Surging shoppers kill New York Wal-Mart employee

1 hour, 28 minutes ago

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A Wal-Mart employee in New York state's Long Island died on Friday when a throng of shoppers surged into the store and physically broke down the doors, a police spokesman said.

The 34-year-old man was at the entrance of the Valley Stream Walmart store when it opened at 5 a.m. local time and was knocked to the ground, the police report said.

The exact cause of death was still to be determined by a medical examiner.

Four shoppers, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman, were also taken to local hospitals for injuries sustained in the incident, police said.

The Friday after America's Thanksgiving holiday is known as Black Friday and marks what is traditionally the busiest retail day of the year, kicking off the Christmas shopping season.

U.S. stores across the country opened in the early hours of Friday to offer discounts to consumers hit by a contracting economy. Hundreds of shoppers waited on line before dawn at some locations to secure deals on holiday gifts.

Representatives at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, were not immediately available for comment.

(Reporting by Michele Gershberg; Editing by Daniel Trotta and Sandra Maler)

The Internet is the new Book Burning

Tue Nov 25, 8:20 PM

By The Associated Press

NEW YORK - It's billed as the world's most expensive, most beautiful new book.

Valued at well over US$100,000, a 28-kilogram handmade tome depicting the life and work of Michelangelo has arrived at the New York Public Library, fresh from publication in Italy.

The velvet-and marble-bound book will go on public display next Tuesday.

It takes six months to make each book, using Italian artisan skills dating to the Renaissance. The copy on display was donated to the library but more than 20 books have been sold.

"I love books," Marilena Ferrari, the Italian publisher who produced the extravagance, said in a telephone interview from Bologna, Italy, where she's president of a company called FMR, which publishes fine books about art.

"Books are being destroyed by the Internet, they're losing their identity - it's the modern, Internet version of burning books," she said. "Today, things last so little before they disappear. "

The book, titled "Una Dotta Mano" or "the learned hand," has a front cover made of white marble from Michelangelo's favourite quarry, in Carrara. The binding is covered with a red silk velvet handmade by the same Italian shop that made the main stage curtains at The Metropolitan Opera and Milan's Teatro Alla Scala.

The book is filled with photographs of Michelangelo's drawings and sculptures. The text is by Michelangelo biographer Giorgio Vasari, with essays by the director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci.

Japanese man releases hundreds of worms in train

Tue Nov 25, 10:01 AM

TOKYO (AFP) - A Japanese man was arrested for releasing hundreds of beetle larvae inside a moving express train to try to scare female passengers, police said Tuesday.

"I wanted to see women get scared and shake their legs," police quoted 35-year-old Manabu Mizuta as saying.

He was arrested on the spot by a patrolling police officer after releasing the creatures on the Keihan line in Osaka prefecture.

"He would go close to women on the train, any woman, and pour out the worms from containers," said a police spokesman.

Local police had been on alert after 18 similar cases of released worms had been reported this month by the same train operator.

"When the arrest was made, the man had nearly emptied a container, which is believed to have held 200 worms," he said. "You cannot count them because there are so many."

Mizuta had 10 containers in his backpack estimated to contain a total of 3,600 worms, police said.

"We have the worms sitting inside the police station right now," the spokesman said.

"You see them wriggling inside their clear cases. It's really disgusting."

Adventures in Italian Politics

Italian transvestite ex-MP triumphs as reality TV star

2 hours, 21 minutes ago

ROME (AFP) - The first transvestite elected to the Italian parliament, Vladimir Luxuria, garnered the votes of most TV viewers Monday night as the winner of the reality TV show "Celebrity Island."

The 43-year-old served in parliament for two years as a member of the Refoundation Communist Party before losing his bid for re-election in April.

Over the past six weeks Luxuria, whose real name is Wladimiro Guadagno, has been a star on reality TV, trying to survive living on the beaches of Honduras with other celebrity "survivors". In the end viewers picked Luxuria as their favourite.

