Wow. Who would have figured . . . . NOT. Talk about epic fail. Obama once again steps in dog crap without having a Popcicle stick to get it out from in between his toes. JD

THE US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be “far preferable” to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

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Talk about a bum deal. A man has diabetes and finally gets a kidney transplant, but the kidney is cancerous? Talk about being cheated in life. After a five-year wait, Vincent Liew was ecstatic when he got the call in 2002 that a new kidney was available for him. The 37-year-old diabetic was in complete kidney failure and receiving dialysis three times every week. Liew and his wife Kimberly believed the transplanted kidney would save his life. Instead, the kidney was a ticking time bomb that killed him just seven months later.

Experts say that apparently Liew is the first man ever to die of uterine cancer. There are no medical records of another transplant patient succumbing to the deadly disease, and men, of course, have no uterus to develop the cancer in the absence of a transplant.

Originally from Singapore, Liew lived in New York and worked at the Hong Kong Economic Office. Dr. Thomas Diflo at NYU Langone Hospital performed the transplant. The kidney was from an apparently healthy 50-year-old woman, Sandy Cabrera, who had died from a stroke the day before. Unbeknownst to Liew and his doctor, the woman had an undiagnosed uterine cancer. She appeared healthy and no one at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, where she died, suspected that she carried the deadly disease. Relatives, friends and even the patient herself believed she was perfectly healthy until the stroke.

Just days after the transplant, an autopsy revealed that the donor had uterine cancer. No one knows why Dr. Diflo, who performed the transplant, was not informed of the cancer for almost two months. Liew’s widow, Kimberly Liew, has sued Dr. Diflo and the hospital where the transplant took place. Testifying in the malpractice case, Dr. Diflo says that he told Liew it would be safest to remove the transplanted kidney, but assured him that there was a very low chance that he would develop a type of cancer based in the female organs.

Liew opted to keep the kidney. Four months later, in extreme pain, Diflo removed the kidney. The organ was obviously cancerous at that point. A month later, just seven months after the transplant, Liew died. An autopsy found that Liew died from cancer, and that the cancer cells in his body were genetically female, meaning they originated in Cabrera’s body and were transplanted with the organ.

Despite safeguards, about 1 percent of transplants in the U.S. are believed to spread a disease including HIV, cancer, tuberculosis and others. Potential donors are screened for HIV and syphilis, and medical histories are taken, but a risk remains. For many donors, the probability of living years longer with the organ outweighs the small risk of infection with a deadly disease.

Dennis Hopper, the maverick director and costar of the landmark 1969 counterculture film classic “Easy Rider” whose drug- and alcohol-fueled reputation as a Hollywood bad boy preceded his return to sobriety and a career resurgence in the films ” Hoosiers” and “Blue Velvet,” died Saturday. He was 74.

A longtime resident of Venice who also was known as a photographer, artist and collector of modern art, Hopper died at his home of complications from prostate cancer, said Alex Hitz, a friend of the family.

A frail-looking Hopper, whose battle with prostate cancer was revealed in October, was able to attend a ceremony for the unveiling of his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in late March.

In a more than five-decade acting career that was influenced early on by working with James Dean and studying at the Actors Studio, he made his film debut as one of the high school gang members who menace Dean in the 1955 classic “Rebel Without a Cause.”

Film critic Roger Ebert lost his ability to speak nearly four years ago, when he underwent a tracheostomy, a procedure that opens an airway through an incision in the windpipe, after surgery for cancer in his jaw.

In an interview in the new issue of Esquire magazine, the 67-year-old film critic for the Chicago Sun-Times uses pen and paper and text-to-speech computer software to communicate. He’s developed a kind of rudimentary sign language, and he sometimes draws letters with his finger on the palm of his hand.

Ebert had surgery to remove his cancerous thyroid in 2002. He had surgery on his salivary glands in 2003 and on his jaw in 2006. Complications in 2006 led to more surgery and months of recuperation. He lost his ability to speak.

When asked about another operation to restore his voice, Ebert shakes his head.

Ebert has been a film critic for the Sun-Times since 1967. In 1975, he became the first journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize for movie criticism.

His thumb, pointing up or down, was the main logo of the televised movie review shows he co-hosted, first with Gene Siskel of the rival Chicago Tribune and – after Siskel’s death in 1999 – with his Sun-Times colleague Richard Roeper.

The Esquire article describes a moment where Ebert begins to type on his computer. He presses a button and the speakers light up. “I’ve never said this before,” the voice says, “but we were born to be Siskel and Ebert.” The voice then says: “I just miss the guy so much.”

Besides his film reviews, Ebert writes a blog and has published numerous books.