Singer Axl Rose recently revealed via Twitter (see below) that GUNS N' ROSES is now managed by Doc McGhee, who has handled the careers of BON JOVI, MÖTLEY CRÃœE and KISS  throughout the years. There is one problem, however '” McGhee was apparently never told of the arrangement.

In the brand new issue of Classic Rock magazine, which goes on sale next Wednesday (March 31), KISS guitarist/vocalist Paul Stanley was asked if McGhee was still KISS' manager in light of the reports that Doc was now representing GUNS N' ROSES. "That's been very funny," Paul replied. "A few weeks ago I said to Doc: 'It would've been nice if you'd told us.' Doc replied: 'I had nothing to to do with it.'"

Stanley added, "Axl has decided, from what I understand, that Doc is his manager. That's a one-way agreement. because Doc is not managing GUNS N' ROSES. One day he certainly might but he's not right now. And he definitely is still our manager."

Neither GUNS N' ROSES nor Axl Rose is listed as a client on McGhee Entertainment's official web site.

As previously reported, Rose is being sued by Front Line Management, which claims the singer owes the company nearly $2 million in unpaid commissions.

Front Line Management, founded by Irving Azoff, sued Rose in Los Angeles on Thursday (March 25) for nearly $1.9 million in unpaid fees. The company claims it had an oral agreement with Rose to receive 15% of the GUNS N' ROSES' frontman's commissions.

Source: www.blabbermouth.net

By SETH BORENSTEIN

AP Science Writer

First the ground shook in Haiti, then Chile and now Turkey. The earthquakes keep coming hard and fast this year, causing people to wonder if something sinister iBy SETH BORENSTEIN (AP) '“ 2 days ago

First the ground shook in Haiti, then Chile and now Turkey. The earthquakes keep coming hard and fast this year, causing people to wonder if something sinister is happening underfoot.

It's not.

While it may seem as if there are more earthquakes occurring, there really aren't. The problem is what's happening above ground, not underground, experts say.

More people are moving into megacities that happen to be built on fault lines, and they're rapidly putting up substandard buildings that can't withstand earthquakes, scientists say.

And around-the-clock news coverage and better seismic monitoring make it seem as if earthquakes are ever-present.

"I can definitely tell you that the world is not coming to an end," said Bob Holdsworth, an expert in tectonics at Durham University in northern England, referring to the number of quakes.

A 7.0 magnitude quake last month killed more than 230,000 people in Haiti. Less than two weeks ago, an 8.8 magnitude quake '” the fifth-strongest since 1900 '” killed more than 900 people in Chile. And on Monday, a strong pre-dawn 6.0 magnitude quake struck rural eastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people.

On average, there are 134 earthquakes a year that have a magnitude between a 6.0 and 6.9, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This year is off to a fast start with 40 so far '” more than in most years for that time period.

But that's because the 8.8 quake in Chile generated a large number of strong aftershocks, and so many occurring this early in the year skews the picture, said Paul Earle, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Also, it's not the number of quakes, but their devastating impacts that gain attention with the death tolls largely due to construction standards and crowding, Earle said.

"The standard mantra is earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do," he said.

There have been more deaths over the past decade from earthquakes, said University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham, who just returned from Haiti. In an opinion column last month in the journal Nature, Bilham called for better construction standards in the world's megacities. Last year his study of earthquake deaths, population, quake size and other factors produced disturbing results. And that was before Haiti, Chile and Turkey.

"We found four times as many deaths in the last 10 years than in the previous 10 years," Bilham told The Associated Press Monday. "That's definitely up and scary."

Other experts said they too have noticed a general increase in earthquake deaths. The World Health Organization tallied than 453,000 deaths from earthquakes from 2000 to 2009, up markedly from the previous two decades. In the 1970s, however, a massive quake in China killed about 440,000 people.

But those numbers fluctuate every year. Statisticians say the hit-or-miss nature of earthquake fatalities makes it hard to see a trend in deaths.

A quick analysis by two statistics experts found no statistically significant upward trend since the 1970s because of the variability '” despite the earthquake experts' perceptions that deaths have been rising, at least since the 1980s.

The Haiti quake likely set a modern record for deaths per magnitude of earthquake "solely as a function of too many people crammed into a city that wasn't meant to have that many people and have an earthquake," said University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Disaster experts say they've seen more deaths especially from quakes that wouldn't have been as bad decades ago. They point to two in Turkey and India '” a 1999 earthquake in Izmit that killed 18,000 and the 2001 disaster that killed 20,000 in Bhuj.

