Being Born Into Poverty Didn't Stop The Founder of Popeyes From Building A $400 Million Fast Food Fortune

Earlier today, Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen Inc. announced that it signed a landmark deal to acquire the rights to their secret recipes for$43 million dollars. Popeyes made the deal with the estate of the company's late founder,Al Copeland Sr. You might be surprised to hear that Popeyes didn't already own their secret recipes. You might be even more surprised that Al Copeland Sr, who died in 2008, hadn't been involved with Popeyes since he drove the company into bankruptcy in 1991. So how did Copeland's heirs manage to score a $43 million posthumous payday? As you are about to learn, this is just yet another amazing story in the absolutely fascinating life of Al Copeland Sr. A man who was equally famous in Louisiana for his flamboyant lifestyle and incredibly generous acts of philanthropy. A man who managed to die with nine children from four wives. A man who, despite being born into wretched poverty and never graduating high school, died with a net worth conservatively estimated at $400 million dollars. Al Copeland Sr was a truly fascinating and inspirational person…

Alvin Charles Copeland was born on February 2, 1944 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His family was dirt poor. Al and his two older brothers were raised by a single mom in a rough housing project after their father abandoned the family. Al dropped out of high school at the age of 16 and got a job at a local super market to help support the family. He soon landed a job managing a donut shop called Tastee Donut. At some point, Al was offered the opportunity to buy a brand new new Tastee Donut location. He jumped at the opportunity and sold his car to cover the startup costs. This is where Copeland got his first taste of the lucrative world of fast food franchising.

Copeland lived frugally and saved every penny with the intention to buy another Tastee Donut. As fate would have it, by the time he had the money to buy that second donut store, Al had an even bigger idea. Sensing an even bigger opportunity, in 1972 Copeland decided to launch a restaurant that blended local Cajun flavors with fried chicken and home-style cooking. Al was just 28 years old when he opened the first "Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken" in Arabi, Louisiana, a suburb of St. Bernard Parish. The restaurant was soon renamed "Popeyes Famous Chicken & Biscuits", then just "Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken"… but pretty quickly it was simply known as "Popeyes".

Popeyes was an instant hit. Copeland soon expanded to two locations. Then three. Then four. In 1976, he opened his business up to franchising. Between 1976 and 1986, Popeyes expanded to more than 500 locations. By 1989, there were 700 locations around the world and Popeyes was the third largest quick-service chicken restaurant in the world behind Church's Chicken and KFC.

So what does an ambitious man with the #3 chicken restaurant in the world do next? He makes a deal to buy out the #2 restaurant obviously! In 1989, Copeland negotiated a deal to acquire Church's Chicken for $380 million (roughly $730 million after adjusting for inflation). The combined company now operated over 2000 quick-service chicken restaurants. Still not enough to top KFC's 6000 locations, but impressive nonetheless.

Unfortunately, the merger turned out to be a major bust. The anticipated cost savings of the combined companies never materialized. In fact, because Church's and Popeyes were still being marketed as separate and distinct restaurants, many costs actually went way up. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that Copeland financed the acquisition almost entirely with debt. Every year, the interest payments on the debt amounted tens of millions of dollars.

In April 1991, Popeyes was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with debts totaling over $400 million. In October 1992, a bankruptcy judge allowed the company's creditors, operating as a newly formed entity called America's Favorite Chicken (AFC), the right to acquire and run all Popeyes and Church's locations. 20 years after launching his baby, Al Copeland would was relieved of his chicken duties forever.

But wait! There was one small silver lining. Thanks to an extremely shrewd business decision made years earlier Al Copeland may have been down, but he wasn't totally out. Copeland may have lost the rights to his beloved Popeyes restaurant locations in the bankruptcy, but he still controlled one extremely valuable asset: The secret recipes.

Pay attention, because this was a truly brilliant move. Back when Copeland first started to franchise, he technically formed two companies. The first company operated the franchise business and all the owned and operated restaurants. The second company was called "Diversified Foods & Seasonings". Diversified Foods & Seasonings basically controlled one asset: The intellectual property rights to all the secret recipes that made Popeyes chicken and sides taste so darn good.

By contract, every Popeyes restaurant in the world was required to use these spices to give their chicken its distinct Cajun flavor. This company owned and operated five spice plants, two in Louisiana, one in Alabama, one in San Antonio and one in Nebraska. Every Popeyes franchise was required to pay an annual royalty to Diversified Food & Seasonings in order to receive their spices. The contract for these rights was scheduled to last until the year 2029.

When AFC brought Popeyes out of bankruptcy, it had no choice but to continue paying Diversified Food & Spices annual royalties for access to the secret recipes. Those royalties amounted to $10 – $13 million per year in profits for Al Copeland.

