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Published: June 30, 2009
■ Buckingham Palace says that public funding for Queen Elizabeth II and the royal family cost British taxpayers the equivalent of $1.14 each last year. The Queen's office published her latest accounts yesterday. It showed that the costs incurred by the royal family were $68.6 million in the year to March 31. Public money is used to pay the costs of travel and running homes used by the royal family, including the Queen's Buckingham Palace residence. The accounts don't include the cost of security provided by the police and army.
■ A Florida medical examiner says that television pitchman Billy Mays likely died of a heart attack but further tests are needed. Hillsborough County Medical Examiner Vernard Adams said that the boisterous, bearded 50-year-old known for hawking OxiClean suffered from hypertensive heart disease. He was found dead Sunday in his Tampa home. A day earlier he bumped his head during a rough landing on a commercial airliner, but Adams says there was no evidence of head trauma. He said that Mays was taking the prescription painkillers Tramadol and hydrocodone for hip pain. But Adams says that there was no indication of drug abuse, and pill counts showed Mays had been taking the correct amount of the drugs.
■ A new version of Ben E. King's "Stand By Me" featuring Jon Bon Jovi and exiled Iranian singer Andy Madadian, which is making the rounds as an online video, is meant to send "a musical message of worldwide solidarity" to the Iranian people in the wake of the country's controversial recent election, according to co-producer Don Was. Was said that the session, which took place June 24 in Los Angeles, was spurred by a conversation he had with Madadian about "whether there was something we could do just to send out a little message of solidarity, remembering the ‘60s, believing music can change things." When they arrived to record the song, they found Bon Jovi, guitarist Richie Sambora and John Shanks, who is producing their next album, sitting outside and having lunch. "They asked what we were doing, I told them, and Jon said, ‘Look, man, if you do it right now we'll do it with you,'" Was recalled. "So we did."
■ Apple Inc. co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs is back at his office a few days a week after taking a 5½--month medical leave and getting a new liver. Jobs, 54, will work from home on days he doesn't work from Apple's Cupertino, Calif., headquarters, a company spokesman said. The state of Jobs' health and the timing of his return have been watched closely by investors and the media, because few CEOs are considered as instrumental to their companies' success as Jobs has been to Apple. He is seen as the visionary behind Apple's popular iPod music players and the iPhone.
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