SOUTH PORTLAND — A 70-year-old South Portland man has been charged with robbery after police say he stole an undisclosed amount of cash from the Bank of America on Philbrook Avenue.
Donald C. Sturton was arrested shortly after the crime was reported March 7 and was in possession of a small amount of cash and a toy firearm when he was taken into custody, according to a media release from South Portland Police. He has been charged with robbery, a crime punishable by up to 10 years, and remained at Cumberland County Jail on Friday morning.
South Portland Police received a call around 3:30 p.m. from Bank of America to report it had just been robbed. The male robber said he had a firearm, although one was never actually displayed. He made off with a small amount of cash and fled to the parking lot, according to police.
Investigators said bank employees were instrumental in securing the crime scene, notifying police and giving responders an accurate description of the suspect so they could be on the lookout when they arrived at the bank.
One of the first responding police officers said he saw the suspect in the Maine Mall parking lot, near JC Penney. Due to Sturton possibly being armed he was quickly and safely taken into custody, said police.
The chief executive of computer firm Yahoo is to step down after accusations that a fake computer science degree was included on his CV, reports say.
The benefits of arbuscular mycorrhiza for plant growth are directly correlated with the degree of root colonization, and in the case of soy, it has an important role in favoring nodulation and biological nitrogen fixation (Moreira & Siqueira, 2006).
27] observed that in the tailings and soil around the artisanal mining at Sekotong, West Lombok of Indonesia, there were some taxa arbuscular mycorrhiza, such as Glomus, Gigaspora and Acaulospora.
Year 1509 (MDIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.
April 27 – Pope Julius II places Venice under interdict and excommunication for refusing to cede part of Romagna to papal control.
June 19 – Brasenose College, University of Oxford, is founded by a lawyer, Sir Richard Sutton, of Prestbury, Cheshire, and the Bishop of Lincoln, William Smyth.
This page is a placeholder for a page about the year 1509. The Wikiquote community has not yet come to a consensus on what this page, and calendar-year pages generally, ought to say. Please discuss any suggestions for the contents of year pages at the Village pump. In the meantime, Wikipedia's 1509 article offers a list of noteworthy events of this year.
April 27 - Pope Julius II places Venice under interdict and excommunication for refusing to cede part of Romagna under Papal control
The Armand Commission was the first Commission of the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), between 1958 and 1959. Its president was Louis Armand of France. There would be two further Commissions before Euratom was merged with the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community in 1967 to become the European Community.
Era Television (Chinese: 年代電視) is a nationwide cable TV network in Taiwan that is operated by the ERA Communications Inc., established on October 1996.
Categories: Television stations in Taiwan | Television channels and stations established in 1996 | Taiwanese television stubs
Sculptor Gutzon Borglum and President Calvin Coolidge selected Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln to appear on Mount Rushmore.
In political science, historical rankings of United States Presidents are surveys conducted in order to construct rankings of the success of individuals who have served as President of the United States. Ranking systems are usually based on surveys of academic historians and political scientists or popular opinion. The rankings focus on the presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults (such as corruption).
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin D. Roosevelt are consistently ranked at the top of the lists. Often ranked just below those three are Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt. The remaining top 10 ranks are often rounded out by James Madison, Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, Woodrow Wilson, and Harry S. Truman. The bottom ranks often include Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Warren G. Harding. William Henry Harrison and James A. Garfield both died shortly after entering office, and are sometimes not included in the rankings as a result.
Political scientist Walter Dean Burnham noted the "dichotomous or schizoid profiles" of presidents, which can make some hard to classify. Historian Alan Brinkley said, "There are presidents who could be considered both failures and great or near great (for example, Nixon)". James MacGregor Burns observed of Nixon, "How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?"[1] Indeed, Richard Nixon scores very poorly in opinion polls but usually ranks better among historians. By contrast, Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy tend to score highly in popular opinion polls, but rank highly less often in polls of historians because their negative qualities have been largely forgotten, for Reagan because he was seen as helping end the Cold War and for Kennedy because of sympathy after his assassination. But most often the reason presidents are hard to classify is either because their foreign policy success or failure stands in contradiction to their domestic policy achievements, such as Lyndon B. Johnson's failure in the Vietnam War compared to the success of his Great Society programs, or their personal behavior contrasts with their professional success, such as Nixon's Watergate and Bill Clinton's Lewinsky scandal.
