Documents: Prisoner plotted to kill Justin Bieber

LAS CRUCES, N.M. (AP) — An imprisoned man whose infatuation with Justin Bieber included a tattoo of the pop star on his leg has told investigators in New Mexico he hatched a plot to kill him.

Court documents in a New Mexico district court say Dana Martin told investigators he persuaded a man he met in prison and the man's nephew to kill Bieber, Bieber's bodyguard and two others not connected to the pop star.

He told investigators that Mark Staake and Tanner Ruane headed east, planning to be near a Bieber concert scheduled in New York City. They missed a turn and crossed into Canada from Vermont. Staake was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Ruane was arrested later.

The two men face multiple charges stemming for the alleged plot.

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World’s Population Living Longer, New Report Suggests

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are dramatic: infant mortality has declined by more than half between 1990 and 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organizationfinanced by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women in this country formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said.

The World Health Organization issued a statement Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differ substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others are similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries – representing about 15 percent of the world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which measured disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published Thursday in the Lancet, a British health publication.

The one exception to the trend was sub-Saharan Africa, where infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternal causes of death still account for about 70 percent of all illness. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death there rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared to a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The change means that people are living longer, an outcome that public health experts praised. But it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing noncommunicable diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization in Geneva. “It’s not something that medical services can address as easily.”

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Stocks lower as investors watch Washington

Stocks slipped Thursday on Wall Street after more signs of tension emerged from federal budget talks in Washington.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 70 points at 13,174 just after 1 p.m. EST. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was down 10 points at 1,418. The Nasdaq composite index was down 24 points at 2,989.

In Washington, House Speaker John Boehner said that the White House was so resistant to cutting government spending that it risked pushing the country off the “fiscal cliff.”

The “cliff” is tax increases and government spending cuts that take effect Jan. 1 unless Congress and the White House reach a deal to avert them. Economists have warned that the “cliff” could eventually lead to a recession in the United States.

President Barack Obama said that a deal was “still a work in progress.” Asked about Boehner's assertion that he was waiting to hear more from the president, Obama said only, “Merry Christmas.”

Stocks fell despite the fourth straight weekly drop in applications for unemployment benefits. Applications fell 29,000 last week to 343,000, the second-lowest this year, the Labor Department reported.

On Wall Street, energy and health care stocks fell the most, and telecommunications stocks were down only slightly. All 10 categories of stock in the S&P 500 index were lower.

Best Buy shot up $1.86, or 15 percent, to $14.04 after a newspaper reported that the founder of the troubled electronics chain will make a bid of up to $6 billion for the company by the end of the week.

CVS Caremark climbed 97 cents, or 2 percent, to $48.51 after issuing a profit prediction for next year that was ahead of Wall Street expectations. The company also raised its dividend.

On Wednesday, the Dow Jones industrial average declined for the first day in five. Stocks rallied in the afternoon after the Federal Reserve tied its pledge of super-low interest rates to an improvement in the unemployment rate, but the rally faded.

The Fed said it would hold interest rates super-low until the unemployment rate drops below 6.5 percent, a threshold the Fed believes may not be breached until the end of 2015. The rate is 7.7 percent today.

The Dow's close Wednesday of 13,245 put it within a point of its close on Election Day. After the election, stocks slid 5 percent as investors began to fret about the “fiscal cliff,” but stocks have drifted back higher recently.

“I don't think anyone expected the markets to hold up this well as we get closer and closer to the deadline,” said Randy Frederick, managing director of active trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.

“Two possibilities: Either the markets are convinced that they'll reach some sort of agreement, or the markets don't care,” Frederick said.

Among individual stocks:

— Google gained $5.26, or 0.8 percent, to $702.82 after releasing an updated map application for the iPhone. Google Maps came pre-loaded on previous iPhones but was dropped for the much-derided Apple Maps earlier this year.

— SolarCity, which installs rooftop solar panels, began trading on the Nasdaq under the symbol SCTY. Shares were priced at $8 and shot to $12. Elon Musk, founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, is the company's chairman.

— Clearwire, a struggling provider of mobile Internet access services, jumped 40 cents to $3.15 in heavy trading after Sprint Nextel offered to buy out the minority shareholders of the company for $2.1 billion, giving Sprint total control.

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Most Googled in 2012: Whitney, PSY, Sandy

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The world’s attention wavered between the tragic and the silly in 2012, and along the way, millions of people searched the Web to find out about a royal princess, the latest iPad, and a record-breaking skydiver.

Whitney Houston was the “top trending” search of the year, according to Google Inc.’s year-end “zeitgeist” report. Google‘s 12th annual roundup is “an in-depth look at the spirit of the times as seen through the billions of searches on Google over the past year,” the company said in a blog post Wednesday.

