There is a woman who sings at our church. She has a fine voice and is obviously an accomplished vocalist. Included in her repertoire is a vibrato which when used to highlight a note or passage adds significantly to the music. However, when used on every note, as she does, it is just plain annoying.
The same can be said of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Unlike his milquetoast predecessor nominees (Sen. John McCain and former Gov. Mitt Romney) who cowered irrationally in the face of political correctness – they could not find the courage to criticize President Barack Obama with regard to either his policies or his background affiliation with American hating radicals like Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers or his refusal to release his academic records at Occidental, Columbia, or Harvard for fear of being labeled “racist” – Mr. Trump has ventured fearlessly into the political thicket dismissing “political correctness” as ridiculous and dangerous. But sometimes his rhetoric is just annoying.
But he also steps out of bounds as when he scoffed at Carly Fiorina’s appearance and suggested Megyn Kelly’s questions were prompted by her menstrual cycle – both being the type of stereotypical references that are critical of a whole category of people. That’s entirely different than referring to Rosie O’Donnell as a “fat, loser” which is simply a personal statement rather than a broad classification – well, that and it is also accurate. Rosie O’Donnell is hard pressed to criticize since she herself has made a living off of personal attacks and outrageous accusations. And that also puts the lie to this outrageous notion that an attack on one woman is an attack on all women. (Mssrs. McCain and Romney should have well understood that an attack on one person of color – Mr. Obama – was not an attack on all people of color.) Who would subscribe to such an irrational notion? I mean besides all of the weak kneed Republicans serving in the United States Congress.
He wasn’t branding all Mexicans as drug dealers, criminals and rapists. His blowtorch rhetoric was accurate albeit a bit overblown. There are countless incidents where murderers, drug dealers, rapists, pimps and human traffickers have entered the United States illegally from Mexico. That doesn’t mean all illegal immigrants fit that description it just means that some do and they create a significant problem.
On the other hand when he suggests that a federal judge of Mexican descent should recuse himself from a lawsuit involving Mr. Trump because he is Mexican, he is just wrong – wrong on the facts, wrong on the law and wrong on the logic. If, on the other hand, he were to demonstrate that because of the judge’s membership in Latino advocacy groups, contributions to his political opponent, statements that the judge has made about Mr. Trump or about similar situations, the judge could be bias, he would be entirely justified regardless of the judge’s ethnic origins.
And Mr. Trump has called for a suspension of Muslim immigration until such time that the United States can adequately vet the identity, country of origin, possible terrorist ties, and intent of each immigrant. That is hardly an unreasonable response to a series of terrorist attacks in the United States by Muslims who claimed fealty to jihadi terrorist organizations or orthodoxy.
More importantly liberals willingness to overlook similar conduct of their own would suggest this has more to do with politics than reality. If Mr. Trump is a racist because of his comments about Mexicans, does that make Mr. Obama a racist because of his comments about white policemen, or former President Bill Clinton a racist for his suggestion that Mr. Obama’s rise in politics was “fairy tale” and that Mr. Obama’s win in South Carolina against Hillary Clinton was because he was Black? If Mr. Trump is a misogynist because of his comments about Ms. Fiorina and Ms. Kelly, does that make Mr. Clinton a misogynist for his serial abuse of women? Or make Ms. Clinton equally guilty for savaging the women who were Mr. Clinton’s victims? If Mr. Trump an Islamaphobe for suggesting a pause in the immigration process for Muslims until they can be properly vetted, does that make liberal icon President Jimmy Carter an Islamaphobe for actually banning Iranian immigration?
Look, I doubt that Mr. Trump is a racist, or a sexist, or an Islamaphobe. In fact his history of negotiations, hiring, promoting, and building suggests quite the opposite – when it comes to commerce Mr. Trump has demonstrated that he is gender, race, and ethnically neutral. But Mr. Trump IS a lout with a big mouth and a tin ear. And even at that I will take him every day over a money grubbing, serial liar who has played fast and lose with public office as a means to accumulate over a $150 Million in personal wealth and a $3 Billion slush fund (The Clinton Family Foundation) to be used at her whim and caprice while accomplishing nothing in the high offices she has held.
So, you don’t like the Donald? – whatever, fugetaboutit!


A man who was due to walk free from jail on Wednesday has had his release blocked after he was allegedly caught on CCTV indecently assaulting an underage inmate.
The 20-year-old was already serving time a Juvenile Justice centre for sexually assaulting a minor when police allege he committed the indecent acts.
Police prosecutor Sergeant Kieran Drever lodged the last-minute detention application in Wagga Local Court on Monday.
“Should [the offender] be granted bail, there is an unacceptable risk to the safety of the community and of him continuing to commit offences,” Sergeant Drever said.
Police allege that the four indecent assaults fell within a 24-hour period.
Sergeant Drever told the court the home address listed on the man’s bail application was right next to a primary school.
“Given the nature of the offences for which he is already serving time and the new allegations, there are concerns that he will continue to commit offences against young people, given the proposed location that he is to reside,” she said.
The man’s lawyer said he had secured full-time employment at a factory, which would mean he would not be near the school during class hours.
However, magistrate Christopher Halburd granted the police’s application to extend his detention, arguing his release would pose an “unacceptable risk” to the community.
“This individual is older than most of the people in a Juvenile Justice detention centre and is alleged to have committed further indecent assaults on someone in that controlled environment,” Mr Halburd said.
Mr Halburd said the prosecution case against the man seemed particularly strong, given that one of the alleged incidents was caught on camera.
The man will return to court on August 29 to enter his pleas.


Pure Digital’s Jonathan Kaplan–aka the Flip Guy–Speaks (Post-Cisco)!
BoomTown has been an unabashed fan of Pure Digital’s Flip digital video cameras since we debuted them at the D: All Things Digital conference in 2005.
And I have used the nifty device on this site since for my shaky-tastic video extravaganzas.
Yes, Pure Digital’s CEO Jonathan Kaplan (pictured above) is to blame!
Now, Kaplan has gone and sold Flip off to Cisco (CSCO) for $590 million in stock.
Sources said that Pure Digital–this corporate name will go by the wayside, by the way–had also chittered-chatted with Sony (SNE) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) about such a possibility.
That’s pretty good company for Pure Digital, considering it started as a white-label product, shrink-wrapped for theme parks and drugstores.
But the simplicity of its line of relatively inexpensive cameras, including the recently released Mino (seen below, and also sold in a high-definition version), has made it a huge consumer success, which is no easy task in the devices arena.
With Flip software, a user can plug the unit into a USB port of a computer to upload digital video easily. Flip models cost anywhere from $100 to $299.
Spot-on simplicity and a no-brainer feel have made them into the most popular such devices around, and in a very short time.
But, although it got $68.2 million in funding since its founding in 2001, taking all that innovation and success and truly turning it into a global brand was a much longer and more expensive slog for the San Francisco start-up.
Hence, a sale to the bigs.
Pure Digital is probably a good fit for Cisco, which has been trying to turbocharge its consumer-focused business, especially in home networking, and the move is a clear step in that direction.
In the integration, Cisco has made the Flip team part of ypuCisco’s Consumer Business group, and Kaplan will become general manager of the combined organization.
What comes next for Flip could be interesting, including the addition of social-networking and streaming features, which would dovetail well with Cisco’s other investments in consumer networking.
But most of all, it’s a nice ending to a very sharp company that makes a great product. Introducing a new consumer electronics device into the world is no small task and, clearly, Flip deserves the much bigger stage it is set to get.


Macular Degeneration NZ is hosting a free Awareness & Education Seminar in New Plymouth.
The aim of the seminar is to share the latest information on research and treatments and the management and impact of living with macular degeneration. The seminar will be led by local ophthalmologist, Dr Kevin Taylor and we hope to have low vision aids and equipment available for the public to view.
We hope to promote the New Plymouth event to as many local residents as possible to raise awareness and provide information on MD.


The Premier League fixtures for the upcoming 2018-2019 season have been released and it's a tough start to the new campaign for the Magpies.
Benitez has praised Newcastle's winning mentality after seeing them effectively secure their Premier League status with five games to go.
Middlesbrough midfielder Adam Clayton has signed a contract extension which will keep him at the club until 2021.
It was a comfortable home win for Middlesbrough, which sent Swansea further into the relegation zone.
Alvaro Negredo scored twice. His first; an excellent finish from an Adam Clayton cross. His second; Boro's first penalty of the season.
A much needed win for Aitor Karanka's side, moving the Boro up to 14th in the Premier League table, four points from the bottom three.
Swansea slip one place to 19th after Sunderland's 1-0 win over Watford.
The Frenchman had been expected to sign for Sunderland in January but the club say the player will now move elsewhere.
Boro boss Aitor Karanka says game against relegation rivals Hull City is 'important' but should not be treated as a final.