Abraham Lincoln is often considered the greatest president for his leadership during the American Civil War and his eloquence in speeches such as the Gettysburg Address.
The 1948 poll was conducted by historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. of Harvard University.[2] The 1962 survey was also conducted by Schlesinger, who surveyed 75 historians; the results of this survey are given in the book The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents by William A. Degregorio. Schlesinger's son Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. conducted another poll in 1996, not currently on the chart below.
The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents also gives the results of the 1982 survey, a poll of 49 historians conducted by the Chicago Tribune. A notable difference from the 1962 Schlesinger poll was the ranking of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was ranked #22 in 1962, but was ranked #9 in the 1982 survey.
The 1996 column shows the results from a poll conducted from 1989 to 1996 by William J. Ridings, Jr. and Stuart B. McIver, and published in the book Rating the Presidents: A Ranking of U.S. leaders, from the Great and Honorable to the Dishonest and Incompetent. More than 719 people took part in the poll, primarily academic historians and political scientists, although some politicians and celebrities also took part. Participants from every state were included, and emphasis was placed upon getting input from female historians and "specialists in African-American studies", as well as a few non-American historians. Poll respondents rated the Presidents in five categories (leadership qualities, accomplishments & crisis management, political skill, appointments, character & integrity), and the results were tabulated to create the overall ranking.
A 2000 survey by The Wall Street Journal consisted of an "ideologically balanced group of 132 prominent professors of history, law, and political science". This poll sought to include an equal number of liberals and conservatives in the survey, as the editors argued that previous polls were dominated by either one group or the other, but never balanced. According to the editors, this poll included responses from more women, minorities, and young professors than the 1996 Schlesinger poll. The editors noted that the results of their poll were "remarkably similar" to the 1996 Schlesinger poll, with the main difference in the 2000 poll being the lower rankings for the 1960s presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy, and higher ranking of President Ronald Reagan at #8. Franklin Roosevelt still ranked in the top three.
Another presidential poll was conducted by The Wall Street Journal in 2005, with James Lindgren of Northwestern University Law School for the Federalist Society.[5] As in the 2000 survey, the editors sought to balance the opinions of liberals and conservatives, adjusting the results "to give Democratic- and Republican-leaning scholars equal weight." Franklin D. Roosevelt still ranked in the top-three, but editor James Taranto noted that Democratic-leaning scholars rated George W. Bush the sixth-worst president of all time, while Republican scholars rated him the sixth-best, giving him a split-decision rating of "average".
Thomas Kelly, professor emeritus of American studies at Siena College, said: "President Bush would seem to have small hope for high marks from the current generation of practicing historians and political scientists. In this case, current public opinion polls actually seem to cut the President more slack than the experts do." Dr. Douglas Lonnstrom, Siena College professor of statistics and director of the Siena Research Institute, stated: "In our 2002 presidential rating, with a group of experts comparable to this current poll, President Bush ranked 23rd of 42 presidents. That was shortly after 9/11. Clearly, the professors do not think things have gone well for him in the past few years. These are the experts that teach college students today and will write the history of this era tomorrow."[6]
The C-SPAN Survey of Presidential Leadership consists of rankings from a group of presidential historians and "professional observers of the presidency"[7] who ranked presidents in a number of categories initially in 2000 and more recently in 2009.[8][9] With some minor variation, both surveys found that historians consider Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Franklin D. Roosevelt the three best presidents by a wide margin and William Henry Harrison (to a lesser extent), Warren G. Harding, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, and James Buchanan the worst.
Because Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms as both the 22nd and 24th President, the total number of Presidents in each poll is at least one less than the number of the most recently serving President in the poll. Because of their short time in office, Presidents William Henry Harrison and James Garfield are sometimes omitted from these polls.
More than 1,000 people have participated in the surveys. The issue of the validity of the rankings has been of special interest to historians and political scientists, who have tried to specify the relative importance of personality, leadership, issues and partisanship. Quantitative ranking by groups of scholars has been in favor in recent decades, displacing the traditional methods of evaluation by individual writers as typified by Bailey (1966) and most biographers.