People around the globe searched en masse for news about Houston‘s accidental drowning in a bathtub just before she was to perform at a pre-Grammy Awards party in February.

Google defines topics as “trending” when they garner a high amount of traffic over a sustained period of time.

Korean rapper PSY’s “Gangnam Style” music video trotted into second spot, a testament to his self-deprecating giddy-up dance move. The video is approaching a billion views on YouTube.

Superstorm Sandy, the damaging storm that knocked out power and flooded parts of the East Coast in the midst of a U.S. presidential campaign, was third.

The next biggest trending searches globally were a pair of threes: the iPad 3 tablet from Apple Inc. and Diablo 3, a popular video game.

Rounding out the Top 10 were Kate Middleton, who made news with scandalous photos and a royal pregnancy; the 2012 Olympics in London; Amanda Todd, a Canadian teen who was found dead of an apparent suicide in October after being bullied online; Michael Clarke Duncan, the “Green Mile” actor who died of a heart attack in September at age 54; and “BBB12,” the 12th edition of “Big Brother Brasil,” a reality show featuring scantily clad men and women living together.

Some trending people, according to Google, were:

— Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver who became the first to break the sound barrier without a vehicle with a 24-mile plummet from Earth’s stratosphere;

— Jeremy Lin, the undrafted NBA star who exploded off the New York Knicks bench and sparked a wave of “Linsanity”;

— Morgan Freeman, the actor whose untimely death turned out not to be true.

The Internet also continued its rise as a popular tool for spreading addictive ideas and phrases known as “memes.” Remember LOL? If you don’t know what it means by now, someone may “Laugh Out Loud” at you.

This year, Facebook said its top memes included “TBH (To Be Honest),” ”YOLO (You Only Live Once),” ”SMH (Shake My Head).” Thanks to an endlessly fascinating U.S. presidential campaign, “Big Bird” made the list after Republican candidate Mitt Romney said he might consider cutting some funds for public broadcasting.

Yahoo said its own top-searched memes for the year included “Kony 2012,” a reference to the short film and campaign against Ugandan militia leader Joseph Kony; “stingray photobomb” for an unusual vacation snapshot that went viral; and “binders full of women,” another nod to Romney for his awkward description of his search for women cabinet members as Massachusetts’ governor.

And people were happy to pass on popular Twitter posts by retweeting them. According to Twitter, the year’s most popular retweets were President Barack Obama‘s “Four more years,” and Justin Bieber’s farewell to six-year-old fan Avalanna Routh, who died of a rare form of brain cancer: “RIP Avalanna. i love you”.

Gadgets News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Oregon shooter ID'd; he wielded AR-15, sparking chaos -- but why?

The gunman who killed two people and himself in a shooting rampage at an Oregon mall was 22 years old and used a stolen rifle

By Michael Muskal and Andrew Khouri

December 12, 2012, 11:07 a.m.

A young masked man, bent on a mission of destruction and death, entered an Oregon mall and opened fire, turning the holiday shopping season into a chaotic horror that could have been much worse, police officials said Wednesday.

Police identified the shooter as Jacob Tyler Roberts, 22, who killed two people and seriously wounded a third before turning a weapon on himself and ending his life Tuesday afternoon, officials said.

The man entered the Clackamas Town Center, a popular suburban mall several miles from downtown Portland, on Tuesday afternoon. He was wearing a hockey-style mask and a protective vest and began firing with an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, stolen from someone the suspect knew, police said. There were also several magazines of ammunition.

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PHOTOS: Deadly shooting at Oregon mall

Police said it was unclear how many shots were fired, but there were estimates of between 10 to 20 shots before Roberts turned the weapon on himself.

Police were still searching for a motive but have ruled out the idea that the shooter was specifically targeting anyone.

“We do not understand the motive of this attack,” Clackamas County Sheriff Craig Roberts said at a televised news conference. “There is no apparent relationship between suspect and victims.”

People at the mall helped push shoppers out of the building, according to a variety of videos shot on cellphones by some of the shoppers fleeing. Shoppers, including two emergency room nurses and one physician who happened to be at the mall, provided medical assistance to victims who had been shot, Roberts said.

He praised the 10,000 shoppers “who kept a level head, got themselves out of the mall, got others out. There are a number of heroes,” Roberts told reporters. “There is a whole group of people coming together to make a difference.”

While saying that the deaths and injuries were tragedies, Roberts noted: “We all need to be very thankful that this incident was not much worse.”