Sooty air pollution can cause genetic damage that can be passed along to offspring, Canadian researchers reported today in a study on mice.
Follow-up work is needed to learn if people can inherit pollution-damaged DNA that harms their health. In the meantime, the discovery is sure to increase scientists' worry about particulates, the microscopic soot particles emitted by factories, power plants and diesel-burning vehicles.
The good news: Air filters protected the mice.
"The new work now adds another area of potential concern" because of the implications for risks to future generations, said Dr Jonathan Samet of Johns Hopkins University, who headed a recent National Academy of Sciences call for more research into the dangers of this common pollutant.
These airborne particles are linked to a growing list of health problems, including asthma and heart disease, in the people who breathe high levels of them.
But there had been little evidence that any air pollutant might cause the kind of genetic damage that can be inherited - until Canadian scientists in 2002 housed mice downwind from steel mills and tested their offspring. The males passed on double the DNA mutations as mice living in the cleaner countryside.
Now those same researchers, from Ontario's McMaster University, report in the journal Science that they've found the culprit: airborne particulate matter, better known as soot.
In the new experiments, biologist James Quinn and colleagues housed two groups of mice near the steel mills for 10 weeks. One group breathed outside air, while the other was housed in a chamber equipped with HEPA filters - high-efficiency air filters designed to catch microscopic particles.
Then, the mice were bred and their offspring checked for specific DNA mutations that are passed through the father's sperm.
Mice that breathed filtered air had mutation rates 52 per cent lower than the mice exposed to full-strength steel mill pollution.
The specific sperm changes measured aren't linked to disease, but they're similar to a type of DNA damage that is. Quinn said more study is needed to see if they're a marker for potential health problems, and whether pollution-spurred mutations in disease-causing genes could be inherited, too.
Regardless, Quinn said the study's practical value may be in showing the effectiveness of air filtration. The HEPA filters blocked particulates, and nature does the same thing - particulates adhere to tree leaves - which has implications for policy-makers who must decide on road-building and tree-cutting projects, he said.
Quinn couldn't say if the particulates themselves or toxic chemicals that attach to them damaged the sperm. But one suspect is a group of particulate-clinging chemicals called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs, some of which are known to be cancer-causing.
Air samples showed daily PAH exposure near the steel mills was 33 times as high as in the nearby cleaner countryside - but HEPA filtering of the urban air blocked most of those chemicals as well, the study concluded.
The Environmental Protection Agency already has ordered tougher curbs on ultra-fine particulate pollution because of concern about effects on the elderly, children and people with respiratory illnesses. In December, it plans to reveal which parts of the country aren't in compliance.
Tiny enough to be inhaled deeply into the lungs, these particulates enter the bloodstream and move through the body.
"At the moment, we are grappling with the fact that even though the air is visibly cleaner, we're still finding adverse health effects" from particulates, said Hopkins' Samet.
If those same particles make it all the way to sperm-forming cells, "that would be quite a remarkable sequence" - one that needs confirmation, Samet cautioned. Still, the potential for affecting next generations makes it "both a public health issue and an issue for the ecosystem," he said.


Is ‘Brand Journalism’ the New PR?
PR professionals: Do you consider yourself content providers? How about reporters? Bloggers? Are we getting close? OK, here’s the question of the day: Instead of struggling with media gatekeepers to win coverage and attract wandering eyes to your brand, should you simply become the media? Instead of providing access to key personalities and emailing quotes for a big story, why not just tell the story yourself?
According to Blue Fountain Media strategist Tim Gray, the best way to promote your brand through content is to create it—he sees the PR industry moving quickly in that direction, and Bazaar Voice’s 2012 “social trends report” backs him up.
Of course you’ve heard about the ways in which an increasingly interconnected media world makes traditional advertising less effective than ever; most viewers/readers will skip those pesky sponsored messages when given the choice. The appeal of creating your own content delivery system is obvious–and more than a few brands have started doing just that.
As usual, financial brands like banks and credit card companies have moved ahead of the curve when it comes to “brand journalism.” Prominent examples include projects like American Express’s Open Forum and HSBC’s Business Without Borders—legitimate media outlets designed to promote their underlying brands without directly selling or marketing the products in question by providing relevant, valuable information to their target audiences via original content, guest writers and media partnerships with other prominent third-party brands like Mashable. Some efforts are less impressive: all the news on Cisco’s “technology news site” The Network seems to be about the company itself.
Gray’s advice is fairly simple: Act like a journalist writing with your audience’s interests in mind–and interact with them whenever possible, lest they think you’re just another faceless marketing professional. Provide true value to your readers/followers rather than directly promoting a specific product or service and they will respond in turn. In other words, get them to trust your brand and they’ll be far more likely to buy whatever you happen to be selling. The idea isn’t new; only the venue is.
What do you think? Are you ready to start pumping out branded content, or would you rather leave the wordsmithing to the newsmen?


I did something new not long ago. In my prayers at a memorial service, I remembered not just the deceased, his children, and friends but also the two people he murdered.
Here was a man who bore in his own body the sins of his country, what had been done and left undone. Here was a service that constituted a prayer that the country of his birth find a future bigger than its past. Here were leaders of that country, past and present, gathered to respect a man who had the courage, dignity, and humility to change his mind.
Seán O’Callaghan was born in Ireland and grew up understanding nationalism as a religion and terrorism as an act of devotion. He joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army as a teenager and soon had two conquests to his name, a police officer and a reservist soldier. After learning of a policewoman’s death, Seán heard a top IRA officer say, “I hope she’s pregnant and we get two for the price of one.” That was the decisive moment—the telling judgment. Seán recognized this was no noble contest, but a squalid sectarian war.
He changed his tune. He became the most senior informer in the organization, working with the Irish government to undermine the IRA’s efforts from within. His efforts started to have notable effects—information he shared even helped thwart an attempt to assassinate the heir to the British throne. But after six years Seán could stand the secrecy and subterfuge no longer. He gave himself up to the police and was sentenced to prison for 539 years. Another six years passed before he made the next step, publicly renouncing the paramilitary cause and all it stood for. He told his family he could never have any contact with them again.
Three years later, having received a pardon, Seán walked free—although freedom meant a life in hiding. “I keep looking in front of me as well as behind me,” he said. “That’s just how it is.” Freedom also meant it was time to enter recovery from the drinking that had long drowned his abiding guilt.
Seán had lived his life among lies: initially the deceit and secrecy of terror brigades, then the mystery and concealment of being a spy, and finally the danger and disguise of living in hiding from the ruthless revenge of the organization he once adored. He wanted somehow to glean dignity, integrity, and wisdom from the ashes of false ideals and the poison of broken trust. He knew how the mind of a terrorist works, and to the end of his days he labored to communicate insight and dismantle fanaticism.
Right now I'm reading In the Garden of Beasts, by master storyteller Erik Larson. It is the captivating story of William E. Dodd, U.S. ambassador to Germany during Hitler's rise to power. Dodd's young adult daughter Martha, a socialite who had affairs with the head of the Gestapo and a Russian spy, steals the show. Next I plan to read Stephen Ozment's sweeping survey A Mighty Fortress: A New History of the German People.
When you read children’s literature you expect to smile at the quirky characters fumbling to figure out their growing independence. You might expect to cry as you watch characters face the pain of growing up. You don’t expect to be confronted by current events like a refugee crisis—and inspired to imagine the kind of society we could be even in the face of terror and fear.
The show Homeland puts viewers in a moral vice and squeezes.


Police have reaffirmed their commitment to tackle criminals who target isolated rural areas.
Northumbria Police has issued a strong warning to crooks who target the farming industry and rural population for their agricultural machinery and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs).
Superintendent Andy Huddleston is also the national police lead for agricultural machinery and vehicle thefts.
He said: “Nationally, we have seen a pattern emerge in how these sophisticated criminal groups operate and the types of premises they are targeting.
“We know many offenders see this type of crime as low risk with a high gain – and there are often a number of factors to this. We are talking about high-value machinery which is in demand both here and abroad, and it is often stored in yards and buildings away from dwellings where these groups feel they are less likely to be caught in the act.
“We see things differently – these crimes have a terrible impact on UK farming as they can ruin livelihoods.
Activity to combat offences includes regular Checkpoint operations, which bring together a range of agencies on dedicated days of action, taking part in community meetings with rural partners, councils, the NFU, Foresty Commission and National Park, and the FarmWatch scheme.


Dewberry is currently seeking Construction Inspectors for its Metropolitan DC offices to work on projects in DC and MD. The Construction Inspector function is to monitor the work of contractors to ensure quality control and contract compliance for roadway, utility, storm drainage, and streetscape construction projects of moderate to considerable complexity. Experience with DDOT is a plus. MSHA and/or VDOT experience will be considered.
Maintains and reviews comprehensive project records including daily diaries, materials notebooks, as-built plans, pay quantity records, progress schedules, work orders, and monthly estimates.
3 years of preferred DDOT construction inspection experience with applicable certifications including: Concrete, Soils & Aggregate, Paving, & Striping .
Working knowledge of mathematics including algebra, geometry, and trigonometry.
Working skill in operating computer equipment, software programs and field inspection equipment.
Communicate effectively with agency and contractor personnel and the general public.
*In accordance with the First Source Amendment Act of 2011, District residents will be given priority for new jobs created by municipal financing and development programs.