"I admired his capacity to defy the prejudices of his companions," said Giorgio Gori, the show's producer.

Gori added that in the beginning his communist party members and voters "no doubt did not appreciate seeing their former deputy in a bikini, but the public rewarded his choice."

Luxuria plans to give half of the 100,000 euros (128,000 dollars) prize money to the UN children's agency UNICEF.

Born a man who dresses as a woman, Luxuria, also an actor, has become an icon of the Italian gay movement and easily won his seat in parliament in 2006 representing a district in Rome.

and

Italian far-right party offers money for babies named after Mussolini

2 hours, 49 minutes ago

By The Associated Press

ROME - What's in a name? A little extra cash, if the name is that of Italy's wartime Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini or his wife.

A far-right party is offering the equivalent of $2,400 Cdn to parents in southern Italian villages who name their children Benito or Rachele after the Mussolinis.

An official with the neo-Fascist Fiamma Tricolore party, Vincenzo Mancusi, says "they are nice names."

He says the initiative is a way to pay homage to his party's roots and keep alive names that are rarely used.

Mancusi said Tuesday the bonus applies to five villages in the Basilicata region where birth rates are especially low.

Designed as an incentive, it applies to babies who are born in 2009.

To some psychiatric patients, life seems like TV

By JENNIFER PELTZ, Associated Press Writer Jennifer Peltz, Associated Press Writer Mon Nov 24, 6:36 pm ET

NEW YORK – One man showed up at a federal building, asking for release from the reality show he was sure was being made of his life.

Another was convinced his every move was secretly being filmed for a TV contest. A third believed everything — the news, his psychiatrists, the drugs they prescribed — was part of a phony, stage-set world with him as the involuntary star, like the 1998 movie "The Truman Show."

Researchers have begun documenting what they dub the "Truman syndrome," a delusion afflicting people who are convinced that their lives are secretly playing out on a reality TV show. Scientists say the disorder underscores the influence pop culture can have on mental conditions.

"The question is really: Is this just a new twist on an old paranoid or grandiose delusion ... or is there sort of a perfect storm of the culture we're in, in which fame holds such high value?" said Dr. Joel Gold, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York's Bellevue Hospital.

Within a two-year period, Gold said he encountered five patients with delusions related to reality TV. Several of them specifically mentioned "The Truman Show."

Gold and his brother, a psychologist, started presenting their observations at medical schools in 2006. After word spread beyond medical circles this summer, they learned of about 50 more people with similar symptoms. The brothers are now working on a scholarly paper.

Meanwhile, researchers in London described a "Truman syndrome" patient in the British Journal of Psychiatry in August. The 26-year-old postman "had a sense the world was slightly unreal, as if he was the eponymous hero in the film," the researchers wrote.

The Oscar-nominated movie stars Jim Carrey as Truman Burbank. He leads a merrily uneventful life until he realizes his friends and family are actors, his seaside town is a TV soundstage and every moment of his life has been broadcast.

His struggle to sort out reality and illusion is heartwarming, but researchers say it's often horrifying for "Truman syndrome" patients.

A few take pride in their imagined celebrity, but many are deeply upset at what feels like an Orwellian invasion of privacy. The man profiled in the British journal was diagnosed with schizophrenia and is unable to work. One of Gold's patients planned to commit suicide if he couldn't leave his supposed reality show.

Delusions can be a symptom of various psychiatric illnesses, as well as neurological conditions such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Some drugs also can make people delusional.

It's not unusual for psychiatrists to see delusional patients who believe their relatives have been replaced by impostors or who think figures in their lives are taking on multiple disguises.

But "Truman" delusions are more sweeping, involving not just some associates but society at large, Gold said.

Delusions tend to be classified by broad categories, such as the belief that one is being persecuted, but research has shown culture and technology can also affect them. Several recent studies have chronicled delusions entwined with the Internet such as a patient in Austria who believed she had become a walking webcam.