Armed with basically a million dollars a month in royalty profits, Al Copeland proceeded to launch dozens of new businesses. He opened several new restaurants, bought three hotels and even two comedy clubs. One of his hotels, The Clarion Grand Boutique Hotel in New Orleans, is one of the highest rated in the entire country.

So exactly how rich was Al Copeland? During his 2004 divorce proceedings (wife number 3 out of 4), it was revealed that Al Copeland had a personal net worth of $400 million dollars and an annual income that fluctuated between $13 and $15 million. Not bad for a high school dropout who was born into poverty and raised in a housing project!

Sadly, Al Copeland was diagnosed with a rare form cancer in December 2007. He died just four months later on March 23, 2008, in Munich Germany, where he was receiving an experimental treatment. Copeland was just 64 years old.

As we mentioned in the beginning of this article, earlier today Al Copeland's heirs reached a deal to sell the rights to the secret recipes in perpetuity for $43 million dollars. Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, which is till majority owned by AFC, is now a publicly traded company on the NASDAQ, ticker symbol PLKI. Popeyes' CEO Cheryl Bachelder (the first female CEO of a major fast food restaurant) proclaimed:

"This is an exciting and historic event representing a win for everyone involved. We now have the recipes in house in perpetuity, and we thank the Copeland family for helping bring together the treasured recipes Popeyes is known for with the brand so beloved by its guests."

And as if all this wasn't amazing enough, while he was alive Al Copeland never forgot his humble beginnings. He used his wealth to launch several charities that focused especially on education and giving poor kids get better opportunities in life. He established the Alvin C. Copeland Endowed Chair of Franchising at Louisiana State University and provided the funds to launch a Chef Apprentice school at Delgado Community College in New Orleans. Al Copeland certainly lived life to the fullest and the world is much better off because of he was in it!

How Much Does A PGA Tour Caddie Make?

When most people think of a caddie, they probably picture a lazy teenager on summer break sweating it out for tips from old rich men and women. Let's be honest, the first thing we all think of is Caddyshack. It's difficult to watch a single moment of golf on television without seeing a caddie, yet many golf fans have very little concept of what a caddie actually does during a given tournament. More importantly for Celebrity Net Worth fans, we have no idea how much money caddies get paid for their work on a professional level. Do PGA caddies earn a salary? Are they tipped like caddies at a high end country club? Do they take a percentage of a pro-golfer's earnings? Here's a quick breakdown of how the men behind the biggest names in golf bring home the bacon…

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The Base Salary:

Caddies don't have an annual salary like most people do. The President of the Professional Caddies Association (PCA) recently told reporters that high end caddies typically earn a base weekly salary of somewhere between $1,000-$1,500. Again, caddies negotiate this deal with the golfer on a case by case basis. Some could make more. Some could make less. The average PGA Tour player plays between 20-30 events per year, so it would make sense to assume that the average salary would range from $20,000-$45,000.

Bonuses:

The real money for caddies lies in bonuses. The PCA President also explained that golfers earn at least 5% what the golfer makes in a given week. If the golfer finishes in the top 10, that number can grow to 7%. If the golfer wins, that number can grow to 10%. Assuming the PCA President was correctly quoted, you can see how money can add up very quickly.

Let's use the U.S. Open as an example. Martin Kaymer's caddie would receive a $162,000 bonus for winning the tournament. The caddie's bonus is more than any golfer finishing 12th or worse earned at the tournament. The caddies whose golfers tied for 9th would get $14,820. The caddie for Toru Taniguchi, who finished dead last, would get $999.

Using the 2013 PGA Tour Money List, the minimum Tiger Woods' caddie would have received was$427,671. Because Tiger won five times in 2013, it's reasonable to assume the caddie made far more.

In all, 33 golfers made more than $2 million in 2013. That means those caddies would receive a minimum of $100,000 in bonuses. Another 50 golfers made between $1-$2 million, resulting in bonuses of at least $50,000. And if you were the caddie who finished 125th on the money list (the last person to guarantee a PGA Tour card for 2014), you would have received at least $30,508 in bonuses.

Golfers can also receive bonuses or gifts for a good year. Tiger Woods reportedly gave his caddie,Steve Williams, a Ford GT after winning at Doral in 2005 and earned more than $1 million annually during Tiger's prime. Today, thanks to his run with Tiger, Steve Williams is personally worth$20 million. That's a heck of a lot more than many golfers actually have in the bank!

The Complicated Income:

While the path to a six-figure salary is clear for caddies, there are also traps along the path. Caddies operate as independent contractors. This means they negotiate their deals directly with the golfer. While the newly formed Association of Professional Tour Caddies is trying to work with the PGA Tour for better healthcare and retirement benefits, the caddie is kind of like his/her own one-person business. The income listed above doesn't include a government cut, social security, or health insurance deductions. There certainly isn't a pension.

