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Show All Answers
It is against the law to discharge pollutants into (1) the storm drainage system (2) surface water and (3) groundwater.
Streams serve as a natural habitat and a source of food to many animals, fish, and aquatic life. Pollution will kill a stream and everything that uses it for survival. A stream filled with these items will suffer:
These items contaminate water, causing death or illness to aquatic life, and fish by interrupting their reproductive cycle. The stream or waterway begins to fill up. The riparian corridor is destroyed. When that happens, the stream dies.
Pollutants also contaminate drinking water supplies. Antifreeze, detergents, and oils actually change the chemical makeup of water causing destruction not only to fish but also to the surrounding habitat for plants and animals. The economic loss is immeasurable.
The choices we make around our home will have an impact on our local streams. Some things you can do are:
Groundwater is rainwater that has had a chance to be absorbed into the ground where it "percolates" through the ground layers. This natural cleansing process removes most of the pollutants before they enter streams. Porous soil layers, detention areas, and forested areas help absorb rainwater and greatly eliminates a lot of damaging stormwater runoff. When groundwater has a chance to percolate through the ground layers and eventually draining into the streams as a natural process, this provides a steady flow of "clean" water to streams.
Runoff is rainwater that runs over the landscape picking up any pollutants that may be on the ground surface and carries these pollutants directly into the nearest stream. Runoff occurs when (1) there is an increase in impervious cover (rooftops, driveways, parking lots, etc.), (2) when soil is compacted by heavy construction equipment, or (3) when land is cleared by removing plants and trees that would normally help absorb rainwater. When rainwater cannot be absorbed naturally into the ground layers, rainwater runoff enters the streams too quickly causing erosion and flooding conditions.
Sanitary sewer drains are designed to drain wastewater and sewage from inside our homes. The sanitary sewer drains lead to the sanitary sewer system and ends up at a wastewater treatment plant. Unlike stormwater runoff from yards, streets, parking lots, etc, wastewater in this system is treated before being discharged into a natural water body.
Surface water runoff also called stormwater runoff flows across the top of yards, parking lots, streets, etc. In suburban areas, stormwater runoff enters a storm drain that takes water directly to the nearest water body. Water in a storm drain is untreated so it contains pollutants picked up by stormwater runoff and runs directly to the nearest creek or lake.
You can call the County Stormwater Division at 636-797-6228 or your local city government offices. Educational programs are available as well as publications that address pollution control practices.
Yes. Jefferson County has a Recycling Coordinator in the Solid Waste Division. For information on recycling centers call 636-797-5043. You can also visit the County Recycling website.
Rainwater or snow melt encounters materials on the ground including loose sediment, oil and grease, heavy metals, toxic household cleaners, organic debris, excessive nutrients, bacteria and viruses and litter. Often the chemicals, oils and trash are carried in in the runoff and discharged to streams rivers and lakes. To find out more about stormwater visit our Educational Resources page.
Sewer systems and stormwater drains are two different things. The water that goes down your house drain flows to a wastewater treatment plant where it is treated and filtered, then released to a receiving stream. But water that flows down driveways and streets into a gutter or ditch is not treated and flows directly to a lake, river or stream. The pollutants in the stormwater, are discharged to the lake, river or stream too.
An illicit discharge is the illegal dumping of any pollutant into the storm drain system. Pollutant examples include, but are not limited to, pesticides, fertilizers, weed killers, detergents, oils and grease, litter and illegal activities such as dumping materials into storm drains or connecting waste water pipes into storm drains.


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A multitude of features in the works
Dean "Rocket" Hall and the rest of the folks at Bohemia Interactive have been pretty busy working on the standalone version of DayZ and this new developer video helps shed some light on what they have been polishing. Improvements to player health, inventory, and zombie pathfinding have been made, as well as implementing zombie spwaning from the server-side. A full breakdown of the features discussed in the video can be found on the developer's blog.
It has been said before but, it is still really impressive to see a mod take off with such force on the power of its community. It is also good to see that other developers who are trying to hop on the zombie-survivalist bandwagon, looking to just make a quick buck, get knocked down quickly due to their own greed blinding them to their larger issues. The DayZ standalone should be releasing sometime this April 2013, pending any sort of global infectious catastrophe.