Reality television may help such patients convince themselves their experiences are plausible, according to the Austrian woman's psychiatrists, writing in the journal Psychopathology in 2004.

Ian Gold, a philosophy and psychology professor at McGill University in Montreal who has researched the matter with his brother, suggests reality TV and the Web, with their ability to make strangers into intimates, may compound psychological pressure on people who have underlying problems dealing with others.

That's not to say reality shows make healthy people delusional, "but, at the very least, it seems possible to me that people who would become ill are becoming ill quicker or in a different way," Ian Gold said.

Other researchers aren't convinced, but still find the "Truman syndrome" an interesting example of the connection between culture and mental health.

Vaughan Bell, a psychologist who has researched Internet-related delusions, said one of his own former patients believed he was in the virtual-reality universe portrayed in the 1999 blockbuster "The Matrix."

"I don't think that popular culture causes delusions," said Bell, who is affiliated with King's College London and the Universidad de Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia. "But I do think that it is only possible to fully understand delusions and psychosis in light of our wider culture."

U.S. teen lives 118 days without heart

Wed Nov 19, 3:35 PM

By Jim Loney

MIAMI (Reuters) - An American teen-ager survived for nearly four months without a heart, kept alive by a custom-built artificial blood-pumping device, until she was able to have a heart transplant, doctors in Miami said on Wednesday.

The doctors said they knew of another case in which an adult had been kept alive in Germany for nine months without a heart but said they believed this was the first time a child had survived in this manner for so long.

The patient, D'Zhana Simmons of South Carolina, said the experience of living for so long with a machine pumping her blood was "scary."

"You never knew when it would malfunction," she said, her voice barely above a whisper, at a news conference at the University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center.

"It was like I was a fake person, like I didn't really exist. I was just here," she said of living without a heart.

Simmons, 14, suffered from dilated cardiomyopathy, a condition in which the patient's heart becomes weakened and enlarged and does not pump blood efficiently.

She had a heart transplant on July 2 at Miami's Holtz Children's Hospital but the new heart failed to function properly and was quickly removed.

Two heart pumps made by Thoratec Corp of Pleasanton, California, were implanted to keep her blood flowing while she fought a host of ailments and recovered her strength. Doctors implanted another heart on October 29.

"She essentially lived for 118 days without a heart, with her circulation supported only by the two blood pumps," said Dr. Marco Ricci, the hospital's director of pediatric cardiac surgery. During that time, Simmons was mobile but remained hospitalized.

When an artificial heart is used to sustain a patient, the patient's own heart is usually left in the body, doctors said.

In some cases, adult patients have been kept alive that way for more than a year, they said.

"This, we believe, is the first pediatric patient who has received such a device in this configuration without the heart, and possibly one of the youngest that has ... been bridged to transplantation without her native heart," Ricci said.

Simmons also suffered renal failure and had a kidney transplant the day after the second heart transplant.

Ricci said her prognosis was good. But doctors said there is a 50 percent chance that a heart transplant patient will need a new heart 12 or 13 years after the first surgery.

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Austria up in arms over school kissing ban

Thu Nov 20, 2:31 PM

VIENNA (AFP) - The decision by a headmaster in Austria to ban kissing from his school made front-page news Thursday as outraged pupils and politicians slammed the move as medieval and excessive.

Siegfried Biermair, the head of a school in Gunskirchen, Upper Austria, sent a letter to parents on Monday informing them of the kissing ban after teachers complained that the kissing rituals of some girls were getting out of hand.

Instead of simply greeting each other with a light peck on the cheeks between lessons, some 14-year-olds had taken to "theatrically falling into each other's arms and kissing each other on the mouth, sometimes very intimately and for many minutes," Biermair complained.

Such behaviour "could lead to undesirable developments" and boys could also start demanding kisses, he argued.

So, at a meeting, teachers and a number of parents had voted unanimously in favour of a kissing ban.

However, the move was immediately slammed as "ridiculous" and "excessive", not only by pupils, but by politicians as well.

