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Let's start with the good news. You can still borrow money, whether it's a mortgage or a home-equity loan, a car loan or a student loan. But you'll find that the rules have changed. Your credit record and credit score matter more than they used to, and home and car purchases require bigger down payments.
|Mortgage Loan Rates in Your Area
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In late November, the federal government announced two new programs to help kick start consumer lending. First, the Federal Reserve will purchase $500 billion of mortgage-backed securities. The news sent mortgage rates lower and generated a slew of calls to mortgage brokers. Part two is a $200 billion program to lend money to private investors who buy securities backed by student and auto loans, credit card debt and small-business loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration. Theoretically, easier credit will trickle down from this program, but it may take a while before consumers see the effects. And neither program addresses the reluctance of lenders to take chances on any but the most credit-worthy customers.
You may get a better reception at the local branch of your own bank or at a smaller community bank or credit union. If you don't like the rate offered or you get turned down, keep shopping, says Keith Gumbinger, of HSH Associates, which publishes financial information and rates. "Price and access to money are widely variable. Just because a lender on one side of town says no doesn't mean it's no." Before you shop rates, request your credit reports and check your credit scores at annualcreditreport.com. That way, you can see where you stand -- and what may be dragging down your credit.
Mortgages: Stricter Rules
To get a mortgage now, you'll have to make a down payment and document that you have the income and reserves to make your mortgage payment, run your household and still handle unexpected expenses.
Subprime mortgages that were offered to borrowers with questionable qualifications during the housing boom have dried up because lenders -- and the investment firms that bought the mortgages -- can no longer count on appreciating home prices to bail out bad loans. Now most lenders (and borrowers) must play by the rules of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which guarantee loans meeting their criteria so that investors will want to buy them in the secondary market.
Loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration have also regained favor as an option, not just for credit-challenged borrowers (typically those with credit scores under 620) but for prime borrowers looking for low down payments.
The FHA helped Kyle and Tracy Spear of Swampscott, Mass., north of Boston, purchase a larger home with a small down payment. Last summer, the couple had planned to subdivide their property in Boston and sell the home plus a separate lot. But the city and their neighborhood nixed the subdivision, and they ended up netting just $15,000 on the sale. For two months, Kyle, 38, Tracy, 37, and their three boys -- Kyle, 4; Tyler, 2; and Jack, 11 months -- lived with friends and family to save money until they found their next home, a 2,800-square-foot house with four bedrooms that cost $540,000. They qualified for a 30-year jumbo mortgage with a fixed rate of 6.875% backed by the FHA. And because the FHA required a down payment of only 3%, they had to put down just $16,000.
Prove it. The days of "Take my word for it" are over, and stated-income loans, or so-called liar loans, are history. Lenders will ask you for at least two months of financial account statements, two years of tax returns and even verification from employers that overtime, commission or bonus income will continue.
Lenders are also scrutinizing more carefully the ratio of your debt to income. Beginning February 1, 2009, Freddie Mac is imposing a limit of 45% of all pretax income for all debt; borrowers with a credit score of 740 or better will get the best rates. The FHA's guidelines are even more stringent: Mortgage debt may not exceed 31% of your income, and total debt can't top 43%. The FHA doesn't impose a credit-score threshold.
Loans with no down payment, or those that combine first and second mortgages, such as the 80/20, are also gone. Mortgages backed by Fannie and Freddie require a minimum down payment of 3% to 5%. The bigger your down payment and the better your credit score, the better your interest rate. If you put less than 20% down, you'll pay private mortgage insurance, or PMI. But here's the Catch-22: If home prices have been falling in your area, you may not be able to get PMI, and if you can, you'll have to ante up 10% to 15% for a down payment.
Congress has authorized the FHA, which relies on its own program of mortgage insurance, to take up the slack in declining markets, says Meg Burns, director of the FHA's Office of Single-Family Program Development. The FHA can guarantee loans up to the same amount as Fannie and Freddie. Beginning January 1, the limit is 115% of a metro area's median home price, up to $625,500, and the minimum down payment is 3.5%, up from 3% in 2008.
Mortgages are still pretty affordable. According to HSH Associates, at the beginning of November the national average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan was 6.4%. FHA loans had a 6.7% rate; the expanded jumbo rate was 6.8%, and the traditional jumbo rate was 7.9%. Adjustable-rate mortgages didn't offer much of an advantage: The interest rate on a 5/1 ARM was 6.4%, and on a one-year ARM it was 5.8% (although one-year ARMs have become scarce). The election may help stabilize the market, says Gumbinger, but he sees nothing to suggest that rates will go down anytime soon.


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Definition of queercore in English:
A cultural movement among young homosexuals that deliberately rebels against and dissociates itself from the established gay scene, having as its primary form of expression an aggressive type of punk-style music.
Example sentences
- Although he's best known as the axman for enduring queercore innovators Pansy Division, Goodwin's finding that his latest side venture, fronting the metallic Dirty Power, is keeping him far busier.
- After all, Pansy Division more or less invented queercore, celebrating boy-meets-boy relationships and raging playfully against homophobia and censorship.
- Throughout the '80s and '90s queercore bands like Team Dresch, Pansy Division and the Philly-based F80 and Size Queen offered a seething critique of mainstream and punk rock culture as they fought for visibility and queer expression.
For editors and proofreaders
Syllabification: queer·core
What do you find interesting about this word or phrase?
Comments that don't adhere to our Community Guidelines may be moderated or removed.
= trending

subset: commoncrawl


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© The Financial Times Ltd 2016
FT and 'Financial Times' are trademarks of The Financial Times Ltd.
The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.
August 12, 2010 7:52 pm
Global sales of Apple's iPhone have been overtaken by the multitude of phones using Google's Android system, which has quickly become the US smartphone market leader.
The latest evidence of Google's rapid success in mobile comes from Gartner, the research group, which said Android's global share of the smartphone market had leapt from 1.8 per cent a year ago to 17.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2010.
That growth came largely at the expense of Nokia and Research in Motion, which produces the BlackBerry.
Android handsets now outsell Nokia smartphones and the BlackBerry in the US.
Google's success has provided a boost to struggling handset makers adopting Android such as Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
"We thought [Android] would be the second-largest global smartphone operating system by 2012, but we are now seeing it could be as soon as the end of this year," said Carolina Milanesi, research vice-president at Gartner. "For a lot of companies, Android has been a godsend."
Although the iPhone continues to gain on its rivals, the fact that it is available only from Apple and a limited number of mobile operators has constrained its growth rate compared with Android, which is free for anyone to adopt.
"Apple have gone from being the underdog and people rooting for them to seeing an increase in the level of scrutiny and criticism," Ms Milanesi said. "Now they are seen as arrogant."
Through their touch screens, application stores and easy web browsing, Google and Apple have reinvented the smartphone market. Nokia remained the largest mobile manufacturer in the second quarter, according to Gartner, selling 111.5m devices. But its share has fallen from 36.8 per cent to 34.2 per cent. RIM, which is entangled in arguments over security and privacy with governments around the world, is also losing market share.
But Android's success is a mixed blessing for the mobile industry. By making its highly advanced features available to any manufacturer for no fee, Google has made it harder for device makers and operators to differentiate. For marketers and developers, the Android app store also remains less appealing than Apple's because of its weaker payment system and wide variety of software versions, screen sizes and devices.
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on November 24, 2013 - 12:01 AM
• Club Med is holding its semiannual sale at more than 50 all-inclusive resorts in the Caribbean, United States, Mexico, Europe and Asia. Prices vary. For example, a seven-night stay at Sandpiper Bay in Port St. Lucie, Fla., in early March now starts at $2,318 per couple (including taxes), a savings of $798. Book by Jan. 8, and travel by June 27. Blackout dates apply and vary by property. Info: (800) 258-2633, www.clubmed.us.
• Sanderling Resort in Duck, N.C., is offering reduced rates to active and veteran members of the military, fire and rescue personnel, law enforcement officers and medical personnel. The Heroes Welcome rate, valid on stays through March 30, starts at $119 per night (plus $31 taxes and fees), a savings of at least $67. The oceanfront resort is also offering 20 percent discounts to guests who donate at least $5 to the Outer Banks Public Safety Auxiliary; the discounted rate starts at $144 per night, plus taxes. Based on availability. Info: (877) 697-4613, www.sanderling-resort.com/heroes.
• Save up to 45 percent on two Star Clippers sailings that feature Formula One's Monaco Grand Prix. The seven-night Star Flyer cruise on May 17 starts at $1,550 per person double, which includes a 30 percent advance purchase discount and a 15 percent transatlantic air credit. The ship sails round trip from Cannes, France, and docks in Monte Carlo for the Grand Prix trials. The seven-night May 24 cruise from Cannes to Monte Carlo starts at $1,832 per person double (including 35 percent discount with air credit) and overlaps with the Grand Prix finals. Add port charges of $255, plus taxes (based on final fare). Regular price is from $2,818. Info: (800) 442-0551, www.starclippers.com.
• With European Waterways, solo travelers save $1,800 on all April cruises in the Netherlands. The luxury barge operator is waiving single supplements on six-night Panache cruises departing April 6, 13, 20 and 27. A junior suite starts at $5,090 per person; price includes all meals, wines, open bar, daily escorted excursions, local transfers, and taxes and fees. The 12-person barge visits the Keukenhof Gardens, Gouda's cheese markets, St. Peter's Church and the Zaanse Schans conservation area. Info: (877) 879-8808, www.gobarging.com.
Deals sell out and availability is not guaranteed. Some restrictions may apply.