A daughter, Caili Jean-Lorain Mueller, was born to Mark and Jana Mueller of Charlevoix on March 4, 2005, at the Charlevoix Area Hospital. Caili weighed 10 pounds, 2 ounces. Her siblings are Jason Clyde, 4, and Jacob Albert, 2. Grandparents are Jim and Cindy Mansen of Charlevoix, and Jerry and Kristine Mueller of Royal Oak. Great-grandparents are the Rev. Albert and Donna Mansen of Hudsonville, Clyde Cunningham of Charlevoix, and Jean Bartz of Hazel Park.
A son, Juan Gabriel De La Fuente Gallardo, was born to Teresa D.L. F. Gallardo and Juan Gabriel Gallardo of East Jordan on March 7, 2005, at the Charlevoix Area Hospital. Juan weighed 7 pounds, 6 ounces. His siblings are Herman Reyes De La Fuente, Agustin Tadeo De La Fuente, Oscar Gabriel De La Fuente, and Martina Jimenez De La Fuente. Great-grandparents are Omar F. De La Fuente of Blanco, Texas, and Maita F. Salazar of Blanco, Texas.
A daughter, Mailey Grace Hamilton, was born to Matthew and Stacey Hamilton of East Jordan on March 8, 2005, at the Charlevoix Area Hospital. Mailey weighed 7 pounds, 5 ounces. Grandparents are Dennis and Darla Hamilton of Cadillac, and Thomas and Cynthia Kenyon of Rochester. Great-grandparents are Ines Brocht of Marion, Julian and Mary Butzu of Oakland, and Clark and Marge Hamilton of Cadillac.
A son, Miles Michael Dimitrijevic, was born to Tomislav and Carol Dimitrijevic of Boyne Falls on March 9, 2005, at the Charlevoix Area Hospital. Miles weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces. His sibling is Olivia Frances. Grandparents are Teresa and Rolf Bauermeister of Charlevoix, Patricia Jarema of Boyne Falls, and Zoran Dimitrijevic of Sterling Heights.
A daughter, Chloe Michelle Roeske, was born to Jamie Schwemin and Mike Roeske of Petoskey on March 10, 2005, at 11:30 a.m. at Northern Michigan Hospital. Chloe weighed 7 pounds, 2 ounces and was 19 inches long. Her siblings are Murphy, 10, and Hayden Drury, 7. Grandparents are Ray and Shirlee Schwemin of Marquette, Michaeline Roeske and Jeremone Roeske of Emmett.
The Petoskey Elks meet 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 15, at the former Emmet County Road Commission office building on Charlevoix Avenue, Petoskey. The group meets the first and third Tuesdays of each month.
MS support group meets 6:30-8 p.m. Wednesday, March 16,at the Community Health Education Building Connable Avenue, Petoskey. Call HealthAccess at (800) 248-6777 for more information.
The Church of the Nazarene Food Pantry and soup kitchen is open each Wednesday from 5-to 6 p.m. This free service is open to the community. For additional information call the church office at 548-5462.


WINTER HAVEN - Pickin' in the Park will be Saturday at 6:30 p.m. in Central Park.
Bring a lawn chair or blanket, and enjoy toe-tappin' music by Winter Haven's Harmony Grits.
For details, call Main Street Winter Haven at 863-295-9422.
LAKELAND - At 7 p.m. on Saturday, there will be a chamber music recital at All Saints' Episcopal Church.
The recital will include a discussion of music, which includes "Quartet for the End of Time," written while the composer was in a German prison camp during World War II.
This piece was composed for the instruments and players available in the camp; which were piano, clarinet, violin and cello. The human concerns of this music, hope for eternity, reaching for the transcendental and release from the constraints of time are accessible to careful listening. The program will begin with a brief discussion.
The group formed as a chamber music project at the University of South Florida and will be attending a contemporary music workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory in June. The members are Laura Salata, violin; Ann Satterfield, clarinet; Sarah Mingle, piano; and Natalie Schultess, cello.
LAKELAND - The 36th annual Volvo Mayfaire by-the-Lake will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Mother's Day weekend, May 12 and 13. Admission is free.
The event takes place on the shores of Lake Morton in downtown Lakeland and draws about 60,000 visitors every year. Around 185 artists are selected for exhibition, and they include painters, photographers, sculptors, jewelers, ceramicists, musicians and more.
The art isn't the only thing happening, though. A children's art tent will be set up and filled with free activities for the younger festival visitors. Entertainment is scheduled throughout the weekend and can be found on stage on the Lakeland Public Library lawn. Food vendors also will be on hand with great snacks, meals and drinks for festival-goers. And Polk Museum of Art, located just behind Lakeland Public Library, will be open all weekend and will show family-friendly films throughout Saturday in the Museum's auditorium.
On the night of May 12, the annual Mayfaire Saturday Night/Festival of Arts and Athletes will take place on the Lake Mirror Promenade, just one block north of Lake Morton. The Mayfaire Classic 5K, sponsored by the Lakeland Runners Club, will kick off Saturday night's festivities at 7 p.m.
After the race, The Rogues will perform until late in the evening. Clowns, balloon artists and other street performers will also be on hand.
For details, call 863-688-7743, ext. 237.
LAKELAND - Bring a bag lunch and learn the basics of beading at Polk Museum of Art during a half-day workshop.
Artist Megan Bisbee-Durlam will teach beginners to intermediate students the basics of beading, sewing and designing with color. Each participant will learn innovative techniques they can take away and use on their own. Plus, participants will leave with a finished piece of art.
The class size is limited to 25. Call 863-688-5423 to register.
The opening reception is May 5 from 7 to 9 p.m.�The artists will receive awards during the event.
The Melvin Art Gallery is open weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and during intermissions of many performances of the FSC Fine Arts Series.
For details, please call 863-680-4743.
HAINES CITY - Haines City Community Theatre will perform "Taken in Marriage" May 11-20.
This story of a young woman's wedding is comedic as she deals with her family before the big day.
LAKELAND - "Monica Naugle: Oppositional Essences" will be on display through May 20 at the Polk Museum of Art.
The Plant City artist utilizes discarded metal and other materials to create unusually delicate sculptures.
She weaves forms that are either directly recognizable (clothing or a purse, for example) or sufficiently organic in appearance as to seem perfectly natural.
Naugle is a native of Colombia who has lived in Florida since 1978. This is Polk Museum of Art's first exhibition of her work.
The exhibit of "Tsukioka Yoshitoshi: Thirty-Two Aspects of Women" will begin May 12 and run through September.
Yoshitoshi is considered to be the last and greatest genius of ukiyo-e.
Drinkable Art: An "Exhibition" in Good Taste will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. on May 24. The cost is $25 per person.
Drinkable Art is a wine tasting "exhibition" featuring vintner/artists from around the world and a selection of their choicest creations.
Workshops are held at the museum and at off-site facilities in the community as an extension of the museum's ongoing commitment to community outreach.


GALECA, the Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, gave its top acting prizes to Timothee Chalamet and Sally Hawkins.
Call Me by Your Name has been named film of the year by GALECA: The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics, which is comprised of more than 200 gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and entertainment journalists in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., which announced its Dorian Award winners on Wednesday. The film also earned Timothee Chalamet a Dorian Award as Film Performance of the Year – Actor and as Rising Star. Sally Hawkins was awarded the comparable best actress prize for The Shape of Water.
Lady Bird’s Greta Gerwig was named Director of the Year.
Jordan Peele earned Screenplay of the Year for Get Out. Peele was also crowned Wilde Artist of the Year and Wilde Wit of the Year. He shares the latter award with Saturday Night Live’s Kate McKinnon.
Meryl Streep was crowned the group’s latest choice for Timeless Star, a career achievement honor.
God’s Own Country — another love story involving two gay men — won as GALECA's Unsung Film of the Year. The Shape of Water was recognized as Visually Striking Film of the Year. And mother!, Darren Aronofsky’s psychological chiller starring Jennifer Lawrence, was hailed as Campy Flick of the Year.
Among TV categories, HBO’s Big Little Lies took TV Drama of the Year, and Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was named TV Comedy of the Year.
A number of the recipients will join the group for GALECA’s annual Winners Toast on Feb. 24 in Beverly Hills. A complete list of winners follows.