There's also the issue of travel. Caddies often foot the bill for getting to a tournament. 20 years ago, most PGA Tour events were within driving distance, but as the game has exploded in global popularity, many of the world's best golfers play in 5-10 different countries per year, not to mention an early tour stop in Hawaii. With fuel, lodging and entertainment prices rising, the cash cow can have some spots.

Caddies often work seven days a week, walking the course looking for the slightest advantage for their golfer/boss. The hard work offers plenty of reward if things go right, and not much security if things go wrong. Still, it's easy to see why so many seek so few opportunities to carry someone's bag on a Sunday.

Oh and one more small piece of interesting trivia: The richest person at this year's US Open was a caddie. One of the caddies was actually a billionaire. That happened because one of the qualifiers chose his father Scott McNealy to be his caddie. McNealy was one of the founders of Sun Microsystems and has a personal net worth estimated at $1 billion dollars 

World Cup 2014 : Five problems jeopardising Brazil's World Cup hopes

Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari declared himself "satisfied" with his team's 0-0 draw against Mexico in Fortaleza on Tuesday, and the hosts remain on course to reach the World Cup knockout phase.

However, 'Felipao' admitted that improvements still need to be made, as was evident in their opening game, when they came from behind to beat Croatia 3-1 in Sao Paulo.

Here's a look at five areas where the Selecao could fall down in their bid to win the World Cup.

Coping with the pressure

"The demands are always much greater here in Brazil, but we are prepared," said Dani Alves after the Mexico game. Nevertheless, the Selecao have shown signs of fragility under pressure in their two matches so far.

Seeing Neymar break down in tears at the end of the rousing version of the national anthem at the Castelao brought home the enormity of what this Brazil side is trying to achieve and the amount of pressure they carry on their shoulders.

Against Mexico, the nervous energy transmitted by the crowd in the early stages of the game in particular had an impact on both sets of players.

First touches were poor, passes were wayward and challenges came flying in during a frantic opening spell.

Brazil at times lack a calming presence - captain Thiago Silva is usually such a cool customer but he has apparently been unable to sleep at night due to the pressure that is as stifling as the heat in Fortaleza.

Dependence on Neymar

With the possible exception of Oscar, Neymar is the one player in this Brazil side capable of conjuring up a moment of match-winning magic from nowhere.

Fred last week insisted there was nothing wrong with giving the ball to the Barcelona man when the going gets tough. Against Croatia his was a match-winning contribution, and against Mexico he was twice denied by brilliant Guillermo Ochoa saves.

However, seeing Neymar in tears following the national anthem in Fortaleza indicated that he could do with having some of the weight taken off his shoulders.

"Neymar doesn't win or lose on his own. He is part of a group," says Scolari. "Within the group, he can sometimes be the decisive player. But he wins and loses with the rest of the team."

Striking concerns

Scolari has selected Fred against both Croatia and Mexico, but the 30-year-old Fluminense centre-forward has been ineffective, except for winning the controversial penalty that set Brazil on their way to victory in their opening match.

Against Mexico, Fred was replaced by Jo, and he could be a contender to come into the starting line-up against Cameroon on Monday, when Brazil will look to clinch their place in the last 16.

There are no other options, and it is easy to wonder how much of a difference Diego Costa could have made had Scolari shown faith in him and persuaded the Atletico Madrid man to represent his homeland rather than his adopted country Spain.

Paulinho

"Today I felt much freer out on the field, which is fundamental to me," said Paulinho after the Mexico game. But the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder still didn't do enough to suggest that he should be an automatic starter against Cameroon.

With a solid centre-back pairing and Luiz Gustavo offering extra protection to the defence, Brazil could do with a more technical, creative player in central midfield. Paulinho has often appeared sluggish, his touch clumsy. Perhaps Hernanes will get his chance to impress in Brasilia.

What about Plan B?

Scolari wants his sides to come flying out of the blocks and score an early goal. But against Croatia they conceded first and had to rely on a controversial penalty as they fought back to win the game.

Against Mexico, they often lacked inspiration and couldn't find a way past Ochoa, leaving Oscar to later lament: "In the first 30 minutes, we had various chances to score but none of them came off. Mexico play with almost everyone behind the ball. It is difficult to play against opponents like that who counter-attack quickly."

Scolari may need a more efficient Plan B come the tournament's latter stages.

Kanye, Kim took 4 days to perfect their first wedding picture

Speaking at the special talk at Cannes Lions festival, Kanye West spoke about what went behind the first wedding picture before it was Instagrammed to the world.