"Look at some of the big ones recently," said Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the WHO's disaster epidemiology research center. "Had the Izmit or Bhuj quakes happened 30 years ago, the events would have been relatively insignificant as the population of these cities were a third of what it was when it did happen. Increasing population density makes a small event into a big one."

Disaster and earthquake experts say the problem will only worsen. Of the 130 cities worldwide with more than 1 million population, more than half are on fault lines, making them more prone to earthquakes, Bilham said.

"I've calculated more than 400 million people at risk just from those," he said.

Developing nations, where the population is booming, also don't pay attention to earthquake preparedness, Bilham said. "If you have a problem feeding yourself, you're not really going to worry about earthquakes."

He said he when he went to Haiti after the January quake, he had hope that construction would be quake-proof because of the emphasis on it. Instead, people rebuilt their houses their old unsafe ways.

Another reason quakes seems worse is that we're paying attention more. The phenomenon of Haiti quickly followed by the 8.8 in Chile got everyone's attention.

But it won't last, said disaster researcher Dennis Mileti, a former seismic safety commissioner for the state of California.

"People are paying attention to the violent planet we've always lived in," Mileti said. "Come back in another six months if there has been no earthquakes, most people will have forgotten it again."

Raphael G. Satter contributed to this report from London.s happening underfoot.

It's not.

While it may seem as if there are more earthquakes occurring, there really aren't. The problem is what's happening above ground, not underground, experts say.

More people are moving into megacities that happen to be built on fault lines, and they're rapidly putting up substandard buildings that can't withstand earthquakes, scientists say.

And around-the-clock news coverage and better seismic monitoring make it seem as if earthquakes are ever-present.

"I can definitely tell you that the world is not coming to an end," said Bob Holdsworth, an expert in tectonics at Durham University in northern England, referring to the number of quakes.

A 7.0 magnitude quake last month killed more than 230,000 people in Haiti. Less than two weeks ago, an 8.8 magnitude quake - the fifth-strongest since 1900 - killed more than 900 people in Chile. And on Monday, a strong pre-dawn 6.0 magnitude quake struck rural eastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people.

On average, there are 134 earthquakes a year that have a magnitude between a 6.0 and 6.9, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This year is off to a fast start with 40 so far - more than in most years for that time period.

But that's because the 8.8 quake in Chile generated a large number of strong aftershocks, and so many occurring this early in the year skews the picture, said Paul Earle, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Also, it's not the number of quakes, but their devastating impacts that gain attention with the death tolls largely due to construction standards and crowding, Earle said.

"The standard mantra is earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do," he said.

There have been more deaths over the past decade from earthquakes, said University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham, who just returned from Haiti. In an opinion column last month in the journal Nature, Bilham called for better construction standards in the world's megacities. Last year his study of earthquake deaths, population, quake size and other factors produced disturbing results. And that was before Haiti, Chile and Turkey.

"We found four times as many deaths in the last 10 years than in the previous 10 years," Bilham told The Associated Press Monday. "That's definitely up and scary."

Other experts said they too have noticed a general increase in earthquake deaths. The World Health Organization tallied than 453,000 deaths from earthquakes from 2000 to 2009, up markedly from the previous two decades. In the 1970s, however, a massive quake in China killed about 440,000 people.

But those numbers fluctuate every year. Statisticians say the hit-or-miss nature of earthquake fatalities makes it hard to see a trend in deaths.

A quick analysis by two statistics experts found no statistically significant upward trend since the 1970s because of the variability - despite the earthquake experts' perceptions that deaths have been rising, at least since the 1980s.

The Haiti quake likely set a modern record for deaths per magnitude of earthquake "solely as a function of too many people crammed into a city that wasn't meant to have that many people and have an earthquake," said University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Disaster experts say they've seen more deaths especially from quakes that wouldn't have been as bad decades ago. They point to two in Turkey and India - a 1999 earthquake in Izmit that killed 18,000 and the 2001 disaster that killed 20,000 in Bhuj.

"Look at some of the big ones recently," said Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the WHO's disaster epidemiology research center. "Had the Izmit or Bhuj quakes happened 30 years ago, the events would have been relatively insignificant as the population of these cities were a third of what it was when it did happen. Increasing population density makes a small event into a big one."

By SETH BORENSTEIN

AP Science Writer

First the ground shook in Haiti, then Chile and now Turkey. The earthquakes keep coming hard and fast this year, causing people to wonder if something sinister is happening underfoot.

It's not.

