The greatest living Red Sox player, New England icon Carl Yastrzemski, underwent emergency triple-bypass surgery yesterday at Massachusetts General Hospital after being diagnosed with coronary artery disease.

Yastrzemski, the folk hero of the 1967 Impossible Dream season that forever changed the franchise's fortunes, emerged from the operating room at 8 p.m. after a six-hour procedure to reroute the flow of blood around blockages in three arteries to his heart.

"The surgery was a complete success, and he's resting comfortably," said Yastrzemski's spokesman, Dick Gordon.

Source: http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/articles/2008/08/20/yaz_has_triple_bypass/

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After a public rebuke from the Patrick administration, MBTA General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas agreed yesterday to rescind a 9 percent pay raise for executive employees that had been criticized as excessive for an agency struggling to pay its bills.

Grabauskas granted the raise, which took effect last week, to 273 employees not covered by the MBTA's union contracts, saying it matched an increase recently won by unions that had gone without one for three years.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2008/08/20/mbta_rescinds_9_raises_for_top_earners/

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Sudan's indicted president denied Wednesday that his regime is orchestrating genocide in the troubled western region of Darfur -- and offered hope for an end to the violence and the dawn of reconciliation by promising free and fair elections next year.

President Omar al-Bashir was indicted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague last month on genocide and war crimes charges. Prosecutors say militias unleashed by his government have killed some 300,000 ethnic Africans since 2003. More than 2.5 million have been displaced.

Source: http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2008/08/20/sudans_president_darfur_genocide_nonexistent/

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