"The ban is not only totally disproportionate, it's also completely counterproductive," said Matthias Hansy, head of Austria's Pupil's Union in a statement.

"There are much more pressing problems at our schools, such as the increasing trend towards violence," Hansy said.

Another pupils' group, "Aktion Kritischer Schueler" or AKS, said the ban reflected an "outdated, medieval world-view".

"We won't allow the dignity and rights of pupils to be downtrodden in this way," said AKS head Vanessa Gaigg.

"School directors are not monarchs who can impose their ridiculous values on pupils."

AKS urged Upper Austria's schools minister, Fritz Enzenhofer, to overturn the ban immediately and the group said it would organise a "kiss-in" protest in Enzenhofer's office next week if he refused.

A politician from the far-right populist BZOe party, Rainer Widmann, saw the ban as an "undue interference in pupils' privacy."

The education expert of the regional branch of the environmental Green party, Gottfried Hirz, agreed.

"We should be happy that at a time when violent videos and increasing violence in schools, pupils are once again displaying behaviour of mutual affection," Hirz said.

"Don't we have more pressing pedagogical problems in our schools at the moment?"

"Human Teeth" from the Internet Encyclopedia

Skull with built-in sauna turns heads in Vienna

Mon Nov 17, 1:19 PM

By The Associated Press

VIENNA, Austria - An oversize skull with a built-in sauna is turning heads in the Austrian capital.

The white walk-in structure - situated near a busy Vienna intersection - is known as the "Wellness Skull" and also boasts a bathtub and shower. On either side of the neck, that is.

The eye-catching installation, which stands 4.5 metres tall and is made of wood and synthetic material, is the brainchild of Dutch artist Joep van Lieshout.

Van Lieshout said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that his 2007 creation was part of a series of pieces linked to body parts.

"It's really a piece that has many different interpretations," van Lieshout said when asked about the skull's deeper meaning. "Like a painter uses paint, I use design."

Tourists and locals alike appeared astounded by the skull Monday, two days before it officially goes on display as part of an effort by Public Art Vienna to revitalize and enhance urban space around the capital.

"It's the most random thing I've seen in Vienna," said 27-year-old Nick Abrahams from London as he walked it Monday afternoon.

"It's really strange," echoed Nick Trute, 29, from Sydney, Australia.

Although the skull was built to be fully functional, visitors won't be able to try it out or witness steam emanating from its eye sockets - something that only happens when the sauna, which fits eight people, is in use.

Visitors will be able to go inside every first Saturday of the month or by appointment through March 15.

Americans Desire Less Tolerance

Hollywood out of step with American morals: poll

Mon Nov 17, 12:48 AM

By Gregg Kilday

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - A majority of Americans say Hollywood doesn't share their moral values, according to a poll commissioned by the Anti-Defamation League, a group that fights anti-Semitism.

Sixty-one percent of those surveyed said that religious values in America are "under attack," and 59% agreed that "the people who run the TV networks and the major movie studios do not share the religious and moral values of most Americans."

The poll, titled "American Attitudes on Religion, Moral Values and Hollywood," was conducted by the Marttila Communications Group, which surveyed 1,000 adults nationwide. It was released Friday at the ADL's annual meeting in Los Angeles.

"These findings point to the challenges that we face in dealing with issues of religion in society," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director. "The belief that religion is under attack underlies the drive to incorporate more religion into American public life. Disturbingly, 43% of Americans believe there is an organized campaign by Hollywood and the national media to weaken the influence of religious values in this country."

Among the survey's findings:

-- 61% of respondents agree that "religious values are under attack in this country," while 36% disagree with that statement.

-- 43% said that Hollywood and the national media are waging an organized campaign to "weaken the influence of religious values in this country."

-- 63% disagree with the statement that "the movie and television industries are pretty much run by Jews," while only 22% agree with that point. When ADL conducted its first survey on anti-Semitic attitudes, in 1964, nearly half of the respondents believed that the television and film industries were run by Jews.