While it may seem as if there are more earthquakes occurring, there really aren't. The problem is what's happening above ground, not underground, experts say.

More people are moving into megacities that happen to be built on fault lines, and they're rapidly putting up substandard buildings that can't withstand earthquakes, scientists say.

And around-the-clock news coverage and better seismic monitoring make it seem as if earthquakes are ever-present.

"I can definitely tell you that the world is not coming to an end," said Bob Holdsworth, an expert in tectonics at Durham University in northern England, referring to the number of quakes.

A 7.0 magnitude quake last month killed more than 230,000 people in Haiti. Less than two weeks ago, an 8.8 magnitude quake - the fifth-strongest since 1900 - killed more than 900 people in Chile. And on Monday, a strong pre-dawn 6.0 magnitude quake struck rural eastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people.

On average, there are 134 earthquakes a year that have a magnitude between a 6.0 and 6.9, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. This year is off to a fast start with 40 so far - more than in most years for that time period.

But that's because the 8.8 quake in Chile generated a large number of strong aftershocks, and so many occurring this early in the year skews the picture, said Paul Earle, a seismologist at the U.S. Geological Survey.

Also, it's not the number of quakes, but their devastating impacts that gain attention with the death tolls largely due to construction standards and crowding, Earle said.

"The standard mantra is earthquakes don't kill people, buildings do," he said.

There have been more deaths over the past decade from earthquakes, said University of Colorado geologist Roger Bilham, who just returned from Haiti. In an opinion column last month in the journal Nature, Bilham called for better construction standards in the world's megacities. Last year his study of earthquake deaths, population, quake size and other factors produced disturbing results. And that was before Haiti, Chile and Turkey.

"We found four times as many deaths in the last 10 years than in the previous 10 years," Bilham told The Associated Press Monday. "That's definitely up and scary."

Other experts said they too have noticed a general increase in earthquake deaths. The World Health Organization tallied than 453,000 deaths from earthquakes from 2000 to 2009, up markedly from the previous two decades. In the 1970s, however, a massive quake in China killed about 440,000 people.

But those numbers fluctuate every year. Statisticians say the hit-or-miss nature of earthquake fatalities makes it hard to see a trend in deaths.

A quick analysis by two statistics experts found no statistically significant upward trend since the 1970s because of the variability - despite the earthquake experts' perceptions that deaths have been rising, at least since the 1980s.

The Haiti quake likely set a modern record for deaths per magnitude of earthquake "solely as a function of too many people crammed into a city that wasn't meant to have that many people and have an earthquake," said University of Miami geologist Tim Dixon.

Disaster experts say they've seen more deaths especially from quakes that wouldn't have been as bad decades ago. They point to two in Turkey and India - a 1999 earthquake in Izmit that killed 18,000 and the 2001 disaster that killed 20,000 in Bhuj.

"Look at some of the big ones recently," said Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the WHO's disaster epidemiology research center. "Had the Izmit or Bhuj quakes happened 30 years ago, the events would have been relatively insignificant as the population of these cities were a third of what it was when it did happen. Increasing population density makes a small event into a big one."

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/art … wD9EANS781

- Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer is reporting that Edward "Umaga" Fatu passed away around 6PM EST in a Houston hospital. Apparently he suffered his second heart attack and didn't make it through. He was 36.

WWE has confirmed Fatu's passing on their website with the following:

WWE would like to express its deepest condolences to Mr. Fatu's family, friends and fans on his tragic passing. Mr. Fatu was under contract with WWE at various time periods and most recently performed under the name "Umaga." Mr. Fatu's contract was terminated on June 11, 2009.

Condolences go out to the Fatu family and friends.

http://www.impactwrestling.com/headline … snum=30374

VELVET REVOLVER/ex-GUNS N' ROSES bassist Duff McKagan has penned the latest installment of his weeky financial column, "Duffonomics", which appears at Playboy.com. An excerpt follows below.

"The music business is changing so rapidly, in fact, that if a book were published on the topic today, it would be out of date by spring. Back in 2004, when I was writing a semester-long university paper on digital rights management (basically, the factors that go into splitting the profits on a song you pay for online), I was thwarted by the almost weekly changes happening in that specialized sector alone. But change brought on by newer and better technology doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. It's just a fact of life, and musicians either have to adapt or get new jobs.

"Existence is a comfort zone for most musicians however, while major label executives are clenching hard right now just trying to make a buck. The difference between the people that make money off of music and those that actually make the music is now really starting to widen."

Read the entire column at Playboy.com.

http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbe … mID=131368