He revealed that a famous celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz backed out one day before their wedding leaving them upset.
'I'll tell you a little story about the Kiss photo that my girl put up,' Perfectionist and rapper Kanye told the audience at Cannes.
'She was exhausted because we worked on the photo so much because Annie Leibovitz pulled out of the wedding, because I think she was scared of the idea of celebrity.
'But because Annie pulled out, I was like "I still want my wedding photos to look like Annie Leibovitz's photos" and we sat there and edited photo for four days - because the flowers were off-colour and stuff like that.
'Can you imagine telling someone who wants to just Instagram a photo, who's the number one person on Instagram, "We need to work on the colour of the flower wall", or the idea that it's a Givenchy dress, and it's not about the name Givenchy, it's about the talent that is Riccardo Tisci - and how important Kim is to the internet.
'And the fact the number one most-liked photo [on Instagram] has a kind of aesthetic was a win for what the mission is, which is raising the palette.
Afer all the hard work, Kim and Kanye's wedding photo is the most-liked image to be uploaded to Instagram.

Facebook launches new image messaging app Slingshot

Facebook has launched a photo-messaging app one week after accidentally releasing it on Apple's app store.

Known as Slingshot, the app's features include sharing photos and videos with friends and sending "reaction shots".

It uses an unlocking mechanism, whereby photos received from friends must be unlocked by "slinging" a different photo back to the original sender.

Like Snapchat, all images are deleted once sent and users can scribble or type over their photos.

"When everyone participates, there's less pressure, more creativity and even the little things in life can turn into awesome shared experiences."

On the social media page for the app, the creators said: "With Slingshot, we wanted to build something where everybody is a creator and nobody is just a spectator.

The app is developed by Facebook's Creative Labs division, which has been tasked with creating new and innovative products.

Slingshot users do not need to have a Facebook account to sign up for the photo-messaging app. They can access the app with their mobile phone number and connect with friends in their phone's contact list, or they can connect via their Facebook friends' list.

Snapchat competitor?

The Slingshot launch comes as Facebook is trying to fight off threats from other social networking agents, which also contain messaging and photo-sharing tools.

In addition to developing its own apps, Facebook has also been on an acquisition spree.

In 2012 Facebook bought photo-sharing network Instagram for $1bn (£589m).

A year later, it was reported that Snapchat rejected a $3bn bid from Facebook, revealing the social media giant's apparent continued and serious interest in photo-messaging services.

Previously Facebook attempted and failed to create a successful image-messaging app called Poke, which was recently abandoned and had been described by some as a "blatant copycat app."

In addition to the unlock requirement, Slingshot features a "select all" function, which allows people to send a picture to all their contacts at the same time.

However, unlike Poke, Slingshot has a number of unique features not found in rivals such as Snapchat, which could help it distinguish itself.

As the Verge news site notes, Snapchat has deliberately avoided offering such a facility to avoid its users becoming overwhelmed with alerts.

Another similar app and potential rival is Taptalk, which is reportedly admired among some Facebook engineers.

Taptalk provides a comparatively minimalist and simplified approach to image messaging, allowing users to send personal pictures or videos by tapping or holding their friend's profile picture.

It has also been noted that Slingshot's icon is strikingly similar to Taptalk's.

At this point Slingshot is available on Apple's App Store and Google Play to US account holders, but not elsewhere.

U.K. stocks rise for second day after BOE minutes

Royal Dutch Shell climbs after asset sale

Helping lift the benchmark, shares of Royal Dutch Shell PLC UK:RDSB +1.69%  RDS.B +0.13%  picked up 1.4% after the oil giant confirmed it has completed the sale of 78 million shares of Woodside Petroleum Ltd. AU:WPL -4.55% . Shares of Woodside dropped 4.6%. Oil prices were also higher amid sectarian in violence in Iraq that could disrupt the country’s oil supply. On Wednesday, Iraq’s largest oil refinery was attacked by Sunni militants using machine guns and mortars, according to media reports.

Investors in London also found support in the minutes from the Bank of England’s June meeting. All nine members of the Monetary Policy Committee voted in favor of leaving the key interest rate at a record low of 0.5% and making no changes to its 375 billion pound ($636 billion) asset-purchase program.

After BOE Governor Mark Carney last week said rates could rise sooner that markets currently expect, speculation grew that MPC member Martin Weale had voted in favor of tightening policy.

“It still looks like a rate rise will be a 2015 event, although, should the run of strong U.K. data continue, there is a chance that a rate rise may happen around the time of the November Inflation Report,” said Jake Trask, corporate dealer at UKForex, in a note.

BOE officials did signal in the minutesthat a rate rise could come before the end of the year, but only if they assess that the economy can cope with higher borrowing costs. The poundGBPUSD -0.14%  slipped after the minutes, trading at $1.6944, down from $1.6966 ahead of the release.

Back in corporate news, shares of Premier Foods PLC UK:PFD -8.70% tumbled 7.4% outside the main index in London, after the food producer warned that “Power Brands” sales for the second quarter are anticipated to be negative and below the company’s expectations due to subdued grocery markets.