It was a typical shopping day some two weeks before Christmas as more than 10,000 people crowded through the stores at the mall with more than 1.4 million square feet of commercial space. It was 3:29 p.m. when the first call went to 911, police said.

TIMELINE: Deadliest U.S. mass shootings

“For all of us, the mall is supposed to be a place where we can take our families, especially during the holiday season,” Roberts said earlier on televised interviews. “Things like this are not supposed to happen.”

Witnesses told reporters of seeing a masked man carrying a long gun through the Macy’s toward the mall’s food court. Austin Patty, 20, who works at Macy's, told the Associated Press. There was a series of rapid-fire shots in short succession as Christmas music played, he said. Patty said he dove for the floor and then later fled.

The mall’s Santa, Brance Wilson, told reporters he was waiting for the next child to ask for Christmas presents when he heard shots ring out and the mall erupted into chaos.

“I heard two shots and got out of the chair. I thought a red suit was a pretty good target,” said Wilson, 68.

Families waiting for Santa scattered. More shots followed, and Wilson said he sought better cover.

Witnesses said they heard the gunman yell, “I am the shooter.”

More than 100 law enforcement officers responded to the scene, and at least four local agencies were working on the investigation, including the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is working to trace the shooter's weapon.

At his news conference, the sheriff said the rapid and large turnout helped keep the body count low by limiting the shooter’s ability to move around.

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'Modern Family' star's dad to handle her finances

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Modern Family" star Ariel Winter's father will temporarily handle her finances and she'll continue living with her adult sister, at least for the next three months, according to a custody agreement reached Wednesday shortly before a trial was to start.

The exact terms of who will raise Ariel were not spelled out in court, but she will stay with adult sister Shanelle Gray until those involved meet March 29 to review the agreement.

Ariel held hands with Gray while in court. Her mother, who temporarily lost custody of Ariel in October, left the courtroom crying.

Ariel's father, Glenn Workman, was appointed temporary guardian of his daughter's finances.

The actress' mother, Chrisoula "Chrystal" Workman, has been accused of physically and emotionally abusing the 14-year-old. An initial report by child protective services found evidence of emotional abuse but claims of physical abuse were deemed inconclusive, Superior Court Judge Michael Levanas said last month.

Chrystal Workman denies she has ever abused the actress. She claims Gray is not a fit guardian and contends Ariel is a rebellious teen and should be returned to her home.

Since October, Ariel, who turns 15 in January, has been living with Gray, an actress who has appeared on "The Bold and the Beautiful" and operates acting studios with her husband. Gray's attorney has said she was subjected to similar abuse by her mother and that state authorities removed her from Workman's home when she was a teenager.

Ariel, who has been acting since age 7, plays Alex Dunphy on the ABC series, which is both popular and critically acclaimed.

Guardianship cases in California are public record. Gray's attorneys requested the case and its proceedings be sealed, but a judge refused. The case was filed under Ariel's birth name, Ariel Workman, in part to avoid attention.

Glenn Workman is estranged from his wife but states he would be willing to care for his daughter. The judge initially rejected his request, citing inconsistent statements Glenn Workman made in court filings and to child protective services investigators.

Ariel has several projects in the works and already has a lengthy resume of appearances on TV series such as "ER" and "Phineas and Ferb" and movies such as "Kiss Kiss Bang Bang," ''Ice Age: The Meltdown" and "ParaNorman."

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Anthony McCartney can be reached at http://twitter.com/mccartneyAP

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Hasbro to meet with girl, 13, on gender-neutral Easy-Bake ovens

The 13-year-old New Jersey girl who started a petition for boy-friendly Easy-Bake ovens will meet Monday with Hasbro, the company that makes the kitchen toy.

In a statement, Hasbro said it invited McKenna Pope and her family to make their case at its Pawtucket, R.I., headquarters as “a consumer centric company” would.  

“Through the years, based on both market research and buying patterns, we have seen that the primary interest in the Easy-Bake Oven comes from girls,” the company said.

In the past, Hasbro has made gender neutral Easy-Bake ovens, it said.

“Clearly we believe it is a great product that can provide lots of enjoyment for both girls and boys ages 8 and up,” the company said.

Pope’s campaign began when she tried to buy an Easy-Bake oven for her gastronomically-inclined 4-year-old brother, only to discover that the product was only available in “girlie purple and pink colors,” she wrote in a petition on Change.org.

So far, more than 41,000 people have signed the petition urging Hasbro to market the product to boys as well as girls.

Pope and her brother have also garnered support from some major male bakers and chefs. In a YouTube video titled “Everyone Can Cook,” culinary celebrities such as "Top Chef" star Manuel Trevino, Joshua Whigham of the Bazaar in Beverly Hills and Michael Lomonaco of Porter House cheer on the eighth-grader’s efforts.