subset: commoncrawl


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On Wednesday, December 19th 2012, Judith's Reading Room opened its second library in Albania in the historic village of Polenë, outside the city of Korçë. At the primary school there, teachers and students spent the last day of school before the winter break, organizing books and setting-up the English language library. The library will be used to help improve students' reading skills. The school in Polenë serves about sixty students enrolled in all grade levels from kindergarten to ninth grade, and has a staff of eight teachers. Children have English classes two to three times a week starting in third grade.
In addition to enjoying a visit from Santa Claus, children at the school were able to spend some time looking through the school's new library which included many interesting titles requested by the teachers. The children made signs expressing their love of reading, and were excited to finally receive the shipment of books. They were happy that Judith's Reading Room was able to provide them with the books. Dennis Dias, a local Peace Corps Volunteer who coordinated the event, helped teachers distribute books to the children.
[note color="#b5a66b"]Please check out the Sunday Express-Times site, Sara K. Satulla wrote an awesome story on Judith's Reading Room in the VALLEY Section's back page in regards to the opening of this library ….. Judith's Reading Room, Bethlehem-based nonprofit, opens its 45th library.[/note]Zana Begollari, an English teacher in Polenë, gave a short speech commemorating the event, saying "These books are important to helping us communicate freely in English as a foreign language. Step by step, we must practice the English language. In these books are words we must use daily." Fredi Mançi, another teacher at the school, explained "These books are new and different. We can all make use of them, the teachers as well, and there is a good possibility of improving our English skills as well in order to share the joy of these books with the children." Ilir Filovani, the director of this school, said the school had a great need for the books and appreciated the gift.
The children remarked on the familiarity of some characters in the books like Sleeping Beauty and SpongeBob, and were motivated to start reading to learn more about them. One student, Christina, read a passage from her favorite book to the rest of the students present. At the end of the event, Ms Begollari led her English students to say "Thank you from the bottom of our hearts."
Judith's Reading Room had previously opened a library in the neighboring village of Qatrom.


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DENVER -- Two Denver Broncos players are suing the NFL seeking to overturn their drug suspensions.
The lawsuit filed in Denver District Court contends the league violated protocol in collecting urine samples from linebacker D.J. Williams and defensive lineman Ryan McBean and refused to clear the players after the collector was fired for not following proper procedures.
Williams and McBean were suspended without pay for Denver's first six games of the 2012 season.
Williams' lawyer, Peter R. Ginsberg, said the league contends the urine samples they provided to an NFL specimen collector for testing in August weren't from a human. Ginsberg said the specimen collector said he watched Williams void directly into the specimen bottle, so it would've been impossible for the specimen to be non-human.
The collector has since been fired by the league for dereliction of duty, but the hearing officer, Harold Henderson, who works in the commissioner's office, ruled against the players, whose appeal was denied.
Williams and McBean filed suit this week against the NFL asking that their penalties, which were handed down Friday, be thrown out.
"The claims have no merit and we are confident that the discipline will be upheld and enforced as required by the policy," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said Tuesday.
The NFL Players Association also chimed in on the matter Tuesday, questioning the process followed by the NFL before the league suspended Williams and McBean for violating the policy on performance-enhancing substances. The players union said it's "disappointed" with the six-game suspensions.
The union said in its release that there was evidence of breaches in the collection protocol and other procedural irregularities. Also, the NFLPA said the league handed down the bans "even though the specimen collector was fired by his agency for not following procedures." It also called for independent arbitrators as part of any future drug testing policy.
"The NFLPA and NFL have been negotiating a new and comprehensive Substances of Abuse and Steroids policies. The facts in these two cases, and in recent cases in other sports, dramatically underscore the players' insistence to have independent, neutral arbitrators as part of any future policy. We will continue to fight for a fair, clean and safe game," the union said in its statement.
The lawsuit contends Henderson exceeded his powers and wasn't an impartial arbitrator and that errors were made in the chain-of-custody procedure. It also claims that after the players' appeals hearings, the NFL lawyer held what's called "ex parte communications" with Henderson, meaning the players' lawyers weren't present.
"The bottom line is that the NFL totally compromised the steroid policy, trampled on our clients' rights, damaged their reputations, are threatening their livelihoods and we've asked for judicial intervention to ensure against that happening," Ginsberg said.
"I don't think I've ever seen the NFL so flagrantly violate its own procedures and have no conscience with regard to punishing players without any justification," Ginsberg added. "I think that the hearing officer was answering to the commissioner and there may be vestiges of hard feelings for the (collective bargaining agreement) negotiations. Or simply, the commissioner doesn't understand that he has responsibilities to players as well as to the owners."
McBean becomes a free agent Tuesday afternoon, but with this suspension hanging over his head, his lawyer, Peter Schaffer, wonders just how marketable he will be to teams. Schaffer said the evidence in the case closed on Dec. 9, but he didn't receive a decision until February.
"I want to make emphatically clear that neither one of these players tested positive for a banned or an illegal substance. I think that's very important to point out," Schaffer said. "The damages are enormous. Forget about not just the damage to D.J.'s and Ryan's reputation, but monetarily, it's enormous."
Schaffer also compared the case to that of Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun, who recently won his appeal to overturn a 50-game suspension for a positive drug test.
Braun's legal team argued in a grievance hearing that the collector, Dino Laurenzi Jr., did not follow the procedures specified in baseball's drug agreement.
"The facts of this case are so much better than the facts of Braun," Schaffer said. "In Braun's case, the arbitrator ruled, based on WADA cases, that the collector made a mistake and therefore he can't punish the player, even though Major League Baseball believed the collector did not make a mistake. The collector has come out and said I did everything right and Major League Baseball has come out and said the collector has done everything right.
"In this case, the NFL fired the collector for obvious dereliction of duties. At the hearing, the NFL administrators all admitted the collector made many mistakes and that's why he was fired. And yet they still suspend these two players."
A four-game suspension for Broncos tight end Virgil Green was not addressed in an NFLPA news release. Green has said he now has been approved for the medication for which he was been suspended. Green is not party to the lawsuit filed by Williams and McBean.
Williams, who has been the backbone of Denver's defense for several seasons as the Broncos' top tackler, is livid over his suspension, Ginsberg said.
"It's a huge deal professionally and personally," Ginsberg said. "D.J. has been playing for eight years and he's never violated any test for either steroids or illegal substances. Here, the NFL is broadcasting publicly that he failed a steroids test. He's very upset."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.


