Good Morning Big Brother

[Saint Nick]

[Saint Nick]

delicious fucking soda

[Saint Nick]

San Francisco (CNN) -- Jurors deciding Barry Bonds' fate asked to listen again to the testimony of a key prosecution witness Friday before they recessed deliberations for the weekend in the baseball legend's perjury and obstruction of justice trial.
The judge will read the transcript of Kathy Hoskins' testimony Monday morning when the jury returns for their second day of deliberations.
Bonds, 46, allegedly lied to a federal grand jury about knowingly taking performance-enhancing drugs and about being injected by anyone but his doctors.
The three perjury counts and one count of obstruction of justice could each carry a 10-year prison sentence upon conviction. A fourth perjury charge was dropped by prosecutors Wednesday.
Jurors earlier Friday were allowed to hear again two segments of a conversation secretly recorded in the San Francisco Giants' locker room by Bond's former assistant, also a key government witness.
The trial began last month in a San Francisco federal courthouse less than two miles from the ballpark where Bonds broke Hank Aaron's major league home run record in August 2007.
Bonds' former trainer was freed Friday from the prison where he's been held since he refused to testify the trial two weeks ago.
U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found Anderson in contempt of court on the first day of trial testimony when his lawyer informed her that he would not take the stand to answer questions about Bonds' steroid use.
It was the third time Anderson chose jail time over testimony. He was sent to prison for several weeks twice before when he refused to appear before a federal grand jury investigating Bonds.
The absence of the trainer's testimony hampered the government's case against Bonds, who is charged with lying under oath when he testified about his steroids use in 2003 before the grand jury that was investigating an alleged sports doping scandal involving Anderson of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative.
A prosecutor argued Thursday that Bonds lied because he knew the truth about his steroids use would "tinge his accomplishments" and hurt his career.
"His secret was so powerful that he couldn't admit it, wouldn't admit it," Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeff Nedrow said in his closing arguments.
Bonds' defense lawyer, during his closing arguments Thursday, asked jurors to acquit him because of a technical oversight by prosecutors -- an argument the government quickly rebutted.
The judge's instructions to the jury say Bonds can found be found guilty only if his lies could have affected the grand jury's decisions and that Bonds knew it, defense lawyer Allen Ruby said.
But none of the 25 prosecution witnesses presented evidence about what decisions the grand jury made or what they might have made, Ruby said. "Who told us about the grand jury at all?"
The Internal Revenue Service agent who started the federal investigation into the distribution of performance-enhancing drugs testified that Bonds' false testimony affected his work, but Agent Jeff Novitzky was not part of the grand jury, Ruby said.
"I know that this is a little technical," Ruby said. "I don't apologize for that. Every word of the law matters."
The judge also instructed jurors to rely only what they heard from witnesses in the trial and not use their prior knowledge of the grand jury process, he said.
"The government is trusting you to do what you are forbidden to do, and fill in the gaps," Ruby said.
Prosecutor Matthew Parrella, in his rebuttal, said Novitzky's investigation and the grand jury probe were "one and the same."
The jury can also read the indictments the grand jury issued in 2004 and the grand jury transcript in which "the issues are fleshed out," Parrella said.
Ruby told jurors that Bonds acknowledged to the grand jury that he used the substances known as "the clear and the cream," but at the time of his testimony, even investigators didn't know what was in them.
Bonds told the grand jury he thought Anderson was giving him flaxseed oil, Ruby said.
Nedrow, in his closing, said it was "implausible" that Bonds would take drugs "and really not know what they were."
A urine sample given by Bonds in the summer of 2003, just months before his grand jury testimony, tested positive for anabolic steroids, he said. The defense argued there was another sample taken weeks earlier that tested negative for the drugs.
Defense lawyer Cristina Arguedas, in her part of closing arguments, accused prosecutors of ignoring crimes by witnesses in exchange for their testimony against Bonds.
"They will forgive it if that person will say something bad about Barry Bonds," Arguedas said.
Bonds' former girlfriend, Kimberly Bell, testified for the prosecution that she witnessed physical and emotional changes in Bonds that the government argued were indications of steroids use.
Bell testified during the trial that she had committed perjury when she told the same grand jury in 2003 that she had not noticed Bonds' shrunken testicles.
Bell also admitted she had committed mortgage fraud by lying on a home loan application, Arguedas said.
During court testimony last month, Bonds' childhood friend Steve Hoskins, who worked for a decade as his assistant, said he tried to persuade Bonds to stop using anabolic steroids in 2000 and 2003.
Bonds' defense lawyer argued that Hoskins' cooperation with the government was motivated by bitterness over Bonds firing him and by a desire for protection from prosecution for allegedly stealing money from Bonds.
Prosecutors played an audio recording that Hoskins secretly made in the San Francisco Giants locker room of a conversation with Anderson about the hazards of steroid usage.
Bonds' defense attorney suggested that Hoskins made the recording only after Bonds dismissed him in March 2003.
Hoskins acknowledged that he leaked the details of the recording to investigative reporter Lance Williams, who included it in his book about the scandal, "Game of Shadows."
While he never witnessed Bonds being injected with anabolic steroids, Hoskins said he saw Bonds and Anderson emerge from a bedroom with a syringe during spring training in 2000.


Barry Bonds sucks

[KC]

Nice broken link.

[Saint Nick]

[Jeff]

No one did this as good as my pal Jerry.

[Saint Nick]

I'm insulted.

[KC]

Jerry is a very nice fellow. You should not feel insulted.

[Saint Nick]

IM DOIGN IT BETERR OKJ

[Saint Nick]

YO KCIZZLE HAVE A NICE MORNING YADIG

[Saint Nick]

[Saint Nick]

[Saint Nick]

If you rely on a deep, sludgy kick of java to get you through the day, your need for caffeine might have something to do with your genes: a team of researchers have identified variations on two genes that may influence how much coffee people consume.

The study was a meta-analysis of data from five studies involving 47,341 U.S. participants of European descent, and run by scientists from the National Cancer Institute, Harvard School of Public Health, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The genes in question are known as CYP1A2, which is involved with the body's caffeine metabolism, and AHR, which regulates CYP1A2. Scientists found that people with high-consumption variants of either gene on both chromosomes consumed on average about 40 mg more caffeine per day than people who didn't have the mutation on either chromosome. (More on Time.com: Drinking Coffee May Lower Women's Risk of Stroke)

Forty milligrams is not a huge amount, equivalent to a can of soda or a third of a cup of coffee. The researchers measured all sources from which participants got caffeine, including soda, tea and chocolate, but about 80% came from coffee.

The authors acknowledge that the influence of these genes on caffeine intake is small, accounting for less than 1% of the variation in coffee consumption in the reviewed studies. But the results suggest that there may be many other genes that contribute to how much caffeine people consume, and may help researchers better understand the effects of the drug on the body. (More on Time.com: A Man Dies After Overdosing on Caffeine)

The Boston Globe's Daily Dose blog reported:

What's interesting, though, is that mutations studied were involved with how fast the body metabolizes caffeine as well as certain chemicals and toxic substances. And it could be that those who metabolize caffeine faster are more likely to be looking quickly for their next hit of coffee than those who are slow metabolizers, [study co-author and professor of computational biology at Brigham and Women's Hospital Daniel] Chasman speculates.

And — if you want to take these theories one step beyond — these gene mutations that predispose some to a higher caffeine intake might also protect them from dangerous toxins by flushing them more quickly out of the body. And that could provide some explanation for why coffee drinkers have been found in the latest research to have fewer health problems like strokes.

[Saint Nick]

THE DRINK LINKS KEEP BREAKING

[Will]

I want better news articles.