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Photography does not have to be your job or career. This may be an obvious statement, but I think many emerging photographers feel that to be a "real" or successful photographer you must do it for a living. I don't agree with this at all. Doing photography professionally is tough and generally low paying, and in most cases, you're not shooting what you want.
For me, the most satisfying, rewarding and successful work I have done throughout my life has been taking photos to please myself and not someone else. In fact, it's not even a contest. I think the answer to being a happy and content photographer is to get a job doing something that isn't awful and to go take pictures for yourself.
Never equate success with money!


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Police have refuted statements made by Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz that the deadly bus crash that killed 25 Russian travel agents was caused by a race between two tour bus drivers.
Speaking to Israel Radio on Wednesday, police investigator Chief Superintendent Noam Bigenski said he was not aware of such suspicions adding that he did not know how Mofaz had received such an impression.
"I can't really explain it," he told the radio. "It's not something I know of from the material we've gathered so far - not of a contest and not of any wild driving on the part of the drivers or anything of the sort."
Bigenski added that the accident was still being investigated and said it was too early to place the blame on anyone.
A spokeswoman for Mofaz responded that the minister had only been repeating information he was given by police officials.
"This was not his interpretation. This is what he was told by Traffic Division chief Cmdr. Avi Ben-Hemo," she said. "Perhaps there was a mistake or misunderstanding between the investigator on the ground and the division chief."
While visiting the scene of the accident on Tuesday, Mofaz said that the crash had been caused by the two drivers arguing about who would go through a checkpoint first, which led to attempts to pass each other.
"The drivers were bullying each other. There aren't infrastructure problems on the road," Mofaz said.
Two planes with relatives of the Russian casualties and medical staff will arrive in Israel from Russia on Wednesday. Defense officials said an Israel Air Force plane will fly the dead and wounded back to Russia.
Twenty-four people died Tuesday when the bus of Russian tour operators overturned and rolled into a ravine near. Dozens more were wounded. It was one of the worst accidents in Israel's history.
Earlier tolls put the number of dead at 25 and 26, but the Russian embassy said Wednesday the final number was 24.
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For those who seek such detail, here's the full MOU with USAPA and APA
I'm not going to fill the page with the full MOU. But if you're interested, click below to keep reading.
I'm not going to fill the page with the full MOU. But if you're interested, click below to keep reading.
American Airlines will begin recalling furloughed pilots in early 2013, the carrier told pilots Wednesday.
"Right now, we are looking at about 40 pilots a month with the first class on Jan. 9, 2013," said John Hale, the airline's vice president of flight, in a hotline to members. "Announcing the recall now allows pilots on a deferred status to give the notice necessary if they would like to return to AA in January."
American currently has about 650 pilots on furlough who haven't previously been offered a recall.
American's pilots begin voting Friday on a proposed six-year contract.
In a letter Tuesday to its members, the Transport Workers Union said it was combining a number of its American Airlines locals that represent maintenance and engineering employees.
Among the changes:
– Local 567 (Fort Worth Alliance maintenance base) and DWH (Dallas/Fort Worth maintenance base) will be folded into Local 514 (Tulsa base), as will be Title II (facilities and vehicles maintenance) from Local 513 from DWH.
– Locals 561 (Miami/Southeast), 562 (New York/Northeast), 563 (Chicago/Midwest) 564 (Los Angeles/West), 565 (Dallas/Fort Worth/Southwest) will form a new Local 591.
"This will create two M/E Locals with the size and resources to continue to represent its members and be financially viable for future contract negotiations," wrote Bobby Gless, deputy director of TWU's air transport division, in a letter to members.
The new local 591 will also incorporate the mechanics and related employees and stores employees from those five locals, plus Locals 510 (Washington, D.C.), 529 (St. Louis) and the stores employees from 507 (Boston).
TWU members in May and August approved new contracts with American that included, among other things, a revocation of the 1993 "Baker letter."
That document stated that the airline would pay the salaries of certain union officials as they did union work. It was named for former American Airlines executive vice president Robert W. Baker, whose bailiwick included maintenance and engineering.
Keep reading for the entire letter, with the explanation of why it was necessary.
Courtesy of Tulsa TWU Local 514, we have this breakdown of Title I (aircraft), Title II (facilities and vehicles) and Title V (stores) employees who took the early-out option:
|Title I
|Title II
|Title V
|ABQ (Albuquerque)
AFW (Alliance Fort Worth)
|AUS (Austin)
|BDL (Hartford)
|BNA (Nashville)
|BOS (Boston)
|DCA (Washington National)
|DEN (Denver)
|DFW (Dallas/Fort Worth)
|DTW (Detroit)
|DWH (Dallas/Fort Worth east hangar)
|EWR (Newark)
|GSW (Amon Carter)
|HDQ (Headquarters)
|IAD (Washington Dulles)
|IAH (Houston Intercontinental)
|JFK (New York Kennedy)
|LAS (Las Vegas)
|LAX (Los Angeles)
|LGA (New York LaGuardia)
|MCO (Orlando)
|MEM (Memphis)
|MIA (Miami)
|MSY (New Orleans)
|OKC (Oklahoma City)
|ORD (Chicago O'Hare)
|PDX (Portland, Ore.)
|PHL (Philadelphia)
|PHX (Phoenix)
|RDU (Raleigh-Durham)
|RNO (Reno)
|SAN (San Diego)
|SAT (San Antonio)
|SEA (Seattle-Tacoma)
|SFO (San Francisco)
|SJC (San Jose, Calif.)
|SJU (San Juan, P.R.)
|STL (St. Louis)
|TPA (Tampa)
|TUL (Tulsa)
American Airlines officials informed employees Wednesday evening that Nov. 1 is the date upon which American will freeze their pensions.
The freeze isn't a surprise – American has stated its intent to do so since March. But the effective date couldn't be set until new labor contracts were finalized.
With U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane's order Wednesday approving three contracts, American now has new contracts in place with eight of its nine bargaining units, and voided the ninth, with the Allied Pilots Association.
Denise Lynn, American's senior vice president of people, informed employees of the timetable for several matters:
– The Nov. 1 freeze date for the defined-benefit pension plans. Employees will accrue benefits through Oct. 31, but nothing after that. Except for APA members, American will then match employee contributions to a 401(k) plan up to 5.5 percent of earnings.
"Similar to other employee groups, pilot pension benefits will continue status quo through October 31; as we don't yet a consensual agreement with the APA, replacement plan details will be determined at a later date," Lynn wrote.
Pilots rejected a tentative agreement on Aug. 8 that provided that American would contribute to a 401(k) plan an amount equal to 14 percent of their earnings. A 13.5 percent contribution, as provided in a "term sheet" American is relying on instead, was contingent upon the pilots' approval of a consensual deal.
The pilots' B Plan, a defined-contribution plan in which American put an amount equal to 11 percent of a pilot's pay, will be frozen as of Nov. 1 and terminated as of Nov. 30. The money in their accounts will be distributed to pilots.
– People who retire on Nov. 1 or after will be under new rules in which employees pay the full costs for coverage.
"For those who retire under age 65, two retiree medical options are available at full costs. Those who retire at age 65 and over may purchase a guaranteed issue Medicare supplement plan."
– Employees will see the new health insurance programs, including higher employee contributions and costs, beginning on Jan. 1.
– Any employee who retires Nov. 1 or afterward won't be offered life insurance coverage.
For individual work groups, the company will communicate changes affecting them directly.
"There will be changes in our airport, maintenance and cargo operations, among others, as that process moves forward – and you should expect to receive more specific information about implementation plans from your operating leadership," Lynn said in her letter.
"Where these plans involve the outsourcing and job reductions announced previously, Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notices will be mailed to those who may be affected. While this is the hardest part of the whole restructuring, I am encouraged that the actual number of involuntary reductions will be substantially less than originally expected as a result of the Early Out opportunities we were able to make available to people," Lynn added.
Keep reading for her entire letter
American Eagle pilots will have a chance to vote on a tentative agreement.
The Air Line Pilots Association's master executive council at American Eagle voted to send the deal out on Wednesday. I'm told the vote was 7-5-1.
American Eagle management was happy, per this statement from spokesman Bruce Hicks:
"American Eagle is very pleased to have reached a consensual tentative agreement today with the Air Line Pilots Association. The company and the ALPA negotiating teams have worked together over the past several months to reach this agreement, and made significant progress in August by reaching an agreement in principle which paved the way for this tentative agreement. With the full contract language now in place, ALPA will be conducting a ratification vote in the next few weeks. This agreement represents another significant step forward in the successful restructuring of our company."
Update: Keep reading for a letter to pilots from MEC chairman Tony Gutierrez.
Fellow American Eagle Pilots,
This week your elected MEC leaders met in Dallas and voted to approve the full contract language of the Agreement in Principle (AIP) reached with management in August. With this approval, the MEC now has a Tentative Agreement (TA) with Eagle management that will require pilot ratification. The bullet point details of the AIP were made available to the pilot group in August. With this MEC approval and an official TA, full contract language will shortly be made available for all Eagle pilots to review prior to voting. This decision was neither easy nor taken lightly, and it was made in full view of the result of the APA-AA 1113 decision, Eagle's 1113 filing on the TWU, and this morning's announcement of RFP awards.
During the last few weeks, the Negotiating Committee has been meeting with management to write contract language codifying the bullet point concepts contained in the AIP. The MEC has been provided the final language throughout the process in order to provide continual guidance and feedback to the Negotiating Committee as the process ensued. During this week's MEC meeting, the members of the MEC verified that the written contract language properly reflects the conceptual ideas contained within the bullet point AIP.
The Strategic Planning Committee will begin domicile roadshows next week to provide more details about this TA and to answer all of your questions. The roadshow schedule will be sent out this week. We urge every pilot to make an effort to attend a roadshow whether you're currently a "yes" or "no" vote. Our goal is to provide complete and factual information on every aspect of this TA. In addition to domicile roadshows, the SPC will record the first live presentations to provide a recorded version that will be available on the EGL ALPA website.
In addition to videos available on our website, we will also be publishing all contract language modifications on the EGL ALPA website for your review.
Captain Tony Gutierrez
MEC Chairman
U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane on Wednesday gave American Airlines permission to sign three collective bargaining agreements with the Association of Professional Flight Attendants and the Transport Workers Union.
APFA members approved their contract Aug. 19, while the two TWU units, mechanics and related employees and maintenance stock clerks, approved theirs on Aug. 8.
In a message to employees, AMR/American Airlines chairman and CEO Tom Horton said that "we are entering the next important phase of our journey back to industry leadership."
"With the court's approval, we will now begin to put in place the new contracts we reached through consensual agreements with the APFA and TWU. … It is clear while these are not easy steps, they are necessary to build a new American equipped to compete with the best the world has to offer."
The approval means that American Airlines now has collective bargaining agreements with eight of the nine bargaining units on the property. The exception is the Allied Pilots Association, whose members turned down a tentative agreement Aug. 8. On Sept. 4, Judge Lane gave American permission to toss out the pilots' 2003 contract.
Horton in his letter said the airline would continue to pursue a consensual deal with pilots.
And, in what one might consider a "no hard feelings" comment, Horton expressed a hope that relations inside the airline improve.
While "I believe there is a growing sense of confidence in what the new American will be," Horton wrote, "I also understand that there are many different views and feelings about the past, and I hope that over the coming weeks, months and years, we can forge a new basis for mutual respect and trust, and a new beginning."
Tony Gutierrez, the head of the Air Line Pilots Association unit at American Eagle, summed up Wednesday's announcement of changes in American Airlines' regional flying as a "bad day for all of us."
The most immediate effect on Eagle pilots is that American Eagle will close its pilot and flight attendant base at Los Angeles International Airport.
"Since last year's divestiture negotiations, we have known that AMR was determined to diversify its regional feed," Gutierrez wrote in a message to American Eagle pilots. "But knowing this doesn't begin to lessen the emotion of seeing it come to fruition."
Gutierrez, chairman of ALPA's master executive council at American Eagle, and other MEC leaders have been debating whether to turn an "agreement in principle" with American Eagle management into a tentative agreement that all members would vote on.
He asked pilots to study the proposal very closely if the leadership decides to put it out for a vote, and to note how important its job protections would be for pilots.
Keep reading for his entire message sent Wednesday morning to American Eagle pilots.
American Airlines Inc. will close its Alliance Airport maintenance base in Fort Worth by mid-December and eliminate nearly 1,110 jobs there, according to documents given the Transport Workers Union.
American, which has done much of its maintenance work in house, will outsource the work now done at Alliance or transfer it to American's other major maintenance bases at Tulsa and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.
Those plans are no surprise – the airline included those proposals on Feb. 1 when it announced its new business plan to employees and the public. But the timing had not been public because the airline needed to get its TWU-represented employees to ratify new contracts first.
That happened Aug. 8. On Wednesday, the airline goes before U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane to seek his permission to let the carrier sign the agreements with the union.
The total number of employees at American's maintenance bases will drop by 1,708 – from the 6,489 positions in August when TWU-represented employees approved their new contracts, to 4,781 as of February when the reductions in force are to be largely completed.
Tulsa will see a drop almost as large as Alliance – down 993 jobs. But with 4,157 jobs remaining from the original 5,150, the Tulsa base will remain the largest in American's system.
The timeline we've seen puts the Alliance reduction in force on Dec. 15, with the hangar "clean swept" in January. In April, American plans an auction of non-aircraft parts, with the keys to the facility surrendered on April 30.
Although there are a lot of jobs being lost at Alliance, we don't know how many Alliance-based employees will wind up unemployed.
Depending on a number of factors, particularly seniority, many Alliance employees will be able to transfer to other American facilities and bump less-senior employees from their jobs. The bumped employees then may be able to bump other employees less senior than themselves. And so on.
Like flight attendants (but not for $40,000 like flight attendants), many of the TWU-represented employees can take an early-out option. According to numbers out of TWU, 633 mechanics and relates employees and maintenance stock clerks had put in for the early-out option as of Friday morning.
The Association of Professional Flight Attendants said Wednesday that 211 furloughed flight attendants, the last furloughed American Airlines flight attendants still on furlough, are being invited back to their jobs.
This will be the first time in 11 years that American will have no flight attendants on furlough, since just after the 9/11 attacks.
The union attributed the recall to an "extraordinary response" to a voluntary early-out program that opened up Monday, fewer job cuts planned in a new contract, high numbers of flight attendants on sick leave and increased training because of the new contract.
The new contract, approved by APFA members Aug. 19, requires more flying each month by the average flight attendants. But, the union said in its message to members Wednesday, those productivity improvements will take time to implement.
American spokesman Bruce Hicks said in a statement:
"American is pleased that we are able to recall the remaining 211 flight attendants currently on furlough. We regularly evaluate our staffing needs, and because we anticipate a large number of flight attendants will elect to participate in the Voluntary Early Out Program, we are taking this proactive step to ensure we remain adequately staffed throughout this process.
"As we agreed with APFA, the company will not limit the number of flight attendants who can accept the Early Out option, and this recall is important to ensure proper staffing as we determine how many flight attendants will accept the offer, as well as the impact of our restructuring changes.
"We welcome our flight attendants back to service and recognize they play an integral role in providing an outstanding onboard experience for our customers."
Here's the timetable spelled out by the union:
Friday, Aug. 30 American sends out the recall notices
Monday, Sept. 10 Deadline for flight attendants to accept the recall
October-November Training
Friday, Nov. 16 Flight attendants are back on active status
As a note, the recall doesn't include the large number of flight attendants, including many veteran ex-Trans World Airlines employees, who fell off the recall list during the past decade,
Keep reading for the entire hotline.


