I informed him that I can't get the press off my lawn," Obama joked.
The case began on Monday, when word broke that Gates, 58, had been arrested five days earlier at the two-story home he rents from Harvard.
Supporters including Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson called the arrest an outrageous act of racial profiling. Public interest increased when a photograph surfaced of the handcuffed Gates being escorted off his porch amid three officers, two white and one black.
Cambridge police moved to drop the disorderly conduct charge on Tuesday — without apology, but calling the case "regrettable."
Meanwhile, the police union and fellow officers, black and white, rallied around Crowley, a decorated officer who in 1993 tried to give lifesaving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to Reggie Lewis, a black Boston Celtics player who collapsed at practice. Lewis could not be revived.
Crowley, 42, had been selected to be a police academy instructor on how to avoid racial profiling.
A multiracial group of officers and union officials stood with Crowley on Friday at a news conference to show support and to ask Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who is black, to apologize for their comments. Patrick had called Gates' arrest "every black man's nightmare."
Obama's take on the situation: "My sense is you've got two good people in a circumstance in which neither of them were able to resolve the incident in a way that it should have been resolved."