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"You don't celebrate Christmas?" Well, not any more.
1 Peter 4:3-5
For we have spent enough of our past lifetime in doing the will of the Gentiles–when we walked in lewdness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and abominable idolatries. 4 In regard to these, they think it strange that you do not run with them in the same flood of dissipation, speaking evil of you. 5 They will give an account to Him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.
I realize that those who are still drunk on the wine of the Babylonian Mystery religion (incorporated into the Roman Catholic Cult as brought out in The Two Babylons by Alexander Hislop) don't appreciate or comprehend those who are now SOBER and happy to be free from idolatrous traditions for the plain truth of the Bible and history.
The Sabbath-keeping Church of God rejoices in the knowledge and glorious plan of salvation for all mankind that the biblical festivals, the holy days that our Great Creator God has ordained portray – no longer falling for the hollow days of pagan Rome, pimped by Roman wolves in sheep's clothing, false father figures.
The Sabbath-keeping Church of God celebrate that soon everybody will join us in celebrating God's holy days, the Jewish holidays" in spirit and in truth, and will trash their former tinsel traditions. We are pioneers of the Wonderful World Tomorrow!
Jeremiah 16:19
O LORD, my strength and my fortress, My refuge in the day of affliction, The Gentiles shall come to You From the ends of the earth and say, "Surely our fathers have inherited lies, Worthlessness and unprofitable things."
It is sad when folks continue to fall for all the RELIGIOUS BULL Rome has dumped on the world and pretend they're worshipping Christ who hates such PAGAN ABOMINATIONS. Why remain in denial?
God is truth and despises such religious lies as Christmas and Easter. They're PAGAN to the core and God's People avoid them like the plague, happy with the biblical festivals God has given us to celebrate.
Yeshua, the King of the Jews, the King of Israel, will return and reign supreme from Jerusalem and teach the Torah, slaughtering the papal bull by the sword of the truth.
Isaiah 2:2-3
2 Now it shall come to pass in the latter days
That the [Temple] mountain of the LORD's house
Shall be established on the top of the mountains,
And shall be exalted above the hills;
And all nations shall flow to it.
3 Many people shall come and say,
"Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD,
To the house of the God of Jacob;
He will teach us His ways,
And we shall walk in His paths."
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem [not Rome].
Yeshua will establish the law of God as the law of the land, the law of all the Earth! That holy law reveals the seven biblical festivals of the LORD that Yeshua will faithfully teach and command all nations to observe or else – not just the Jewish people and Israelites.
Yes, too many people have inherited religious lies, and have passed down traditional error from generation to generation; worthless celebrations that God hates and rejects as unclean and polluted. It bears repeating, since our proud and stubborn peoples have thick skulls that need the truth knocked into them, driving home this biblical message: Christmas and Easter are PAGAN – those who say otherwise are liars, dishonest with themselves and others, worshipping God in vain (Titus 1:16, 1 John 2:4).
I believe many PROFESSING Christians are actually familiar with the Scriptures that condemn futile attempts to modify pagan holidays and tailor heathen customs to serve the true God (Deut. 12:30-32, Jer. 10:2-3), but they conveniently ignore them or reject them by woeful neglect when such Scriptures step on their traditional toes and make them uncomfortable, demanding change (isn't that what true conversion is all about?), requiring them to learn to love God's truth more than their TRADITIONS (Mark 7:7).
Abominable Christians, those who have the perverted religious preference of tradition over truth, are just like every other sinner unwilling to confess and forsake their sins and seek to whitewash or justify them. The difference is such professing Christians often pretend to be better or more righteous than those physical idolaters and immoral folks (who also refuse to repent) while they engage in spiritual idolatry (putting tradition over truth) and spiritual immorality (whoring around with other gods and foreign ways) bringing divine judgment upon our nations.
May the servants of God, who know and believe the Bible and its principles and prophecies about blessings for national obedience and curses for national disobedience (Dan. 9:11), plea for diehard Catholics and Protestants to REPENT!
May we take the Word of God seriously and turn from the pagan holidays that God hates so much He let ancient Israel and Judah suffer war, defeat and deportation for such "harmless" celebrations and blind observations. Will we insist on losing our national sovereignty too, brought to our knees to learn to see things God's way or will we repent and spare ourselves, our family and friends, from suffering the dreadful Time of Jacob's Trouble, the Great Tribulation?
1 Corinthians 10:19-21
19 What am I saying then? That an idol is anything, or what is offered to idols is anything? 20 Rather, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons and not to God, and I do not want you to have fellowship with demons. 21 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord's table and of the table of demons. [No mixing and matching of pagan error with biblical truth]
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? 15 And what accord has Christ with Belial? [No diluting, adulterating and polluting of God's truth with pagan blends]Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 16 And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
"I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people."
17 Therefore
"Come out from among them
And be separate, says the Lord. [Don't stay stuck in the rut of tradition, but let the plain truth set you free!]
Do not touch what is unclean,
And [then] I will receive you.
18 [on these conditions] I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty."