“Little boys and little girls can all be chefs, right?” asks Lomonaco in the video, to a roar of approval from his (mostly male) staff.

ALSO:

'Binders full of women': What's happening with the gender gap?

Eighth-grader petitions Hasbro to market Easy-Bake Ovens to boys

Women a century away from breaking California glass ceiling, study says

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Web host Go Daddy appoints former Yahoo executive as CEO

(Reuters) – Go Daddy, one of the world’s biggest Internet hosting firms, appointed Yahoo Inc‘s former Chief Product Officer Blake Irving as chief executive.

He will take over from interim CEO Scott Wagner on January 7. Irving left Yahoo, where he headed a centralized products group that straddled several client types, on April 27.

“Blake Irving’s deep technology experience and his history of developing new cutting-edge products and leading large global teams make him a … compelling choice to drive Go Daddy to the next level of its … growth,” said Bob Parsons, Go Daddy’s executive chairman and founder.

Irving also served in various positions at Microsoft Corp from 1992 to 2007.

Go Daddy, which describes itself as the top provider of domain names, filed to go public in 2006 but withdrew its IPO due to poor market conditions.

(Reporting by Neha Alawadhi in Bangalore; Editing by Joyjeet Das, Maju Samuel)

Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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'Right-to-work' measure passes in Michigan Legislature

Controversial "right-to-work" legislation covering public-sector employees passed the Michigan House of Representatives on Tuesday, bringing it one step closer to being signed into law.

The House passed the bill, 58 to 51, as union opponents of the measure booed inside the Capitol and an estimated 12,000 people rallied outside. The state's Senate approved the bill last week.

The House is now scheduled to vote on a right-to-work bill for private-sector employees, which would cover Michigan's auto industry. If that measure passes, Michigan would become the 24th right-to-work state, meaning unions cannot require members to pay dues as a condition of employment.

Michigan is the fourth state in the Midwest to become embroiled in labor controversy since 2010, when a slate of Republican governors were swept into statehouses across the nation. The speed with which the right-to-work measure are being passed worries some labor experts, who say that it was once unimaginable that Michigan, where 17.5% of the workforce is unionized, would become a right-to-work state.

"Michigan could prove defining," said Harley Shaiken, a labor expert at UC Berkeley. "What happens here, given the role of unions historically in Michigan, and the larger political implications of right-to-work, will mean a lot."

But even as the Rev. Jesse Jackson rallied protesters on the steps of Lansing City Hall, labor leaders were hurriedly seeking ways to reverse the legislation down the road.

Michigan can't go the way of Ohio, where a referendum last year reversed legislation that would have restricted collective bargaining. Michigan's right-to-work legislation is attached to an appropriations bill, meaning it can't be reversed by referendum. Also, it may be too risky to wait and go the way of Wisconsin, where litigation continues after a judge struck down parts of a collective bargaining law.

However, in Michigan, there is an option of a "statutory initiative," which would be permitted if opponents of the bills can collect enough signatures to equal 8% of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election, union leaders say. A so-called veto referendum could be triggered by collecting signatures equal to 5% of the votes cast.

A statutory initiative would allow voters to cast a ballot on right-to-work legisation in November 2014, when Gov. Rick Snyder, who has said he would support the legislation, will be up for reelection.

"There are multiple options for a referendum," a senior labor leader said Tuesday. "All options are on the table. This fight is far from over."

It’s unclear whether unions are promoting a referendum now to warn Snyder of the repercussions that signing the legislation would have.

Democrats including Sen. Carl Levin and Rep. John Dingell met with Snyder on Monday to urge him to veto the legislation. The governor promised to "seriously" consider their concerns, but Democrats remained worried that he would sign the bills.

“The governor has a choice: He can put this on the ballot, and let the voters make the determination, or he can jam it through a lame-duck session,” Dingell said Monday.

Snyder, a businessman before he became governor, was elected in 2010 by a landslide, beating his opponent by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. But only 35.5% of respondents said they thought he was doing an "excellent" or "good" job in a Michigan State University survey this fall, and that figure could fall as the controversy continues.

"I think this will pass, and be signed, and there will be a long struggle with the United Auto Workers and other unions,” said Kristin Dziczek, director of the labor and industry group at the Center for Automotive Research. "They’re going to focus their attentions on overturning this. I don’t think the war has even begun."

ALSO:

Obama blasts right-to-work in Michigan

Ohio votes to overturn new collective bargaining law

Protests re-ignite as Michigan right-to-work bill nears final OK

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Vindication for 2013 Rock Hall of Fame inductees

Randy Newman's glad he didn't have to do anything drastic to get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The members of Rush are choosing to let bygones be bygones. And Quincy Jones, well, he's still mad.