The FBI is currently planning to have a fully operational facial recognition system in place, which could contain a massive 52 million images by 2015, a big jump from the 16 million the database contained in the middle of 2013.
Documents regarding the construction of FBI's Next Generation Identification (NGI) database, which may hold data on as many as a third of all Americans was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for details from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which claims to be a non-profit organization that safe guards civil liberties in the digital world. The documents revealed that the database can be searched tens of thousands of times every day.
Besides that the documents also showed that database had nearly 4.3 million images that were obtained for non-criminal purposes. Frontier Foundation (EFF) has said that it is concerned that pictures of innocent people will be stored alongside images of criminals.
Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said that the system will be able to question a database of photos to establish the identity of individuals based on their outward form even if they do not have a criminal history.
The NGI database comprises nearly 100 million total records, which has fingerprints, retinal scans, iris scans, facial imaging, scars, marks, tattoos and palm prints. The planned expansion will include people's faces to the system, along with other information like name, age, race and address. The database is shared with federal agencies as well as some 18,000 local, tribal, and state law enforcement agencies across the United States. The FBI says it will help them in tracking down terrorists and criminals.
By 2015, the system will contain up to 52 million images that will help identify individuals of interest. Out of these, 46 million will come from criminal images like mug shots; 4.3 million from civil images including those jobs that require a background or fingerprinting check from employer, who send those prints to the FBI for its civil database; and 215,000 from the Repository for Individuals of Special Concern.
However, the FBI documents do not reveal exactly where the other million or so pictures would be sourced or where the data comes from, who has access to them and what rules govern them. This will likely raise consumer privacy concerns, as those individuals who have never been arrested for a crime will most likely want to be kept out of the database unless the FBI wants them there for a reason.
The linking of criminal and non-criminal databases might be a cause for concern as there is a risk of falsely identifying someone as a criminal for crimes they didn't commit, which means a person required to submit a photo as part of an employer background check could appear in search results and could be implicated as a criminal suspect, simply by virtue of having a picture in the non-criminal file, says the EFF. While the FBI document says that the system will consider it only as an investigative lead rather than make a positive identification and hence there is no false positive rate.
While Facebook and Google Glass have come under scrutiny recently for the potential misuse of facial recognition technology, how the government will be kept in check remains to be seen.


The Walking Dead ranked second on the DVR list, but finished as the No. 1 show in video-on-demand viewing as well as OTT. Unscripted shows Teen Mom 2 and The Real Housewives of Orange County, which belong to a genre typically thought of as the kind watched live, ranked No. 2 and 3, respectively, on the VOD chart.
While sports has given up some ground of late, it still casts a long shadow in the Inscape rankings. On the list of the top 10 shows viewed live, NFL football, college football, basketball and ESPN’s SportsCenter occupy five of the spots.
Compared with others in the measurement game, smart-TV players like Inscape have access to a much broader sample of viewers. That means they can go granular and capture more precise information on viewing, regardless of whether programming is watched live via antenna, internet or cable box, or time-shifted via VOD or DVR.


How I Got Started: "I first started taking photographs going into high school. I was really into graffiti at the time. The camera was really just a device for me to document what my friends and I were tagging. We were just kids looking to have fun, with no artistic intention. I would buy disposable cameras (they were really light to carry around), and then made 4x6 prints once I went through the roll. Eventually, illegal activities and the disposable cameras evolved into a Nikon F1, and Art School in Philadelphia.
"For inspiration, it varies. I'm always paying attention to light during the different times of day and the way it hits different surfaces. I'm constantly at book stores flipping through different art books/magazines. It's important to stay current and see who art directors and photo directors are hiring. I've been really into Boo George and Guy Bourdin's photography work lately. My favorites are the more classical photographers."
Tip to Getting Started: "To someone who's looking to become a professional photographer, I say, go to school in NYC, assist a professional photographer who can pay you, and don't limit yourself to just "street style" shots. There's no money in it (Tommy Ton took it all). Take pictures of everything and anything. Also, just have fun with it. SEE NEW THINGS, take road trips, and explore. It's unfortunate because I feel like a lot of kids just sit in front of Tumblr and explore pictures of road trips other people take."


As evidenced by the hundreds of folks who turned out for the rail trail groundbreaking last Thursday (mid-day on a workday) let’s keep building the rail trail. As evidenced by the Unified Corridor Study (UCS) results and the overwhelming public support for Scenario B with rail and trail on the rail corridor, let’s add robust passenger rail transit fully integrated with our existing bus network ASAP. The UCS found that passenger rail transit will attract 75 percent more passengers and be 35 percent faster than would adding a bus rapid transit to our public transportation system. Furthermore, adding passenger rail transit will result in an overall 25 percent increase in public transit use. Isn’t that what we are trying to do, get folks out of their cars and into a stress-free commute while reducing global warming greenhouse gas emissions? Come on, let’s do this.


Somalia's parliament has elected a moderate Islamist leader as the country's new president. Sheikh Sharif Sheik Ahmed now has the elusive task of stabilizing a country wracked by violence and anarchy for nearly 20 years. He was elected early Saturday. But the Western-backed government wields little control in Somalia - just a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu, where African Union peacekeepers patrol. An Islamic insurgent group called al-Shabab, who say they don't recognize the government, have taken over most of Somalia. The US considers al-Shabab a terror organization with links to al-Qaida.


Do The Vikings Really Want To Move WR Percy Harvin?
The Vikings have been chatting up a storm about the chance to move WR Percy Harvin this offseason, as it sounds like Minnesota is done with his act and the fact he’s thinking of another holdout.
Will the Vikings be able to do it? Or are the Vikings putting on a smoke-screen about moving him?
A few days back NFL.com reported five possible landing spots for Harvin – the Niners, Patriots, Dolphins, Browns, and Jaguars.
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An investment's performance over a single year isn't the best indicator of whether it's worth buying or holding. That's why smart investors look at annualized returns over longer periods.
When investing, especially in stocks, your returns can fluctuate wildly from year to year. For this reason, knowing an asset's return for a single year isn't too helpful when deciding whether or not to invest. Calculating annualized returns for longer time periods can help you better assess how the investments you currently hold are performing, and can also help you choose future investments.
First, determine the investment's overall total return over the holding period you're examining. You can find this by subtracting the investment's current value from its original value, and then dividing by the original value.
Note: This formula assumes all dividends paid during the holding period were reinvested.
Next, divide the number one by the number of years of returns you're considering. For example, if you're looking at a 10-year holding period, dividing one by 10 gives 0.1. To annualize your returns, raise the overall investment return to this power, and then subtract one.
Translated to a percentage, this shows that your 10-year investment in Microsoft produced an annualized return of 9.06%.
Over the past decade, the total return of Microsoft stock has varied wildly, ranging from a loss of 43.8% in one year (2008) to a 53.4% gain the next. The stock had three losing years out of the past 10, and five years where its total return exceeded 20%. The point is that any one of these years would be a poor indicator of the stock's performance as a long-term investment. For this reason, knowing the annualized return is more helpful to investors when analyzing the long-term performance of stocks than any short-term performance figures.
Looking to compare online brokerages? Visit our Broker Center anytime.


January 12, 2010: For the last five years, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been developing an arms industry. With that in mind, a recent deal with South Korea should come as no surprise. South Korea got a $20 billion contract, to build four nuclear power plants in the UAE. As part of the deal, South Korea will transfer research and technology on its RQ-101 UAVs, Hyunmoo-II ballistic and Hyunmoo-III cruise missiles and EMP (electromagnetic pulse) bombs. On the last item, South Korea and the UAE will jointly continue research on this weapon.
Five years ago, when the United States would not let the UAE purchase ten Predator UAVs, the UAE decided to build their own. Using technology obtained from Schiebel, in Austria, and CybAero, in Sweden. The two UAVs created were helicopter type designs, intended for police work, and border patrol. German and South Korean firms also contributed technology. The UAE also plans to export their al Sber and APID 55 UAVs. The smaller al Sber is intended for short range police work, while the larger APID 55 is intended for border and coastal patrol. APID and al Sber prototypes have been built and tested, but the aircraft have not yet entered service. The UAE expects to find most of their sales in the civilian, not military, market.
The UAE hopes that the cooperation with South Korea will enable UAE weapons to more quickly enter service, and be available for export.


Concern about human rights abuses by foreign police forces in the 1970's prompted Congress to prohibit United States training for such organizations. Congress later made some exceptions for programs to combat terrorism, and the Reagan Administration seems intent on making the most of them. ''Our support for democratic development in Latin America must be highlighted by our support to counterterrorism,'' James H. Michel, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, said in November.
The Administration is training some police units in the region; the Central Intelligence Agency and military advisers have worked with military police counterterrorism units in El Salvador, and civilian police units in Costa Rica have been instructed in counterinsurgency, bomb-detection and airport security methods. The effort has prompted accusations reminiscent of the 1970's. In particular, there have been objections to C.I.A.-assisted units of Government security forces in Honduras, who were said to have killed suspected leftists.
In arguing for the training, the Administration says the police must be helped to combat terrorism by leftist rebels determined to undermine fragile elected governments. American officials concede that many of the Central American security forces have unsavory records. But, they argue, it is in the interest of the United States to try to improve their performance, even if Americans dirty their hands to do so. So the Administration has asked Congress for $54 million for counterterrorism aid for every Central American country except Nicaragua, with El Salvador scheduled to receive almost half the money. ''At a time when the guerrillas are returning to the cities, it is idiocy not to be training the police here,'' a senior Western diplomat said in El Salvador.
Reagan Administration officials say their new training program will aim to stop human rights abuses by professionalizing the police. That could be a lengthy and complicated task in a region where only the Costa Rican police can claim a relatively irreproachable record.
In Guatemala, police and army intelligence units have killed hundreds and perhaps thousands of civilians in recent years; torture is common. El Salvador's security forces have shown improvement, but released prisoners still complain they have been deprived of sleep and that their families have been threatened. In addition, military officers identified by American diplomats as responsible for past abuses have not been punished and been promoted, although two enlisted men were convicted last week in the 1981 killing of two American land-reform experts and a Salvadoran colleague.
The police and army in Honduras have a better record, but they are nevertheless strongly suspected of involvement in the killing and disappearance of 200 or more leftists. In Panama, the public security forces have deposed the last three presidents, and they are believed to have recently beheaded a leading opposition politician and to be deeply involved in cocaine trafficking.
Nevertheless, Congress seems disposed to consider favorably further assistance for police training in Central America, several Congressional aides say. But, they add, the program is likely to be heatedly debated.