text: GEORGETOWN, Colo (KKCO) A happy ending to the story of Missy, the German shepherd who was abandoned by her owner high atop a Colorado mountain for eight days. After an all out rescue effort by hikers to retrieve the injured and hungry dog from one of Colorado's tallest peaks, her owner wanted her back. However, Anthony Ortolani will now face charges of animal cruelty. Ortolani contends he had to leave Missy on the mountain when a storm moved in and she was unable to walk because of injured paws. Missy was discovered close to death and alone by a couple of hikers from Denver. After posting a picture online, another group of hikers mobilized to help retrieve the 100 pound dog, not an easy feat.


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When the wife is older than the husband
September 22, 2015 at 7:33 am in Family & Relationships, Love & Sex by Anonymous
How does it affect you self esteem when you are 6 years older than your husband? The age difference never mattered to me until now. I am 58 and my husband is 51 years old. I suddenly feel very vulnerable. I look in the mirror and see the age difference and don't appreciate it one bit. I now wish I had married an older man, so that I would be the young one. I do everthing I can to stay healthy, and vibrant. I eat right, exercise, wear makeup to flatter and dress to flatter my best assets, but I feel like it's a losing battle. If I feel this way now, how will I feel when I am 68 and he is 61 and so on? Is anyone else dealing with this situation?


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Odyssey White Ice 2-Ball F7 Putter The Odyssey White Ice Putter will let you feel the ice in your veins. The new White Ice Putters from Odyssey combine Tour trusted shapes with a new look and better feel. The new White Ice face-insert is our best feeling, multi-layer insert to date. Developed after extensive feedback from players on Tour, our engineers have enhanced the sound, responsiveness and consistency of the insert. Coupled with a new Dark Nickel finish, the new White Ice putters combine Tour-proven looks with Tour-inspired feel.. Price: $99.99
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This fitted tee features a group shot of the guys covered in splatter. 100% cotton Wash warm; dry low Imported Listed in junior sizes. Price: $18.00
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SOUTH BERWICK, Maine — Democrat Mark Eves of North Berwick defeated Republican Burnell Bailey of South Berwick and Independent David Burke of South Berwick for state representive in Dist. 146. Eves received 2,796 votes compared to Bailey's 1,751 and Burke's 533. The district is comprised of North Berwick and part of South Berwick.
In North Berwick, Eves received 1,600 votes and Burnell received 851 and Burke 177. In South Berwick, Eves received 1,196 votes, Bailey received 900 votes, and Burke received 356.
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Location, ST | website.com


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The archive of Linguistics and Linguistics-related teaching resources is available to Graduate Center students by setting up an account on the CUNY Academic Commons and requesting membership to the group, Share-Ling. You can request membership by emailing Stephanie Kakadelis.
Share-Ling is an archive of materials created by Linguistics students at the Graduate Center who have been teaching throughout the CUNY System. They are freely available for your use, we only as that you credit the author when possible. If you have materials to share, please send them to either Michelle or Stephanie - we are always looking to increase the variety and availability of teaching resources!
So sign up at the Commons today!! http://commons.gc.cuny.edu/
Corpora are available in the linguistics program office. Contact Nishi Bissoondial to check out the listed corpus. Please note that you are required to sign the user consent form before using some corpora.
The ACL Data Collection Initiative disc contains text from: Wall Street Journal, copyright 1987, 1988, 1989, provided by Dow Jones, Inc.; the Collins English Dictionary, Copyright 1979, William Collins Sons Co., Ltd.; scientific abstracts provided by the U.S. Department of Energy and a variety of grammatically tagged and parsed materials from the Treebank project at the University of Pennsylvania, copyright 1990,1991, University of Pennsylvania.
• Language: English
• Media: 1 CD
• Consent form: acldci.pdf
The first 10 million words of the 100-million-word American National Corpus project. Non-balanced, non-hand-validated POS tagging in XML. Headers include such information as domain, subdomain, subject, audience, and medium.
• Language: American English
• Genre: balanced
• Type: Written & Spoken
• Size: 10 million words (portion of the planned 100-million word corpus)
• Media: 1 CD
• Consent form: anc.pdf
The WSJ Corpus was compiled by The Brown Laboratory for Linguistic Information Processing (BLLIP), POS tagged and parsed by Treebank-style parsing. This corpus covers the three year Wall Street Journal (WSJ) collection from the ACL/DCI corpus, from 1987-1989.
• Language: English
• Genre: News
• Type: Written
• Size: 30-million words
• Media: 2 CD
CHILDES (TalkBank) is a collection of parsed language data available to all researchers for free. The CHILDES project is led by Brian MacWhinney. All users of CHILDES should consent with the user agreement with the CHILDES project. The old-version of CHILDES was tagged by CHAT, but the XML version is available now.
• Language: Various languages
• Type: Spoken
• Media: online; DVD (downloaded xml version)
• Consent form: childes.pdf
English Gigaword corpus is a collection of previously published English corpora. The main sources are Agence France Press English Service (170 mil), Associated Press Worldstream English Service (530 mil), The New York Times Newswire Service (910 mil), and The Xinhua News Agency English Service (131 mil).
• Language: English
• Genre: News
• Type: Written
• Size: 1.7 billion words
• Media: 1 DVD (only bigram data)
This data set, contributed by Google Inc., contains English word n-grams and their observed frequency counts. The length of the n-grams ranges from unigrams (single words) to five-grams. We expect this data will be useful for statistical language modeling, e.g., for machine translation or speech recognition, as well as for other uses. Number of tokens: 1,024,908,267,229 Number of sentences: 95,119,665,584 Number of unigrams: 13,588,391 Number of bigrams: 314,843,401 Number of trigrams: 977,069,902 Number of fourgrams: 1,313,818,354 Number of fivegrams: 1,176,470,663
• Language: English
• Genre: web
• Type: written
• Size: 1 trillion words
• Media: 6 DVD
International Corpus of Learner English v2.
Installed on several computers within the Program. Software and license are in the possession of the GC's Information Technology Dept.
The Mandarin News Corpus includes text from various journalistic sources (newspaper text from Renmin Ribao (People's Daily), radio scripts from China Radio International, and newswire text from Xinhua newswire service)
• Language: Chinese (Mandarin)
• Genre: News
• Type: Written
• Size: 250 million GB-encoded text characters
• Media: 1 CD
• Consent form: mandarin.pdf
Reuters Corpus Vol.1 (810,000 news stories) and Vol.2 (multilingual/parallel corpus in Dutch, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Italian, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish)
• Language: English and 15 other languages
• Genre: News
• Type: Written (parallel)
• Size: unknown (810,000 news stories; about 600M)
• Media: 3 CD
• Consent form: reuters.pdf
Santa Barbara Corpus of Spoken American English Part-II is based on hundreds of recordings of natural speech from all over the United States, representing a wide variety of people of different regional origins, ages, occupations, and ethnic and social backgrounds. It reflects many ways that people use language in their lives: conversation, gossip, arguments, on-the-job talk, card games, city council meetings, sales pitches, classroom lectures, political speeches, bedtime stories, sermons, weddings, and more.
• Language: English
• Genre: balanced
• Type: Spoken
• Size: 6 hours
• Media: 1 DVD
A 100-million-word collection of spoken and written British English. The sources are carefully selected from various genres to represent a good sample of present-dayt British English.
• Language: British English
• Genre: Balanced
• Type: Written (90m) & Spoken (10m)
• Size: 100 million words
• Media: missing
• Consent form: bnc.pdf
The Brown Corpus was compiled by W.N. Francis and H.Kucera at Brown University in 1976.
• Language: English
• Genre: Balanced
• Type: Written
• Size: 1 million words
• Media: 1 CD
The LOB corpus is a 1-million-word corpus of British English (in a parallel format to the Brown Corpus), which was compiled by Stig Johnsson, Erie Atwell, Roger Garside, and Geoffrey Leech in 1986 (POS tagged).
• Language: British English
• Genre: Balanced
• Type: Written
• Size: 1 million words
• Media: missing
The Census Bureau receives numerous requests to supply information on name frequency. In an effort to comply with those requests, the Census Bureau has embarked on a names list project involving a tabulation of names from the 1990 Census. These files contain only the frequency of a given name, no specific individual information.
• Language: English
• Genre: English names
• Size: 2M
• Media: CD
WordNet is a large lexical database of English, developed under the direction of George A. Miller. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. Synsets are interlinked by means of conceptual-semantic and lexical relations. The resulting network of meaningfully related words and concepts can be navigated with the browser. WordNet is also freely and publicly available for download. WordNet's structure makes it a useful tool for computational linguistics and natural language processing.
• Language: English
• Genre: Balanced
• Type: NA
• Size: 11M (compressed)
• Media: online; CD
The following corpora are often used in the corpus-based research or were used in our students' research.
The Penn Corpora of Historical English, including the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English, second edition (PPCME2), the Penn-Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Early Modern English (PPCEME), and the Penn Parsed Corpus of Modern British English (PPCMBE), are running texts and text samples of British English prose across its history - from the earliest Middle English documents up to the First World War. The texts come in three forms: simple text, part-of-speech tagged text and syntactically annotated text. The syntactic annotation (parsing) permits searching not only for words and word sequences, but also for syntactic structure. All of the annotation has been carefully checked by expert human annotators for accuracy and consistency. The corpora are designed for the use of students and scholars of the history of English, especially the historical syntax of the language, and they are publicly available to individuals, research groups and libraries.
Language: English
Genre: Historical
Type: Written
Size: Unknown
Media: CD and online
direct link to online resource
More information on the PPCHE website.
The Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest freely-available corpus of English, and the only large and balanced corpus of American English. The corpus contains more than 450 million words of text and is equally divided among spoken, fiction, popular magazines, newspapers, and academic texts. It includes 20 million words each year from 1990-2012 and the corpus is also updated regularly.
The page that specifically describes the n-grams is http://www.ngrams.info/intro.asp
N-gram data: Up to 155 million distinct strings -- searchable by word form and part of speech, and also by lemma.
Corpus can be accessed at this link http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/


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Just Nixa LbNA # 48058
|Potted Frog
|Placed Date
|Jun 9 2009
|Nixa, MO
|Found By
|Last Found
|Apr 9 2012
|Hike Distance
Stamp: Hand-carved
Distance: Drive-by or short walk depending on where you park.
Pet, bicycle, child-friendly
I consider Nixa as my hometown. From age 7 through age 28, I lived in Nixa. In the years before that, I lived close to it, and my dad worked there since before I was 4. When I first moved there, the population was not much more than 2,ooo. I have lots of memories of my mom taking my brother and I to meet my dad for lunch at the Nixa Café on Main Street or the Sale Barn Café at the (now gone) Nixa Livestock Auction.
Never attending Nixa schools, I did not get into sports at Nixa, but I worked there in the summers and much of my family lived there, too, so it has always been home. It has changed in so many ways since I was a little girl. Now I live in another state and usually shocked at the new things (houses, businesses, streets, schools) on my return visits. But its still home.
We no longer live in this area. If this letterbox needs attention that a finder cannot fix, please contact me. I know people in the area who could help with it if necessary.
Just Nixa is just a tribute to where I grew up. I never lived in town, but spent a lot of time there. This letterbox stamp is not from the past, but the present, to represent a fast-growing, ever-changing community.
To find Just Nixa, head to The Center, by going east on North Street from Main Street. You will find the large community center, park, pool, disc golf course and fitness center on the north side of the road. Find a place to park, and head to the Disc Golf Course. At the tee-off for the 4th hole you will see a wishing well with a bench beside it. Sit on the bench and look in front of you. Slightly to the left is a large tree, and behind it are two culverts. Go to the left (south) culvert. Jammed under a stationery rock on the south side is the letterbox, well-hidden by two smaller rocks.
Please be careful to replace the box where it was as the area could be prone to flooding during heavy rains. Also beware of poison ivy. There is a small woods to the north full of it, and it is all over the large tree in front of the culverts.
The park is usually very busy in the summer, so be stealthy. The wishing well can give you a reason to have a photography diversion.


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My spring themed event was planned for New York University's School of Law and the event was held in one New York University's beautiful event spaces, Greenberg Lounge. Greenberg Lounge is a fantastic place to hold an event because the windows look directly out on Washington Square Park and during the springtime in New York City it is especially welcoming to see the trees, plants and flowers coming to life.
One of my most favorite places in the world is Tuscany and I decided to incorporate the rich, rustic, earthy Tuscan feel into the decor, food and wine. The luncheon was pre-plated so I had a bit of a challenge on my hands: feeding ten guests per table with the appetizer, main course and dessert already placed on it. I thought about my time in Italy and the best occasions were shared over a meal so I decided to present the appetizer family style. That way, our guests who may of not known anyone at their table could break bread together and start conversing and feel more comfortable. Boy, did they!! The wine start flowing and everyone just had a wonderful time!!
When I think of springtime, I think of green. I selected a lovely green damask cloth that really complimented the warm wood tones already present in the event space. Sunflowers are very popular in Italy and just lend themselves to a bright and cheery springtime feeling which I also wanted to construe.
As for the entertainment I decided to change things up a bit and chose a doo-wop group. I have typically used decor as means to brighten an event but this time the music almost had me beat. It just added a wonderful layer of cheer.
Thank you to GigMasters for hosting this contest! I found you because I was searching for entertainment for my own wedding and I also cannot wait to utilize your services for upcoming events that I am planning.
This post is part of the Spectacular Spring Party contest sponsored by GigMasters. To find out how to enter, visit the Life of the Party.


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Six Nations preview: England v Scotland
Updated: Saturday, 02 Feb 2013 18:05 | Comments
By Tadhg Peavoy
Scotland will arrive in London this Saturday looking for a first victory at Twickenham since 1983; all signs suggest they won't get it.
This England side is brimming with confidence following their mesmeric and highly surprising 38-21 victory over New Zealand last December.
Buoyed by that win, one would expect England to come into the tie ready to unleash hell upon their northern rivals, in the oldest clash in the history of international rugby.
While Scotland have recorded five wins over England since 1983, all of them have come in front of a partisan crowd at Murrayfield, where Scotland have managed to strangle the life out of their oldest foes.
At Twickenham, the Scots must contend with being minnows in the playground of one of rugby's top dogs, and both their fans and teams tend to struggle with such a challenge.
A glance at Saturday's team sheets reveals obvious advantages that the Red Rose would appear to hold over the Thistle.
England's front five looks a formidable unit, with Joe Marler, Dan Cole, and the engine room of Joe Launchbury and Geoff Parling, providing a solid platform for England to work off.
Captain Chris Robshaw provides the pivotal link play from openside flanker to a backline that remains unproven, but is showing signs of considerable life.
Ben Youngs and Owen Farrell link up at halfback, with both players on their day excellent in their own ways.
Youngs excels with ball-in-hand and is never short of confidence to take on the opposition defence.
While Farrell is a number 10 who loves to keep his pack on the front foot with well-placed tactical kicking, and a metronomic boot from penalties.
Outside them again, the wealth of talent is obvious, with Alex Goode, Chris Ashton, Brad Barritt and Mike Brown all likely tryscorers.
While Scotland cannot command the same calibre of player at present, they do boast some solid talent.
Their front five is built around number four Richie Gray, arguably the best second row in this year's championship. His lineout, breakdown and loose play are five-star, and Scotland will hope he can inspire his pack to rise to the occasion at Twickers.
In the front row ahead of him tighthead prop Euan Murray is a hugely experienced international who will provide ballast at scrum time.
The back row is where Scotland are strongest, with Alasdair Strokosch, Kelly Brown and John Beattie forming a fine triumvirate.
It is beyond the pack that Scotland have struggled recently, and in truth since the Five Nations became the Six Nations in 2000.
While Greig Laidlaw and Ruaridh Jackson are far from weak half-backs, they often lack the cutting edge and creativity to raise Scotland's game above the mediocre.
The same is usually said of Scotland's centre pairings; however, in this outing, interim head coach Scott Johnson has opted to pair Matt Scott and Sean Lamont, which could provide a much needed air of vitality and freshness.
In the back three, Scotland have talent, with Stuart Hogg and Tim Visser very dangerous. The question is can the pack supply them with enough quality possession and open space to do some damage.
As always in England v Scotland encounters, the game is likely to he a highly attritional affair, with the Scots looking to impose themselves on the English at the breakdown and at set-pieces, forcing plenty of turnovers and errors, leading to the Red Rose upping the penalty count early on, which will give the Scots a chance to kick themselves into the lead.
The Scottish team will most likely have some pre-planned moves in the can to attempt to crack the England rearguard open and wrestle a few five-pointers over the line.
If new coach Johnson can keep Scotland's defensive structures firm, while adding a sprinkle of creativity to the attack, this is possible.
England have the bigger and more technically skilled pack and backline, and they will be hoping to overpower the Scots early on and keep them pinned back in their 22.
They will full well expect an early onslaught and feel that if they can withstand this, they can gradually subdue Scotland, as they have done so well in recent meetings.
All signs point to an England victory. But Scotland love nothing more than upsetting the apple cart.
England to win by 15 points.
England v Scotland, RBS 6 Nations, Twickenham, Saturday 2 February, kick-off 16:00:
England: 15 Alex Goode 14 Chris Ashton 13 Brad Barritt 12 Billy Twelvetrees 11 Mike Brown 10 Owen Farrell 9 Ben Youngs 1 Joe Marler 2 Tom Youngs 3 Dan Cole 4 Joe Launchbury 5 Geoff Parling 6 Tom Wood 7 Chris Robshaw (captain) 8 Ben Morgan.
Replacements: 16 Dylan Hartley 17 Dave Wilson 18 Mako Vunipola 19 Courtney Lawes 20 James Haskell 21 Danny Care 22 Toby Flood 23 Dave Strettle.
Scotland: 15 Stuart Hogg 14 Sean Maitland 13 Sean Lamont 12 Matt Scott 11 Tim Visser 10 Ruaridh Jackson 9 Greig Laidlaw 1 Ryan Grant 2 Dougie Hall 3 Euan Murray 4 Richie Gray 5 Jim Hamilton 6 Alasdair Strokosch 7 Kelly Brown (captain) 8 Johnnie Beattie.
Replacements: 16 Ross Ford 17 Moray Low 18 Geoff Cross 19 Alastair Kellock 20 David Denton 21 Henry Pyrgos 22 Duncan Weir 23 Max Evans.
Match officials:
Referee: Alain Rolland (Irl).
Touch judges: Jerome Garces (Fra) Francisco Pastrana (Arg).
TV: Nigel Whitehouse (Wal).
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NEWMARKET — The Town Council recently passed a resolution to allow the town administrator to contract with engineering firm Wright-Pierce, regarding the relocation of water and sewer lines.
The New Hampshire Department of Transportation is planning to improve the drainage system of North Main Street in the spring of 2015, and has concluded that the town sewer and water mains will conflict with their new plan.
The state will not be contributing to the cost of the project because the lines are older than 50 years.
Town Administrator Stephen Fournier explained that Newmarket had been looking to improve the water and sewer lines previously, but now have no choice but to address the issue. As the road belongs to the state, and not to the town, they are able to enforce the moving of the lines. It will be at least another year until work on the water and sewer lines begin, according to Fournier.
Location, ST | website.com


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RonRazz wrote:Detra319 wrote:haha thats funny shit...reminds me of lifting for wrestling in 7th grade...saw that shit all the time.
Was that the last time you picked up the weights?
Pretty close
Yeah, idk....I guess its fun to spend money to get a cold, sticky hand and one lick of ice cream...Ive been seeing these pop up everywhere, like its some new trend. IDFGI10up wrote:wtf
Clue wrote:SARG27044 wrote:http://kggo.com/Article.asp?id=2267237&spid=37006
I don't get it. Is this the new cool thing to do? Been seeing these everywhere
I want the last 2 minutes of my life back.
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Associated Press
HALF MOON BAY, Calif. — Despite big wave warnings, two walls of water caught dozens of spectators off-guard and knocked them to a rocky beach as they watched a Northern California surfing contest Saturday, leaving some with broken bones but sparing them from being pulled into the ocean.
Thirteen people swept from a seawall had significant injuries, including broken legs and hands, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection Battalion Chief Scott Jalbert. He said others treated at the beach for injuries such as scrapes and bruises were not included in the total. At least three of the injured were taken to hospitals.
Jalbert estimated "a couple hundred" people were on the seawall at the southern tip of Mavericks Beach when the waves struck, upstaging the surfing competition that draws some of the world's top surfers.
The waves were 5 feet to 6 feet high by the time they hit — "small but strong," he said.
"Nobody was swept away into the water. They were just swept onto the beach area pretty hard," Jalbert said. "It's pretty rocky."
Additional firefighters had been on the way to clear the beach because of dangerous conditions but arrived too late, he said.
Only after the unexpected large waves swept in during high tide did the National Weather Service post a high surf warning until 10 p.m. Saturday. The agency previously posted a less severe high surf advisory.
"It's a force of nature that can't be predicted," Jalbert said. "We were very lucky that nobody was swept out to sea."
The surfing contest offers a $150,000 purse, making it the most lucrative big-wave contest in the world, even though it is held only when conditions are prime.
Competitors voted to schedule it because forecasts called for record-breaking tall waves, despite warnings that strong winds could make those breakers dangerously unpredictable.
Chris Bertish, who traveled 21 hours from his South Africa home, won the contest. He had just 48 hours' notice that huge waves were breaking off the coast and the Mavericks Surf Contest was on. Second place went to Shane Desmond of Santa Cruz.
The other winners were: Anthony Tashnick, Santa Cruz, third place; Dave Wessel, Kailua, Hawaii, fourth; and Carlos Burke, Burle, Brazil, fifth.


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A recent jump in robberies has cops in Canarsie on alert.
According to recently released NYPD crime statistics, 23 robberies have taken place in the 69th Precinct over the last month. During the same time period, the precinct saw 14 robberies – 9 fewer than this year.
The disparity amounts to a 64 percent increase in area muggings, officials said.
While every case is diligently investigated, cops at the precinct said that a fair share of the robberies were considered teen−on−teen crimes. The victims are usually pushed and shoved for their iPhones, cell phones and other electronic items.
Captain Milt Marmara, the commanding officer of the 69th Precinct, told members of the 69th Precinct Community Council that he and his officers were already focusing on ways to bring the robbery numbers down – a feat that they might have already achieved.
Statistics show that between June 29 and July 5, just two robberies were reported – one fewer than the three reported the same time last year.
Despite the uptick in robberies, burglaries in Canarsie dropped by 38 percent over the last four weeks, from 21 last year to 13.
Car thefts also dropped – by just over 11 percent, statistics show.
Captain Marmara said that the crime drops are the result of the dedicated, talented police officers who patrol the neighborhood every day.
©2009 Community News Group
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Some have labeled the last ten years in the venture capital industry a decade of lost returns. Ten and 11-year industry benchmarks show a negative Internal Rate of Return (IRR) causing some investors to question if the venture capital model is broken and in need of dramatic overhaul.
The analysis contained in this VC Update paints a more nuanced and — especially in the case of the leading firms — a more positive picture of the industry's performance and outlook. This article explores these trends, highlighting key challenges and emerging opportunities impacting the venture industry, and segmenting the previous decade by vintage year groups based on current and expected performance.
Download the article (PDF)
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MEDINA, Minn. – Victory Motorcycles along with actor/avid Victory rider/retired U.S. Marine R. Lee Ermey – best known as "The Gunny" – are taking part in Rolling Thunder XXVI, the Memorial Day weekend motorcycle ride honoring U.S. military personnel May 26 in Washington, D.C.
Ermey – best known for his role as a Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant in the film, "Full Metal Jacket" – will attend Rolling Thunder XXVI as an official representative of Victory Motorcycles, saluting U.S. military personnel and their families on behalf of Victory employees and riders.
Riders will have the opportunity to ride with Ermey between four Washington, D.C., area Victory Motorcycle dealerships May 25 as he makes appearances at each store. (See the Victory Motorcycles Facebook page for details on where and how to ride with Ermey.)
"We enjoy the freedom to ride because of the service and sacrifice of our nation's military personnel, and we're honored to have the Gunny represent our brand at this Memorial Day weekend event," said Steve Menneto, vice president of Victory Motorcycles.
Posted by Holly Wagner. Image courtesy Victory.


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Ugly Betty actress Ashley Jensen will return to play the titular heroine, who is based on the books by best-selling author MC Beaton, for a eight new stand alone episodes
The producers have released a three-minute trailer showing snippets of the remake which is called Us & Them
A third series has already been commissioned, and it's not hard to see why old-fashioned formula has proved such a hit
The Gavin and Stacey actress said she won't be a glamorous mum but these pictures tell a different story
"I love my shape, I love my food, and my husband tells me I'm beautiful every day"
Lily Allen, Philip Schofield, James Corden and more angry showbiz types hit out at the decision to cut off Adele during the Brit Awards
COMMITMENT and children were the last thing Mathew Horne ever wanted – but now he has had a sudden change of heart.
JAMES Corden's the first to brag he's mates with Take That, loves messing about with Wayne Rooney and enjoys a quiet pint with David Beckham.
Rapper Tinie Tempah leads the pack with four nominations at this year's Brit Awards.
Gavin And Stacey will be returning to the small screen, co-writer Ruth Jones has confirmed.
Kylie Minogue found herself lost for words when Mathew Horne presented her with a sweatshirt adorned with an image of herself from her Neighbours era.
Mathew Horne has revealed he has been converted into a Culture Club fan since prepping for his role as Jon Moss.
Boy George has helped stars of a new TV drama about his band Culture Club turn back the clock nearly 30 years.
It's A Miracle! Stars of a new TV drama about former chart stars Culture Club turned back the clock nearly 30 years.
Ross upsets bosses with joke about his own side
Monday morning and we here at Mirror.co.uk's Showbiz Towers are still recovering after being in the presence of greatness this weekend.
Friday here at Mirror.
Mathew Horne has risen through the ranks to become one of the biggest British stars of the moment.
Laugh? We thought we'd never start.
Kylie Minogue asking a smitten Mathew Horne to zip up her purple dress...
Duffy was the big winner at tonight's Brit Awards, bagging three gongs, but despite being nominated in four categories, Coldplay walked away with nothing.
BRIt AWARDS 2009 with MasterCard ONLY CHANCE OF GONG IS PUBLIC VOTE
Settle down on the sofa and grab a mince pie .. here's Jim Shelley's must-see festive TV
Joanna Page (aka Gavin & Stacey's Stacey), 31, on having enough of Christmas already, the G&S family, and starting one of her own.
EXCLUSIVE: Give us a gong or we won't go
They might have won two BAFTAs this year, but Gavin and Stacey stars James Corden and Mathew Horne refuse to kip down in a posh hotel.
They might have won two BAFTAs this year, but Gavin and Stacey stars James Corden and Mathew Horne, refuse to kip down in a posh hotel.
Kylie Minogue will make a guest appearance in Gavin & Stacey stars James Corden and Mathew Horne's new comedy series.


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Pitcher throws complete game, day after mom's deathUPDATED 8:23 AM EDT May 03, 2013
Josh Roberson of North Davidson High School in Welcome, N.C., lost his mother after a three-year battle with breast cancer. Less than 24 hours after her death, he took the mound and pitched a complete game, thinking that's what his mom would have wanted.
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Travel Photos
Photos: Family friendly New Braunfels on a small budget
Photo: Natural Bridge Caverns, Inc.
View in Castle of the White Giants highlighting the Cavern's largest column, the Watchtower. The Watchtower is 50 feet tall.
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Joel Dykstra
|This profile of a DEFEATED 2008 U.S. Senate candidate to represent South Dakota is part of the Wiki the Vote project.
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Joel Dykstra is the Republican nominee in the 2008 congressional elections for the Senate in South Dakota. He is the Republican nominee seeking to challenge incumbent Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.). He won in primary elections which took place on June 3, 2008. [1]
- 1 Positions, record and controversies
- 2 Bio
- 3 Money in politics
- 4 Committees and affiliations
- 5 More background data
- 6 Contact
- 7 Articles and resources
Positions, record and controversies
Joel Dykstra has served South Dakotans in the State Legislature since 2002. In 2004, Joel was elected Assistant House Majority Leader, a position he still holds today. He also chairs the House Taxation Committee and serves as Vice Chair of the House State Affairs Committee. [2]
2008 elections
Dykstra is the Republican nominee seeking to challenge Sen. Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) in the 2008 congressional elections.[3] He won in primary elections which took place on June 3, 2008. [1]
Money in politics
This section contains links to – and feeds from – money in politics databases.
Campaign contributions
The following is drawn from government records of campaign contributions to Joel Dykstra. Campaign contributions are one of the most direct conduits for influencing members of Congress. How to use this information. <crpcontribdata>cid=N00029249&cycle=2008</crpcontribdata>
Committees and affiliations
Dykstra will be assigned committees if and when he is elected to Congress.
More background data
Dykstra for Congress
Post Office Box 8
Canton, SD 57013
Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
Articles and resources
Related SourceWatch articles
- 2008 U.S. congressional elections
- Portal:South Dakota and the U.S. Congress
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Greg Giroux and Marie Horrigan, "Iowa, Montana, South Dakota Races set for November", CQ Politics, June 4, 2008
- ↑ About Joel Joel Dykstra for Senate Official Website
- ↑ 2008 Race Tracker page on South Dakota's Senate Race
External resources
- 2008 Race Tracker page on South Dakota's Senate Race
- Joel Dykstra for Senate Official Campaign Website
External articles
- Aaron Blake. "Republican enters race for ill senator's seat," The Hill. July 5, 2007.


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The institutional and physical design of improved nursing care
Like Peter Watt (also trained as a nurse), I acknowledge readily that there are deeply embedded problems in the NHS, and that standards of care are often poor, and probably getting worse. Mid-Staffs is indeed just the tip of the iceberg.
Unlike Peter, but like Chris, I regard these problems as institutional (and therefore power-related) rather than those of a "cult" (or rather than cultural). Consequently, I believe that it is primarily through institutional change (i.e. changing power structures) that NHS care will be changed for the better, rather than through increased managerialism, or through hanging effigies.
If I were (a socialist) Lord Francis, I'd make three central recommendations on how to change the NHS to make it more 'caring': one short-term, one longer term, and one – the main focus of this piece – to do with the physical status of the hospital institution.
1) Short term power change
Instead of loading the issue of safe staffing levels on to NICE, I'd recommend the imposition of weekly management/staff side meetings at Trust level to review the past week's levels and trained/untrained mix, and allow staff side to argue why the levels/mix were not enough, if that's what they think, with management side able to agree increase or defend their position. In the event of no agreement, the matter should be referred immediately to a CQC adjudicator. Repeated 'losses' for management side by the adjudicator would result in prompter inspection. This puts the power in the hands of frontline staff, but institutionalizes it more than the current whistleblower stuff.
2) Long term power change
2) Instead of suggesting that trade unions split their 'terms and conditions' function from their 'work standards function', which will be counterproductive, I'd recommend to the TUC and the broader union movement that it should redevelop and revitalise its existing structure of local Trades Councils, brining together all unions in a geographic area with public service users to come to their own conclusions and action plans about those services. This is obviously about more than hospital/care home, but these discussions would be a core feature. Such action plans might include use of the Foundation Trust governors (whose role Francis wants to bolster, but in an ineffective way as it stands) to push hospital management into change demanded by both staff and users, but it might also include community-wide consent to industrial action if management don't listen or respond.
3) Physical change and nurse power
This one may seem a bit odd, but I think our hospitals are now designed wrong, and this is contributing directly to reduced quality of care.
From the early 1980s onwards, most hospitals replaced their old 'nightingale' wards, which were long rectangles with beds down each side, numbering 26-32 in total. Generally there'd also be two or three side rooms, reserved generally for people with infections who were being 'barrier nursed' or for shouty/aggressive/confused people who were really disturbing the other patients. The nurses' desk, which was separate from the nurses' office, was smack bang in the middle of the ward. Shift handovers generally took place in the office (though I often preferred to do it bed to bed if I was in charge).
Nightingale wards were replaced with 'bayed' wards, with each bay containing 4-6 beds, and the nurses' desk moved to next to the office, somewhere between but not in the bays.
Nobody, as far as I know, has ever done any proper research into whether this major physical change to the way nurses had to go about their work changed the quality of care. Reflecting the emerging market-driven ideology of the time, anything that was done was around 'customer experience' and such, and there was an in-built assumption that the new wards were better because less people less meant less noise and more privacy. The anecdotal evidence – that nurses found it easier to work effectively, and that many patients felt security in numbers – was dismissed as resistance to change.
But in fact what little research there is does suggest I may have a case. Pattison and Roberston, writing in 1996, when both types of ward were still around, concluded that, even in gynaecological wards (where care needs around the 'activities of living' like drinking tend to be less than in medical/elderly wards) :
The aim of any ward layout at its most basic level is to provide a safe environment for patient care. This involves the nurse in charge of the ward being able to observe junior staff and monitor their activities, as well as being able to see the patients In turn the patients should be able to contact a nurse at all times. The results show that there is no doubt that patients feel these aims are better fulfilled on the Nightingale ward. On the bay ward, the lack of information on nurses' whereabouts and the activity of the rest of the ward (e g the progress of ward rounds), is a major area of concern.
With the benefit of Mid-Staffs hindsight, the authors' ensuing recommendation that the safety issue could be resolved by "[m]ore sophisticated information systems… for bay wards , and that "[m]ost patients (75%) expressed a preference for the bay ward layout, and on this criterion alone there appears to be no reason not to encourage their continued introduction" seems strangely glib, but this perhaps reflects how much worse things have got in the 18 or so years since the research was done. In 1995, bay wards were the way to go, standards (and staffing levels) would only increase, and a bit of concern about the new wards not being at all conducive to patient care could be dismissed in the Advanced Journal of Nursing Care.
Give this background, I do increasingly wonder if this is the nursing equivalent to the belated discovery that smoking causes cancer, caused by the continued determination of those with a vested interest to promote other possible causes, such as the early 20th century tarmac-ing of roads (this 1956 article provides a fascinating insight into the contentions of the time).
That is, are we ignoring a pretty obvious correlation between big changes in the way nurses have to carry out their work because of walls in between patients and the decline in standards, which appears to have taken place over roughly the same period of time (I nursed in the 80's to early 90s, and again in the early 2000's when I came back from overseas and before my back gave out, and I can attest personally to that decline, for what it's worth)?
Are we ignoring the possible ward labour-poor care link, because, as with smoking-cancer, there are possible, though unproven explanations which fit better today's dominant right-wing narrative: ranging from not enough 'leadership' to 'too posh to wash' and onto the more generic 'broken society' stuff (while this is dominant, I don't discount the 'leftie' explanation that it is all to do with understaffing, though I do think this is contributory)?
I am not, I should stress, arguing that declining standards may be solely down to the ergonomics of nurses' movements and visibility. It's probably more complex than that, and to do with the way in which some of the feeling I used to experience when I walked onto a ward for a shift – that I was joining my team for a new day's battle – may have been lost, and with it the inbuilt solidarity around keeping up standards. You don't have to be a believer in the principles of the Panopticon to acknowledge that, when everyone can see what everyone else is up to for most of the whole 8 hours, then everyone's going to stick the effort in. On an open ward, my team developed an almost telepathic understanding of when a colleague needed a quick hand – for example, when Mr Jones, the heavy left-side stroke patient, needed the two of you to pivot from bed to chair, and this sense of teamwork extended to the physios, the OTs, the cleaners, and even the odd junior doctor.
Put more simply, when I see nurses walk down a ward nowadays, they seem to do it more slowly than I did. There must be a reason for that.
So where to go with this? Of course, this may be no more than the hunch of an ex-nurse, desperate to resolve the apparently conflicting beliefs that it was better in his day and that today's nurses are just as good as we were. But I also think, with all due humility, that it's something worth checking out properly. It seems to be that this is absolutely the kind of thing that Ben Goldacre and his Innovation Unit mates should be developing a Randomised Control Trial for, to see if a return to the physical old days really does create significantly better care. Of course, a Trust would have to be persuaded to knock through a wall or three first, to create a new Nightingale, but I suspect that'd be much better investment than implementing some of the managerialist crap that Lord Francis has come out with.
March 17, 2013 at 6:09 pm


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Kansans are always eager to help when a disaster strikes. Unfortunately so are the scam artists. And they are working right now on clever ways to take advantage of your kindness.
When a tornado levels a town, the first instinct is to help. That's why so many rush to affected area and start moving debris. But when it comes to giving money, if you react too quickly you may just become a victim too.
The Better Business Bureau has a few important reminders:
- Research the organizations you're sending money to.
- Learn exactly what they are raising money for and how it'll be used.
- Be wary of any charity that claims 100-percent of the money is helping tornado victims.
- Avoid email solicitations. don't click any links -- it may be a set up for identity theft.
- Instead go directly to the charity's website.
- Don't give cash. instead make a check payable to the charity itself, not an individual.
- Beware of excessive pressure on the spot.


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SUSSEX, Wis. – Dominion Powersports Solutions has hired Al Jenik as the new general manager for PowerSports Network.
Jenik will work with the company's management team at its headquarters to implement business growth plans while establishing and maintaining strategic partnerships and dealer relationships, the company announced.
Jenik worked for Harley-Davidson for 19 years. He held a variety of positions in the sales division there, including dealer development rep and district manager, before becoming director of dealer services in 2008.
Jenik was the driving force behind several initiatives, PSN said, including the Connect CRM program and Harley-Davidson's Dealer Performance Groups and Dealer Consulting programs which grew to more than 200 dealer members. The initiative improved sales and profitability of its participants by more than $28 million annually. Most recently, Jenik served as vice president of dealer development with Tracker Marine Group.
Posted by Holly Wagner


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Here is a useful page link with information on how to perform a Facebook remote logout. This allows you to log out of any Facebook session that you may have left active on another computer or device.
Click here to see info on Facebook Remote Logout
Facebook Remote Logout
This feature will also let you see if you're still logged in on other devices and immediately log out on those devices from one central control in your account. This feature is rolling out gradually. Once it's live for you, you can try it under the "Account Security" section of your Account Settings page on your Facebook account


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NEW BEDFORD — Ronald V. Pimental, 75, of Acushnet, passed away on Sunday, July 27, 2014 at St. Luke's Hospital after a brief illness. He was the husband of Janice E. (Nerbonne) Pimental; they had been married for 55 years.
Born in New Bedford, the son of the late Manuel V. and Mary (Barboza) Pimental, he lived in Acushnet for most of his life.
He was a communicant of St. Francis Xavier Church, where he was a member of the St. Vincent dePaul Society.
Mr. Pimental was formerly employed as a boilermaker/welder for Local 29, International Brotherhood of Boilermakers.
He served in the Army National Guard and was called to active duty during the Berlin Crisis.
He loved playing golf, watching the Boston Red Sox, and playing cards with his friends. He had been a volunteer for Damien's Pantry.
He is survived by his devoted and loving wife, Janice; his sister, Vivian Bird of New Bedford; and several nieces, nephews, and Godchildren.
Funeral from the Saunders-Dwyer Home for Funerals, 495 Park St., New Bedford, Thursday at 8:45 AM. Funeral Mass at St. Francis Xavier Church, Acushnet at 10 AM. Burial will follow in Acushnet Cemetery. Visiting hours Wednesday 5-8 PM.
In lieu of flowers, remembrances may be made to St. Francis Xavier Parish, 125 Main St., Acushnet, MA 02743.
For directions and guestbook, please visit www.saundersdwyer.com.
Location, ST | website.com


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Share Photo
This NOAA satellite image taken Wednesday, May 30, 2012 at 4:45 a.m. EDT shows cloud cover along the East Coast as the remains of tropical storm Beryl move through the region dropping heavy rain. The Northeast also sees heavy cloud cover as Tuesday\'s severe thunderstorm outbreak dies down. More clouds are noted in the Southern Plains where more severe weather was reported on Tuesday. (AP PHOTO/WEATHER UNDERGROUND)