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Create a Website Account - Manage notification subscriptions, save form progress and more.
Yes, you can pay your bill online here by using an electronic check or debit/credit card (additional 3% fee with debit/credit card).
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Utilities are billed quarterly. Your first utility bill will be prorated from the time you create an account with us.
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There are a few factors that could contribute to a high bill.
Yes. You can contact us either by email or phone (616) 457-2340 to request paperless billing.


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Swedish black/death metal outfit Dawn returned from the chaos of the 2000s a year ago and have been steadily moving toward releasing new material since. In support of this, the band will be re-issuing its entire discography through Century Media in 2014.
Formed in 1990, Dawn migrated from the death metal of their early demos into a more complex, melodic, epic and atmospheric style of black/death metal that culminated in Slaughtersun – Crown Of The Triarchy in (1998). Along with Dissection, Unanimated, Eucharist and Sacramentum, Dawn created a hybrid of melodic metal styles that expressed Iron Maiden-style harmony and melodic within the more rigorous rhythmic format of underground death metal.
During the first half of 2014, Dawn's back catalog will finally be made available again on CD and — for the first time ever — on vinyl. Carefully re-mastered by Dan Swanö, who also mastered Sacramentum and Fleshcrawl classics, these re-issues feature re-developed artwork done with full cooperation with the band.
Look for these releases in 2014:
- (title TBA) Demos 1991-1993 on CD/LP
- Nær Sólen Gar Niþer For Evogher (1994) on CD/LP
- Sorgh På Svarte Vingar Fløgh (1996) on MCD/MLP
- Slaughtersun – Crown Of The Triarchy (1998) on CD/2LP
No CommentsTags: Black Metal, dawn, death metal