-- Nearly 40% support the notion that "dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries," and nearly the same number disagree with the statement that "censoring books is an old-fashioned idea."

-- Nearly half of those surveyed -- 49% -- believe that the United States is becoming "too tolerant in its acceptance of different ideas and lifestyles; 47% disagree with that statement.

The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percent.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter

Call to action: Dallas pastor issuing 7-day sex challenge to congregants

Wed Nov 12, 4:33 PM

By The Associated Press

DALLAS - The pastor of a megachurch says he will challenge married congregants during his sermon Sunday to have sex for seven straight days - and he plans to practise what he preaches.

"We're going to give it a try," said Rev. Ed Young, who has four children with his wife of 26 years.

Young, 47, said he believes society promotes promiscuity and he wants to reclaim sex for married couples. Sex should be a nurturing, spiritual act that strengthens marriages, he said.

"God says sex should be between a married man and a woman," Young said. "I think it's one of the greatest things you can do for your kids because so goes the marriage, so goes the family."

Young said he will deliver his seven-day sex challenge while sitting on a bed in front of his Dallas-area church campus.

He is founder of the nondenominational Fellowship Church, which draws about 20,000 people each Sunday and also has campuses in Fort Worth, Plano and Miami.

Earlier this year, a southwest Florida pastor, perhaps having more faith in his congregants' stamina, issued a 30-day sex challenge.

New program in Brazil offers Botox for low-income beauty-seekers

Mon Nov 10, 3:26 PM

By The Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil - Want Botox but don't have the bucks?

Not a problem in beauty-obsessed Rio de Janeiro - at least if you don't mind a trainee doing the work.

The Brazilian Society of Esthetic Medicine is offering free Botox injections and several other beauty treatments to those earning less than $250 a month.

Spokeswoman Isabel Alvarez says the program lets student doctors get experience and gives the poor a chance for luxury treatments they couldn't normally afford.

Also offered are laser hair or acne removal, chemical skin peels, treatment of varicose veins and nutritional counselling.

Alvarez says the program has operated sporadically since 1998 and has treated some 10,000 people.

This year's 10-day program started Monday.

Woman dies after being hit by husband's coffin on the way to cemetery

By The Associated Press
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SAO PAULO, Brazil - Police say a woman has died on the way to a cemetery when a traffic accident hurled her husband's coffin against the back of her neck.

Police say 67-year old Marciana Barcelos was in the front passenger seat of the hearse when the accident occurred Monday in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul.

Barcelos died instantly.

Her 76-year-old husband Josi Coimbra died Sunday of a heart attack while dancing at a party.

The driver of hearse and Barcelos' son suffered minor injuries.

Obese man convicted of crushing wife to death wins new trial

Thu Nov 6, 3:03 PM

OTTAWA (AFP) - A Canadian man who weighs 380 pounds (172 kilograms) will face a new trial for crushing his wife to death, local media said Thursday.

The Ontario Court of Appeal overturned Peter Mathisen's 2005 murder conviction and ordered a new trial, saying the trial judge failed to properly instruct the jury about whether the death may have been accidental.

According the daily Toronto Star, Mathisen and his wife got into a brawl after he confronted her about an affair and accused her of poisoning him.

The prosecution alleged she died of strangulation, while a defense expert testified she was likely crushed to death. Mathisen said in court he did not realize his knee was pressed against her chest.

Justice John Laskin wrote in the original decision the victim died because Mathisen either "put his knee on his wife's chest and kept it there" or "continually sat on his wife's chest."

"The pivotal question is whether ... he did so unintentionally," the judge concluded.

Women lead in bacteria, hands down, according to study of 51 college students

Mon Nov 3, 6:59 PM

By Randolph E. Schmid, The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Wash your hands, folks, especially you ladies.

A new study found that women have a greater variety of bacteria on their hands than men do. And everybody has more types of bacteria than the researchers expected to find.