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Thoughts, feelings & happenings as I go through treatment for Breast Cancer. Hopefully honest, helpful & sometimes even a little bit funny!! Love Chez. xx
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Annie - An Explanation
I can only say that I'm really sorry about this, I'm not an ignorant person by any stretch of the imagination & I feel quite guilty that I haven't responded to many of you......I just didn't quite know what to say. And I also didn't want to sensationalise things any more than they had been already.
I'm not making myself clear but I'm actually struggling here to put this into words.
Right, okay.....here goes.....I really don't know if I'm doing the right thing here or not but something has got to be said.......*takes in a deep breath*
To those of you that have only started reading my blog recently (or any kind of blog come to that), you may have gathered that there is a whole blogging community out there in cyberspace, obviously the main one that I'm involved with is the Breast Cancer bloggers community. We tend to 'meet' through other peoples blogs & we're there to support each other, to share our news, to discuss treatments, to raise awareness, to campaign for a cure etc (you get the picture.) I'd go so far to say that many of us, have made new & lasting friendships through our blogs.
When those of us with a primary cancer come across a blog written by someone with secondary cancer(s) or when one of us develops secondaries, well, we can understand what they're going through to a certain point but, we could never fully know what it feels like. Reading that person's blog helps us to understand a bit more. And we want to support them.
Which is exactly how I felt when I came across 'Annie's blog' last year. There's also such a thing as 'Survivor's guilt'; I felt a bit of that too.
I actually wrote a post for her blog (Curly hair & false eyelashes) in August 2011, which explains just how much she touched my life when I came across her writings; you can read it here. (Although you will need to click on the images & then zoom in to read it until I figure out another way to get it on here cos I only printed off a copy from my blog & I've scanned it onto my laptop today; I didn't think on to copy & paste it onto a word document.)
And she wrote one for me prior to that, which I featured on this blog on 11th July 2011; you can read her post here.
Anyway, when I moved back to Liverpool in September 2011, I was happy that I would be closer to 'Annie' (she lived 20 minutes away from where I was relocating to), so that I could visit her, maybe take her out somewhere.....I dunno, just 'be there' for her. We'd chatted about it quite a lot through email, Facebook & Twitter. I knew that she was only expecting to live another 6 months.....that's what her Doctors had told her....
When I couldn't reach her by phone, text, email or through Twitter & Facebook, I started to fear the worst.
So, feeling that I'd exhausted every other avenue, I decided to send an inbox message to one of her friends on Facebook, someone who I knew was pretty close to her.
He inboxed me back a few hours later, providing his phone number & asking me to call him.
Oh Jeez.....what can I say without transcribing the whole conversation onto here? We've spoken so many times since then.....I'm exhausted thinking about it.
Without going into detail, I'll cut to the chase.
Basically.....Annie's blog was a complete fabrication.
She made up the whole story about having breast cancer; she'd never had breast cancer - let alone secondary breast cancer.
There I've said it. I hate to be the bearer of this news but people have never stopped asking about her. It's not that I'm fed up of them asking, far from it, their concern is overwhelming & so touching, but I can't lie to or avoid people any longer. We all knew that 'Annie' was a pseudonym (I know her real name but I won't reveal that here) & anyone who was reading either of our blogs at the time also knew that we'd met. So I feel a bit of a responsibility to put people in the picture about this. I feel responsible for driving a lot more traffic to her blog by introducing her to a lot of my readers. I also feel like a bit of an idiot to be honest because I was taken in by it. And here's me, the streetwise Scouser thinking that not many people can put one past me!
As the title of my blog says - 'It Could Only Happen To [me]'. But this isn't about me.
Hearing this news shocked me to the core. I couldn't believe it & kept asking 'Are you sure? How? Why?'......Apparently suspicions were aroused at her work place, she was suspended & then resigned from her job a short time later.
I can't really tell you much more than this cos that is basically all that I really know. I've known for a few months now & I think that I've been trying to come to terms with it in my own head before I felt like I should tell other people.
Obviously she wasn't/isn't very well (click here to see what a possible explanation for it could be).....but I suppose that's not for me to judge; I did try to contact her after I'd found out to see if she wanted to talk about it but she never ever replied.
Anyway, I can imagine that many of you will have further questions about this so if anyone wants to contact me then please be assured that I won't ignore you this time however, I haven't really got much else to say on the subject, I don't know why she did it, I don't know where she is, I don't have any contact with her whatsoever.
I mean, thinking back, she inspired so many of us, she really, definitely did.
I know when I was feeling down & depressed I'd read her blog, see how she was 'coping' & then I'd find more resolve to pick myself up & get on with my life.
I've gone through all of the emotions that you are probably feeling right now; disbelief, amazement, shock, anger, pity, amusement, incredulity.....the list is endless.
Please know, that I'm truly, truly sorry to be the one to break this news. So many people have contacted me in the past few months that I just felt that it was time to let people know what I know. I'm sorry if anyone thinks that this is inappropriate or insensitive but like I said, after driving so much traffic to 'Annie's blog', by promoting it & asking you all to support her, I feel like I added unnecessary fuel to the fire.
I suppose that's all I can say really.
I mean, am I glad that she's not going to die of secondary breast cancer? Of course I am.
But at the same time.....it's all very bizarre. She is very much alive & kicking.
I'll leave it with you.
Love Chez. xx
10 comments:
- Catriona6 March 2012 at 18:59:00 GMT
Chez, big massive hug for you... Thank you for breaking the silence...ReplyDelete
That Annie was/is very ill there is no doubt, just not as we had (along with many others, inclduing some very well qualified people) believed. I just hope that by now she has found the help she needs.
Never, ever, ever, blame yourself for any of this. As you rightly say, Annie was a gifted writer who inspired many, many people with her witty style and profound observations. Her piece in repsosne to the summer 2011 riots was truly amazing.
I was fooled too... and I'm a decade older then you (or thereabouts).
Now, go forward, let it go, no-one worth knowing thinks any the less of you.
I am glad it's all out in the open. I have to say when I found out I took it quite badly. I had offered emotional support to Annie when at times I was struggling with my own diagnosis. I cannot begin to understand why a person would behave like this, there are professionals paid to do that. I just hope she is getting help.ReplyDelete
I agree with your last statement Chez, I'm glad she did not die to this horrible disease xx
may be some information can help you at hereReplyDelete
thanks sharing
Poor lass. What kind of issues can lead someone to such a course of action? I am so very glad that she hasn't (as I feared) died of this awful thing, but like everyone else I hope she finds the help she so clearly needs.ReplyDelete
She wrote very well. She certainly seemed to understand, and she connected immediately with many of the fears and feelings that I, and many others, have experienced. If the blog had been pitched as a fictionalised account which would inspire and assist many many women going through an awful experience, then it worked very well indeed. If it was an attention-seeking device which allowed someone to gain the love and support that they couldn't get any other way, then I think that person probably needs and deserves our sympathy. If it was a way to get a following which might lead to a book deal and make someone some money, then it was callous exploitation, but it wouldn't be the first time that has happened.
Chez - you're a fine woman with a big heart. Never, never, never imagine that anyone would think less of someone who cared enough to support someone they believed was going through such an illness. That you did is a credit to you, not a failing.
Thank you for sharing this news with us, and for your courage in doing so.
Chez, thanks so much for posting this and thanks to Catriona for pointing me to it. I'm another who was completely fooled by what was a very skilful fabrication and I'm another decade older. I too feared the worst when the blog disappeared and am shocked to know the real reason why.ReplyDelete
If it's any consolation, I've experienced this situation before, not on a blog but on a small private breast cancer forum. There a new member also presented a very skilful fabrication about a secondary diagnosis and was offered a great deal of sympathy and emotional support.
I do hope that 'Annie' gets the professional help she so obviously needs and that those who supported her aren't deterred from offering the same generous support to others who really need it.
Thank you for all of your very understanding comments about this blog post, both with regards to my standing on this & also for your compassion for 'Annie'.ReplyDelete
I realise that there are going to be people that are very upset about this revelation but I really felt that it was time that I spoke out about what very little I know about all of this, especially since I know how it feels to be very worried about someone; when I couldn't get in touch with her I was pretty upset.
I suppose the one good thing is that we are not going to lose someone else to secondary breast cancer.
With love & hugs to all of you.
Thank you.
Chez. xx
This is so sad,Chez - thank you for sharing what was terribly tough to share.ReplyDelete
I guess it is a reflection of the complicated and inter-connected online lives and relationships we develop. And how much trust we place on the basis of the information in front of us, often because we share so much of our own personal self online. Something like this knocks that trust.
I hope you don't mind if I refer to your post in a blog I was already working on about the friendships we develop online.
I too hope that Annie has the medical and emotional support she needs.
You take care and it is great to hear your latest updates :)
Big hugs
Philippa (aka Feisty Blue Gecko)
Hi Phillipa, great to hear from you & thank you for your kind comments....please feel free to refer to this post in your blog, hope ur well, Love Chez. xxDelete
Hi Chez - I am not sure if the link reached you or not, some of my comments on blogspot disappear.ReplyDelete
Here is the post about trust:
and a short follow up:
I would be really keen to hear your thoughts, given your own experience :)
P xoxReplies
Hi Phillipa,Delete
I've been offline for a little while but will take a look at your posts as soon as I can.
I'll be in touch soon, take care,


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Brewton-Parker students make Who's Who list
MOUNT VERNON -- Nineteen Brewton-Parker College students were selected for the 2003 edition of Who's Who among Students in American Universities and Colleges as national outstanding campus leaders.
Students are included based on their academic achievement, service to the community, leadership in extracurricular activities and potential for continued success.
They join an elite group of students from more than 2,300 institutions of higher learning in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and several other nations. Outstanding students have been honored in the annual directory since it was first published in 1934.
Brewton-Parker students, listed by hometown, named to Who's Who for 2003 are:
AILEY -- Ashley M. Morris
CARTERSVILLE -- Amanda Faye Crosby
CLAXTON -- Ashley Lynne Todd
DUBLIN -- Joy Ducree-Evans
EASTMAN -- Elizabeth Lane Snyder
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Kevin Lamar Dean
JESUP -- Michelle Rose Stokes
KELOWNA, British Columbia -- Jaime Alison Murrant
LAWRENCEVILLE -- Ashley S. Brown-Little
LYONS -- Annie Elizabeth Chavis and Monica Kristen Miller
MOUNT VERNON -- Lee Ann Jones
TIFTON -- Courtney L. Thompson
VALDOSTA -- Stephen Andrew Bailey
VIDALIA -- Sandra Tralane Farrow and Leslie Katrina McDaniel
WARNER ROBINS -- Michael Ryan Lyons
WOODBINE -- Charles Tyler Conkin
WRENS -- Amy Elizabeth Prescott
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