For most of this year's inductees, inclusion was a long time coming.

"I'm very happy," the 69-year-old Newman said Monday from his home in Los Angeles. "I thought I'd have to die first, but I'm glad I'm around to see it."

Newman is joined in the 2013 class by the eclectic group of rockers Rush and Heart, rap group Public Enemy, "Queen of Disco" Donna Summer and bluesman Albert King. Jones and his friend Lou Adler will enter the hall as Ahmet Ertegun Award winners for their contributions to rock beyond performance.

They will be inducted into the hall of fame April 18 in Los Angeles. The ceremony will mark the end of a long wait for fans of five of those six acts, who've been eligible for entry for some time. Public Enemy was inducted on its first ballot appearance, swelling the ranks of hip-hop entries.

In many ways, the 2013 class balances the scales, though not nearly soon enough for some new members.

"Well, it's about time, man," Jones said late Monday night in an interview from his home in Los Angeles. "But I promise you I'm not sitting around worrying about it."

Summer, who passed away at age 63 in May, gains entry after six years as a nominee. King, a deep influence on Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughn who died in 1992, now takes his place along all the other legendary blues guitarists in the hall.

Rush, one of the most-played staples of classic rock radio, gained entry following its first appearance on the ballot. But the Canadian trio became eligible in 1998 and was repeatedly left off the list, to the great consternation of its legion of fans who cried bias against prog rock. Heart also waited a decade to make it on the ballot, gaining entry during its second appearance.

After years of disappointment, then disinterest, Rush's Alex Lifeson said the band now feels "wonderful" about its entry into the hall and is especially happy for its followers.

"First of all it's all water under the bridge and it was a very tiny bridge," the 59-year-old guitarist said in a phone interview from his home in Toronto. "I think our fans are more upset than we were because they feel a real bond to this band and it's been an important part of their lives in some form, and to be snubbed was snubbing them at the same time. ... Perhaps there were times when I thought if this ever happens I'm not going to bother going, or who cares or whatever, but at the end of the day positive karma is an important thing and this is an important thing to a lot of our fans and people we know."

Jones was less forgiving of the long wait he had. The 79-year-old entertainment icon's fingerprints are all over the hall of fame. He pops up often at key moments in rock 'n' roll history and was even Ray Charles' presenter during the soul singer's induction at the inaugural 1986 ceremony. He never expected to wait so long for his own entry.

"I was pissed off about it at first because I saw how it was going down and who was going in and who wasn't," Jones said with a deep laugh. "But I'm used to it, man. I've been around a long time, and I know how it works, you know. It's still an honor, man."

The 2013 class also continues the process of opening the hall of fame's doors a little bit wider.

In many cases, the delayed entry of this year's inductees had to do with a debate among its membership over the hall of fame's direction. The rock 'n' roll family sits under a big tent, but just how big it should be has been a matter of debate for the Cleveland, Ohio, institution.

The class may signal a new direction.

"That is an eclectic group," Newman said. "Well that's nice. It seems like they're broadening what they think rock 'n' roll is. That's good. There's no point being doctrinaire about music. ... People get awful strict. It's a hell of a thing to get strict about, isn't it?"

There was clearly no debate among the hall's membership about Public Enemy, which gained membership on its 25th anniversary.

The openly militant, always angry group helped elevate and define nascent rap in the 1980s and '90s. MC Chuck D said the group's induction is about more than simple membership.

"It's a great piece of news for the genre and our intention was to spread the light that our music is as legitimate as any other music," Chuck D said as the group traveled through Wyoming on tour Monday. " ... So this is significant to be alongside Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run DMC and the Beastie Boys and just to be able to say this accomplishment, we don't think it's solely due to us."

Lifeson hopes the hall's membership keeps up with the trend.

"Maybe it should be the Music Hall of Fame and not so much the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," Lifeson said. "But maybe it all is rock 'n' roll. It started as a little seed and grew into this great big tree with a lot of branches. That's why it's so sad the whole progressive movement, bands like Yes and King Crimson, are not included in this. And I hope one day that they are because they deserve to be in there way before we do. They were huge influences on us and so many other bands that have done fantastic work over the years. I know Deep Purple were up for this as well. It's a little unfortunate that they didn't make it in because they were extremely influential. I hope there comes a time when these other artists and bands are included because they were equally as influential as any of the ones that are being inducted today."

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Online:

http://rockhall.com /

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Follow AP Music Writer Chris Talbott: http://twitter.com/Chris_Talbott.

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