"One thing that really is astonishing is the variability between individuals, and also between hands on the same individual," said University of Colorado biochemistry assistant professor Rob Knight, a co-author of the paper.

"The sheer number of bacteria species detected on the hands of the study participants was a big surprise, and so was the greater diversity of bacteria we found on the hands of women," added lead researcher Noah Fierer, an assistant professor in Colorado's department of ecology and evolutionary biology.

The researchers aren't sure why women harboured a greater variety of bacteria than men, but Fierer suggested it may have to do with the acidity of the skin. Knight said men generally have more acidic skin than women.

Other possibilities are differences in sweat and oil gland production between men and women, the frequency of moisturizer or cosmetics applications, skin thickness or hormone production, he said.

Women also may have more bacteria living under the surface of the skin where they are not accessible to washing, Knight added.

Asked if guys should worry about holding hands with girls, Knight said: "I guess it depends on which girl."

He stressed that "the vast majority of the bacteria we have on our body are either harmless or beneficial ... the pathogens are a small minority."

The researchers took samples from the palms of 51 college students - that's 102 hands - and tested the samples using a new, highly detailed system for detecting bacteria DNA.

They identified 4,742 species of bacteria overall, only five of which were on every hand, they report on Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The average hand harboured 150 species of bacteria.

Not only did individuals have few types of bacteria in common, the left and right hands of the same individual shared only about 17 per cent of the same bacteria types, the researchers found.

The differences between dominant and non-dominant hands were probably due to environmental conditions like oil production, salinity, moisture or variable environmental surfaces touched by either hand of an individual, Fierer said.

Knight said the researchers hope to repeat the experiment in other countries where different hands are assigned specific tasks.

While the researchers stressed the importance of regular hand washing, they also noted that washing did not eliminate bacteria.

"Either the bacterial colonies rapidly re-establish after hand washing, or washing (as practised by the students included in this study) does not remove the majority of bacteria taxa found on the skin surface," the researchers said in their report.

While the tests could determine how many different types of bacteria were present, they could not count the total amount of bacteria on each hand.

The research was funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

-

On the Net:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: http://www.pnas.org

As people take tourist photos, other tourists are inevitably included in the background. Each person who enters the space being photographed ends up in numerous personal collections around the world.

Belgian conceptual artists Jan Fabre causing another stink in the art world

Mon Nov 3, 11:40 AM

By The Associated Press

ANTWERP, Belgium - Belgian conceptual artist Jan Fabre is creating another big stink in the art world.

And more than a few museum-goers are expressing their distaste after touring Fabre's "Spring is on its way" exhibit at Antwerp's MuHKA museum of contemporary art.

It consists of onions and potatoes hung from the ceiling in condoms and the vegetables are, well, spoiling.

Museum spokeswoman Kathleen Weyts defends the exhibit, saying that like many of his works, Fabre's latest effort is "about transformation and metamorphosis."

But the local media reports that many visitors, not to mention museum guards, are protesting the smelly display, which has now become the talk of the town.

It's not the first time people have turned up their noses at Fabre's work. Eight years ago he got the same reaction in Ghent, Belgium, after covering some university pillars in ham.

"Protest Against Fabre's Stink Art," headlined the Het Nieuwsblad newspaper in response to the Antwerp exhibit.

"Fabre's stinking work raises tempers," added the VRT television network on its website.

Some shoots have broken through the condoms and other condoms have crashed to the floor from the weight of the vegetables.

The Antwerp museum has no plans to remove Fabre's installation, which runs until the start of spring 2009, but it is removing any vegetables that fall.

"It smells of onions, but I would not call it a stink," MuHKA director Bart De Baere said in defending the exhibit to VRT.

"Fabre always says that art must be a bit smelly," added Weyts.