Boy finds mummified body hanging in Dayton, Ohio, home

In an empty, dusty house, a boy stumbled upon a classic horror movie scenario this week: A mummified corpse hanging by the neck from a belt.

And officials say it had been there for five years.

Until the boy made his way inside the ramshackle house in Dayton, Ohio, on Sunday, neighbors didn't think anyone lived there, said Ken Betz, director of the Montgomery County Coroner's Office.

They thought the house was abandoned, and it looked that way.

The front door was papered with citations for the overgrown yard, and no one came and went from the address. The home was unfurnished.

Inside, however, was the body of Edward Brunton, who hanged himself with a belt in a closet in 2009, according to Betz.

Betz puts Brunton in his late 40s at the time of his suicide.

The closet shielded his body from rapid decomposition, animals and insects, resulting in the mummy-like condition the boy found it in.

"Because of the location where he was found, it was relatively protected, sunlight-protected, temperature-protected and low humidity," coroner Kent Harshbarger told CNN affiliate WDTN.

Brunton had little time to forge friendships with neighbors; he had purchased the home just months prior to his death. He also was estranged from his family and friends, thus no one ever reported him missing, Betz said.

The boy's mother, Michelle McGrath, went into the house to investigate. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary until she entered the room that housed the closet.

"When I crossed the threshold of the room, is when I smelled it," she said.

She called the police.

Authorities found identification documents on Brunton's body. His estranged brother, who still recognized him, confirmed it was him.

Suicide bomber strikes Nigeria World Cup screening, killing 14

A Suicide bomber driving a three-wheeler taxi detonated a blast at a open air World Cup viewing venue in Damaturu, northern Nigeria Tuesday night, killing 14 people, according to police.

Police Assistant Superintendent Nathan Cheghan told the Associated Press 26 other were wounded in the attack.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bombing in the Yobe state capital as people watched Brazil play Mexico, but suspicions fell on Islamist militia Boko Haram or a similar Islamist splinter group.

Police commissioner for Yobe state, Sanusi Ruf’ai, said the attack happened at about 8:15 p.m., shortly after the soccer match began.

The bomb blast follows several similar attacks in northern Nigeria in recent months. Just over two weeks ago, 14 people were killed in a bomb attack on a bar in the town of Mubi in Adamawa state, where people were watching soccer. In May three people were killed at a soccer viewing venue in Jos, the capital of Plateau state. And in April, two people died when gunmen opened fire on a soccer viewing venue in Yobe state.

In soccer-mad Nigeria, young men often crowd into bars, video halls and mass open air football screening venues to watch the game live via cable TV or large screens. For many who lack cable TV at home it is the only way to see World Cup soccer games live and other major soccer matches.

But Nigerian authorities have warned that venues screening soccer matches could be targeted by extremists who see the game as un-Islamic.

Authorities in Adamawa and Plateau states and the Federal Capital Territory have recently banned screenings of world cup soccer matches in public venues because of the risk of attacks. Police in other areas have warned venue owners to take extra security precautions.

Yobe, Borno and Adamawa states have been under a state of emergency for more than a year as the Nigerian government grapples with an insurgency that has killed thousands of people in recent years, shut down schools and caused thousands of farmers to desert their land and villagers to evacuate their homes.

Boko Haram kidnapped more than 300 girls from Chibok village in April, and the ensuing campaign for their release, under the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls focused global attention on the militant group.

Boko Haram’s attacks have increasingly targeted civilians. In an attack on a boarding school in Yobe state in February, dozens of school boys were shot in their beds, burned alive or had their throats cut. Hundreds of school teachers have been killed in northern Nigeria since last year. Markets and bus stations have been hit as well.

The group, fighting for an Islamic state across all Nigeria, opposes Western education and culture, which it sees as the products of corrupt infidels. The insurgency has deepened divisions between the mainly Muslim north and mainly Christian south in Africa’s most populous nation of about 170 million people.

Football viewing venues make easy targets for terror groups in Africa: during the soccer world cup in 2010 more than 70 people died in an attack by Somali terror group Al Shabab in the Ugandan capital Kampala. The U.S. embassy in Kampala recently issued a warning to avoid crowded football venues in Uganda because of the risk of attack.

In an attack Sunday in the Kenyan town of Mpeketoni, people watching a world cup soccer game at a local venue were among the victims. Some 60 people died in attacks Sunday and Monday on Mpeketoni and nearby villages, not far from the tourist area of Lamu on the north eastern Kenyan coast.

Both Kenya and Somalia have faced attacks by Shabab because of their military presence in Somalia, although Kenyan authorities blamed local political networks for the attacks Sunday and Monday.

There were fears the number of dead in the Damaturu attack could rise, with many seriously injured victims.

