Halderman

A chagrined David Letterman apologized to his staff Monday and noted that his wife has been "horribly hurt" by the news that he slept with women who worked for him on CBS' "Late Show" in the years leading up to their marriage. "If you hurt a person and it's your responsibility, you try to fix it," he said on the program. "Let me tell you, folks, I got my work cut out for me." Letterman struck a notably more contrite tone than on Thursday, when he revealed that a man had allegedly sought to extort $2 million from him to keep quiet about the comic's affairs.

Work on a planned museum at the World Trade Center has ground to a halt because of a financial dispute, and there is now no possibility it will open on time next year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday. The underground museum commemorating victims of the 9/11 attacks was scheduled to open in September on the 11th anniversary of the disaster, a year after the opening of a memorial at the site that has already drawn 1 million visitors. But in recent months, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum foundation has been fighting with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey over who is responsible for paying millions of dollars in infrastructure costs related to the project.

Edith Stone stopped to read at the tiny county library branch almost every day. And when she died at 95, she left behind a gift--an estate valued at $150,000. The library, which is sometimes so crowded that people read while standing in the aisle, plans to use the money to expand. The estate is the largest gift ever to a branch library in Alameda County. The library, designed three decades ago to house 20,000 volumes, is home to 40,000 books, records and magazines.

Edith Stone stopped to read at the tiny county library branch almost every day. And when she died, the 95-year-old left behind a going-away gift--an estate valued at $150,000. The library, which is sometimes so crowded that people read while standing in the aisle, plans to use the money to expand. The estate is the largest gift ever to a branch library in Alameda County. The library, designed three decades ago to house 20,000 volumes, is home to 40,000 books, records and magazines.

PBS flexed its usual strength when the News and Documentary Emmy nominations were announced Thursday, racking up 37 nods for its coverage of Taliban youth, the death of Iranian protester Neda Agha-Soltan and a community battle over a mosque in West Virginia, among other topics. The public television system was followed closely by CBS, which had a particularly good showing, scoring 31 nominations, including 16 for its long-running Sunday newsmagazine " 60 Minutes." HBO placed third with 20 nominations, one of its largest hauls ever, followed by National Geographic, which earned 19. NBC had 17 and ABC got 9. For the third year in a row, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences is recognizing "new approaches" to news, documentary and arts programming, categories that require entrants to demonstrate some form of innovation.

A Princeton graduate student said he had figured out a way to defeat new software intended to keep music CDs from being copied on a computer -- simply by pressing the Shift key. In a paper posted on his Web site, John Halderman said the MediaMax CD3 software developed by SunnComm Technologies Inc. could be defeated on computers running the Windows operating system by holding down the Shift key, disabling a Windows feature that automatically launches the encryption software on the disc.

Moran misses the essence of the jury findings in the DeLorean case. The jury didn't find De Lorean innocent, but rather found the prosecutors guilty. The whole trial was a joke. Take 6 inches off DeLorean's height, give him a bald head and pot belly, have him manufacture diapers instead of sport cars (all the while giving him the same financial status) and last but not least give him a fat, 50ish wife instead of the beautiful Christina and voila, you have a conviction! The outcome was known from day one to all who followed the case.

Merle Haggard's whistle-stop campaign train to help financially troubled farmers may have gotten off the track, but organizers vow it will still roll--eventually. Dwight Halderman, who oversaw guest accommodations for the California-to-Illinois journey that was to have begun Monday in Bakersfield, said over the weekend that "everyone is feeling shell-shocked" after working virtually around the clock.

A star of the opera and concert stage, she is the latest in a long line of guest artists who have been invited to help create programming for the four-day summer fest. Upshaw, who will be making her fourth appearance in Ojai, will work with artistic director Thomas W. Morris and collaborators such as violinist and composer Richard Tognetti, leader of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, jazz composer and big band leader Maria Schneider and theater and opera director Peter Sellars.

There was no shortage of celebrity secrets for sale in 2009, with John Travolta, David Letterman, Cindy Crawford and others claiming they were victims of extortion. From Letterman's monologue describing sexual liaisons with staffers to Travolta's emotional testimony about his son's death, celebrities confronted information and allegations that others offered to keep secret, for a price. And those are just the cases that came to light. Experts say extortion is a constant threat to the rich and famous.