Before he walked into a Binghamton immigration center and shot 13 people to death last Friday, Jiverly Wong sent a letter to a Syracuse TV station, explaining his motives. He is a courteous, crazy man.

After Chis Brown pled not guilty to assaulting Rihanna in a Los Angeles courtroom Monday, Rihanna's attorney said something peculiar: The apparent victim of Brown's attack would like to bring the case to a rapid conclusion.

Bad news: Mumia will never, ever be freed. Sorry, leftists :(

Slowly, news is starting to come out about 'Jiverly Voong,' the gunman who shot and killed more than a dozen people in a Binghamton immigration center yesterday. He was an angry gun-obsessed loner, surprise.

Oh, Rod Blagojevich. God bless you for brightening up this bleak Friday. News from you is like the sun coming out from behind the clouds! What's up now? Oh, you tried to extort Rahm Emaneul?

Albany restaurant critic Steve Barnes was viciously beaten last October by two thugs he'd never seen before. An arrest has been made! And he's got shadowy connections to the seedy Albany restaurant world!

A judge has frozen the assets of Peter Madoff, the brother of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff, and granted him $10,000 a month in living expenses. How is he supposed to live on that?

A grand jury has indicted Rod Blagojevich, the disgraced, impeached, and irrelevant former Illinois governor, on 16 felony charges. So what is the poet-politician doing? Going to Disney World, of course!

A teenager was shot and paralyzed in Spanish Harlem in 1960; he died last month; and the NYPD reclassified his case as a homicide, half a century later. Cops are such sticklers.

It turns out that, prior to being arrested at a bar brawl and maybe snorting coke on camera, Ashley Biden was busted for drinking before she was 21. Just like Jenna Bush!

In your troubling Wednesday media column: layoffs at Conde Nast and the Boston Globe, Bill Keller fights back, King's officially dead, North Korea's still mean to journalists, and more:

So Ted Stevens, the corrupt old bastard who invented Alaska and ruled it with an iron open palm for 100 years, is no longer a convicted felon. It is a proud day for America.

Massachusetts securities regulators charged Walter Noel's Fairfield Greenwich Group with fraud this morning. The complaint isn't short on potentially incriminating detail. In one 2005 email, for example, Bernie Madoff informs a Fairfield exec that "the less you know about how we execute, and so on and so forth, the better you are." [NYT, WSJ]

WNYW reporter Mike Sheehan hosts a segment dedicated to unlocking unsolved crimes. So maybe he explain this one: How did his car collide with a police horse in SoHo Monday if he wasn't drunk?

What do Kelly Killoren Bensimon, Ja Rule, and Plaxico Burress all have in common? All three made appearances at the courthouse at 100 Centre Street this morning, which would have been a very convenient coincidence for waiting news photographers if they managed to catch them all. A "caramel-skinned" Kelly turned up with lawyer Ed Hayes to face charges she assaulted her boyfriend. (Her case was adjourned to June 8.)

Vince Shlomi, better known as the ShamWow! guy, was arrested for beating up a hooker who tried to eat his tongue. She was arrested too. The Smoking Gun got her mug shot, and it's brutal.

Six killed, three injured in shooting spree at small-town North Carolina nursing home. [AP]

Someone tried to sell a videotape they claimed showed Ashley Biden, daughter of VP Joe Biden, to the New York Post for $250,000. Political payback, or just another tale of politicians' kids gone wild?

Former LA Times writer Daniel Hernandez relays a bizarre story from Mexico: A wrestler had a nervous breakdown on a bus, forced his way off and soon died in the wilderness.

Vince Shlomi, best known as television's ShamWow! guy, was arrested in Miami last month. For beating up a prostitute. Who allegedly tried to bite his tongue out. Did you know that? Now you do.

The Smoking Gun got hold of the police report and Mr. Shlomi's mug shot, and as you can see, he didn't escape unscathed. But neither did she. The facts of the case, briefly, according to the police report: