individuals would be a good match with schools in Berkeley.

School board director John Selawsky said the appointments have the added benefit of making the district’s administrative leadership more representative of Berkeley’s ethnic diversity. Both Ramos and Kelly are bilingual (Spanish and English). Delaney is African American.

Child Nutrition Services Program under fire

Also at the Wednesday meeting, the board’s last regular session of the school year, a citizens’ advisory committee delivered a sweeping criticism of the district’s Child Nutrition Services Department.

In a report, the committee said a lack of coordination and leadership in the department has severely hampered the implementation of the district’s 1999 Food Policy, widely hailed as a model in the state for its ambitious goal of “(improving) the health of the entire community by teaching students andBoard and high school principal,” according to a letter inviting the community to a meeting with two school board members at the church Monday.

The new group organizing the meeting, Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action, is made up of 12 local religious congregations and is part of the Pacific Institute for Community Organization, a nationwide network of faith-based community organizations.

Board of Education President Terry Doran and school director Joaquin Rivera promised to be at the meeting.

Among the concerns parents have is that their children are placed automatically in remedial English classes at Berkeley High, where they miss studying other subjects.

“Many children in the (English Language Learner) program have been speaking English since birth,” said Liz Fuentes, a parent of a graduating Berkeley High senior and teacher at Thousand Oaks


given out by InterAction, a coalition of more than 165 U.S.-based relief, development and environmental agencies, which work throughout the world.

Lee has worked to pass legislation to create multilateral international efforts to fight the spread of the disease. She was also co-author of HR 3519, the Global AIDS and Tuberculosis Relief Act of 2000, which was signed into law by Bill Clinton and would go on to give $1 billion to the combat AIDS worldwide.

Lee has also introduced legislation that would increase the affordability of AIDS drugs and links debt relief to HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention.

Commenting on the award, Lee said, “I am honored to receive this award, but the real recognition should go to the many organizations and people who are dedicated to international humanitarian, development and$26 preview nights. Berkeley City Club 2315 Durant 843-4822

Films

Pacific Film Archive June 8, 7:30: Aerograd; June 8, 9:15: The Letter That Was Never Sent; June 9, 7:30: Comic and Avant-Garde Shorts; June 10, 5:30: Pitfall, 7:25: Woman In the Dunes. Pacific Film Archive Theater 2575 Bancroft Way (at Bowditch) 642-1412

Bernard Maisner: Illuminated Manuscripts and Paintings. Through Aug. 8 Maisner works in miniature as well as in large scales, combining his mastery of medieval illumination, gold leafing, and modern painting techniques. Flora Lamson Hewlett Library 2400 Ridge Rd. 849-2541

Berkeley Historical Society Walking Tours All tours begin at 10 a.m. and are restricted to 30 people per tour $5 - $10 per tour. June 23: Sue Fernstrom will lead a tour of Strawberry Creek and West of the UC Berkeley


250 megawatts, Schremp estimated. That’s enough power for 150,000 to 187,500 homes.

LOS ANGELES — Former bitter rivals NetZero and Juno Online Services, the two biggest providers of free Internet access, said Thursday they will merge in a deal that is expected to create the nation’s second-largest Internet connection company.

NetZero of Westlake Village, Calif., and Juno Online Services of New York announced the deal after close of market.

The two would share 7 million subscribers and would be larger than the online access arms of Microsoft, Earthlink and AT&T, company executives said in a statement. Only AOL would be bigger.

Under the terms of the all-stock transaction, NetZero and Juno will become wholly owned subsidiaries of a newly formed company called United Online Inc.

NetZero stockholders will own about 61.5 percent oftwo had clashed in court since late last year, when NetZero sued Juno on accusations of patent infringement.

The California company alleged that Juno was using unique technology that combines pop-up ad banners and a navigational tool.

A federal judge lifted a temporary restraining order against Juno in April, though a trial was expected later this year.

Juno has also taken court action against NetZero.

In a separate case, Juno filed a patent infringement case against NetZero and Qualcomm Inc. last summer over Eudora e-mail software.

In that suit, which was also last reported as pending, Juno alleged the Qualcomm-developed program infringes on a patent it holds for software that allows it to continue to display advertisements connected to e-mail messages even when a user’s computer is not connected to the Internet.

WASHINGTON —


lady Laura Bush, who is rarely seen when her husband conducts business, took a front-row seat, just one sign that this was a most special occasion for the young Bush White House. Three charter buses deposited members of Congress at the North Portico. Senior White House political strategist Karl Rove bounced through the East Room slapping backs and shaking hands two at a time. Vice President Dick Cheney, Bush’s chief operative on Capitol Hill, slipped into the ceremony unannounced but for the clapping of the first lawmaker to spot him.

A grander ceremony planned for the South Lawn was chased inside by rain, so the dozens of guests who couldn’t fit in the East Room were seated before TV monitors in the Grand Foyer. A grinning Rick Lazio, whohe said in the confession. “Her hands turned purple and blue and I kind of realized that was it.”

Stayner said he did the same to Silvina Pelosso, and said he slashed Juli Sund’s throat the next morning after repeatedly sexually assaulting her and telling her he loved her.

The 147-year-old courthouse was silent as the tape of Stayner, in a quiet voice, described the crimes in graphic detail.

At one point in the proceeding, a weeping Jose Pelosso, Silvina’s father, who had flown from Argentina for the hearing, shouted a slur at Stayner and stormed out of the courtroom.

Stayner, 39, already is serving a life sentence after pleading guilty in federal court to murdering Yosemite naturalist Joie Armstrong in July 1999, a crime that led to his arrest in the


tourists’ case. That case was held in federal court because she was killed in a national park.

He could face execution if convicted in the tourist case. Prosecutors said they will decide whether to seek the death penalty before the July hearing.

Stayner said he had no intention of killing the three women tourists until he saw them through the window in their room at the rustic motel where he worked outside the park as a maintenance man.

In the previous three months, however, he had begun to contemplate murdering his girlfriend and her two daughters. He described the woman as a “slob” and said he fantasized about sexually assaulting her girls and then burning the house down.

But he said his plans were thwarted because a caretaker lived upstairs from theThen he went to his room above the lodge office, donned camouflage pants, a black, hooded sweatshirt and grabbed a backpack that contained a gun, a knife, clothesline and black duct tape.

He knocked on the door of room 509 and said he had to check on a leak in the bathroom.

Carole Sund initially refused to let him in the room, but relented when he said he would get the manager.

When he emerged from the bathroom, he pulled a gun. The girls, he said, were unfazed, merely looking up from watching the videotape “Jerry Maguire.”

“The mother’s eyes got real big,” he said.

He made the three lie on the floor, bound their hands behind their back with duct tape, gagged their mouths and then took the girls into the bathroom


while he strangled Carole Sund.

He then threw her body over his shoulder and dumped it in the trunk of their rental car.

“It felt like I was in control for the first time in my life,” Stayner said.

Stayner, a hairy, but balding man, said was careful to collect any hairs he left behind, something he learned from a forensic science program on the Discovery Channel.

At times during the interview with FBI interrogator Jeffrey Rinek, Stayner told how he had close brushes with law enforcement officers. He seemed boast as he told agents how he tried to throw them off his trail by wiping off fingerprints and getting a kid to lick an envelope so his DNA wouldn’t be on a letter he sent to the FBI with clues.

Agents encouragedhim at times, telling him he was amazing, and they even expressed sympathy.

“Oh my God, you’ve been living with that?” Rinek exclaimed as Stayner began sobbing as he described how he killed Juli.

Stayner, who wrapped a naked Juli in a blanket and put her on the front seat of the car, said he had grown fond of her and didn’t want to kill her. But he didn’t have anywhere he could take her.

Juli asked if he was going to kill her, but Stayner didn’t answer.

As he drove from the Cedar Lodge with Juli in the passenger seat and two bodies in the trunk, Stayner had no idea where he was going.

Eventually he pulled into a parking lot at a scenic overlook at Lake Don Pedro, a reservoir in


the Sierra Nevada and carried Juli down to a grassy section on a trail below.

After sexually assaulting her again, Stayner said he turned the girl around so he didn’t have to look at her. He kissed her a few times and told her he wished he could keep her.

Juli made a gesture as if putting a gun to her head, like she wanted to be finished off.

Stayner said he grabbed her hair, pulled her head back and took a couple of swipes with a long, serrated kitchen knife across her throat. He said he stared off in a daze toward the reservoir below as she made a loud, gurgling noise.

“I didn’t want her to suffer like the other two,” he said. “I know she did.”

SACRAMENTO — California environmentalists,other groups unhappy with the direction in which they believed the GOP was moving, all huddled together under the same big tent. Sarah Palin, the first politician with a national profile who managed to appeal to each of these constituencies, went on to become a sort of patron saint of the movement after her ticket’s loss in 2008. Upstart Tea Party candidates ousted establishment Republicans in primaries (goodbye, Bob Bennett) and beat favored Democrats in general elections (hello, Scott Brown), relying on grassroots enthusiasm to overcome their lack of national party dollars. Aspiring politicians learned in 2010 that even in an era of Democratic power, by striking just the right balance of fiscal conservatism, limited government, and tacit bigotry, they could cobble together enough support to put their


the Duke Twilight, good for third place...also finished third at the Carolina Fast Times with a vault of 11-7.75.

Prior to Duke: 2007 California state pole vault champion...named 2007 San Diego Tribune Track & Field Athlete of the Year...also named San Diego Hall of Champions Track & Field Athlete of the Year in 2007...vaulted a personal-best 13-0 at the final home meet of her sophomore year.

Personal: Daughter of Renee and Terry Mattoon...born November 17, 1990... has one older sister, Kate... sister Kate was a pole vaulter at the University of Notre Dame (2005-07)...a biology major.characters across decades and to capture whole communities. Of course, readers (particularly male readers) are not always willing to grant writers (particularly female writers) the authority to paint on such broad canvases, which is one reason Marian Evans chose to publish her novels as George Eliot. Middlemarch—which tracks idealistic young Dorothea Brooke and ambitious physician Tertius Lydgate as they make ill-considered marriages in a scandal-prone English manufacturing town—takes on the sweeping scope, complex politics, and historical specificity that define its French Realist predecessors, while adding a psychological acuity that anticipates Henry James.

4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1873–1878, 864 pages in Penguin Classics trade paperback edition, trans. by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky) A near-contemporary of Middlemarch, Anna Karenina also traces the parallel paths of two characters, in


Archive for September, 2009

The giants of the East are positioned to upset U.S. sanctions on Iran by supplying Tehran with gasoline.

U.S.-led fuel sanctions on Iran are being undermined by China and Russia. Chinese companies are already selling gasoline to Iran, and Russia is poised to follow suit.

Because Russia has so often thwarted sanctions on Iran in the United Nations Security Council, the U.S. has been forced to get more creative.

In anticipation of Iran’s refusal to enter into talks about its nuclear program, the United States has developed a sanctions plan that bypasses the UN.

Although Iran is among the world’s largest crude oil producers, it lacks the refining capability to meet domestic demands for gasoline. The proposed U.S. sanctions zero in on Iran’s gasoline imports, which comprise up togrowing economic power. Russia is emboldened by its central role in energy politics.

Weighed down by internal and external strife and division, America is increasingly incapable of defending its position on the global stage, and the rise of Russia and China—as well as other powers—will increasingly marginalize the U.S.

For more about these ultimately hope-filled trends, read “The Giants of the East” and Russia and China in Prophecy. •

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Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on RUSSIA – CHINA – THE REAL STORY

Surrendering to Iran
September 18, 2009 | From theTrumpet.com
One fateful step at a time.

The most recent stop on America’s surrender tour came yesterday, when President Obama scrapped plans for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe. The original plan, established by President Bush in 2007, was designed to protect America’s


with the United States.

All of this means Iran has dodged yet another bullet aimed at curbing its nuclear ambitions. It also supplies Tehran with more valuable time to reach the nuclear finish line.

For the United States, meanwhile, it represents another monumental defeat in the war against terrorism’s primary state sponsor—the regime that has been targeting and killing Americans for going on 30 years. •Two men separated by 100 years are united in their search for freedom. In 1856 a slave, Samuel Woodward and his family, escape from the Monroe Plantation near Richmond, Virginia. A secret network of ordinary people known as the Underground Railroad guide the family on their journey north to Canada. They are relentlessly pursued by the notorious slave hunter Plimpton. Hunted like a dog and haunted by the unthinkable suffering he and his forbears have endured, Samuel is forced to decide between revenge or freedom. 100 years earlier in 1748, John Newton the Captain of a slave trader sails from Africa with a cargo of slaves, bound for America. On board is Samuel’s great grandfather whose survival is tied to the fate of Captain Newton. The voyage changes


forth by the court in the judgment:
"1. That ELSA GARCIA had been a passenger in a truck owned and operated by Silvio Hidalgo.
"2. That Silvio Hidalgo had in full force and effect a policy of automobile liability insurance providing uninsured motorist coverage with Fideltiy and Casualty Insurance Company of New York.
"3. That Silvio Hidalgo stopped his truck in the south bound lane on East 8th Court, Hialeah, Dade County, Florida, in front of ELSA GARCIA's home located on the east side of said street.
"4. That East 8th Court is a two lane street with one lane for traffic south bound and one lane for traffic north bound.
"5. That ELSA GARCIA exited said truck from the right hand side passenger door and crossed directly in front of the truckin or upon or entering into or alighting from."
Only one Florida case has been cited for our guidance. In Industrial Fire & Casualty Ins. Co. v. Collier, 334 So.2d 148 (Fla. 3d DCA 1976), Collier was driving his automobile home from work and one of the tires became flat. During the time he was changing the tire, his car was truck by another automobile which caused his car to strike and injure him. At the time Collier was injured, he was standing outside his car, with it jacked up, removing the spare tire from it. This court held that Collier was "occupying" his car within the meaning of his policy with Industrial Fire. The decision relied for support upon the holdings of a list of cases from other


the left-hand lane of the highway. Under these facts, Elsa had completed the act of "alighting from" the truck. She was engaged in a distinctly separate activity having nothing to do with the truck, that is, the crossing of a highway in order to go home. We hold that the activity of Elsa when struck by the passing automobile was too remote in time and place from the act of exiting the truck in which she had been a passenger to be considered as "alighting from" the truck. The summary judgment entered must, therefore, be reversed inasmuch as the trial judge applied an erroneous rule of law in holding the plaintiff liable under the policy of insurance as a matter of law.
Reversed and remanded for further proceedings inThen, he struggled home and battled monsters, men, and creatures. And, once home, he had to battle the leeching men who had moved into his home and abused his wife's kindness. But what I most love about Odysseus is his imperfections. He is not a perfect hero-he is an adulterer, he is quick to violence, and sometimes he just makes the gods angry. But he fought and survived to find a place at home. He never gave up and continued to battle each challenge that came his way. I can admire that and attempt to emulate it.

In terms of heroines, there are two women that immediately jumped to mind, and since both are similar in nature, I can talk about them at once. I'm thinking of Lily Bart


A man has broken down at a royal commission hearing while giving a harrowing account of being sexually abused, assaulted, bullied, bound and choked at an exclusive Sydney boys school.

The witness, who is now in his 50s, told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse that he was abused in the first week he arrived at The King's School, in January 1972.

"I was sitting in the [recreation] room when one of the boys pushed me off a wooden bench seat that he was sitting on — it was his to sit on, not mine," he said.

"It ended in a few minutes when he took to my face and my body with his fists, he beat me until I cried then I ran off to thedorm."

The witness, who was 11 at the time, told the inquiry things got worse after that.

"A week later, or two, the same boy sexually abused me," the witness said.

"He was in the dorm naked reading a porn magazine and masturbating.

"I've never forgot how shocked I was — I'd never seen a man's erection before and I froze.

"He wouldn't let me leave until he finished and then he asked: 'Don't you like porn?'

"I was 11 years old, I didn't know porn existed until I arrived at King's."

The former student said for the next six years he was labelled "the poofter" at the school, and he did not report the abuse for fear of being beaten.

He said older boys ran initiations for younger students and he was forced to take


part in a series of violent traditions including "black balling" — where boys would cover his scrotum with boot polish.

On one occasion he said he was set upon by five boys who held him down while he was sexually assaulted.

He told the inquiry he was often threatened with knives and deprived of liberty, on one occasion he was bound and choked with his school tie until he passed out.

He said the abuse took a heavy toll.

"My life at King's was so unhappy I became increasingly angry and depressed," he said.

The witness said teachers at the school turned a blind eye to the abuse.

"I was constantly and mentally assaulted by abusers, and other boys, right under the nose of masters and teachers — whose pastoral care medical teams weresupposed to be in charge of my welfare," the witness said.

Teacher punished him, survivor says

The former student said that one teacher even sought to blame him for his predicament.

"He often remonstrated with me for failing to get along with other boys, my school work, my attitude," he said.

"He punished weak boys with neglect and made them be punished with pack drills — which were calisthenics [done] to the point of failure — and the boys would cry."

He said the situation became so dire that he considered suicide.

He told the hearing that he thought telling teachers was not an option, because of reprisals, and that he was too ashamed to tell his parents.

"How could I tell a soul that I'd been raped by a boy with his hand? And


the whole school thought I was gay, and they beat me, and tormented me, and did unspeakable acts to me," he said.

The former student said King's had denied him access to his school records and had not apologised or made recompense.

He told the inquiry he suffered ongoing trauma as a result of his treatment, including depression and flash-backs.

He said he wanted the school to admit they failed him, and that it was "not the child … this kid didn't fail".

"I was made a victim for six years, and none of us that have suffered institutional abuse — be it sexual or otherwise — want to look like victims," he said.

"For [The King's School] to claim they didn't know anything like this was happening is totally incredulous."

School principal concernedabout the school's image, says victim

Another man, John Williams, spoke at the hearing saying he was sexually abused at the King's School in Sydney in the 1960s, and he was rebuffed when he finally went to confront school authorities in 2002.

Mr Williams said he went to the meeting seeking acknowledgment of the abuse, rather than for compensation, but meeting with principal Tim Hawkes gave him little comfort.

"Tim Hawkes told me that he understood what had happened when I was at school however he was very concerned about the school's image, and said if it went public it would have a negative impact on the school," Mr Williams said.

"He also talked about the school not having enough money to help me."

The royal commission hearings continue.


to children, talk about bad medicine.The cigarette industry denied for years that smoking causes a plethora of fatal conditions, everyone once insisted that the world was flat, and people who sell millions of tons of this known carcinogen press that their product is safe.

Letter to

The FDA

I just signed the following petition addressed to: The FDA.

----------------Take Aspartame off the Market

The FDA approval of aspartame was fraudulently obtained by Searle, aspartame's inventor. It was rejected for sale to consumers, yet the president at the time took executive action to ensure that the FDA commissioner could take no further action. Rodents that died from it were autopsied after a year of decomposition and brain tumors were removed. These rodents were deemed healthy. They never reported that they found that it causedINTRODUCTION
============

INTERNATIONAL DIGESTIVE ENDOSCOPY NETWORK (IDEN): THE PAST AND PRESENT
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Rapid advances in gastrointestinal (GI) endoscopy have made it necessary for us to continue to equip ourselves with latest endoscopic technologies and techniques in various fields. In 2011, IDEN took its first step toward sharing the latest researches, skills and technologies on diverse topics of endoscopy in the upper and lower GI, including colonoscopy, enteroscopy, and endoscopic mucosal resection/endoscopic submucosal dissection (IDEN 2011 July 1 to 2, 2011, Grand Hilton Hotel Convention Center, Seoul, Korea). This year, IDEN was held at the same venue on June 9 to 10, 2012 with 2 days of impressive scientific programs dealing with a wide variety of concerns covering from the upper and lower GI to pancreatobiliary endoscopies. Some of the most outstanding leaders


in their fields were invited from Asia Pacific, USA, and Europe. IDEN was designed to have participants get an opportunity to explore and discuss a variety of issues in basic and clinical research to endoscopy, gastroenterology and other various clinical problems we can share, forming \"the NETWOKS\" for tomorrow. IDEN 2011 was first inaugurated by Prof. Chang Duck Kim (Korea University Anam Hospital, Seoul, Korea) successfully, and Prof. Myung-Hwan Kim (Seoul Asan Hospital, University of Ulsan, Seoul, Korea) and Prof. Young-Tae Kim (Korea University Guro Hospital, Seoul, Korea) served as a chairman and congress president of IDEN 2012, respectively, to extend IDEN fruitfully as a root of bigger international networking in the field of digestive endoscopy.

THE REAL INTERNATIONAL NETWORK: WHY IS IT NEEDED?
=================================================

Endoscopic developments offer enormous potential forstone for providing higher solutions for digestive endoscopy, which is why a network is prerequisite. As much as networking is concerned, telemedicine is a convenient and efficient tool for remote education purpose in various fields, and it can also be used to educate doctors and medical students. Prof. Joon Soo Hahm, MD (Hanyang University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea), the former chairman of Korea Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy, established the effectiveness of the telemedical system for live endoscopic multichannel demonstration conference by demonstrating the effectiveness and usefulness of a multicenter-based live endoscopic demonstration through live, interactive, high resolution video transmission using advanced networks and the digital video transport system (DVTS) and concluded that a multicenter-based live endoscopic demonstration is a very effective conferencing method when used with advanced


Copyright (c) 2015 Baptist Press. Reprinted from Baptist Press (www.baptistpress.com), news service of the Southern Baptist Convention.
The original story can be found at http://www.bpnews.net/42950/hobby-lobby-reversal-sought-in-congress

Hobby Lobby reversal sought in Congress

WASHINGTON (BP) -- Congressional Democrats have set themselves against the Supreme Court in the battle over religious liberty, and the lead Southern Baptist spokesman on the issue is urging legislative leaders not to erode the First Amendment right.

Democrats in the Senate unveiled a bill July 9 to counter the high court's decision in support of the religious freedom of business owners in the controversial Hobby Lobby case. The Protect Women's Health From Corporate Interference Act would bar any federal law, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), from exempting an employer from abiding by the Obama administration's abortion/contraception mandate. Thatrule, implemented by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to enforce the 2010 healthcare reform law, requires employers to provide for their workers drugs and devices that can potentially cause abortions.

Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called for leaders in both the Senate and House of Representatives to resist efforts to weaken RFRA, which requires the government to have a compelling interest and to use narrow means to burden a person's religious exercise.

There should not be "a toggle switch" that the government uses to decide "who may and may not exercise religious liberty," Moore said in a statement for Baptist Press. "And as the Supreme Court rightly affirmed, American citizens do not forfeit their First Amendment rights simply because they engage


in commerce.

"And yet, now some would jeopardize religious freedom in order to fight their culture war," he said. "Religious liberty is too important to everyone in this country to see it end up a dead trophy on the wall of the sexual revolutionaries."

In its June 30 opinion, the 5-4 Supreme Court majority relied on RFRA in ruling for the religious liberty rights of Hobby Lobby and other family owned, for-profit businesses that conscientiously objected to the mandate to pay for abortifacients. RFRA, a 1993 law that was approved nearly unanimously by Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton, protects the religious freedom of people by extending rights to the corporations they own, the court said.

In a letter Thursday (July 10) to congressional leaders, Moore saidorganizations, led by Planned Parenthood Federation of America and NARAL Pro-Choice America, endorsed the legislation, as did such groups as Americans United for Separation of Church and State and People for the American Way.

Introduction of the legislation came six days after the Supreme Court delivered another win for religious liberty to HHS mandate foes, this time to a non-profit institution.

The high court issued an order July 3 preventing enforcement of the HHS mandate against Wheaton College until the appeal process is complete. The legal challenge by Wheaton, an evangelical Christian school in suburban Chicago, is one of 100 lawsuits filed against the mandate, with 51 of those by non-profits, according to the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The justices' order in support of Wheaton appeared far-reaching. It said the


school -- and, by likely extension, other objectors -- need only inform HHS it is a religious non-profit with "religious objections" to the mandate to avoid enforcement during review by the courts. The college need not fill out the form required by the government, the justices said. The court said the order should not be interpreted as a communication of its opinion on the case's merits.

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a 15-page dissent in which she described the court's order for Wheaton as "extraordinary and reserved for the rarest of cases." Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan joined in the dissent.

Philip Ryken, Wheaton's president, applauded the order. "We continue to believe that a college community that affirms the sanctity of human life from conception to thegrave should not be coerced by the government into facilitating the provision of abortion-inducing drugs," he said in a written release.

Other non-profits gained relief from the mandate the same day the Supreme Court issued its Hobby Lobby opinion. Two federal appeals courts blocked enforcement of the regulation on the Eternal World Television Network and five Roman Catholic institutions in Wyoming, according to the Becket Fund.

The HHS regulation requires coverage of such drugs as Plan B and other "morning-after" pills that possess a post-fertilization mechanism that can cause an abortion by preventing implantation of tiny embryos. The rule also covers "ella," which -- in a fashion similar to the abortion drug RU 486 -- can act even after implantation to end the life of the child.

HHS provided an exemption


to its rule for churches and their auxiliaries but did not extend it to non-church-related, non-profit organizations and for-profit companies that object. The administration also offered an accommodation for non-church-related religious organizations, but critics said it was inadequate because it still forces such groups to provide access to the drugs through third parties.

GuideStone Financial Resources, the Southern Baptist Convention's health and financial benefits entity, and two of the organizations in its health plan have challenged the mandate in court and have asked for a permanent injunction. No decision has been made on the request.

The Supreme Court's June 30 ruling came in challenges to the mandate by Hobby Lobby and Mardel, both owned by the evangelical Green family of Oklahoma City, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, which is operated bythe pro-life, Mennonite Hahn family.

Moore's July 10 letter went to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Speaker of the House John Boehner and others in congressional leadership.

Tom Strode is the Washington bureau chief for Baptist Press,the Southern Baptist Convention's news service. BP reports on missions, ministry and witness advanced through the Cooperative Program and on news related to Southern Baptists' concerns nationally and globally. Get Baptist Press headlines and breaking news on Twitter (@BaptistPress), Facebook (Facebook.com/BaptistPress) and in your email (baptistpress.com/SubscribeBP.asp).

Formed in 1946 by the Southern Baptist Convention, and supported with Cooperative Program funds, Baptist Press (BP) is a daily (M-F) international news wire service. Operating from a central bureau in Nashville, Tenn., BP works with four partnering bureaus (Richmond, Va.; Atlanta, Ga.; Nashville, Tenn.; and Washington, D.C.), as


Diocese of Tunsberg

Tunsberg is a diocese of the Church of Norway. It includes parishes located within the counties of Vestfold and Buskerud, with the cathedral located in Tønsberg. The Diocese of Tunsberg consists of the cathedral deanery and 9 rural deaneries.

History
Prior to the establishment of the Diocese of Tunsberg in 1948, then counties of Vestfold and Buskerud belonged to the Diocese of Oslo. In a meeting of the episcopate in 1936, it was made clear that this diocese, which encompasses about a third of Norway's population, could not be managed by a single bishop. Therefore, the episcopate suggested that Vestfold and Buskerud should become their own diocese. But the Second World War intervened; the discussion was resumed after the liberation of Norway in 1945. The result of thisThe next installment in J.K. Rowling’s “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” series has started shooting in the U.K. Principal photography on the as-yet-untitled movie started Monday at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden outside London, where the Harry Potter movies were shot.

The studio offered new details of the upcoming film, which will see Eddie Redmayne return as magical beasts lover Newt Scamander to take on Gellert Grindelwald, the dark wizard played by Johnny Depp, who was unmasked at the end of the first movie.

Jude Law will star as future Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore in the film, a younger version of the character originally played by the late Richard Harris and Michael Gambon in the Harry Potter films. The sequel moves the main action to 1920s Paris, shortly after


and Credence, whose fate was unknown at the end of the first move, makes a return, played again by Ezra Miller.

Zoe Kravitz will play new character Leta Lestrange, a fleeting glimpse of whom appeared in the first film, and Claudia Kim will also star as a young woman introduced in the film as an attraction at a wizarding circus.

The screenplay was written by Rowling, as with the first installment. David Yates returns to direct. Rowling, David Heyman, Steve Kloves, and Lionel Wigram will produce the new film with Neil Blair, Rick Senat, and Danny Cohen as the executive producers.

Other cast members include William Nadylam as a wizard named Yusuf Kama; Ingvar Sigurdsson as a bounty hunter named Grimmson; Ólafur Darri Ólafsson as Skender, who runs the wizarding circus;Survey of nutritional management practices and metabolic disorders in West Virginia dairy herds.
Sixteen farmers, representing three major dairy counties in West Virginia, were interviewed to determine current dairy management practices. Herd health records were used to determine the incidence of metabolic and digestive disorders. All feedstuffs used on these farms were sampled for chemical analyses. The total number of cows on the 16 farms surveyed was 1870 with an average herd size of 117 and 6387 kg milk produced per cow per year. Fourteen of the 16 farmers used forage testing services, obtained professional advice on feeding and nutrition, and attempted to feed according to production. Eleven of sixteen farmers increased grain 2 weeks prior to calving and all gradually adjusted the intake of grain to cows recently


" Famine in South Sudan." When I was growing up in the 1970s, it would have been an unremarkable headline. In those days, we were horribly habituated to images of African kids with matchstick legs and bloated bellies. Now, though, such headlines are startling, and for the best of reasons: Famines are slowly being eradicated.

According to the Danish academic Bjorn Lomborg, 1.7 million children died from malnutrition in the first decade of this century. A shocking number, to be sure; but it had fallen by 60 percent since the 1950s, despite the world population more than doubling in that time.

As usual, few saw the good news coming. "The battle to feed all humanity is over," wrote Paul Ehrlich in 1968. "Hundreds of millions are going to starve tofood in the world. But plenty is no guarantee against rapacious, brutal, corrupt regimes. Almost every recent outbreak of starvation has been caused by bad government or by war. The last 20 years have seen famines in Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan — all caused by conflicts. There may have been an even worse spasm of starvation in North Korea in the end of the 1990s (we can't be sure of anything in that secretive tyranny) caused, not by war, but by an insistence on economic self-reliance of the sort which, incredibly, some Western protectionists want to imitate.

South Sudan, which broke away from Sudan in 2011, has followed the post-independence script to the letter: corruption, autocracy, tribal violence, civil war. President Salva Kiir is


from the largest ethnic group, the Dinka. Since the end of 2013, he has been chronically at war with his former deputy, Riek Machar, who is from the second ethnic group, the Nuer. It would be like some comically dark Evelyn Waugh novel if it were not so tragic. Supporters of both men attack members of the other tribe; planting and harvesting are disrupted; humanitarian food supplies are blocked.

At the risk of sounding trite, what South Sudan needs is a minimally competent administration. The days when starvation was caused by drought or crop failure are almost over. Modern starvation is caused by politicians. The worst famines of the past century — 10 million died when Stalin collectivised Ukrainian farming in the 1930s, more than 20 million when Maodid the same to China in 1959 — were inflicted on people by the coercive power of the state.

South Sudan is no different. "This crisis is man-made," said State Department spokesman Mark Toner, "the direct consequence of a conflict prolonged by South Sudanese leaders who are unwilling to put aside political ambitions for the good of their people." Quite.

The solution to famine, strange as it sounds, is democracy. The great Indian economist Amartya Sen points out that mass starvation has existed under every other system of government: theocracy, absolute monarchy, fascism, communism. But never in a state that is accountable to its citizens at the ballot box.

Obviously, it is not in our gift to impose democracy on other nations, only to inspire by our example. So, short of


A certified firearms instructor for the NRA:

New Jersey police and Dept. of Children and Families officials raided the home of a firearms instructor and demanded to see his guns after he posted a Facebook photo of his 11-year-old son holding a rifle.

"Someone called family services about the photo," said Evan Nappen, an attorney representing Shawn Moore. "It led to an incredible, heavy-handed raid on his house. They wanted to see his gun safe, his guns and search his house. They even threatened to take his kids."

Moore was not arrested or charged.

A Dept. of Children and Families spokesperson told Fox News they could not confirm or deny an investigation or raid had taken place due to government regulations.

"The department has a child abuse hotline for the state of NewJersey and anybody can make a call to that hotline," spokesperson Kristen Brown said. "We are required to follow up on every single allegation that comes into the central registry."

Moore, of Carneys Point, is a certified firearms instructor for the National Rifle Association, an NRA range safety officer and a New Jersey hunter education instructor.

He recently posted a photograph of his son wearing camouflage and holding his new .22 rifle. The child has a New Jersey hunting license and recently passed the state's hunter safety course.

"If you look at the picture, his finger isn't even on the trigger - which is proper," Nappen told Fox News. "If half of Hollywood could follow that rule we'd be thankful."

Brown said their role is not to go out and search Facebook


Home > News > Specials

The Rediff Special/George Iype

April 15, 2004

Out of every three cases of suicide reported every 15 minutes in India, one is committed by a youth in the age group of 15 to 29.

In the Union Territory of Pondicherry, every month at least 15 youths between the ages of 15 and 25 commit suicide.

In 2002, there were 10,982 suicides in Tamil Nadu, 11,300 in Kerala, 10,934 in Karnataka, and 9,433 in Andhra Pradesh.

In 2003, the largest number of farmers -- around 175 -- committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh.

Kerala, the country's first fully literate state, has the highest number of suicides. Some 32 people commit suicide in Kerala every day. T hese statistics are startling. Southern India is the country's information technology hub. The southern region iscompeting with northern India to become the country's economic powerhouse. But south India has another distinction, one that it would rather not have: the region accounts for the world's largest number of suicides by young people, according to The Lancet, the respected British medical journal. Some 50,000 people in the four states of Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh and the Union Territory of Pondicherry kill themselves every year. This statistic becomes even more alarming when you consider that the total number of suicide cases recorded in the whole of India in 2002 was 154,000. The Lancet has published an authoritative study on suicides in southern India in its April edition. The study says the suicide rates among young men and women in southern India are the


highest in the world. The study conducted by the Vellore-based Christian Medical College on teenagers in Tamil Nadu, especially in the Vellore region, found that the average suicide rate for women is as high as 148 per 100,000, and 58 per 100,000 for men. Worldwide, this rate is 14.5 per 100,000. Also, in the West, men are three times more likely to commit suicide than women. "This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Dr S K Vijayachandran, nodal officer for Kerala's district mental health programme. "It is not youngsters alone. More people in the southern states belonging to every walk of life are killing themselves than in other regions in India." For instance, the suicide rate in Kerala was about 32 per 100,000 persons in 2002,thrice the rate in India as a whole. "This is a huge problem," Dr Vijayachandran says, "which requires urgent intervention." Experts like him put forward various reasons for the dismal state of mental health among people in the South. Some of these reasons, which mental health experts term 'acute stress factors,' include: Family conflicts, domestic violence, academic failures, and unfulfilled romantic ideals.

Voracious appetite for high-end consumer goods spurred by moneylenders and hire-purchase schemes.

The wide gap between people's aspirations and actual capabilities.

The disintegration of traditional social support mechanisms as was prevalent in joint families.

Emergence of a trend towards nuclear families, alcohol abuse, financial instability and family dysfunction.

A growing population of the aged.

Failure of crops, huge debt burdens, growing costs of cultivation, and shrinking yield. Two years ago, the National


Indian states, there is low level of registration of suicide deaths in police stations," says Sunder Rajan, a retired Tamil Nadu police officer. "Therefore, no figures about suicides in the country can be relied upon for any scientific analysis of the problem." On its part, the National Crime Records Bureau has one main reason for the increasing suicide rate in the country: 'Family problems.' Psychologist Mathew Kurien of the Southern Medical Centre, Bangalore, agrees. "In this modern age," Dr Kurien says, "children are not brought up peacefully. They are under pressure to deliver at school; they are under pressure to appear for competitive examinations. After they reach puberty, no one in the family gives them any advice about the meaning of life." Dr Kurien's argument is borne outSwift to 59-fold coverage, Karma to 291-fold coverage and Magneto to 83-fold coverage. In all cases, the phage genomes produced circular assemblies. Breakpoints in sequencing coverage were determined by manual inspection of contigs in CLC Workbench version 6.2 (CLC bio).

Terminal labeling of genomic DNA
--------------------------------

In order to locate the physical termini of the phiCbK chromosome, whole phage genomic DNA was ligated with a short oligonucleotide tag of known sequence and this product resequenced by pyrosequencing as described above. In principle, the oligo tag will ligate to the physical chromosomal termini and the boundary between the tag sequence and the phage genomic sequence will indicate the original physical ends of the phage chromosome. Genomic DNA of phage phiCbK was end-repaired with the NEBNext End Repair Module (NEB) using 1 μg


Kenneth Stampp; historian exposed true face of slavery

Kenneth Stampp, 96, a historian who helped transform the study of slavery in the United States by exposing plantation owners as practical businessmen, not romantics defending a noble heritage, died of heart ailments July 10 at a hospital in Oakland. He had vascular dementia.

His death was confirmed by the University of California Berkeley, where he taught from 1946 until retiring in 1983.

Mr. Stampp denied having the burgeoning civil rights movement in mind when he researched and wrote “The Peculiar Institution” (1956), which powerfully challenged the way slavery was presented in history texts. But the impact of the book was undeniably linked to the changing era in which it appeared.

Leon Litwack, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian who studied under Mr. Stampp and calledhim “one of the most important historians” of his generation, said that as late as the 1940s, many eminent historians of the South depicted slavery as a largely benign system.

As those writers saw it, blacks could be said to have prospered under the watch of benevolent slave owners. Still others, Litwack said, described slavery as an enterprise that was never especially profitable and one that might have dissolved on its own had the Civil War not interceded.

Mr. Stampp was among the first mainstream writers to devastate that comforting “magnolia-blossom interpretation of the plantation,” Litwack said.

Mr. Stampp documented the records of smaller slave-owning farms as well as the largest plantations to create a portrait of a society determined at all costs, including rebellion, to keep its prosperous but morally


repugnant way of life.

“After the necessary adjustments are made in costs and total income, surviving business records reveal that during the last antebellum decade slavery was still justifying itself economically,” Mr. Stampp wrote in “The Peculiar Institution.” “During the Fifties returns of 7 to 10 percent on capital investments were common. Even in the upper South slavery was amply rewarding those who took pains to preserve or restore the fertility of their soil and who directed their enterprises with reasonable efficiency.”

Southern historian John Bettersworth, reviewing the book for The New York Times, called it “American historical scholarship at its lucid best.”

Among Mr. Stampp's other prominent books was “The Era of Reconstruction” (1965), which disputed the prevailing idea that “radical Republicans” from the North were determined to humiliate theSouth after the Civil War and enfranchise blacks solely out of political self-interest.

Mr. Stampp's research showed those “radicals” primarily as well-intended, sometimes flawed men trying to make democracy work within a political system and culture that had never been known for its pristine ethics. As for blacks joining the Republican Party en masse, it was less a GOP conspiracy against the Democratic South, Mr. Stampp wrote, than former slaves facing a practical choice “between a party that gave them civil and political rights and a party whose stock-in-trade was racist demagoguery.”

With the book, Time magazine wrote, Mr. Stampp became “the most provocative” of historical revisionists re-examining the postwar era.

“Kenneth Stampp helped revolutionize our understanding of two of the most challenging and painful subjects in all of American history:


slavery and Reconstruction,” said Edward Ayers, a Southern historian who is now president of the University of Richmond. “In 'The Peculiar Institution' he portrayed slavery as a particularly cold-blooded business in which black people were imprisoned against their will, far different from the romantic and evasive way it had been taught throughout the first half of the 20th century.

“In 'The Era of Reconstruction,' Stampp showed that the period after the Civil War marked not the willful and malicious devastation of the white South by the North,” Ayers added, “but rather a clear-eyed and determined attempt to fulfill what emancipation had begun.”

Kenneth Milton Stampp was born in Milwaukee on July 12, 1912. At the University of Wisconsin under mentor William Hesseltine, he received his bachelor's degree in 1935, followedby a master's in 1937 and a doctorate in 1942, all in history.

Mr. Stampp's doctorate thesis led to his first book, “Indiana Politics During the Civil War” (1949), which looked at the tensions between pro-North and pro-South forces in the swing state. His other books included “And the War Came: The North and the Secession Crisis, 1860-1861” (1950) and “America in 1857: A Nation on the Brink” (1990).

His marriage to Katherine Mitchell ended in divorce. In 1962, he married the former Isabel Peebles Brown. She died in 1996.

Survivors include two children from his first marriage, Kenneth M. Stampp of Oakland and Sara Stampp of Berkeley; a daughter from his second marriage, Jennifer Stampp of El Cerrito; and two grandchildren.

Mr. Stampp taught history at the University of Maryland before


joining the Berkeley faculty and was, at various points in his career, a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, Oxford University and the University of London. In 1952, he received a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship, which he used to research “The Peculiar Institution,” and received in 1993 Gettysburg College's Lincoln Prize for lifetime contribution in Civil War studies.

In addition to professional organizations, his memberships included the NAACP and the Berkeley chapter board of the American Civil Liberties Union.

He said in a 1996 interview that he decided on his career at a young age.

“I remember a child's biography of George Washington, and some other books that related to history which made me think very early that I wanted to be a historian,” he said. “In fact, in fifth grade I toldwith a fourth-quarter concussion. The nine sacks were the Chargers’ third-most in franchise history and most since recording 11 versus the Jets in 2012.

Nose tackle Damion Square had half a sack in his first 25 career games.

The Ohio State product leads the team despite having missed the first four games with a hamstring injury. He’ll turn 22 in July.

Notable

The Browns converted four of their first five third-down attempts with a fourth-down conversion following the only failed one. They scored 17 points on their first three possessions. Before Saturday, the team hadn’t scored multiple touchdowns in six straight games. Its first two drives went for touchdowns.

Punter Drew Kaser, an Ohio native, had a strong game in his local stadium. His coverage units helped his effort. He averaged 50.2 yards


of five punts with a 46.4 net average. One was downed inside the 20. There were no touchbacks.

Despite the sacks, the Chargers did not record a takeaway. So ended their 20-game streak of forcing at least one turnover. It was the longest in the NFL. San Diego entered Saturday as the only team to have forced a turnover in every game this season.

The Chargers have scored a touchdown on their opening drive in nine of 15 games. That leads the NFL. Rivers is 39-of-47 for 583 yards and six touchdowns without an interception on game-opening drives.

Inside linebacker Denzel Perryman was carted from the sideline to the locker room with what was diagnosed Saturday as a knee sprain, a source said. He is scheduled to undergo an MRI. PerrymanWhilst I was finding out about stewards last week, I was also reading about bailiffs. The bailiff was the senior person living on the manor if the lord was absent.

Whereas the position of steward was one of honour, demonstrating the regard in which a man was held by his lord, that of bailiff was much lowlier. He was likely to be a younger son of the gentry or the member of a better-off peasant family and was appointed on the steward’s recommendation. That means that somehow or other he had to have come to the attention of the steward. In the worst cases this might be through bribery, but you can also imagine pushy parents putting their sons in the way of local stewards, or stewards appointing their


own illegitimate sons. Often, of course, the steward would simply come across a young man who impressed him.

The bailiff was an employee of the lord of the manor and he collected the rents, so reading and writing were necessary skills. As the lord’s permanent representative on the manor, he didn’t just represent the lord to its inhabitants, but also to strangers and visitors. When the lord was absent, the bailiff lived in the manor house. His life would have been fairly comfortable, except that he was usually hated by the tenants and villeins.

In many ways, his duties were the same as those of the reeve, the chief villein on the manor. There were major differences between them, however, not least that the bailiff was paid and the reevewas not. The reeve was compensated in other ways, and occasionally helped himself to compensation, but the bailiff was paid with money.

The bailiff’s first priority was the demesne, the part of the manor that was solely for the support of the lord. It was the bailiff’s job to manage the livestock and the crops, and to make sure that as little as possible was stolen. He was also responsible for buying in from outside things that couldn’t be grown or made on the manor, such as salt, iron, tar, parchment or nails.

The bailiff was supposed to view the whole manor every day so that he could decide when the land was to be manured, and when the threshing, ploughing sowing and harvesting were going to take place. He


also had to watch over the shearing of the sheep. The sale of wood and skins from the manor was his responsibility. The money from these would have been an important part of the lord’s income. He decided which of the lord’s livestock should be bought or sold.

The bailiff also had non-agricultural duties. He was chief law officer and business manager for the manor.

Lords were advised not to appoint friends or relatives as their bailiffs, but the mere fact that this advice is recorded indicates that it was a fairly common practice that must have led to many problems.

Sources:

A Dictionary of Medieval Terms and Phrases by Christopher Corèdon and Ann Williams

Life in a Medieval Village by Joseph Gies and Frances Gies

The English Manor by Mark Bailey

Life in aThe Senate just passed a bill that, if signed into law by the House, would rebuke President Donald Trump's support for Saudi Arabia in its controversial war against Yemen.

The bill would end America's support for Saudi Arabia in a military campaign against Yemen so harsh that the United Nations referred to it as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, according to NBC News. Thousands of Yemenis have been killed due to Saudi military actions and thousands more have been left on the brink of starvation. Yet despite this human rights concern, as well as Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's involvement in the assassination of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump has continued to defend Saudi Arabia and support that nation's war against Yemen, even going so far as


to publicly disagree with and criticize his own intelligence community when they have lambasted the Saudi government.

Advertisement:

"The bottom line is that the United States should not be supporting a catastrophic war led by a despotic regime with an irresponsible foreign policy," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., declared from the Senate floor on Wednesday. The bill passed by the Senate was co-sponsored by Sanders and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on the grounds that (as Sanders put it in his speech) it would "begin the process of reclaiming our constitutional authority by ending United States involvement in a war that has not been authorized by Congress and is unconstitutional."

As Sanders further explained to Talking Points Memo, "The issue of war and peace is obviously an enormously important issue for the peopleHeavy firing kills two visitors at Naini jail in Allahabad

Motorcycle-borne miscreants opened indiscriminate firing on visitors who had come to meet their relative lodged at Naini Jail in Allahabad on Sunday. In the firing, son and uncle of a murder accused lodged in the jail were killed while four others were injured. The police recovered a rifle and a pistol from the spot.
According to Allahabad police, Jhusi resident ChandrabhanYadav was loged in Naini Jail allegedly for the murder of two brothers of one Shailendra. On Sunday, Chandrabhan’s family members had come to meet him in the jail on Sunday afternoon. No sooner than they alighted the four-wheeler, two motorcycle-miscreants hurled crude bomb on them creating flutter in the area.
The miscreants then opened indiscriminate firing on the Yadav’s kin.


Cao jolts the House

In December 2008, the nationally unknown Vietnamese community activist captured a seat for Republicans in majority-black New Orleans, becoming an instant — albeit short-lived — celebrity for the GOP.

Story Continued Below

On Saturday night, he handed Democrats their only Republican vote on the centerpiece of their domestic agenda, a massive overhaul of the nation's health care system that promises to enhance coverage for tens of millions of Americans and thousands of Cao's constituents. Now he's a bit of a cult hero on the left — a profile in courage, Democrats say — and television bookers were scrambling to find cell phone numbers for his aides Sunday.

Republicans and Democrats who have worked closely with Cao in Louisiana and Washington say they weren’t a bit surprised — eventhe past couple of months, according to an aide. President Barack Obama called him Saturday, giving Cao an opportunity to press the president to help with hospital development and forgiveness for disaster loans in New Orleans.

All along, Cao was looking for reasons to support the bill, according to spokeswoman Princella Smith. But there was one seemingly insurmountable obstacle among a series of reservations: The former Jesuit seminarian was dead-set against voting for it if it expanded abortion rights in a new health care exchange.

He met with members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and called Democrats to help secure their votes for the Stupak-Pitts amendment sharply limiting the use of federal dollars for subsidizing abortions, according to Smith.


(MJL, JHC), PPCS clinicians, or one of the two Special Volunteers, approached the patients in several Clinical Center hospital units and Outpatient clinics while the patients were in their hospital rooms or waiting for their medical appointments in outpatient clinics. The PPCS representative first verbally described the study and if the patient expressed interest, they were presented with the written Consent Information and the packet of questionnaires. PPCS representatives were available while patients completed the questionnaires. All patients were already involved in experimental treatments and research projects for the study and treatment of their particular disease at the NIH Clinical Center. They were in various stages of their treatment and recovery. Some patients were in remission in response to the investigative treatments. Two hundred consecutive NIH Clinical CenterKen Williams' Music Video Spurs Bank of America to Close Loan

When banks drag their feet in the loan process, most borrowers probably feel like there's little they can do to move things along. But one Georgia couple may have hit on a way for borrowers to get results.

Ken and Meredith Williams launched a full-on social media onslaught -- capped by the lovable music video above -- in an attempt to persuade Bank of America to finally close a loan that had been delayed for more than two months.

In late September, a senior mortgage officer told the Williamses that the $203,000 loan they had applied for to buy a home in Decatur, Ga., would close on October 31st, according to a timeline the couple posted on closeourloan.wordpress.com, a blog


they created to broadcast their plight.

That's when Ken and Meredith decided to make some noise: Ken made a theatrical appeal through a YouTube music video while Meredith banged the social media drums of Twitter and WordPress. She tweeted to @BofA_help, Bank of America's customer service Twitter handle, got her friends to send similar tweets, and created the "Close Our Loan" blog to host the couple's YouTube escapades and a timeline detailing their loan troubles.

"Why can't a house go fast when a buyer's got cash, preapproval and two cats," sings Williams, as he dances in front of a Bank of America office. "It takes time, obviously, a month or even two, but now we're looking at three!"

Ken posted the music video on Dec. 11, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.The video generated a flurry of media reports in the following days, while Meredith's Twitter offensive spurred Bank of America's social media team to relay the couple's complaints. And it all paid off. On Dec. 16, Bank of America closed on the couple's loan and agreed to pay the late fees charged to the Williamses by the seller of the home.

"The Williams' loan closed December 16. We apologize for the delay in closing, and for the inconvenience, we provided a credit at closing," Bank of America conveyed in a statement to AOL Real Estate.

The couple broadcast the news with a little more oomph. "CLOSED THE LOAN. KEYS IN HAND. PER DIEM FEES PAID FOR BY BANK OF AMERICA," trumpets a Dec. 16 entry in their blog's timeline.

The Williamses


The United States Department of Justice issued the warrants for those arrests, many of which were carried out by the Swiss police at a luxury hotel in the early morning hours. Mr. Blatter was not implicated or charged that day, but Swiss and American officials later said that he was a target of their investigators.

Now, four months later, Swiss authorities are directly investigating Mr. Blatter, who has led FIFA since 1998. His tenure has seen significant growth of the game and the organization’s coffers, but also a variety of corruption scandals.

A United States law enforcement official said Friday’s announcement by Swiss authorities was independent of the Justice Department’s investigation, which continues. But Swiss and American investigators continue to coordinate their efforts, and the teams met just last week.

OneInternational Space Station Heads of Agency Meeting

ESA PR 41-2004. Space agency leaders from the United States, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada met today at the ESA Technical Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands, to discuss International Space Station (ISS) cooperation activities.

At this meeting, the ISS Partnership unanimously endorsed the ISS technical configuration and reviewed the status of ISS on-orbit operations and plans. The new ISS configuration is planned for completion by the end of the decade and will accommodate on-orbit elements from each of the ISS Partners. The configuration will enable increased utilization and will provide early opportunities for an enhanced crew of greater than three people.

The ISS Partnership’s endorsement of this configuration provides a clear basis for completion of programmatic and financial evaluation and subsequent agreement on


the Space Shuttle to flight in the March 2005 timeframe as a significant step for continuing ISS assembly and operations.

The leaders of the ISS partnership also noted the continued success of on-orbit ISS utilization and operations activities, including the spacewalk on 30 June 2004 by Expedition 9 Commander Gennady Padalka and NASA ISS Science Officer Mike Fincke, and the April 2004 research mission to ISS by ESA astronaut André Kuipers, as well as continuing successful critical on-orbit operations of Canada’s Canadarm 2.Milton Keynes Theatre is proud to support an extensive programme of Creative Learning activities in its venue and in the local community. We deliver a regular and varied programmes of events, workshops, school holiday activities and weekly classes for young people and adults.

All programmes include activities related to the shows being presented in the theatres as well as opportunities to explore theatre-making more generally and to build personal skills.

In addition, we offer regular events exploring the options available to young people
interested in a career in theatre.

Youth Theatre

The Milton Keynes Youth Theatre focuses on all aspects of theatre and aims to develop young people’s skills and interests through a varied program, professional mentoring and a range of performance opportunities. Through drama games and exercises they also aim to help


and coaches also repeatedly ignored warnings about the potential scope of the sexual abuse in the sport, according to the SCNG report. In one notable case, officials reportedly knew of abuse accusations from the 1990s as early as 2010. This information did not result in any punishment for the coach. The coach in question ultimately reached a settlement with his accuser.

Although there have been cases of lifetime bans from the sport, it sometimes take years to reach that point. For example, Erick Lans, a former Massachusetts-based coach, was arrested on rape and child sex abuse charges in January 1999 but wasn’t banned until March 2013, 12 years after he was convicted of intent to commit rape, indecent assault on a child under 14, and rape and abuse ofin a loaded condition, the cords in the belt ply, particularly the cords in the vicinity of widthwise opposite edges of the tire may be broken due to fatigue. The reason is that circumferential stretching and compressive strains may be repeatedly produced in the belt ply of the pneumatic tire by deformation due to contacting the ground during running, and such strains similarly act even on the cords embedded in the belt ply. Because the cords embedded in the belt ply are arranged substantially in parallel to the equatorial plane of the tire and bent in a wavy or zigzag form, if they are stretched and compressed circumferentially as described above, a bending moment may be produced in the bends of the filaments constituting the cord so as


team, but apparently, our running shorts weren't cute enough for her.

I have always liked my body, always. I wasn't fat. I wasn't one of those girls that griped and complained and had conniptions every time I had to put on a bathing suit. And I'd never had any complaints from anyone else either. Especially not Chad, who constantly told me how he loved that I ate real food and looked normal and didn't ask him if I looked fat every time I changed my clothes. No one except her ever had a problem with it or ever said anything to me about it. I refused to get a complex because of one high strung woman. And now Dad had to start this crap?

"She does care. We just didn'tsquinted as it stung. My fingers had a little blood on them, but nothing alarming. "I guess I did. It's all right, really, just a bump."

I tried to stand, but he held me down with a hand on my shoulder.

"Whoa. Wait, ok? Let me call an ambulance. If something happened to you after you saved me..."

"Really, that's not necessary. I'm fine."

He frowned and paused, screwing up his lips like he was debating it. I looked at him in the soft glow of the streetlights. He was tall, that I'd seen from before, and broad, but his hair was brown and shaggy, curling around his ears and forehead, and his eyes were light, blue maybe or hazel. His lips were fascinating as he sucked them in and out of


And I was definitely attracted to mister blue eyes.

"Ok, but we're just friends. I've never even been to his house before. You don't think he'll mind my just showing up when he said he'd text me, do you?"

"Positive that he won't."

"Ok."

We started walking in that direction. I knew where Kyle lived but it was nice to have someone to walk with in the dark. "So, what year are you?" I asked to fill the silence.

"Heading into Sophomore. I'm studying to be an architect."

"Really? That's neat. I guess that's why you like geometry."

He smiled and nodded. "What about you? Are you headed to school anywhere?"

"Uh." I sighed. "To be honest, as lame as it sounds, I haven't even thought about it. I kind of blew it this year withclutched my queasy stomach, feeling a pounding in my head and chest. The pound coincided with my heartbeat.

I sat up and saw stars. That had never happened before. At first I was alarmed. Maybe it was something worse than the flu. I stood and went to the mirror. I looked haggard.

Kyle had brought me home right after the movie last night. It wasn't that late when I got home, but Dad was nowhere to be seen, as usual. I went straight to bed, feeling more exhausted than I had in a long time.

And now, I could see my face was dark with fatigue. My eyes were dull and shaded. What in the world? I lifted my arm to push my hair back to check the little gash on


scare you with it all. I mean, you're so young and you don't know me. Yet. But...we will always be drawn together. We'll always crave each other. We'll always be in tune with each other, physically and mentally. There is nothing that can change or break that. And even if there was, I wouldn't want to. Not for the world." His hand moved to my cheek and he caressed it with his thumb. "I've seen you. You can't fake or glimmer what's inside your mind. And you are sweet and caring and absolutely lovable in that head of yours. I promise that my family will love you. In fact, I'm sure they already do. You're one of us now and they can sense how I feel about you."

"Howpulled back to look at me. "My, my, you are a pretty little thing, aren't you?"

"Am I?" I asked lamely and everyone giggled and cackled.

"Well 'course you are! Look at those freckles. And these cheek bones," she mused and ran a cool finger down one to accentuate.

"Thanks," I said, doubly lame.

"Gran, please." Caleb pulled my arm to make her release me and she did. I couldn't help but latch onto his arm and try to keep my eyes up to look around the room with confidence instead of looking like a trapped rabbit. I didn't want them to feel like they were bothering me. I could do this, but...there were at least twenty people in there. "All right, can you all give her some breathing room, please? Jeez,


right then, forbidding us to ever see each other. We were separated for a week before he was able to find me, get to me and sneak past my parents to make it back to me."

I remembered this morning. The strange flu like feelings and aches I had and how Caleb took them all away with one touch this morning. I looked up curiously and she nodded.

"Yeah, think about what you went through this morning but everyday, all day, non stop for a week." I hugged myself while she shook her head. "My parents thought I was crazy, that I'd have some kind of breakdown and were thinking about having me put into an institution."

"Wow."

"So, you see why we are all so concerned for you two, especially you,of the strange girl who had been thrust into their lives. I did not want their sympathy. I licked my lips nervously.

Then I felt a hand on mine and it all went away, like wind blowing fog to clear the air. I only felt calm and warm when I looked up into those blue eyes. He was rescuing me again, with a little encouraging smile to boot. So I told her what she wanted to know.

"My mom left last summer. It's just been me and my dad and he's depressed and a little...bitter. I barely see him. I don't have any other family except one adopted brother who lives in New York. No grandparents. No uncles or aunts. No cousins. Just us."

I waited for the onslaught of 'ahhs'


you like."

"Sure. That'd be great."

She extended her hand to help me up and I took it. Once standing she took my arm in her other hand and laid her fingers precisely lining up to lay over the black handprint on my arm. She looked into my eyes and I saw her gray eyes swirl a bright green. I gasped a little and she smiled at me.

I began to see the scene in my head of when Marcus had grabbed me, but it was all backwards. It played like a movie in reverse. It was freaky. Then the vision stopped just that quickly. When she removed her hand, the handprint was gone. My jaw dropped.

"How did you do that?"

"It's my ability, dear. I can heal things of the supernatural.in to whisper in my ear. "Yes, you will. They are your family now, too."

I looked over and his face was so close our noses almost bumped. My heart galloped and I turned back to focus on my garlic bread. I decided I needed to talk to him. Understand him. Know him. I knew he went to Tennessee and was studying to be an architect, other than that, I had no clue. "So, you live with your family?"

"Yeah. When I'm not at school I stay with my parents about thirty five miles from here. When I'm at school, I have a little apartment there."

"And, Maria's mom is your sister?"

"Yep. Jen."

"What does she do?"

"She works with us."

"Us?"

He looked at me and warred with whether to tell me or not.


to you. You haven't returned any of my text or voicemails, even at the diner."

"Beck, I'm sorry, all right? I've been having a hard time lately. I just didn't want to drag you down with me."

She stood up off the steps and came to stand in front of me. "Mags, you know better than that. I'm a glutton for drama and baggage. You know this," she joked but stepped forward a little and looked at me seriously. "You could have talked to me."

"I just didn't want to talk about it. I don't want to think about it."

"Look. Your mom is a skeez for leaving, but your dad has no right to treat you like this just because he's angry or depressed or whatever. He needs to chill andthis morning in my bathroom when he thought I looked gorgeous in blue, how he loved my freckles. And how even after all that I still felt young and inadequate.

I wanted him to want me because he wanted me. Not because he was imprinted with me and couldn't help himself. So I smiled at Beck and told her to have her way with me.

"Really!" she squealed and she shut my bedroom door. "You never let me play doll with you!"

"I know, now's your chance. Don't go overboard," I warned.

"Ok. What are we going for here? Where's he taking you?"

"A barbeque joint in his home town."

"Boo. That gives me nothing to work with." She pressed a finger to her lips as she thought. "What do you want?"

"I just want


push my hair back with like a headband. She was always so crafty, always coming up with crazy things to do. It's like her brain never turned off.

She pulled her long gold chain necklace off, with an open heart at the end that hung half way to my navel and put it around my neck.

"Perfect. Now shoes. Aha."

She handed me my strappy gold flat sandals and I pulled them on before she dragged me back to the bathroom. My hair has a natural curl at the ends, always has, but she wanted them to curl her way. So she curled and did my makeup and then painted my nails a barely there pale pink. She ended the ensemble with small gold studs in my ears and smiled atbeside mine, and then I was seeing him, a vision of him. He was standing at a stoplight, listening to Cage The Elephant on his mp3 player and thinking about Kyle coming up to join him at Tennessee the next semester. He looked back and did a double take as a beautiful young girl made her way to the crosswalk.

I couldn't believe that was what I looked like to him. I didn't look like some silly high school girl. I looked pretty and confident, distant and a little sad.

The girl looked around and even in the dim light he could see her freckles. He liked them. She checked her phone and stopped behind him to wait. He wanted to turn and get a better look, but didn't want


right?"

"Yep."

"And what about your brother? Where is he?"

I told him about my parent's adoption of Bish, how he moved to New York and I never see him anymore but we text all the time. That he left for school before mom left so he missed all the drama.

"So," I asked, "what about Jen? I don't remember seeing her husband there this morning. Where did she meet him?"

"Uh." He sat up slowly, setting his elbows on his knees and looking uncomfortable. "Well, remember we told you that no one has imprinted in a long time."

"Yeah, I remember."

He waited, watched me and I thought hard because it seemed he wanted me to figure something out. Then it clicked. His sister couldn't be but a few years older than Caleb. So,and stood next to him.

"Hmm. I'm not sure I can be seen with you anymore. I'm thoroughly disappoint- Ah!" He grabbed me around my stomach from behind and lifted me, swinging me around. "You tricked me!"

He pressed his face to my ear. "And you totally fell for it, too."

This savored strongly of the vision I had had of us when we imprinted. His breath on my ear, so close to my neck... I felt goose bumps glide down my skin rapidly and instantly blushed because I knew he could feel them too.

"Yeah, I guess I did," I said, but it was all wrong and breathless.

He set my feet to the ground, but didn't let me go, his hands moved to my upper arms. We stood looking out at


in and enjoyed the feeling of clarity and calm from his touch. "Are you ready to go home yet?"

"No, but I guess I better. It's getting late."

"Here," his hands went inside my jacket and he pushed my arm through the sleeve, "better zip this up. It's dark so it'll be even colder on the bike."

I let him pull both my arms through and zip my jacket up before he took my hand and we made our way back to the parking lot.

"I picked a good day to wear a dress, huh."

"It may not be practical, but you look very pretty."

"Thanks. So, um." I had wanted to ask him this question since I first found out about all this, but couldn't get up the nerve. "Do you..." I sighed.

"Whataround me, "Maggie and I decided to head up to the lake for a couple weeks. So, she might not see you for a while."

Just saying the words let alone thinking about it sent my body in a panic. I gasped and let out a little cry of distress, to my embarrassment, but I had no control.

Dad looked at me sideways as Caleb stepped a little closer.

"Sir, please don't do that. I, um, have a few things that I asked Maggie to help me with before I go back to school. It's kind of important."

It wasn't completely a lie.

Caleb's hand snaked out slowly and low to touch the ends of my fingers with his, and him and I both sighed. I looked up to his face, he was


withdrawing. I am too. Come here, you need me."

"What?"

"Maggie, it's just the withdrawals. Touch my hand and everything will be ok."

"Kyle, I am not your significant. What are you doing here? Where's Caleb?"

He looked hurt and shocked. He started muttering to himself.

"Dad never told me about this. I thought you'd need me, right away. I didn't think you'd fight me and hallucinate."

"I'm not hallucinating!" I yelled. "Where's Caleb?"

"Mags," he said more pronounced. "Who is Caleb?"

I started to falter. Had I just imagined it all? Kyle looked serious. He looked startled. He looked hurt and his eyes beseeched me to take his hand. I didn't know what was going on but I held my hand out and let him grasp it. His fingers were cold and rough, not likeroom for everyone, but we're not snobs. Promise."

"I know. It's just a little overwhelming compared to what I've seen before."

He pulled up to a big black double gate with a J in silver on each one and a half circle centered in the filigree work along the top of the gate and fence. Just like his tattoo on the inside of his wrist. He pressed a red button on the voice box.

"Yes? State your business here," a pompous British voice answered.

"It's me, Randolph. Cut the British crap."

"Oh. It's you, Caleb," a now normal American voice said. "I was trying it out. No good?"

"Nah," Caleb laughed. "I'd stick with the Aussie if I were you."

"Oh, well. Come on in, your father's in his study."

"Thanks."

"What was that?" I asked.

"Our butler


I was still a little worried."

"Do you want me to run for the door screaming? Because I can do that if you want."

He laughed loudly, his dimple winking, and grabbed me around my stomach. "No, I don't want that."

"Just checking."

"You really are kinda perfect," he mused quietly.

Oh, I wanted him to kiss me. I wanted him to badly. I didn't know why he hadn't yet, but I knew he wanted to from that little flash from his mind. So why was he stalling?

His expression told me he read my mind, but as he opened his mouth to say something we heard a voice over the intercom.

"Caleb, is that Maggie? What are you doing here? Is something wrong?" Peter said frantically in his deep timber voice.

"Of course it's Maggie,with a building."

"Yeah. He's the best. And he loves it which makes it even better."

"Caleb?" Peter shouted down the hall. "Are you purposely keeping Maggie from me?"

Caleb rolled his eyes and pushed me forward with a hand on the small of my back. Peter was sitting at an insanely large cherry desk in a huge office with black walls as well. He smiled hugely when we entered.

"Here you go, Dad," Caleb said sarcastically and presented me like a gift. "I'll just wait over here."

Peter guffawed and came around to greet me. He was wearing black slacks and a blue Oxford button up with the sleeves rolled up.

"Oh, come now, Caleb." He hugged me tightly. "This is the only time I'll get this chance. Let me have my fun,"


In fact, I shocked him or... something when he wouldn't let go."

"Wouldn't let go?" he asked and I heard the edge to his tone.

"I handled it."

"Did he hurt you? Force you?" He moved to stand over me, tower over me. "Tell me the truth, Maggie."

"No, he didn't hurt me, just got a little carried away. I zapped him or whatever and told him I wanted you. And then I went inside."

His breathing was heavy and his face hard. "He better hope I don't see him walking around."

"It's ok." I stood, too, and placed my palm on his cheek. His breathing almost instantly calmed and he sighed, leaning into my hand. "Then Dad scolded me for it, like it was my fault. And then...he said he'd like it ifmoney. My mom took it when she left and my dad let things go too badly to help me with loans."

"Don't worry about it. My dad wants to take care of it."

"What! Like pay my way to college?" I stared at him. "No way. I couldn't let him do that."

"Why not? He has the money, that's what it's there for; family." He brought his head to mine. "You're family now. Anything that's ours is yours."

"Caleb, it's too much."

"No it isn't. Just think about it, ok? I'm not guessing here. He already talked to me about it. Same way with the house. It's your house now, too."

I hadn't even kissed him yet and he was already trying to pay for my college.

"Not me, my father," he corrected, reading my


you. Anywhere you go, whatever you do, you'll be a star. We love you, The 25 Hour Crew.'

The tears streamed down my face in record time. Smarty grabbed me into a warm hug. "Aww, sweetie," she crooned.

"Thank you guys," I squeaked out. "This means a lot to me. Really."

"No sweat. It's not much, but we wanted to do something for you," Big John said from behind me. He patted my back and went back to the grill. "So, how's your dad taking all this?"

I pulled myself from Smarty's grip and wiped my eyes as Mena put her arm around me. "He's actually...I don't know. He had some kind of breakthrough or something. He's almost back to his old self."

"Really," Mena said beside me, "well, that's great, honey."

"Yeah, ithe said softly.

"It's no problem."

I went to the fridge to grab the stuff I needed and when I turned back he was gone. So I made the sandwiches and called upstairs for him. He came down and thanked me for the sandwich, but ate in easy silence. When he was done he washed his plate and then took mine from me to wash as well. Then he smiled and kissed my forehead.

"Night. Sleep tight."

"Goodnight, Dad."

I then made my way upstairs, feeling lots of aches in my legs and back. My head pulsed with a headache so I took a scalding shower, placing my new bracelet on the sink, and waited for Caleb to get here so he could take it all away.

He came up and climbed in the


silent challenge. We walked over the bridge and he told me that he was looking forward to getting to college and wondered if Caleb had talked me into going yet. I glanced at him curiously and he just smiled and shrugged saying he knew his cousin.

He was supposed to room with Caleb at his apartment, but that was apparently not going to work now. I felt bad for him and assured him that if the decision was made for me to go, and I hadn't decided yet, that he would be more than welcome to stay at the apartment with us. He smiled sadly and said, "We'll see".

Eventually it started to sprinkle and we made our way out of the park. Then it started to rain, then aheld my cheek in his palm, covering the black mark from Marcus's swift hand. "No. I'm disgusted because they hurt you. I wasn't here, couldn't get here fast enough, and they hurt you."

Peter put his hand on Caleb's shoulder and he nodded and took a deep breath. His dad helped him remove his jacket and he wrapped it around me.

"We better get out of here before your dad comes. Someone had to have heard something."

He lifted me in his arms easily and I clung to his neck as his touch took the pain. I saw Kyle's father standing among the few around us.

"You saved me," I told him, remembering how he'd 'taught' me karate.

"I saw that," he said and smiled, placing a hand on my arm. "But you


Who says tar? "But if it's too much, say the word and I'll-"

"Caleb, I'm fine. Your family is so sweet."

"Our family," he corrected and I smiled.

"Don't worry about me...I think I'm falling in love with them." I held my fingers thumb and index finger up an inch apart. "Little bit," I said and smiled wider.

He stepped up to be one step under me, our heights matched.

"You're amazing," he said and lifted our entwined hands to kiss the back of my fingers. Then he led me down the last few steps to a kitchen full of watchful, weary and worried eyes all fixed on me.

# Chapter Seventeen

"Well, come on, pretty girl. Let's get this over with," Gran insisted as soon as my foot hit the bottom step.

I looked aroundshe meant by that. She pulled me to lay on the chaise lounge and propped a pillow under my head as I saw Peter and Caleb come into the den with us.

"Now, Caleb, come sit right here," she instructed and pointed to the spot on the floor by my head.

"Is this going to hurt?" I asked, unable to not ask. "It didn't really hurt the last time you removed one."

"Yes, I'm afraid it is."

Caleb looked at her sharply and I realized he hadn't known that either. "What do you mean?" he asked forcefully.

"Caleb, I'm sorry, sugar baby, but it was different last time. Yes, his intent wasn't pure then either, but this time it was pure malice and deceit. She's gonna have to feel that when I take


diverted. "Please."

He sighed. "I'll try. But I mean it, too. We've got to figure out a way for us to be together. I can't just let you go home and pretend everything's normal when I know that this isn't over. Marcus isn't going to just stop. We have to keep you safe and I can't do that sneaking in your window every night."

"Sneaking in her window!" Gran said scandalized.

"Gran, what else was I supposed to do? He was hurting her in her-" Caleb said while Peter said. "Now, Gran. You know with our kind there have to be exceptions."

"I know, but...Lord have mercy. Back in my day you'd have been shot for sneaking in some girl's bedroom."

"Well, her dad doesn't know, Gran. Otherwise it wouldn't work."

She threw herstill hate the idea of your family paying for it so I'll look into student loans or whatever I have to, but...yeah. I'm coming with you."

His face split with a grin and he took my mouth forcefully and gratefully. I fisted his shirt front as his arms went around me. I begged that we'd have no interruptions this time as his skin worked like a sponge to extract all my worries and sorrows. It felt like the room took a spike in temperature, I felt too hot, but in a good way. My hand wandered to his hair, shaggy and soft. I let him devour me until I was sure I'd die of not breathing properly.

I pulled back a little, but he didn't release me, just let us


movie. Were you a band geek or a jock in high school?"

He smirked. "Would it matter if I was a band geek?"

"Absolutely not."

"Well, I was little of both, I guess. I played the drums and bass in the school jazz band and was also wide receiver on the football team."

"Wow," I sighed.

"What?" he laughed.

"You're just good at everything, aren't you?" He laughed again, but I kept going as I tugged him under the tree to get out of the sun. "We have guitar, piano, drums, bass, and I know I saw a trumpet on your wall, though I didn't see you actually play it, then football, swimming, geometry, motorcycles. I mean you are a serious overachiever," I joked as I leaned my back against the tree.

He shrugged andhair behind me and to the side, then he placed a kiss on the back of my neck.

"Sleep. Feel better tomorrow."

"K," I muttered as I did what I was told.

~ ~ ~

"Wake up." Someone shook me. "You've got to get up, baby. You're going to be late."

"What?"

I opened up my eyes to see Caleb looking concerned. "It's after 10:00. You better get up. Or maybe you should stay home. Do you feel better?" He touched my forehead.

"After 10:00? Jeez, I thought I set my alarm," I groaned.

"You did. I've been trying to get you up for fifteen minutes. Are you feeling ok?"

"Yeah, I am." And I did. Sleeping with him was the best medicine. "Did you sleep well?"

"I always sleep best with you," he said sweetly, pulled me


down.

"I vote party," Beck said and then recanted. "If that's what everyone else wants to do."

"I don't care what we do," Ralph said sweetly, looking at Beck.

"What about you?" Caleb asked me.

"Whatever you want."

"Well. We can go to the party. He's a pretty nice guy so I wouldn't think it'd be too crazy."

"Ok. Party."

We finished up just as Mrs. Amy came by and said hello.

Caleb drove us to a dark parking lot in the woods. I took my sweater off in the car and we piled out. As you came over the dunes you could see the red and orange bonfire lighting the sand and trees behind it. There were probably fifty people out there on the beach.

Beck jumped out of the car quickly, towing Ralph behind her.we were chosen so young when everyone else imprinted in their early twenties; appropriate marriage age. There had to be a reason, but right now, I was just scared.

We heard a ruckus behind us. We both looked up to see a couple drunk guys barreling through the brush at the edge of the woods in a clumsy and uncoordinated fight. Caleb groaned and got up. They were yelling loudly and taking swings at each other.

"Stay here for a second. Let me pull these idiots off of each other."

He left and I sat up to look at the water. I continued to think as I heard Caleb trying to settle them behind me. I felt the stick in my arm before it registered that something was wrong. I felt


needles. "Just relax. I'm very good at this. It won't hurt. Lean back and close your eyes."

I did what she said though I didn't trust her, I had no other choice.

"I can't believe I have to do this to this poor girl." She took a deep breath. "It's for the good of the clan, the good of the clan."

"What?" I asked, wondering what she meant by what she said.

"I didn't say anything, dear. Lie back."

I looked at her curiously because I knew I heard her say something. Then her lips didn't move but...I heard her.

"This better work. I'm not spending the rest of my life experimenting on teenagers, Sikes."

I coughed a shocked laugh.

"What?" she asked out loud and began to look worried. She looked at her tubes inme sit in a well for days, testing a theory. And what would they do with me if it did break the imprint? Should I fake a broken imprint? Could they tell?

I sat for a long time, trying not to shake and jerk my muscles in pain because the sloshing of the water was driving me insane.

I listened to see if someone was up there waiting for me. I listened for their thoughts but got none. I tried to call Caleb but got nothing from him. After a few hours my teeth chattered so much that my jaw ached and I bit my tongue several times. I had an idea.

I spit my blood into the water around me and waited and waited. No glowing apparitions, nothing. I scolded


button of his shirt. "All this time I resented you two spending so much time together and you were saving her... I really wish you had told me then, Maggie, at the beginning."

"I didn't have my ability then, Dad. You never would have believed me."

"You're right," he laughed sadly, "I wouldn't have. Where are we sending these two?" my father conceded gruffly.

"Somewhere out west," Peter suggested.

"Arizona," I blurted out.

I peeked back at Caleb and saw a grateful little smile. He knew I wanted to go there because he wanted to go to school there. He'd never been and I wanted him to see it. He spoke to me and I could feel the love attached to the words in warmth and tingles.

I love you.

I know. I love you,Dad asked but his tone was easy, he wasn't accusing, just asking.

"Well, in a sense, yes, and I'm sorry about that. See, they would have gone after anyone in our clan who imprinted in this day because it hasn't happened in so long. It just happened that Maggie was it."

"So, Maggie has met your grandmother?"

"Maggie's met the whole family," Caleb explained softly. "I brought her over the day after our imprint to explain everything to her. To let her see my family so she wouldn't be afraid and ask any questions she had."

"Huh."

I heard a tongue clicking.

"Well," my dad continued, "I'd love to meet them, too."

"I was hoping you'd say that," Peter said. "I explained to them last night that we told you everything and they are anxious


Dad pulled me to him. "We just got her back last night. Haven't even had time to tell the police yet."

"What happened?" Bish asked and looked at me. He turned his head and squinted. He pulled me from Dad and looked closely at me with his hand on my shoulders. "Have I been gone that long? You're so..."

He was thinking how stunning I looked. How grown up and different I was.

Holy crap, what happened? How could I have missed so much? She looks more like mom than ever. Man, she was always pretty but she's just so... beautiful.

He had also noticed the two men standing behind us but hadn't acknowledged them yet, on purpose. He suspected they had something to do with all this and he'd have toI'd see Caleb in like five minutes. Normally, it wouldn't matter so much but I didn't want to be away from him at all for a while. I sighed and got a grip on myself. I'd have to learn to function like a normal person.

"Yeah," I agreed, my fingers scratching at the side of my thigh and glanced at Caleb. He smiled.

I know it's hard. It's just really bad right now because of everything that happened the past few days. Go with him and I'll see you at Kyle's.

I smiled and nodded, then told Bish I had to go grab my shoes. Caleb, Peter and Dad went on and were gone by the time I came back down.

"Ok, before we leave," Bish said and cornered me on the


I'm glad you're ok."

"Love you, too."

I hung up just as we pulled onto Kyle's street and...oh, boy. The street looked like a parking lot. There were cars everywhere.

"What's going on? Is the fair in town?" he grumbled as he pulled into a spot way away from Kyle's.

"It's kind of for me," I admitted softly.

"What? What do you mean? Oh, because you were rescued and all, but...this is his parent's right? They're making a big deal over you, huh? They must like you."

"You have no idea."

We made our way down the sidewalk and I was grabbed sideways and lifted as we passed the hedges on the edge of Kyle's yard.

"Holy crap, Mags! I've been worried sick about you."

"Kyle, hey."

He put me down and kissed my cheek, especially close toYork? I went to New York once."

She pulled him away and I was grateful. I squeezed Caleb's hand as we passed through the doorway. After we explained to Dad that I was fine we continued on. I was hugged and patted by everyone.

Kyle's parents said they barely recognized me. I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or not. His parents, Dad, Peter, Caleb, Kyle and I stood and talked for a long while about it all; getting my ability, the ascension and how the energy ribbons were all around us and how I'd projected my thoughts into them. They all crooned about how wonderful it all was. Dad listened intently with a look of amazement the whole time.

Kyle's mom told me about her ascension and how