The case of a state police sergeant who has been paid more than $289,000 this year illustrates the extent of the state's fiscal mess, and its unwillingness to deal with it.
Sgt. Stephanie Miller, who works at the state police barracks in Bethany, has been on the job for 22 years — making her eligible for retirement — and so far this year, she has been paid an eye-watering $185,000 in overtime. That makes her the highest-paid member of the state police union this year. Last year, she was paid more than $151,000 in overtime, part of a total compensation of about $257,000.
But she is far from alone — she is among 117 state police officers who have received more than $50,000 in overtime this year.
The reason for the overtime, of course, is to bump pensions, because a state trooper's lifetime pension is based on the average of their top three salary years. A trooper who retires with 20 years of service gets an annual pension of 50 percent of that average. Every extra year of service beyond that tacks another 2 percent on to the calculation.
That could mean well over $100,000 a year in taxpayer-funded pension payments to troopers who can retire at age 50 or even younger, potentially amounting to many millions of dollars over their lifetimes.
Take into account that there are 1,054 employees in the state police union bargaining group, and the scope of the problem becomes clear. Their pensions could add up to billions of dollars.
The state had a chance to address the problem in the spring of 2015, when it inked a three-year contract with the state police union that kept the lucrative pension plans in place — even though the state's looming billion-dollar shortfalls were anticipated even then.
That contract eliminated "longevity pay" for new hires — a fine step — but promised 9 percent in raises through the three-year life of the deal and, importantly, retained overtime in pension calculations.
Is it any wonder the state has a money problem?
To its credit, the state Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection has seen a 15 percent drop in overtime this year from last year's $31.3 million. But as the true costs of overtime are multiplied many times over down the road, the only real solution is to take overtime out of the pension calculations.
It won't cause undue suffering. The state police contract is remarkably generous. Aside from providing high salaries with regular increases, it gives perks such as use of state vehicles, a daily meal allowance of $18.88 and an annual "cleaning stipend" of $500 for every member of the union who doesn't wear a uniform.
But even as infuriating as those perks can be to the average taxpayer, there's another problem: the incentive to rack up overtime leads to overworked police.
In West Hartford, a town police lieutenant was paid more than $285,000 in 2014 after working a stunning number of overtime shifts, but the excessive number of hours worked raised concerns about his health, and a performance review said his "excessive amount of O.T. occasionally hampers interpersonal skills."
One chilling national study found that nearly half of police officers surveyed reported falling asleep while driving.
Including overtime in the pension formula could be putting lives at risk, as well as emptying the state treasury. State troopers are allowed to work up to 18 consecutive hours in a 24-hour period, a convenience for those seeking to boost their pensions but a sure way to encourage bleary law enforcement.
There is no question that state troopers perform a valuable service. Their jobs are demanding, many risk their lives, and they deserve to be compensated fairly. But the pensions available to them now are wildly out of balance, especially in these lean years, and the pressure to overwork is a danger for troopers and the public alike.


In recent decades, fossil fuel interests have been funding front groups to advance their ideological and political goals, and key to these groups’ success is concealing their industry backing. But Utah columnist Paul Rolly has been working to shine a light on the industry backing behind the most influential front groups in his state. In an interview with Media Matters, Rolly discussed the importance of following the money.
Rolly has been a columnist at The Salt Lake Tribune for the last 20 years, and he has stood out because of his work exposing fossil fuel front groups operating in Utah. He has uncovered the oil industry fingerprints behind campaigns to seize public lands from the federal government, attack renewable energy, and promote an industry-friendly agenda in higher education.
Utah is ground zero for many of the fossil fuel industry’s campaigns, making Rolly’s work invaluable. One of the most prominent fossil fuel-backed campaigns in recent years has been the effort to transfer control of federal lands to state governments, which would greatly benefit fossil fuel interests, as states would likely open up more areas to oil and gas drilling and coal mining.
State Rep. Ken Ivory (R-UT) has played a leading role in the public land grab movement in the west, and Rolly has been paying close attention. In 2012, Ivory co-founded a group called the American Lands Council (ALC), which aims to “secure local control of western public lands by transferring federal public lands to willing States.” Utah, Rolly explained, is the only state that has passed legislation setting aside taxpayer funds to sue the federal government over control of public lands, like those managed by the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service. The lawsuit was recommended by a legal team hired by a Republican-dominated commission of Utah legislators, even though the lawyers acknowledged that the lawsuit “could cost up to $14 million, take years to play out in the courts,” and is “far from a sure victory,” according to the Associated Press.
Rolly has repeatedly pointed out that Ivory has taken a six-figure annual salary from the ALC, which is largely funded by counties in Western states. The ALC’s tax forms reportedly indicate that Ivory and his wife have pocketed almost half of the group’s total revenue. Rolly believes that the negative attention Ivory received over his salary at ALC may explain why he stepped down as the organization’s president in December. (He remains an unpaid member of its executive committee).
Rolly has devoted several columns to exposing the fossil funding behind ALC and other groups that are engaged in the public lands campaign. He's pointed out that Federalism in Action, where Ivory currently heads the “Free the Lands” project, is affiliated with the oil billionaires Charles and David Koch. And he's documented that the firm hired by the Utah legislature to promote the land transfer agenda, Strata Policy, also has financial ties to the Koch brothers. As the Los Angeles Times has noted, ALC has also received financial support from Americans for Prosperity, which was co-founded by the Kochs and continues to spearhead their agenda.
The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate front group that connects fossil fuel executives with legislators to push model bills that serve industry interests, is also highly influential in Utah and has a heavy hand in the public land grab movement. And, as Rolly told Media Matters, “the Koch brothers are a big deep-pocket force behind ALEC.” Ivory is an ALEC member and was even awarded the group’s “Legislator Of The Year” award in 2014.
Too often, media fail to disclose these important ties, Rolly noted. ALEC, for one, “probably doesn’t get the attention it should” in the national media, nor do its “ties to the Koch brothers, and their deep-pocket influence, and what happens to state legislatures.” Many valuable resources that provide context are “underused,” in Rolly’s opinion, including legislators’ conflict-of-interest and financial disclosure forms, which he examines to see if there’s any connection between “who’s giving them money” and “what they’re doing as a legislator.” He said he also examines the tax filings of nonprofits such as ALC.
It’s worth keeping in mind that even as newspapers are facing increased financial pressures, reporting like Rolly’s can be good for business. His columns are among the newspaper’s most viewed pieces online, he says. And he recently received the “Making Democracy Work” award from the League of Women Voters for his work at the Tribune.
The need for the media to disclose the industry backing that’s behind fossil fuel front groups is clear. Dark money groups like DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund exist solely to hide these funds. And research shows that organizations funded by Exxon and the Koch brothers are “more likely to have written and disseminated texts meant to polarize the climate change issue." Yet Media Matters has shown time and time again that fossil fuel front groups are getting away with promoting anti-environmental agendas while hiding the real voices behind their misleading messages.
In the words of the Tribune, Rolly told the League of Women Voters that “democracy best works when the public is informed.” Reporters would do well to follow Rolly’s example by digging a little deeper to uncover the dark money behind special interest campaigns occurring all around the country.
I focus on content more than labels. I happen to call what I do shoe leather journalism and not advocacy journalism. So, I would consider it just journalism.
Well, who would have thought that "shoe leather journalism" included raising money for a political party? I guess that's "conservative journalism" for you.
Salt Lake County Republicans are scrambling to line up a new keynote fundraising speaker after the arrest Tuesday of their scheduled first choice, filmmaker James O'Keefe, on charges of attempting to tamper with the phone system of a U.S. senator.
"The allegations and arrest today certainly change our plans," county GOP Chairman Thomas Wright said in a telephone interview with The Tribune. "We'll be announcing a new speaker shortly."
As of Tuesday night, the party's Web site, slcogop.com, still advertised O'Keefe as the guest speaker for the Feb. 4 Lincoln Day Dinner. His topic was to be "his national exposé of ACORN's unethical behavior, his changes in Congress and [how he will] inspire our Party's passion for a grassroots comeback."
The fundraising announcement said donations of $4,000 to $7,500 would entitle contributing groups to have access to elected Republican officials and the guest speaker at a VIP reception. Wright said the Web site and other promotions would be altered soon to reflect a change.
"We're disappointed," he said of O'Keefe's arrest on felony charges. "He doesn't necessarily represent the Republican Party."