The Murray-Blessing 1982 survey[10] asked historians whether they were liberal or conservative on domestic, social and economic issues. The table below shows that the two groups had only small differences in ranking the best and worst presidents. Both groups agreed on the composition of nine of the top ten Presidents (and were split over the inclusion of either Lyndon B. Johnson or Dwight D. Eisenhower), and six of the worst seven (split over Jimmy Carter or Calvin Coolidge). Conservatives placed Democrat Harry S. Truman at a higher ranking.
An ABC News poll about presidential greatness, taken 16–20 February 2000, asked 1012 adults in the US, "Who do you think was the greatest American president?"[11]
A Rasmussen Reports poll taken June 13–24 of 2007 asked 1,000 randomly selected adults to rate America's presidents. Six presidents — George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy — were rated favorably by at least 80% of respondents.
A Washington College poll about presidential greatness, taken February 11, 2005, asked 800 adults in the US, "Thinking about all the presidents of the United States throughout history to the present, who would you say was America's greatest president?"[12]
A Gallup poll about presidential greatness, taken February 9–11, 2007, asked 1006 adults in the US, "Who do you regard as the greatest United States president?"[11]
A Quinnipiac University poll, taken May 23–30, 2006, asked 1,534 registered American voters to pick the worst U.S. President of the last 61 years.[13]
"Which of these eleven presidents we have had since World War II would you consider the worst president — Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush?"
A USA Today/Gallup Poll, taken December 8–10, 2006, asked 1009 adults in the US, "How do you think each of the following presidents will go down in history—as an outstanding president, above average, average, below average, or poor?"
Bailey, Thomas A. (1966). Presidential Greatness: The Image and the Man from George Washington to the Present. New York: Appleton-Century. → A non quantitative appraisal by leading historian.
List of presidential rankings Historians rank the 42 men who have held the office. AP via MSNBC. Feb. 16, 2009 Poll
Hidden categories: Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages | Articles needing additional references from October 2009 | All articles needing additional references | All articles with dead external links | Articles with dead external links from November 2009 | All Wikipedia articles needing clarification | Wikipedia articles needing clarification from November 2009 | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from November 2009
I know I've already said this, but I'm completely head over heels in love with Kid Icarus. I'm sure it's partially because it was one of the first video games I played way back when, but I also think it's just one hell of a game. One hell of a *hard* game, for sure, but a good one too.
I just had to say that. Plus, I wanted to post this super cool piece of semi-educational game art (found at GoNintendo.com) and needed something, even mindless drivel like this, to go along with it.
I've been eyeing the PSP for some time. Unlike a lot of Nintendo fanboys, I only diss other companies, consoles and games when it's warranted. I had a PS1, I currently have a PS2 and I'm considering buying an Xbox 360, and I'll be damned if I'm not considering a PSP as well for games like Loco Roco, the Final Fantasy Tactics redux and a cute little gem called Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure.
I have yet to play it of course, but from what I've read it's quite an enjoyable action/RPG romp. Don't take my word for it--take the word of the folks at Siliconera (they just posted a thumbs-up review for the game).
Nintendo's "ho hum" attitude towards the future of its Mother/Earthbound series in the States confounds me to no end. OK, so Earthbound on the SNES didn't break sales records--that's the case for quite a few of the Japanese giant's titles, yet they've brought out sequels for many of them.
First we didn't get a the Mother 1+2 compilation for the GBA, and now we're not getting Mother 3 either (as far as anyone can tell). Thankfully it seems we don't need to rely on Ninty for either title, as the emulation community has stepped up to the plate to release English-language patches for both games.
Unfortunately, neither is all that close to being done. In the meantime, though, the great crew at GayGamer.net have posted a video of what has been completed of the Mother 3 project. Check it out here http://gaygamer.net/2007/03/mother_3_translation_gameplay.html
One of the gazillion games I'm looking forward to playing on my DS is Square's Heroes of Mana. That decision is based solely on the few screen shots I've seen of the game, however. Well, those days are over now as a brief trailer for the game has hit the Internet for all our viewing pleasure (http://www.gamebrink.com/nintendo-ds/2313-Heroes_of_Mana-video-2.html). Just a tiny bit of gameplay is included, but it should certainly be enough to whet your appetite for more.
Wow, this one is strange. Along with the fairly straightforward port of SimCity coming to the DS, EA is bringing a new version of its popular Sims series to the Wii--and it isn't like any Sims you've ever played before.
