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NEW YORK – In the midst of a career surge that has made him one of rap's biggest stars, Lil Wayne is bracing for a year behind bars after pleading guilty Thursday in a two-year-old gun case.
A glum Lil Wayne said little as he admitted illegally having a loaded gun on his tour bus in 2007, moving to end a case that had churned along as he collected Grammys and gold records. He's expected to get a year in jail at his sentencing, set for February.
The plea, which came as he boasted the country's No. 1 pop song, makes Lil Wayne the latest in a long line of rappers to face incarceration after topping the charts.
Arguably rap's most popular artist, Lil Wayne somberly answered his judge's questions with "yes, sir" and "no, sir" as he pleaded guilty to a felony charge of attempted criminal possession of a weapon.
He acknowledged he had a loaded .40-caliber semiautomatic gun when the bus was stopped shortly after a Manhattan concert on July 22, 2007. His lawyer had previously disputed the gun was the rapper's, in part by questioning the reliability of a highly sensitive DNA test that prosecutors said tied him to the weapon.
State Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon warned Lil Wayne that he wouldn't be able later to withdraw the plea, as some people try to do.
"I'm not one of those people," said the rapper, who sat in court in jeans and a hooded parka. He pulled up the hood and didn't speak as he left the courthouse with members of his entourage, who piled into four black SUVs. He's due back in court Dec. 15 before his sentencing date, which has yet to be set.
He had faced at least 3 1/2 years in prison if convicted of the original weapons-possession charges against him.
Lil Wayne, 27, also is scheduled for trial in Arizona in March on felony drug possession and weapons charges stemming from a January 2008 arrest at a U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint. He has pleaded not guilty in that case.
In March, an Atlanta judge dismissed felony drug charges against Lil Wayne. His lawyer had said the rapper wasn't staying in the hotel room where police said the drugs were found in 2006.
Over the past two years, Lil Wayne — born Dwayne Carter — has emerged as the best-selling figure in music. His "Tha Carter III" topped all album sales in 2008 with 2.8 million copies sold off of such hits as the No. 1 smash "Lollipop." His Grammys include last year's best rap solo performance award, for "A Milli."
A rapper since he was a teen, Lil Wayne exploded in popularity thanks to his voluminous output on the mixtape circuit and collaborations with other artists. He currently has the No. 1 song in the country with Jay Sean, "Down."
While his lyrics sometimes are laced with violence, he's more known for clever wordplay and risque material.
The relationship between chronicling crime and living it has long been an issue in rap. Some of the genre's big names — including Tupac Shakur, Lil' Kim, Beanie Sigel, Shyne, Mystikal and C-Murder — have done a few months to several years behind bars for crimes committed after they became famous.
T.I., another of rap's top sellers, reported to a federal prison in May for his conviction on weapons charges. He's expected to serve a year and a day.
While some rappers haven't regained their chart status after prison or jail, Shakur became even more popular, and T.I. remains popular on the radio.
Police pulled over Lil Wayne's tour bus shortly after it left a concert venue, saying they had seen and smelled marijuana smoke wafting out the door when it was parked.
After ordering roughly a dozen or so other people off the bus, police found a freshly showered Lil Wayne in his boxer shorts in a bedroom at the back of the bus. Police said that as an officer approached, the rapper tossed away a Louis Vuitton bag containing the gun.

The Miami-based rapper wasn't licensed to carry a gun in New York, prosecutors said.

The Manhattan District Attorney's office said small amounts of DNA found on the gun connected it to Lil Wayne. Defense lawyer Stacey Richman had raised questions about the relatively new technique, used to derive the results from DNA samples that can consist of fewer than roughly 16 human cells.

A hearing on the method's level of scientific acceptance started Wednesday and had been expected to continue for days. After Lil Wayne's guilty plea, both prosecutors and Richman stressed that they stood by their contrasting positions on the technique.

But, Solomon said, "The issue is not going to be decided in this courtroom, in this case."

Meanwhile, another platinum-selling rapper, Ja Rule, still faces gun-possession charges stemming from his separate arrest after playing the same July 2007 show as Lil Wayne. Ja Rule, known to the court as Jeff Atkins, has pleaded not guilty. He has a court date next month.