CARROLLTON, Ga. -- A man has been arrested in the shooting death of a pregnant Carrollton mother.
Tyrail Arrenzo Wynn was taken into custody early Friday. He was charged with murder, feticide, aggravated assault, burglary, cruelty to children and marijuana possession.
Wynn, 25, was emotionless during his first court appearance Friday morning, even after a judge told him he could face the death penalty for the murder charge. The feticide charge carries a possible punishment of life in prison.
Wynn's wife was arrested on a drug charge at the same time as her husband. She has not been charged in connection with the murder.
The victim, 36-year-old Nakita Holland, was found dead in her bedroom Monday evening. She had been shot through the window with a 9mm pistol. Police believe she could have been killed as early as Sunday.
Authorities believe Wynn snuck to the back of the bedroom window and fired several shots inside.
Holland's 2-year-old daughter was in the apartment at the time; the little girl is being cared for by relatives.
Investigators believe Wynn entered the victim's apartment at one point, but do not know if it happened before or after Holland died. They also think he is responsible for graffiti discovered on the back of the apartment building and on Holland's bedroom window. Officials have not said what the graffiti said. Holland's mother, Slynda Johnson, believes it was an attempt to throw investigators off the trial.
Police said it is possible Wynn was the father of Holland's unborn son. They will perform tests to confirm paternity.
Prior to the shooting, Wynn had no criminal record, police said.


Dallas ISD trustee Bernadette Nutall was cleared of wrongdoing in an investigation into whether she harassed a district administrator, according to an investigative report.
The investigation did not substantiate the harassment claims and dismissed reports that she acted unprofessionally with two other DISD employees. The report said those employees didn’t believe their interactions with Nutall warranted a review.
The report raises questions about Superintendent Mike Miles’ involvement in starting the investigation. Nutall and Miles have bumped heads, including an Oct. 13 incident in which Miles had DISD police throw Nutall out of Dade Middle School.
On Oct. 29, DISD hired an outside investigator, former U.S. Attorney Paul Coggins, to look into complaints that Miles said he had received from three employees. Coggins was expected to receive $30,000 for the investigation, but the final bill is not yet known. The district will also pay for Nutall’s legal bills.
One of the complaints about Nutall was based on a letter by Miles’ driver, Freddie Jackson. But Jackson told investigators he wrote the letter only because Miles asked him to do so for his records and that he didn’t intend for it to be construed as a complaint, according to the report.
Jackson stated that he didn’t feel bullied or harassed by Nutall, whom he considers a friend. But Miles told investigators that Jackson came to him with concerns and that Miles told him to put the complaint in writing if he felt bullied or harassed.
A complaint that stemmed from Assistant Superintendent Karon Cofield raised governance issues. She also indicated to Coggins that her letter wasn’t intended to be a complaint against Nutall.
The third issue was from human resources executive director Tonya Sadler Grayson on Oct. 22. In the complaint addressed to Miles, she wrote she felt threatened in a conversation with Nutall in June and feared coming in close contact with her.
Coggins found “insufficient evidence to support a finding of any board policy violations” by Nutall, who had vehemently denied the allegations.
Some trustees found the timing of the complaints suspicious. The allegations surfaced a few weeks after the Oct. 13 incident at Dade.
“Approximately a week or so later, we received letters from employees, coincidentally about the same time,” trustee Lew Blackburn said.
Trustees made the decision Monday to release the investigative report, with some saying it was a final report paid for by taxpayers and should be released. The district had written to trustees that the report was confidential.
Trustee Joyce Foreman said the district didn’t have a problem releasing the allegations against Nutall, but not so much the report clearing her.
“I am so happy that this board has made the decision that the public should have this information because the public paid for it,” Foreman said.
Trustees were unaware that Coggins was hired to investigate Nutall until about a week later. Miles has said he was unaware the district hired Coggins, and that the decision was made by general counsel Jack Elrod, to whom he forwarded the complaints.
Miles submitted the first employee complaint on Oct. 28 and two more the following day, according to district documents.
Sylvia Reyna, a former top DISD administrator, told The News that Miles contacted her after the Dade incident and said he wanted Nutall investigated. He asked her to tell investigators about an incident two years ago with Nutall. Reyna said she told Miles that the argument wasn’t a big deal.
Some trustees would like the issue addressed further in board policy. “We as a board need to look at the policy to make sure that this kind of situation does not happen in the future,” Foreman said.
A contract violation could be grounds for termination.
Trustees added the provisions for termination in his contract after earlier investigation by Coggins. In that investigation, Coggins found that Miles violated district policy by talking to a witness during an internal investigation and that he used a top administrator’s resignation letter” to generate positive publicity for himself and negative publicity for the board.” The letter, which was reported in the news media, harshly criticized Jones.
Miles received a letter of reprimand and was placed on a 90-day improvement plan.
Follow Tawnell D. Hobbs and Matthew Haag on Twitter at @matthewhaag and @tawnell.


YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Last week before we winged our way east we received a covert communique from regular tipster Tommy Talksalot who informed us that former professional dancer and model turned Emmy-nominated actress Victoria Rowell has put her Los Angeles residence on the market with an asking price of $2,599,000.
A quick perusal of Miz Rowell’s resumé on the Internet Movie Data Base shows her big break cam in the late 1980s with two-episode arc on The Cosby Show, a turn of entertainment industry good fortune that launched into her showbiz salad days, the 1990s and early Aughts when she simultaneously appeared on the soap story Young and the Restless (1990-2007) and the medical crime dram Diagnosis Murder (1993-2002).
Along the way she appeared in a number of other tee-vee shows (Noah’s Arc) and mostly bad movies (The Distinguished Gentleman) and pushed out a couple of children, one of them with jazz genius Wynton Marsalis. Since her time at Y&R came to an end in 2007–there are unconfirmed rumors she may reprise her role this year–she’s written a couple of books: a memoir about her experiences in the foster care system (The Women Who Raised Me) and a possibly thinly veiled novel (Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva) about a black actress who appears on the soap story The Rich and the Ruthless.
Anyhoo, property records show Miz Rowell acquired her Los Angeles home way back in the first days of 1997 when she paid $825,000 for the 1923 red tile-roofed Mediterranean perched on a sloping .29 acre city view lot in the quintessentially Los Angeles ‘hood that cleaves to the steep slopes around Beachwood Canyon.
Listing information shows the two-story house measures 4,354 square feet with a total of 4 bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms that include, as per listing information, a celebrity-style master suite comprised of window-wrapped bedroom with city views, “dramatic” bathroom, “spacious” walk-in closet with custom built-ins and a separate private sitting room, which may or may not be that rather useless-looking room furnished with a circular hotel lobby sofa and crystal chandelier.
The main living and entertaining spaces have dark, espresso-colored hardwood floors include a long living room lined on two opposite walls with French doors, a over-sized formal dining room with various access points to the outdoors, and a kitchen fitted with long and narrow center island, antique white raised panel cabinetry, brown and beige flecked granite counter tops, and all the to-be-expected from a multi-million dollar house high-grade, commercial style stainless steel appliances. Additional interiors spaces mentioned but not but now shown in online listing information include a den, library, family room, media/music room, and a breakfast room adjacent to the kitchen.
Various city and canyon view terraces, balconies and what listing information calls “Italian gardens” extend the indoor living spaces to the outdoors and include a swimming pool tightly tucked into a courtyard ringed by vine-draped walls and tree-shaded lawns below the house look pretty and serene but due to their steep slope are relatively impractical for anything but viewing and lop-sided strolling.
An incomplete and entirely unscientific spin through property records suggest (but does not prove) that Miz Rowell does not currently own any other property in Los Angeles, or anywhere else for that matter. Howevuh, given that she married Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey a couple of years ago it’s not such a stretch they might own a home in or around Atlanta.


Sassy is a fun-loving, playful girl. She has been at the Humane Society for some time now and really would like a forever home. Due to her puppy energy, kids 10 and older would be best suited for this cute adolescent.
Sassy and many other animals are available for adoption at The Humane Society of Washington County, 13011 Maugansville Road, Hagerstown. Hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday; 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday and Thursday; 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Animal visitation begins at 10 a.m. daily. Closed on Sunday.
For more information, call 301-733-2060.


Lottery tickets could be sold by Harrogate council to raise money for good causes in the community.
Tickets for the weekly online draw would cost £1 with the winner getting 20% of the profits from total sales.
At least 60% of proceeds would go towards voluntary or community-based organisations, the council said.
The authority said it would enable it to help local projects that were struggling to survive because of government funding cuts.
Councillor Graham Swift said other councils, which had set up similar schemes, had demonstrated it was an effective way of raising funds.
Aylesbury Vale District Council, the first authority to set up an online lottery, raised more than £70,000 for community organisations, according to a council report.
The Gambling Commission said 19 authorities currently hold licences to run lotteries, although they may not yet be up and running.
If approved by Harrogate Borough Council's cabinet, the lottery could be launched by spring, with the first draw taking place in July.