Unlike the borderline realistic appearance of the hit PC and console versions, the Wii version seems to take its cues from Nintendo's Animal Crossing games. Everyone and everything is cute and cuddly--like little Stay Puffed marshmallow men.
I probably won't be picking this one up, but not because of the PG appearance. There's just too many other top-notch titles coming to the Wii this year that are grabbing my attention instead. If you haven't yet made up your mind, check out this video that just appeared on Siliconera: http://www.siliconera.com/index.php/2007/02/26/watch-the-sims-remade-for-wii/
Square sure has been mum on the subject of the American release of Dawn of Mana for the PS2. Heck, I've hardly heard anything about the Japanese release of the game either, and it's been out for a while.
Well, the game is set to come to our shores in late May, and you can bet I'll be picking it up (even if it can't possibly compare to its SNES brethren). For those of you who feel the same way, take a few seconds to ogle the official cover image here. Hopefully it will help tide you over...
Some interesting news recently came out of gaming pub Next Generation about the use of Miis in third-party Wii titles. Apparently the big N hasn't supplied other companies with the information needed to allow them access the characters for use in games. Also, the mag reports, there's no telling if and when Nintendo will put this information in the hands of third parties.
Unfortunately, the news isn't all that shocking to me. Ninty always has held information close to its chest, even when it seemingly damaged relationships with other companies (and, in effect, harmed its own consoles and company). We've already seen this with the Wii, in fact, with Nintendo only recently providing third parties with the information needed to add WiFi connectivity to their games.
I understand a lot of games that just wouldn't work with Miis replacing the main characters, but I'd like to see more of it nonetheless. Here's hoping Nintendo can work something out so it will happen to some extent in the future.
I don't know why, but I've been looking forward to this announcement--that the previously Japan-only SimCity DS will make its way to U.S. gamers this summer. It's probably because I put a lot of hours into an earlier version of the game (this one's based on SimCity 3000 on the PC) while I was in high school).
Some of the Japanese-ness (I know that's not a word) will be removed from the version we see, no doubt, but everything important should remain, including the cute little DS-only additions (sign proclamations with the stylus and blow into the microphone to put out fires).
In case any of you have come to enjoy my news updates, reviews and other quippy commentary and have missed it the past few days, I just wanted to let you know that my husband and I are in the process of moving across country (from Madison, Wis., to Seattle) and I'm unable to do any substantive posts. I'll be back in action on Friday, though, so in the meantime why not check out some of the great sites mentioned on the right side of the screen?
Strange things seem to be brewing in the land of doom and gloom surrounding Sony's PS3. According to recent reports, the version of the system due to be released soon in Europe won't feature the hardware (included in Japanese and American systems) that emulates PS2 and PS1 games. Instead, "limited" emulation of the systems' games will be made possible through software.
"This move is a part of our cost saving measures, similar to the wide variety of cost saving measures we have applied with both the original PlayStation and with PS2. In time this leads to a reduction in the cost of manufacture and over time allows us to reduce the cost of the PS3 to consumers."
It isn't all that shocking to hear Sony's looking at ways to make its monolithic system cheaper, though it's a bit of a head-scratcher that the change hasn't created a price cut for European gamers (it's going to be just as expensive as ever when it's released on that side of the pond).
American and Japanese fans of Sony's latest attempt to take over the world shouldn't get too cocky--word on the street is the hardware-to-software switch eventually will be coming to our shores as well. All of which means I won't be tossing away my slimline PS2 anytime soon...
Nintendo graciously gave U.S. gamers an early preview of this Monday's VC update in the form of a press release announcing imminent availability of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (originally developed for the N64).
Hopefully Nintendo doesn't follow the footsteps it took when it released The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past a month or so ago (the SNES classic was the only VC release that week). Even if that's the case, though, you can hardly go wrong by purchasing Ocarina of Time, arguably Link's best video game adventure to date.
In other VC news, the folks at GoNintendo claim two TurboGrafx-16 games will be showing up on a Wii Shop Channel near you sooner rather than later: the seminal Splatterhouse and the mediocre Double Dungeons. GoNintendo didn't specify whether they're due for release in Japan, Europe or the U.S. Here's hoping at least Splatterhouse comes to the States eventually.