Mario Gomez scored a first-half hat trick

Mario Gomez scored a first-half hat trick as Bayern Munich took a major step toward the knockout stage of the Champions League by defeating Napoli 3-2 on Wednesday.

Gomez opened the scoring in the 17th, taking advantage of an opening in Napoli’s defense. Bastian Schweinsteiger saw the space and sent a through ball to Gomez, who shook off Hugo Campagnaro and slotted past goalkeeper Morgan De Sanctis.

It was Bayern’s 250th goal in the Champions League. Gomez doubled the lead in the 23rd, when Toni Kroos floated a perfect cross behind Napoli’s defense to the unmarked striker. Gomez easily drove the ball past De Sanctis.

In the 42nd, Bayern produced one of the best moves of the match, with Franck Ribery feeding Kroos as the Napoli defense stood helplessly. De Sanctis stopped Kroos’ effort but couldn’t hold onto the ball and Gomez tapped in from close range.

Gomez now has 13 goals in his last 10 Champions League games. With a total of 17, he is the top German scorer in the competition. “We wanted to be aggressive but we knew that they also would be aggressive,” Gomez said. “We allowed a couple of counterattacks in the first half but otherwise did very well before the break.

Naples Italian head coach Walter Mazzarri throws a bottle in the Allianz Arena

• Schweinsteiger out until New Year

Bayern Munich and Germany midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger has undergone surgery on his broken collar bone and will be out of action until the New Year, the Bavarian club said on Thursday.

"The fracture was successfully repaired and a plate inserted in an operation performed at around 2 a.m. on Thursday morning," said Bayern, after the player was injured during Wednesday's 3-2 win over Napoli in the Champions League. Bayern said Schweinsteiger will stay in hospital until Friday and must rest completely for two weeks after that.

"The first step in his sports rehabilitation programme will be to resume jogging, before the player is cleared to resume training with the team in approximately six weeks.

"That in turn means Schweinsteiger will not play again this calendar year," it added.

"It's a blow, because he's been in outstanding form recently," said coach Jupp Heynckes. "In the second half, we saw how important Bastian is to the team. Our game suffered badly after he went off."

11 dead as storm cuts through East, millions powerless

From Maryland to Maine, officials said it would take days to restore electricity, even though the snow ended Sunday.

The storm smashed record snowfall totals for October and worsened as it moved north. Communities in western Massachusetts were among the hardest hit. Snowfall totals topped 27 inches in Plainfield, and nearby Windsor had gotten 26 inches by early Sunday.

It was blamed for at least 11 deaths, and states of emergency were declared in New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and parts of New York.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Michael Ballack Suffers Broken Nose

Bayer Leverkusen have received a blow ahead of their Champions League fixture with Valencia on Tuesday, as Michael Ballack is a major doubt due to a broken nose.

The veteran midfielder scored the only goal of the game in the BayArena side's 1-0 away win over Freiburg on Friday night, but was replaced on the 65th minute mark after picking up the injury. Goal.com Germany state that a report from the University Hospital in Freiburg confirms that the ex-Chelsea man's nose is broken, and that he did not return to the Leverkusen team hotel until 01.30CET on Saturday morning.

56 Officers Feloniously Killed in 2010

Fifty-six law enforcement officers in 22 states and Puerto Rico were feloniously killed in 2010, and more than 53,000 officers were assaulted during the same period, according to statistics released by the FBI.

The annual Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted report released today offers the most complete public picture of the fatal circumstances that officers faced in 2010. In chilling detail, the report summarizes most of last year’s fatal confrontations and illustrates a reality that every officer continually trains to recognize: that there are no routine engagements. Among the scenarios:

• Two West Memphis Police Department officers were killed during a traffic stop when a 16-year-old passenger exited the vehicle and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle.
• A Chicago Police Department officer at the end of his shift was removing his gear near his car in the department’s parking lot when a man ambushed the 43-year-old officer and shot him with his own weapon.
• A 62-year-old deputy sheriff in Mississippi was shot and killed by an uncooperative suspect while responding to a domestic disturbance call.

Information in the report, which is collected each year through the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program, is intended to provide law enforcement agencies with detailed descriptions of the circumstances leading up to officer fatalities. The data can then be incorporated into tactical training.

“Only when detectives, use-of-force investigators, supervisors and administrators examine the various components of the deadly mix will a greater understanding of these encounters emerge,” FBI researchers wrote in a study called Violent Encounters, an in-depth look at years of fatal altercations like those in today’s report. “To make an objective assessment of each case, it is necessary to carefully and completely examine all aspects of the incident thus allowing the facts to surface.”

The 56 officers killed is an increase over 2009, when 48 officers were killed. However, significant conclusions may not be drawn from year-to-year comparisons given the nature of the statistics. Ten years ago, for example, 70 officers were killed in the line of duty (excluding the events of 9/11), and five years ago 48 officers were feloniously killed.

The 2010 report also shows 72 officers were accidently killed in the line of duty, almost all of them involving vehicles. Meanwhile, 53,469 officers were assaulted while on duty—a figure that amounts to one in 10 of the sworn officers in more than 11,000 agencies that reported data.
All told, the figures illustrate the inherent dangers of law enforcement. Here’s a look at some of the data contained in the report:

• Offenders used firearms to kill all but one of the 56 victim officers; one officer was killed by a vehicle used as a weapon.
• Of the 56 officers feloniously killed, 15 were ambushed, 14 were in arrest situations, seven were performing traffic stops, and six were answering disturbance calls.
• One in three officer assaults occurred while responding to disturbance calls; 14.7 percent occurred while officers were attempting arrests.
• The average age of officers killed feloniously and accidentally was, respectively, 38 and 39.

The UCR Program, part of the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services Division, has been collecting and publishing law enforcement statistics since 1937, most notably the annual Crime in the United States reports. In 1972, the FBI began producing detailed reports on officer fatalities after the larger law enforcement community sought the Bureau’s involvement in preventing and investigating officer deaths.

Gaddafi sodomized: Video shows abuse frame by frame (GRAPHIC)

An analysis appears to confirm that a rebel fighter sodomized Gaddafi with a knife.

The American Form of Government

Great white shark kills American diver

A great white shark killed an American diver Saturday in the second fatal shark attack off Western Australia state in 12 days. A witness on a dive boat saw “a large amount of bubbles” before the 32-year-old man surfaced with obviously fatal injuries, Western Australia Police Sgt. Gerry Cassidy said. Two people on the boat described the shark as a 10-foot (3-meter) great white, Cassidy said.

The shark struck 500 yards (meters) north of the picturesque tourist haven of Rottnest Island which is 11 miles (18 kilometers) from a popular Perth city mainland beach where a 64-year-old swimmer is believed to have been taken by a great white on Oct. 10.

Authorities cannot say whether he was killed by the same shark that is believed to have taken Bryn Martin as he made his regular morning swim from Perth’s premier Cottesloe Beach toward a buoy about 380 yards (350 meters) offshore. But analysis of Martin’s torn swimming trunks recovered from the seabed near the buoy pointed to a great white shark of the same size being the culprit. No other trace of Martin has been found.

“It’s a cloudy old day today which is the same as we had the other day with Cottesloe, and they’re the conditions that sharks love,” Cassidy said.

It is the fourth fatal shark attack off Western Australia in 14 months. Great whites can grow to more than 20 feet long (6 meters) and 5,000 pounds (2,300 kilos). They are protected in Australia, a primary location for the species.