POLICE in Shropshire have issued a fresh warning to motorists not to leave Sat Nav equipment on display in their vehicles.
The warning follows two incidents in Wem here car windows were smashed and Sat Navs stolen.
In one, the driver’s quarter light was smashed on a dark blue Seat Alhambra estate parked on the driveway of a house in Aston Road on Sunday night. The thief reached inside and snatched the Sat Nav worth £150.
Again, Sat Nav equipment worth £240 together with a Nokia mobile phone, were stolen.
A spokesman said: “These two incidents underline the need for motorists to be security conscious and to remove Sat Nav equipment and other valuables from their vehicles.
Cheshire East CouncilRedsands residential centre for troubled children at Willaston near Nantwich closesRESIDENTS are celebrating the closure of the controversial Redsands Children’s Centre.


Do you like eating cheeseburgers, bacon, sausage, buffalo wings, crab dip, onion rings and pretzel rolls? Do you have trouble choosing which of these to pick from?
The Baltimore Ravens are doing you a favor and putting them all together. The Tailgater Burger, made with concessions partner Aramark, features a grass-fed beef patty with American cheese, applewood bacon, kielbasa sausage, Maryland crab dip and beer battered onion rings on a pretzel roll. The Buffalo Wings are placed on top, allowing hot sauce to ooze down the burger.
The sandwich will be sold for $18 at M&T Bank Stadium's concession stand 152, stationed on the lower level. Although $18 is more than a standard burger, all that meat could give the price value. This burger screams, "Joe Flacco is elite!"
Ravens fans will have to salivate over pictures for another few weeks. The Ravens open the season with two road games before the home opener Sept. 27 against the Bengals.
In other news, there is a new balsamic roasted Portobello mushroom sandwich for Baltimore fans unwilling to test the Tailgater Burger.


Despite tight budgets, IT must find ways to integrate new technology, make their organizations more agile, heed increasing security and privacy concerns, and address stringent SLAs. How can IT can meet today’s demands while preparing for tomorrow’s disruption? The answer is in the infographic below. For more information, visit here.


In bid to reduce problem in country with most road deaths in developed world, police launch drone that monitors drivers.
South Korea has the most road deaths in the developed world, more than 5,500 per year.
In a bid to make the roads safer, police have launched what they say is the world's first remotely operated drone that monitors drivers on the main highways.


A protest movement is building among Toys “R” Us employees, who are angry that the retailer is shutting down but providing no severance pay.
Beginning last weekend, some of the 31,000 employees who will soon be without jobs began picketing stores in New Jersey, where the company's corporate headquarters is located. Protesters said that when stores closed in the past, employees received severance based on their tenure.
For its part, Toys “R” Us blames the nation's bankruptcy laws. As it turns out, if a corporation is liquidating -- selling off everything and no longer staying in business -- it is not allowed to pay severance to its workers. That's because creditors are supposed to be first in line.
"Because we were forced to liquidate the U.S. business, we were not able to follow the normal severance process," Toys “R” Us spokesperson Amy von Walter told CNN.
But the employees who are losing their jobs are angry because the laws do not prevent the private equity firms from paying top executives big retention bonuses, so they'll stay on the job long enough to complete the transition.
Creating more confusion and resentment, Toys “R” Us paid severance to employees who were let go immediately after the liquidation announcement. Those staying through the required 60 days notice will receive nothing.
The Toys “R” Us protest movement actually began a month ago, when word spread through the stores that employees who faced losing their jobs would not receive any severance pay. The workers and their supporters say companies backed by private equity firms, as Toys “R” Us is, have access to plenty of cash.
The protesters are turning to Congress for relief. Late last week, a group of protesters met with members of the New Jersey Congressional delegation and asked lawmakers to push for changes in the law.
Toys “R” Us announced in May that it would close all of its U.S. stores after it was unable to restructure its massive and growing debt.
The company that became Toys "R" Us was founded soon after World War II and enjoyed explosive growth in the 1970s and '80s, when the huge baby boom generation began having children. Trips to the huge warehouse-sized stores on the weekend were a rite of passage for a generation of children.
In the last decade, the retailer fell victim not just to online competitors, but also Walmart and Target -- retailers that were able to cut into Toys "R" Us sales. The retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last September.


There are days that it takes 6 hours to shuffle through all this communication. I think this hyper-connectivity is a bad thing. Notice how people in a restaurant or a bar spend more time on their phones than actually talking / interacting with the people right in front of them?
Crackberry was a joke, but it turned out that it is very difficult for people to unplug. I successfully did that for a couple of hours each day this weekend, but then right back online to see what I missed. It's nuts. I'm going to start a 12-step program.
Are you overloaded with email / communications? Is email bankrupt? (After getting 500+ spam messages this morning, I think the answer is obvious, except that email is primary communications tool).
Obviously, there are tools that can be used to make business communications more efficient, but some that I have tried slow down Outlook so much or eat up so much memory the laptop slows down that I had to delete them. Suggestions are welcome.
A productivity consultant I know, Matthew Cornell, says that he has a zero inbox. I can't even envision that because some projects, like a fiber build, can result in over 400 emails. I leave them all in the inbox until the project is finished, so I can search in one spot. That's probably not the best way, but I also go through both my sent folder and my inbox monthly to make sure that I have contacted people regularly. Again, I would be happy to hear of a better way.
Feedback for Email Overload or Bankruptcy?
o Have you tried moving to RSS feeds for much of this? The question is whether you need "email-level" interactions. listserv, social networking notifications, etc. would qualify, no?
o 500+ spam messages one morning: This is just plain unnecessary. Get a filter that works, such as Gmail's.
o Fiber build can result in over 400 emails: Why? Again, I wonder if another tool would be better, a collaboration tool like Basecamp, say.
o 2. Can you un-plug? Yes. There's no reason for me not to. I've created a life without fast turnaround deadlines, corporate pace, etc.
o 3. Do you un-plug? No. I simply check email too frequently. Tough habit - our 100,000 year old brains aren't meant for it. Of course I know lots of ways to do it, but I'm like my clients - I need this stuff and it's hard to do.
o leave in inbox until project is finished, so I can search: First, if this approach works for you, great. If not, it sounds like a case of adopting poor practices to work around a cruddy tool: your program should be able to search all folders.
o Go through both my sent folder and my inbox monthly to make sure that I have contacted people regularly: Again, if using the inbox and sent folders for contact management and reminders works, fantastic. There are better tools, though.
I guess that's the theme - use the right tool for the job, not email for everything. Historically, though, email has emerged as the one-stop-shop for communication, and it's relatively broken at that.
Create simple rules for each of the social media outlets sending you e-mail messages. In other words, create a "rule" for everything that is e-mailed to you from Twitter. Instead of having to sift through the various twitter responses in your inbox, then, you can go in to the Twitter folder and handle them all at once.
This way you can info avoid the clutter that these social media announcements make.
Holding everything in your inbox is akin to having that many pieces of paper strewn all over your desk, not in folders not in piles -- just everywhere. Folders can help you organize -- at least it works for me.


Everyone understands that a major hotel/condo/business development is going to create some buildings that will block the view of whatever is behind them.
And everyone understands that casinos come with bright lights.
And everyone understands that you don't propose a public walking trail on your property along the river unless you intend to let the public use the trail and have access to the waterfront.
But even though they seem fully on board with the proposed Mohawk Harbor development project, Schenectady residents and city council members have legitimate reason to be hesitant about the proposed zoning changes sought for it.
Call it a "belief issue."
The first belief issue is in what the project will ultimately look like. Proposed zoning changes for the site are significant, such as allowing for 11-story buildings and for enormous, brightly lit signs.
The existing architectural renderings for the project show buildings that don't appear nearly that tall. They also don't show how elaborate the lighting for the casino might be. It's difficult for the normal person to envision what 90-foot-tall "multi-use pylon signs" will look like.
What we have here is a chicken-or-the-egg scenario. The developer might be hesitant to invest in specific plans for the project without having the zoning in place. And the city might be hesitant to approve zoning changes without seeing exactly how those changes will materialize on the actual site.
With the walking trail and river access, citizens have a different type of belief issue, in that they need assurances that the developer does indeed intend to construct a walking-biking trail through the property and that the property will be accessible to the public.
The city could try to work out an easement. But that could involve complex legal issues such as city liability. Or the developer could put its intentions in writing to guarantee that the bike-trail/riverfront portion of the property will always be accessible to the public. Promises are nice. Contracts are binding.
Surely, the developer must have some idea of how it plans to lay out the buildings, signage and public access of the site. Otherwise, it wouldn't be asking for these specific zoning changes.
Just as it came up with drawings for the original proposal, it would be worth it for the developer to prepare sample renderings to show the public the potential options for the property that include the taller buildings, signs and river access.
This project is going to be here for a long time. It's better to have the public go into it with their eyes wide open now, than blindly go along with zoning changes that they'll be dissatisfied with later.