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Driving the Cadillac Presidential Limo From "White House Down"
Cadillac One. The Beast.
Cadillac One. The Beast. President Barack Obama's custom Cadillac presidential limo goes by many names, but as famous as The Beast is, we still don't know anything about its powertrain (rumor is it's a diesel), armor, or even what the interior looks like. That's why when Sony studios representatives asked if we wanted to drive their replica of the Beast from this summer's "White House Down," we couldn't say yes fast enough.
But first, a little background. Starring Jamie Foxx and Channing Tatum, "White House Down" is about a domestic terrorist group that's taken over the White House and is trying to do evil bad guy things to America, much like the plot to "Olympus Has Fallen," which opened earlier this year. Foxx plays the president, while Tatum plays the secret service agent tasked with protecting him.
Each of the four Cadillac limo replicas in the movie started life as a run-of-the-mill Chevrolet Suburban, Cyril O'Neal of Ghostlight Industries, the builders of The Beast, told us. The Suburbans were stripped of their body, stretched, and widened, and hand-built from Fiberglas. O'Neal said it was so much work that they might as well have started from scratch with two pieces of steel, rather than build their way up from a Suburban. The real Beast is rumored to be built on a chassis of the GMC Topkick, the Suburban's big brother.
Building an accurate replica actually proved more difficult than he and car coordinator Graham Kelly expected.
"When I first got asked to do this, I didn't poo-poo it so much, but I figured 'oh that's alright, it's a Cadillac limo, alright maybe the roof is a little lower, we'll figure it out," Kelly said. "I'll go and buy a stretch Cadillac and make it the right length, and off we go. We'll have three or four of them and it won't be a big problem. And it wasn't until we actually started getting into this, which was actually probably a little too late, that we realized, very quickly -- it was one of those moments where you go, 'oh my god.'"
The problem Kelly and O'Neal ran into was getting accurate info on The Beast so they could build a realistic replica. Not surprisingly, GM and the White House were no help. So the company started building a model based on the headlights, which they determined were from a current-gen Cadillac Escalade. O'Neal and his team worked backward from there, using known measurements like the 12-inch tall Escalade headlight, and Obama's six-foot-one frame to determine the proper proportions of the car. The result is a pretty dead-on replica from the outside.
The interior was actually a bit easier to build since not many images exist of the Cadillac's cabin. That allowed O'Neal and Kelly to use their imaginations when it came to the limo's insides, which resulted in the car getting James Bond-like gadgets and screens. In reality, the replica's interior is pretty basic. The driver's compartment feels like an Escalade's with a familiar shifter, steering wheel, and seats, with the main differences being the custom instrument panel, kill switches, and fake buttons in the center stack. The back seat looks how you'd imagine the President's limo looking, with two forward facing seats and two rear-facing jump seats.
There's really no way of knowing for sure what powers the real Beast, and for the purposes of "White House Down," it really didn't matter. Each Beast replica is powered by a Chevy LS3 V-8, mated to the standard Suburban transmission and transfer case. Yep, The Beast replicas are all four-wheel drive. As Kelly told us, apart from a single shot, all the stunts were done with a driver in the car, "We had it basically performing as a rally car on the field; it was sideways, and four-wheel drifting. It was being hit by Suburbans, it crashed through trees and vegetable gardens," he said. Each of the hand-built replicas cost near $1 million, so you can understand why he may have been reluctant to crash one into a pool as part of the filming.
Despite all the work and money the "White House Down" crew put into building its Beast replica from the ground up, the car drives like a cobbled-together Franken-Caddy that's been rammed by Suburbans and crashed through trees by Hollywood actors and stuntmen. Still, when's the next time I'll get a chance to drive the President's limo? So I hopped in the sweltering cabin (like the real thing, the windows don't roll all the way down) and made the most of it.
My drive of The Beast was supposed to consist of a K-turn, a 10-foot drive down an alley, followed by another K-turn. But after my first 40-point turn, I kept going. With the LS3 burbling and me behind the wheel of a presidential limo, there was no way I was stopping. Though almost every turn was a multi-step affair and I was sweating up a storm in the cabin, I didn't care. Everywhere we went, people, pointed and phones were raised in our direction.
Driving The Beast replica was a special experience, the kind usually reserved for cars with gullwing doors, or sub-three second 0-60 mph times. Though only a handful of people in Washington and Detroit will be able to comment on the realism of the Beast in "White House Down," it looks real enough. You can check out the Beast in action in the "White House Down" trailer below. The movie hits theaters on June 28.
Select images courtesy of Colombia Pictures.
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Star Wars To Collect In 2002: Wizard World
Chicago's Donald E. Stephens Convention Center is host to Wizard World 2002 this 4th of July weekend where fans of comics, toys, anime, and gaming congregate for an event to celebrate fun and entertainment. Put on by Wizard Entertainment, the folks who bring you Wizards and ToyFare magazine, the show has a full schedule of events and exhibit booths set up by your favorite companies like our friends at Hasbro.
Dark Horse Comics
Convention Floor


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Spokane Weekend Wine Time 3/5-3/7
After a long week – we all need to wind down. Wind down, with a wine down weekend. Watch for this weekly feature on DrinkNectar.com that highlights everything wine around the Spokane region! If you're not already, become a fan of DrinkNectar on Facebook.
Vino! A Wine Shop – Jump start the weekend with a tasting of Cadaretta and Buried Cane Wineries from 3-5pm. Vino is located at 222 S. Washington: Cost varies depending on event $5-$10
First Friday – A fantastic wine and art walk through Downtown Spokane. Enjoy fabulous wine at Barrister, Whitestone, Grande Ronde, Arbor Crest @ RiverPark Square, Lone Canary, and Left Bank Wine Bar. Most locations are open 5-8pm; Cost varies between locations for tastings or by the glass
Taste Spokane – Spokane Wine and Food event to support the Wishing Star foundation. Enjoy tasting and bidding on fantastic auction items. The event is at Northern Quest Casino and Resort from 6-10pm. Tickets are available at the door for $25 – This is the event that I will be at – See you there!
Rocket Market – Wine Steward, Matt, shares his wines of the month. Enjoy 8 wines, cheese and bread. Check out the surprises Matt has in store. Rocket Market is located on 43rd and Hatch on the South Hill. The event starts at 7pm and reservations are requested; Cost is $22
Vino! A Wine Shop – March wine sale, Part 1 – regular business hours
Wine Stein & Dine – Benefiting Post Falls School District the 14th annual event benefits the Post Falls Education Foundation. Robert Karl Cellars (among others) will be pouring at the Greyhound Park and Events Center; Tickets can be purchased at the Post Falls School District Office or call Loretta at 208-661-1880
Evening of Enchantment – An evening of jazz and classical guitars, appetizers and chocolate benefiting the American Cancer Society will be on March 6 from 5-8:30 pm. Tickets: $25. Northern Quest, 100 N. Hayford Rd., Airway Heights, Wash. (475-7458)
Alyse Black @ Left Bank Wine Bar – The Infatuation Tour 2010. LeftBank is at 108 N Washington. Show is from 7-9pm. No cost is mentioned.
Gonzaga Bulldogs Basketball – Check with Grande Ronde and Barrister Winery as they typically broadcast the game and have wine specials during game time.
All Weekend
Spokane Tasting Room Tour – Most Spokane tasting rooms are open. Check out this tasting room map for contact information, hours of operation and video reviews.
For Local Wine Event information in Spokane and other cities, check out LocalWineEvents.com
2 comments on "Spokane Weekend Wine Time 3/5-3/7"
rocketwineguy Wow Josh, I didn't realize you were posting our events! Muchas gracias! I finally got a handle of the "controls" here at the Rocket Market and will have time to chat with you about wine, life, etc. I have some cool wine links and wines to share as well.
Thanks so much for your posting of our events and for your passion about wine! Salud!


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This week I'll be participating in the WattsUpWithThat answer to Al Gore's 24-hour web project. Additionally, I'll be talking to a university class tomorrow and addressing a climate skeptics' conference in Munich on December 1st.
Tomorrow I'll be telling a university class about the decisions I made while researching my book. If a person is not a scientist themselves (and I am not), how do we evaluate global warming claims?
My approach was to evaluate the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the organization our governments have entrusted with the job of surveying climate research and figuring out what it all means.
When we look at that organization what do we find? Does it act like a meticulous, reliable professional in business attire? Or does it remind us of a spoiled child: arrogant, bursting with bravado, sloppy, and dismissive?
I'm going to explain to the students that, during my research, I asked some basic questions about the IPCC:
- does it describe its own personnel accurately?
- does it describe the material it takes into consideration accurately?
- does it follow its own rules?
- are there enforcement mechanisms to ensure its rules are followed?
- is there an air of gravitas about its leadership that inspires confidence?
I will demonstrate that, in each case, the IPCC receives a failing grade.
The day after tomorrow (Thursday in my time zone) I'll be taking part in the 24-hour webcast hosted by Anthony Watts over at the climate skeptic website WattsUpWithThat.com. Watts will interview me briefly, I'll make a 30-minute presentation and then there will be a Q&A session based on viewer questions submitted by e-mail. Read about it here, here, and here.
This event is an answer to Al Gore's latest project, 24 Hours of Reality: The Dirty Weather Report. Like an oldtime fire-and-brimstone preacher, Gore has threatened us with global warming, climate change, global weirding, and extreme weather. None of those has apparently achieved his desired effect and so now he's trying out a new marketing slogan: dirty weather.
A live event will always be subject to last-minute changes, but my current understanding is that I will appear near the end of the broadcast, commencing at around 7 pm Eastern time on Thursday evening.
In a few weeks I'll be speaking at the 5th annual Climate and Energy Conference sponsored by the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE). It will be held in Munich on Friday Nov. 30th and Saturday Dec. 1st.
I'm scheduled to be the first speaker on Saturday morning, commencing at 9 am. Malaria expert Paul Reiter is on the programme, as is astrophysicist Nir Shaviv, and sea level expert Nils-Axel Mörner.