Phoenix man held on $1m bond after arrest over priest's death

Gary Moran, 54, accused of beating the Rev Joseph Terra with a metal rod and then fatally shooting the man's assistant

A homeless ex-convict is being held on $1 million bond, accused of beating a priest with a metal rod in his residence at a Phoenix church and then wrestling away a handgun owned by the clergyman before fatally shooting the man's assistant.

Gary Michael Moran, 54, was arrested Sunday night on suspicion of first-degree murder, burglary, and armed robbery, among other charges, police announced Monday.

Authorities said Moran, an ex-convict with a history of violence and drug abuse, stole a camera from the priests and fled in Walker's car, which was found abandoned a few blocks away from the church last Wednesday night.

The attack occurred after the Rev Joseph Terra opened the kitchen door of the Mother of Mercy Mission rectory to investigate noises in a courtyard on Wednesday night, police said.

Badly injured, the 56-year-old Terra made it to his bedroom and retrieved his .357-caliber gun but was unable to fire before the attacker grabbed it, forced the priest to his knees and demanded money, according to court records.

Terra soon blacked out. When he regained consciousness, the Rev Kenneth Walker had been shot.

Walker, 28, died later that night.

Terra, who was able to give Walker last rites after the assault, remained hospitalized on Monday. He was moved out of a hospital intensive care unit Saturday and is expected to make a full recovery.

Police chief Daniel Garcia called the attack "a vicious, tragic, horrifying offense" committed by a criminal who was just released from prison in April.

Moran had served about eight years on charges that included aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.

In that case, police said, Moran broke into a Phoenix apartment and stabbed a resident in the abdomen with a steak knife. They said Moran didn't know the victim or recall the crime and cited a history of drug abuse.

Moran also was sentenced to more than four years in prison after pleading guilty in 2001 to misconduct involving weapons. He was convicted in two 1989 burglaries, as well.

During his recent stint in prison, Moran was found guilty of more than a dozen infractions, including four for drug manufacturing and possession, Corrections Department records show.

"He is a career criminal, a violent felony offender," Garcia said.

During the investigation, Terra was only able to provide a limited description of the suspect, but detectives said they were later able to link Moran to the crime scene through DNA.

Witnesses also helped authorities identify Moran.

On Sunday, a man came to the police station to report that he had heard Moran "was bragging about beating a priest and robbing him," according to court records.

A day later, a woman told police Moran had given her a black bag that contained the priest's camera.

Police said Moran acknowledged his involvement in the crime.

According to court records, Moran first told investigators during his interrogation that he didn't remember what happened.

He later said he was attacked and that "there was a struggle in the hallway with the gun with one of the priests, and the other priest then came after him and he then shot that priest," the records state.

Moran's public defender didn't respond to a request for comment on Monday, and jail officials said his attorney was declining all interview requests on Moran's behalf.

The news of his arrest came just as a Mass was to be held for Walker at another church in Phoenix.

"We're relieved that he's not out there doing it again and we hope some good comes out of it for him," Walker's stepsister, Sasha Keys, said, adding that nearly $42,000 in donations had poured in from around the country.

"I'm still getting letters in the mail with checks," she said.

Armour: Questions linger for Jurgen Klinsmann after thrilling U.S. win

John Brooks saved Jurgen Klinsmann from a lot of uncomfortable questions.

Saved the U.S. from a certain early exit from the World Cup, too.

Just about everything Klinsmann espouses was up for question through the first 80 minutes of the game: His snub of Landon Donovan. His decision to keep the aging DaMarcus Beasley at left back. The supposed fitness advantage the travel-tested and workout-fanatic Americans were supposed to have.

And then, with one furious toss of his head in the 86th minute, Brooks made Klinsmann look like a genius. For a few hours at least.

“It’s a huge three points,” Clint Dempsey said. “We didn’t play our best game, but we ground out the result.”

Klinsmann, his players and their fans were giddy after the 2-1 victory over Ghana on Monday night, and rightfully so. The Americans are second in Group G – yes, you read that right – the best-case scenario with Portugal and Germany still to come. They also crammed two World Cups’ worth of revenge into the victory over the team that sent them home in 2006 and 2010.

No wonder Klinsmann threw up his arms as if his team had just won the World Cup when the final whistle sounded.

“This is definitely the start we wanted,” Klinsmann said. “We worked hard for it, and it is definitely a good feeling to have these three points.”

But the euphoria can’t mask the issues the Americans have – issues that Klinsmann has to answer for.

The furor over Klinsmann’s decision to drop Donovan has largely died down since the U.S. got to Brazil. But the sight of Jozy Altidore being carted off 20 minutes into the game with a hamstring injury, might very well come back to haunt Klinsmann.

Donovan may not be the player he was four years ago, when his goal in stoppage time carried the U.S. into the second round in South Africa. He may not even be the player he was last summer, when he went on a scoring spree that carried the U.S. to the Gold Cup title.