At least 32 people killed - including army's top spy - after attacks on security offices in third-largest city.
A series of suicide attacks on military installations in Syria's government-held city of Homs are reported to have killed 32 people, including the army's intelligence chief - a close confidant of President Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian state television said the army's intelligence chief General Hassan Daabul died and it paid tribute to the "martyrs" in Saturday's bombings.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said loud explosions and gunfire were heard following the assault in the western Syrian city.
Talal Barzani, the governor of Homs province, said there were three blasts in total killing 32 people and wounding more than 20 others.
The SOHR, which put the Homs toll at 42, said air raids by government forces killed another 13 people across the country, including at least three in al-Waer, a rebel enclave of Homs.
The violence comes as officials from the Assad government and the opposition meet for a fourth round in Switzerland to end Syria's six-year-old civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.
Kewara's views were echoed by Mutasem Alsyofi of The Day After, a collection of civil society activists, in an interview to Al Jazeera in Geneva.
Saturday's attacks in Homs hit the heavily guarded Ghouta and Mahatta neighbourhoods, prompting security forces to lock down the city centre.
A witness was quoted as saying a suicide bomber actually made it into Daabul's office and detonated his vest.
Brigadier Ibrahim Darwish, head of the State Security Branch, was also critically wounded, state-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV reported.
Al Jazeera's Andrew Simmons, reporting from Gaziantep on the Turkey-Syria border, said it was unclear how the assailants could have pulled off such an assault.
"Both areas are heavily guarded by the state police and also military so it was a really big and organised twin attack," said Simmons.
Bashar al-Jaafari, who leads the Syrian government delegation to the talks in Geneva, said Saturday's attacks would not go unanswered.
A rebel alliance known as Tahrir al-Sham is believed to have carried out the attack.
Since it was formed, Tahrir al-Sham has fought other rebel groups, including some that fight under the banner of the Free Syrian Army, as well as a faction linked to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group, in northwest Syria.
But the city has seen repeated bombings since then. Double bombings killed 64 people early last year.


President Barack Obama will have to figure out a new plan - three of his top candidates for the Treasury Department have dropped out of consideration in the past month.
Attorney H. Rodgin Cohen, President Barack Obama's leading candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, withdrew from consideration for the post Thursday because of an unnamed "issue," ABC News reported.
Cohen is the third top candidate who has withdrawn from a potential Treasury job.
The previous candidate for Deputy Treasury Secretary, Annette Nazareth, pulled herself out of the running when she realized she'd face questioning over her failure to catch Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme during her time at the Securities & Exchange Commission. Caroline Atkinson, who was up for Undersecretary for International Affairs, was told she had to withdraw because of tax problems.
Cohen, a partner in New York law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, has counseled Wall Street's biggest bankers and would likely have gotten an official nomination from Obama for the deputy post.
An "issue" arose in the final vetting process as top Democrats went over Cohen's credentials, Democratic sources said.
One source said that it was "back to the drawing board" for Treasury candidates.
The Treasury Department is severely understaffed - Secretary Timothy Geithner is running the show alone, single-handedly attempting to fix the country's fiscal crisis.
Cohen's withdrawal will likely fuel the fire for critics of the Obama administration, who claim that the new commander in chief has been unable to retain any quality candidates for positions inside his cabinet.


By William Strauss and Neil Howe.
The idea that history moves in cycles tends to be viewed with suspicion by scholars. Although historians as respected as Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. and David Hackett Fischer have made cases for the existence of rhythms and waves in the stream of events, cyclical theories tend to end up in the Sargasso Sea of pseudoscience, circling endlessly (what else?). ''The Fourth Turning'' is no exception.
This is the third book on the subject of American ''generations'' written by William Strauss, the director of the Capitol Steps, a Washington satire troupe, and Neil Howe, a senior adviser for the Concord Coalition, a group dedicated to balancing the budget. In case you missed the previous two, ''Generations: The History of America's Future'' and ''13th Gen,'' Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe claim that the key to understanding not only American but world history is ''a unit of time the ancients called the saeculum.'' Practically every major historical crisis, the authors assert, comes in a transition between saecula, or at distinct periods within a saeculum. This claim seems less impressive when it is revealed that one size of saeculum fits all facts. ''Eighty-five years passed between the attack on Pearl Harbor and the attack on Fort Sumter. That is exactly the same span as between Fort Sumter and the Declaration of Independence,'' they write. ''Add another decade or so to the length of these saecula, and you'll find this pattern continuing through the history of the colonists' English predecessors.'' The key to history, it appears, is the Fudge Factor.
The boomers, then, will be even harder on their children than they were on their parents. The ''final boomer leaders,'' Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe predict, will be ''authoritarian, severe, unyielding''; ''the same boomers who in youth chanted 'Hell no, we won't go!' will emerge as America's most martial elder generation in living memory,'' they warn.
The boomers are to get their comeuppance when they are impoverished during a financial panic early in the next century. ''Following the Great Devaluation, boomers will find new ethical purpose in low consumption because, with America in Crisis, they will have no other choice,'' the authors write. Many boomers ''who spent a lifetime paying steep Social Security and Medicare taxes will be substantially excluded from benefits by an affluence test.'' Making a virtue of necessity, the aged Aquarians ''will eschew high-tech hospital care for homeopathy, minimalist self-care and the mind-body techniques Deepak Chopra calls 'quantum healing' '' -- thus perhaps accelerating generational succession.
Sometimes Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe try to have it both ways: ''America will become more isolationist than today in its unwillingness to coordinate its affairs with other countries but less isolationist in its insistence that vital national interests not be compromised.'' At other times they hedge their bets: the ''New Silent'' generation ''could well be the first to reach other planets in a rocket fleet,'' even as ''the Fourth Turning could spare modernity but mark the end of our nation.'' All the blinking and whirring of their methodology permits them to make this daring prediction: ''The Fourth Turning will be a time of glory or ruin.'' The Macintosh has labored and brought forth a mouse. ''Human history,'' Mr. Strauss and Mr. Howe write, ''seems logical in afterthought but a mystery in forethought.'' Indeed.


If the Longhorns hope to find success in 2016, it all starts with the offense. New offensive coordinator Sterlin Gilbert has his work cut out for him, but has plenty of pieces to work with. The real challenge will be how quickly Gilbert can implement his up-tempo, spread offense. The offense brings back an experienced offensive line and two dynamic running backs in junior D’Onta Foreman and sophomore Chris Warren. And receivers like sophomore John Burt and freshman Collin Johnson give Gilbert lots of options on the outside.
For the seventh year in a row, the Longhorns are still searching for a quarterback. Seemingly an eternity has passed since Colt McCoy last donned the burnt orange on Saturdays in Austin. Texas still has not found an answer under center, and this year the quarterback battle has essentially turned into a three-man race. Tyrone Swoopes is back for his senior season, and sophomore Jerrod Heard is still recovering from a shoulder injury. But freshman Shane Buechele is drawing the most hype from Texas faithful. Strong has given Buechele high praise this offseason. But it’s still unclear if he’ll start against Notre Dame. Still, it’s almost certain we will see Buechele at some point this season.
One of the most overlooked topics this offseason has been who will be kicking for the Longhorns this season. Many have been quick to say goodbye to Nick Rose after he struggled last season, but none of the kickers on Texas’ roster are proven. There may be some hope, however, as LSU’s starting placekicker Trent Domingue announced on Sunday he is transferring to Texas.
The pressure is mounting for head Charlie Strong after back-to-back losing seasons. It’s hard to say how many games Strong will need to win to keep his job. Is it seven, eight or nine? Does he just have to make a bowl game? Does he have to win a bowl game? Regardless, another losing season and all bets might be off. Whatever happens this season, it will be the defining moment of the Charlie Strong era at Texas.


Crafts, music, food, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. May 6. downtown Apex. apexpeakfest.com.
Craft and food vendors,local bands and dance groups, a barbecue cook-off and rubber duck race, 9 a.m.-6:30 p.m. May 6, downtown Smithfield. hamandyam.com.
Tortoises and other reptiles with wildlife experts, games, food and music, May 13 (time tba), Bass Lake Park, 900 Bass Lake Road, Holly Springs. hollyspringsnc.us.
May 19-21, more than 170 visual arts and crafts exhibitors and performances, downtown Raleigh. artsplosure.org.
Carnival games, pony rides, food May 19-21, North Carolina State Fairgrounds, 1025 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh. gottobencfestival.com.
Celebration of African history, culture and arts, noon to 8 p.m. May 20, Rock Quarry Park, 701 Stadium Drive, Durham.
35 hot air balloons, music, military equipment on display, food and craft vendors, May 26-29, Fleming Loop Park, 503 Fleming Loop Road, Fuquay-Varina. wralfreedomballoonfest.com.


Amnesty at 50 is being repeated at 5 pm on Sunday 2 January 2011 on BBC Radio 4. The programme is presented by John Tusa. He reflects on the history of the organisation that received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977 but also asks some critical questions.


CHICAGO -- In honor of St. Patrick's Day, WGN's Demetrius Ivory asked some folks around town Monday to try out their best pick-up lines for traffic reporter -- and "Irish lass" -- Erin McElroy, who was listening back in the studio.
Visitors from San Antonio tried first. Then, an older Irishman took a shot, to which McElroy said he won simply because of his accent.
Watch the hilarious exchange in the video above.
No pick up line here…get back to the right side!!!!