TAIPEI (Reuters) –
Authorities in Taiwan said on Thursday they would investigate a private training center after receiving testimony and videos showing that children were made to swallow fire and step on glass to build up their courage.

Given videos and testimony from parents of the Mai-teh International Intelligence Research Institute, the city of Tainan in south Taiwan said in a statement it would probe the training center for possible violations of laws governing minors.

The center, licensed as a consultancy and about two years old, had admitted more than 100 people of varied ages to build up their courage via what parents said amounted to corporal punishment, a city government news official said.

A Tainan city councilor and several parents brought the case to local media, prompting the probe.

"My child was forced to split wood with his bare hands and wanted to die," one mother said via local television.

Students paid T$30,000 ($932) per half year for the after school courses, Taiwan's China Times newspaper reported.

"Because the company had always stressed that it was a confidence training school and that only with a strong heart could children see achievements, it had to do things to build up courage," the statement said.

"If there were violations of rules covering minors, we will handle the case according to law," it said.

The training center was closed on Thursday and phones went unanswered, complicating the probe, the city said.

Extreme confidence-building courses are generally reserved for military units, such as the U.S. Marine Corps, and involve challenging exercises designed to overcome fear of accidents.

(Reporting by Ralph Jennings; Editing by Sugita Katyal)

WASHINGTON (AFP) –
US health officials warned Friday that deliveries of swine flu vaccine are likely to be delayed even as influenza deaths climb, with children hit particularly hard.

Eleven more children were reported to have died of flu in a single week, 10 of them from swine flu, bringing the number of pediatric deaths from H1N1 flu since April to 86, Anne Schuchat, a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) told reporters.

In the worst of the past three flu seasons in the United States, which usually run from August to March, 88 children died.

As of mid-week, 11.4 million doses of H1N1 vaccine were available and around eight million had been ordered by the states.

Inoculation clinics got under way in several US states last week, targeting children, health care workers, people who work with infants, and young, healthy adults.

Long lines have been reported outside the clinics, as parents rushed to get their children -- one of the most at-risk groups -- inoculated against swine flu.

"About half the deaths we've seen in children since September 1st have occurred in teens, between the ages of 12 and 17," said Schuchat, warning that deaths of older children from swine flu were likely to increase as the season progresses.

Overall, deaths in the United States from flu have leapt above the "epidemic threshold," and widespread disease from influenza has been reported in 41 of the 50 states. The remainder of the states are seeing higher-than-average rates of illness, Schuchat said.

"It's unprecedented for this time of year to have the whole country seeing such high levels of activity," Schuchat said.

But as deaths rose and flu spread across the United States, H1N1 vaccine manufacturers have warned of slow-downs in production, Schuchat said.

"It doesn't look like we're going to be able to make the estimates we had projected by the end of this month," she said, scaling back earlier projections of 40 million doses of vaccine by the end of October to 28-30 million.

MADRID (AFP) –
Authorities in southern Spain said Friday they are ready to open a mass grave that could contain the remains of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, although his relatives oppose any exhumation.

Garcia Lorca was shot by supporters of General Francisco Franco during Spain's 1936-39 civil war and is believed to have been buried in the grave at Alfaca, near Granada.

"Our aim is to look for him," said the minister of justice for the Andalucia region, Begona Alvarez, as she signed agreements to undertake the work.

"We will reveal the number of bodies discovered... Obviously the rest is up to the families -- whether the remains are identified or not identified," she said.

She added that work would begin "immediately".

The grave thought to contain the remains of Garcia Lorca and three other people shot along with him is one of six believed to be in Alfaca. Four of them will be dug up first.

Garcia Lorca's relatives have urged the Andalucia government not to exhume his remains, but asked to be allowed to identify the remains and dispose of them if they are found.

Lorca, Spain's most widely acclaimed 20th century poet, was 38 when he was killed. His poems and plays, which deal with universal themes such as love, death, passion, cruelty and injustice, are widely studied at universities.