But he’s not washed up, either, and he would have been just the kind of insurance policy Klinsmann and the U.S. could use right about now. Start him or bring him on as a sub. Either way, the Americans definitely could have used his skill and savvy Monday night, to say nothing of the upcoming games against Germany and Portugal.

“I don’t know. I hope so. I would love to,” Altidore said when asked if he’ll be able to play again in Brazil. “But at the end of the day, what matters is the team and we got three points.”

If the Americans are going to be short-handed, they can’t afford fitness issues like they had Monday night.

Just as he did with Germany in 2006, Klinsmann has made fitness a priority for his team. Training sessions are more frequent and challenging, and he and his staff track every physical data point possible. So while other teams fretted about the conditions in Brazil, the Americans dismissed them. Few teams would be fitter, they scoffed, or more prepared for the elements.

But on a night when the heat and humidity weren’t all that oppressive, Matt Besler couldn’t even make it into the second half and several players were gasping and clutching at body parts. Instead of looking like gym rats after being under the watchful eye of Klinsmann and his staff for the last month, a few looked more like guys on a rec team trying to shake off the winter sloth.

Besler’s substitution was only a precaution, Klinsmann said. But it forced him to keep Beasley on at the half when it was clear he was in over his head with Ghana’s fast-paced attack. Ghana may as well have taken up residence on the right side for as much as the Black Stars went after the four-time World Cup veteran.

It was only their spectacular lack of accuracy that kept the score from being 6-2.

“At the end, our competitive spirit, our mental determination, our willingness to fight was really good,” said Michael Bradley, a rare non-factor.

Go ahead and celebrate the victory, the kind of never-say-die comeback that is uniquely American and mesmerizes fans back home. The questions will still be there, larger than ever, once the hangover wears off.

Brian Williams Likes Big Butts, Cannot Lie, In A New Tonight Show Rap Mashup

Turn around, stick it out, even Roker's got to shout.

After blowing up the internet with Brian Williams’ mashup rendition of “Rapper’s Delight,” Jimmy Fallon and the folks at “The Tonight Show” brought him back for a second round of rhyming.

This time, the news anchor’s anaconda don’t want none unless you’ve got buns, hon.

A familiar host of talking heads serve as Williams’ responding chorus of ladies (yeah!) and fellas (yeah!), and a news report on Kim Jong-Un gets put to brilliant use in this rendition of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.” Also, Kathie Lee makes a cameo appearance exactly where you’d expect her to.

Report: AT&T to exclusively carry Amazon smartphone

Amazon has yet to reveal its long-rumored smartphone, but the device may already have an exclusive carrier.

According to the Wall Street Journal, which cites "people familiar with the plans," AT&T will exclusively carry Amazon's smartphone, which the company is expected to announce Wednesday.

The smartphone will reportedly feature a 3-D interface made possible through four built-in cameras.

Amazon is dipping into a highly competitive smartphone market, currently dominated by hardware giants Apple and Samsung. Research firm IDC says during the first quarter of this year, the two companies commanded a combined 45% market share among global smartphone shipments by manufacturer.

The online retailer recently launched Prime Music, a streaming music service that will be included in subscriptions to Amazon Prime.

9 reasons the Fed should print more money

All year, the Federal Reserve has been executing something monetary policy nerds call the taper. It's a measured tightening of monetary policy, as each month the Fed moderately reduces the amount of Quantitative Easing it does and the amount of money it prints. Everyone expects further tapering when the June 17-18 meeting ends. And everyone expects that if there is any change from the past several meetings, it's that there's at least a slim chance the Fed will speed the tapering up.

This is a bad idea. The economy has added jobs for the past few months, but is still adding them much too slowly to bring us a rapid return to full employment and wage growth. There is absolutely no sign that anyone at high levels of the Fed is even considering this, but the best idea would be for Janet Yellen to shock everyone and announce that tapering is over and the Fed is going to unexpectedly increase the pace of QE.

Here are nine great reasons why.

1) The unemployment rate is still really high

Unemployment has fallen a lot from its peak, but by absolute standards it's still insanely high. Indeed, it's just about where it was at the peak of the previous recession. If you didn't think that the very worst moment of the early-aughts labor market was a good time for tighter money, that's a good baseline reason to believe that today isn't a good time for tighter money either.

2) Inflation is still really low

Sometimes you need tight money despite high unemployment because it's the only way to fight inflation. But today the Fed's favorite price index, the PCE deflator, is running below 2 percent. Indeed, it's been consistently running below 2 percent for over two years.

3) QE doesn't undermine financial stability

Former Fed Governor Jeremy Stein delivered an influential series of speeches when he was still on the Board arguing that even when unemployment is high and inflation is low, the Fed should sometimes tighten money anyway because the QE program risks destabilizing the financial system. Fortunately, since the taper began we've had the opportunity to research this question empirically. Gabriel Chodorow-Reich finds that banks did not respond to QE by taking on more risk. In fact, by strengthening the overall economy they made banks less prone to failure.

4) The long-term unemployed still count

Yet another reason sometimes given to defend tighter money is the observation that a frighteningly large share of currently unemployed people have been unemployed for a long-time. These long-term unemployed are in some ways special, and one school of thought is that they are now essentially unemployable and shouldn't count when the Fed tries to measure how much "slack" there is in the economy.

But in an important recent paper, Michael Kiley compares different American metropolitan areas to one another and finds that the long-term and short-term unemployed have similar effects on local wages. In other words, proximity to a ton of long-term unemployed people tends to drag down wages for the employed. That means employers and employees alike regard the long-term jobless as potentially viable substitute workers. And that, in turn, means that if the economy strengthens further, companies will go out and hire those long-term unemployed workers.

5) It's working in Japan

In the first quarter of 2014, the fastest-growing advanced economy was Japan where Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the leadership he's installed at the Bank of Japan have pursued an aggressive program of monetary easing. A key aspect of "Abenomics" is that while American policymakers have always pursued QE apologetically — talking about exit strategies, tapering before inflation rises, etc. — he's had the BOJ boldly assert that increases in the money supply will never be reversed and that a rise in prices would bewelcome.

Of course really definitive proof is hard to come by in macroeconomics. But the fact that Europe has pursued a more cautious monetary policy than the USA which has pursued a more cautious monetary policy than Japan and that Japan is growing faster than the US which is growing faster than Europe is pretty suggestive.

6) Labor force dropouts will return

The job market has been so bad for so long, that lots of people have simply given up looking for work. That's a sign of economic weakness. But if those people are unwilling or unable to return to the labor force, they don't count as economic slack that can be addressed through monetary policy. But history says that's not how the labor market works. Consider the case of stay-at-home dads. Every time there's a recession, many men leave the labor force and become full-time dads. Every time there's a recovery, some of those full-time dads go back to work.

The fluctuations are more striking for dads than for moms because there are fewer of them, but the same basic pattern obtains for women. And the logic applies not just to parents, but to early retirees, people getting master's degrees, and the 15 percent of people aged 16-24 who are neither working nor in school. Many of these people won't join the labor force no matter what happens with monetary policy. But more than zero of them will. That means the unemployment rate underestimates the amount of slack in the economy.

7) Inflation expectations are also low

Financial market expectations of future inflation are crucially important to an economy where short-term nominal interest rates have already gone to zero. That's because the real cost of borrowing money is the nominal rate, minus expected inflation. And though there's been a welcome increase in inflation expectations over the past year to something closer than normal, they remain well below the two percent rate the Fed is targeting.

That low expected inflation is an increase in the real borrowing costs for people contemplating new investments over the next year or two. It means companies are less likely to buy a new truck or other equipment, less likely to lease a new storefront, and less likely to start a new construction project. It also means individuals are less likely to invest in a home renovation or a new car or appliance. One of the Fed's goals should be to get medium-term inflation expectations back up to closer to 2 percent, to encourage companies and households to make more medium-term investments.

8) Wage gains have been pathetic recently

The subtext of the "slack" debate is that further monetary easing will lead to dangerous increases in employees' wages. And it is indeed true that there is some evidence of accelerating wage gains over the past few months. But put this in a broader context and you'll see that this acceleration is from a pathetically low level.

It's not just that the currently unemployed deserve easier money to secure a chance at getting a job. Existing workers deserve monetary conditions that sop up the reserve army of jobless workers and put some pressure on employers to raise pay or lose good workers. Increased wage pressure is especially good for people on the margins of the labor market. Not every firm can afford higher pay, which means that during a tight labor market low-margin employers need to take risks on people like ex-offenders, recovering addicts, or people who've been out of the workforce for a long time. A wage growth dynamic doesn't just put money in people's pockets, it puts capitalism to work addressing real social ills.

9) Businesses can afford to pay more

The share of overall national income that's consumed by corporate profits has been at all-time highs for several years. That means the vast majority of American businesses can easily afford the higher wage bills that would come as a result of a commitment to looser monetary policy. That's doubly true because more rapid re-employment and more robust wage growth would also give companies more customers.

These profits also mean that American businesses have accumulated a tremendous amount of cash. Seeing that cash put to work either in the form of new investments or higher wages is the key to a stronger economy.

And that's exactly what a surprising pivot back to easier money would accomplish. When firms know that the central bank is committed to creating lots of cash, and willing to tolerate a small increase in inflation, then they become less eager to hold onto their money and more willing to swap cash for hard investments. It's time for Janet Yellen and her team to make a bold move that gets the economy moving again.