The Sex Lives of Hockey Players

Frost's alleged victims deny three-way sex, but say it's common in hockey

Thu Oct 30, 7:33 PM

By Allison Jones, The Canadian Press

NAPANEE, Ont. - The two men David Frost is alleged to have sexually exploited as teens candidly acknowledged Thursday that group sex is an accepted "bonding" practice in the hockey world but emphatically denied that their former coach took part in threesomes or manipulated their sexual behaviour.

The men were called as defence witnesses - unusual for alleged victims - and the prosecutor suggested that sex acts involving the players, their girlfriends and Frost did in fact happen, and that as two former members of Frost's "cult," they are now trying to protect him.

The last day of testimony at Frost's trial saw both alleged victims refute much of this week's testimony from their former girlfriends. The women, now 28, told court Frost held such sway over his players, holding the key to their hockey careers, that he could compel them to engage in various sex acts in the 1990s.

Frost, the ex-coach of the junior A Quinte Hawks, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual exploitation relating to two of his former players who cannot be named.

The Canadian Press is also not identifying the two women who have testified this week about having sex with players and Frost during the period of the alleged offences, when they were juveniles, though the women are not part of the same publication ban.

The first man to testify Thursday told the court that group sex is common among hockey players and that he has had sexual encounters involving one girl and as many as five or six other males.

"It's like a bonding thing with your friends or teammates," he said.

The man said during cross-examination that it would be unusual for a coach to be involved.

The second man to testify said he never had a threesome with Frost and never had any threesomes at all while playing with the Hawks for one season, contradicting earlier testimony from the two women and a former teammate.

He also played down his on-off, six-year relationship with the woman, which started when they were 16, in which he funded her education, paid for her rent, car and cellphone.

"Are you playing down this relationship because you feel guilty about the way she was used?" Crown attorney Sandy Tse asked.

The man portrayed his ex-girlfriend as promiscuous among hockey players, clingy and not very attractive.

"I was 16. It worked... Beggars can't be choosers," he said.

His ex-girlfriend had testified that Frost insisted the three engage in sex throughout the relationship, even when the player lived in the U.S. and she was visiting. The man initially said Frost had never been to his condo there. During cross-examination, he mentioned a time Frost was at the condo over Christmas.

The man became more and more defensive as his cross-examination progressed, resulting in an outburst in which he denied he was protecting Frost.

"Listen, there's nobody in this courtroom that has more to resent that guy about than me," he said, referring to being associated with Frost and the allegations.

"You can make me look like this guy who was controlled... (but) I'm not controlled by anybody. I'm (me). I'm my own person."

Tse suggested the man was covering for Frost out of a sense of loyalty. When allegations involving Frost and inappropriate behaviour were investigated years ago, the man stopped speaking to his parents for 1 1/2 years, believing they were responsible for the allegations, Tse said.

"That's the loyalty you were showing Mr. Frost."

Frost's inner circle started to form when the two alleged victims were about 11, Tse said. They first played at his hockey camp, then were coached by him in Brampton, Ont. When the five players Frost mentored tried out for the Quinte Hawks and two or three didn't make it, all five returned to Brampton as a unit, the men said.

The bond between the players and Frost was strong, Tse said, suggesting it was so powerful that many people referred to the group as a "cult."

The first witness didn't agree they were like a cult, but acknowledged "that's what was perceived of us."

He also denied two threesomes his ex-girlfriend testified occurred between the young couple and Frost. He said they did have two threesomes - just with Mike Danton, who went on to play in the NHL.

Danton, who played for the Hawks during Frost's tenure, later played for the St. Louis Blues and is currently in prison in the U.S. for a failed murder-for-hire plot that allegedly targeted Frost.

Tse introduced a letter, which he said Frost had written to the group, giving advice such as remembering that sacrifices lead to success and to read more books. It also emphasized the need to stay close and support each other.

"Isn't that what you're doing today?" Tse asked the witness. "Standing together, keeping the bond and protecting Mr. Frost?"

Closing arguments in the trial are scheduled for Monday, and the judge will deliver his decision Nov. 28.