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Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger sat down for a roundtable discussion with Wes, Meryl Streep, Jason Schwartzman and Bill Murray to talk about Fantastic Mr. Fox. The first part is embedded below, and it continues after the break. Unfortunately you'll need to use the EW link to see part 3.
And for those who continue to see Mr. Fox over the holiday weekend for the first time (or second…or third) please stop by and leave us your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter.
via In Contention


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Last night was the local Blug meeting, and as always it was a good and thought provoking talk.
This month we had Bart Massey down from Portland talking about Linux history, where we are and where we need to go. He had some very interesting points and things we could look at doing in the linux community to try and keep things going the way that those of us who use and enjoy free software hope for.
Note: this is my thoughts based on his talk, credit goes to him, blame or inaccuracies are all my fault. 😉
Currently, the Linux desktop is kind of in between a rock and a hard place: On one side, smartphones (iphone/android) and the other the web. If we don't improve things and fast, we are going to basically get squished out of the desktop.This of course still leaves Linux on the server end, but that means that people who enjoy using a free desktop would have fewer and fewer options over time.
There are several areas ripe for improvement:
- We need to make it WAY easier to make desktop applications. Right now Bart pointed out that it's a great deal easier to make smartphone or web apps. Why would you choose to try and make a gtk/qt app? He suggested going to some kind of better language, but their was no clear winner currently. Haskell and Java are better off than c/c++ in ease of use, but they have their share of issues too.
- The Linux infrastructure is old and confusing and nasty. There's many years of history in lots of the stack, and it would be impossible to just redo it all at once. However, biting off chunks, reimplementing them and making the new thing work with the old setup seems possible here. I think this is what things like systemd are doing. Replacing old infrastructure with new. We need to do this more with areas that are old and failing.
I think what we can take away with this for Fedora is that we should be focusing on a number of areas:
- Try and to the above to increase people using Fedora on the desktop (push fixes of infrastructure, make it easier to make more desktop applications).
- Make sure Fedora gets known as a great testbed for the server side. Get more people who use RHEL testing and working on stuff in fedora to improve things down the road on the server side in RHEL.
- Even though it's not ideal in my mind, we should still position Fedora so it's suited for running web applications (basically a webos/terminal) and a development env for smart phones and web applications.
- Try and do the first three things while still allowing all the other various 'niche' users to use and enjoy Fedora.
Anyhow, I thought I would mention this given that the Fedora Board has been discussing Vision and other longer term plans. I think we should try and do what it takes to keep the desktop moving in a direction where it's likely to expand, while still keeping track of the server and niche users (who we often seem to forget about).


text: Providing low-cost ICT access to low-income communities in developing countries : what works? what pays? CASPREY, G O'CONNOR, D 2003 Expand view This Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development report discusses the potential of and need for telecommunications development in rural areas of low-income countries. It outlines the main challenges, and describes sustainable options. The report also reviews low-cost options and summarizes policies that would support the more rapid diffusion especially telecommunications reform


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April 2., Sunday 11:00
Classical ballet in three acts
Tchaikovsky's first ballet is the most beloved classical piece in ballet literature: while the hardships of love between a prince forced into marriage and a maiden enchanted into the form of a swan is one of the most charming Russian romantic fairy tales, the piece nevertheless failed at its original premiere in 1877. The choreographers creating the premiere were simply not equal to Tchaikovsky's genius. It was Marius Petipa's and Lev Ivanov's choreography that brought fame for the piece and established a tradition, and most companies to this day still dance the piece following this blueprint. Rudi van Dantzig and Toer van Schayk revised this classic creative work in 1988.
The same female ballet dancer portrays both Odette – the pure, innocent white swan– and Odile – the seductive, manipulative black swan in the Hungarian National Ballet's production.
- Location
- Hungarian State Opera
- Date
- April 2, 2023
- Start time
- 11 a.m.
- End time
- 2:45 p.m.
Act I
Siegfried's birthday party in the castle garden To celebrate Siegfried's eighteenth birthday, Alexander and the courtiers and neighbours have organized a surprise party for him in the garden of the castle. The Prince's tutor Von Rasposen is irritated by Siegfried and Alexander's friendly relationship with the local peasants. The festivities are interrupted by the arrival of the Queen, the Prince's mother. She presents her son with a ring reminding him of his future role as successor to the throne: he will soon have to choose a bride. Siegfried is downcast at the prospect of his youth drawing to a close. As darkness falls he and Alexander ponder on the future. They decide to explore the surrounding forest.
Act II
The meeting with Odette Lost in the forest, Siegfried and Alexander arrive at the banks of a great lake. A huge circling bird of prey fills them with fear: it is as if the form of Von Rasposen is still spying on them. The bird of prey – in fact the wicked magician Von Rothbart – summons a swan out of the dark lake, which takes on human form. In Odette, the Swan Queen, and her retinue of swan maidens, Siegfried believes he has found the realization of his ideal of sincerity and simplicity. Surrounded by these pure shapes he is overcome with joy. He swears to remain forever true to his ideals.
Act III
The betrayal During a ball at the castle several brides-in-waiting are presented to Siegfried. But to the amazement of the guests, and to his mother's alarm, Siegfried refuses to make a choice; all the pomp and splendour contrast starkly with the purity of the vision experienced at the lakeside. Von Rasposen announces the last guests: Von Rothbart, his daughter Odile and their retinue. Siegfried imagines that the Black Swan, Odile, is a manifestation of the White Swan Queen, Odette, but still he wavers. Von Rothbart and Odile blind him with a sensual display of dazzling virtuosity. To Alexander's dismay Siegfried yields and offers Odile the ring. Too late he realizes that he has betrayed his ideal, Odette. Stricken, he flees back to the lake in despair.
Act IV
The reconciliation with Odette Disillusioned and betrayed, Odette and the swan maidens tarry by the moonlit lakeside, where Siegfried finds them. Odette forgives Siegfried and attempts to comfort him, telling him that he must learn to live with reality. Von Rothbart tries to drive Siegfried away from the lake, but although Siegfried manages to defy him, he drowns in the waters. Von Rasposen abandons his futile search for the Prince, while Alexander discovers the lifeless body of his friend. In Alexander, Siegfried's ideals will live on.


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The following obituaries were received for Tuesday –
Phillip L. Hert – Bedford
Phillip L. Hert, 64, of Bedford, passed away at 3 p.m. Monday, September 10, 2012 at his home. Arrangements are pending at Day & Carter Mortuary.
Nathan Wade Dalton – Springville
Nathan Wade Dalton, 39, of Springville, passed away Friday, September 7, 2012 in Alabama. Arrangements are pending at Day & Carter Mortuary.
Paul Richard Ooley – Bedford
Paul Richard Ooley, 88, passed away at 7:32 a.m. September 9, 2012 at his home east of Bedford.
He was born December 23, 1923 in Wabash, Indiana, to Luther and Verna Kiser Ooley. He was married November 2, 1946 to Betty Jean Thomas. He was a 1942 graduate of Shawswick High School, a member of the Church of Christ at Pinhook and a World War II veteran.
He was a farmer all his working life. His father died when Paul was 11-years-old and when he was 15 he went to the farm on which he died, live with and work for Everett and Lydia Foster, who became his foster parents. For several years he operated a dairy farm and was a member of the Indiana Holstein Association. Since 1986, he raised beef cattle with his son and his family owns a heard of registered Black Angus Cattle.
He recently received an honorary lifetime membership in the Southern Indiana Angus Association. In 2010, the Lawrence County Cattlemen's Association honored him with a "Lifetime Achievement" trophy. He was a member of the first Lawrence County 4-H Fair Board and served as Building Committee Chairman when the present fairground was developed.
He was an active member of the Farm Bureau for over 65 years and maintained an interest in agricultural activities until his health began to fail. For several years in the 1970's and 1980's, he was a seed dealer for DeKalb Seeds in Lawrence County and worked with the district manager in southwest Indiana.
Survivors include his wife, Betty, a daughters Polly and husband Gerald Jean, of Bloomington, and a son, Michael and wife Louisa Baker Ooley, of Bedford; two grandsons, Benjamin and Christopher Ooley; two step-grandchildren, Scott and wife Lisa Jean and Kimberly and husband Andy Pope and four step-great grandchildren, Jacob, Nicholas and Clara Brekke and Sam Jean; a step brothers, John B. Nelson, of Ft. Myers, FL; a brothers and sisters-in-law Wilmer and Sue Alice Hunter, Dale and Norma Thomas, Juanita Thomas, Harry Lee and Rhea Dawn Thomas, Don and Jane Turpen and Thomas and Nancy Fletcher and several nieces and nephews.
He was preceded in death by his parents; two sisters, Anna Gardner and Betty Padgett; one brother Leroy Ooley and his foster parents Everett and Lydia Foster.
Funeral services will be at 1 p.m. Wednesday, September 12, 2012 at Ferguson-Lee Funeral Home. Burial will be in Pinhook Cemetery. Friends may call on Tuesday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. and on Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the funeral home.
Memorial contributions may be made to the Lawrence County 4-H Council.
Online condolences may be sent to the family at www.fergusonlee.com.
James Neil Brook – Evansville
James Neil Brook, 83, of Evansville, passed away at 2 p.m. Saturday, September 8, 2012, at his residence.
Born November 12, 1928, in West Baden Springs, he was the son of William T. and Lilly Mae (Jones) Brooks. He retired from Zenith Electronics Corporation. James was a U. S. Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, and a member of the American Legion.
Survivors include his children, Beverly A. Baker, of Washington, Michael William and wife
Rosie Brooks, of Salem, Oregon, Cynthia K. and husband Robert Hawkins, of Shoals, Jeffrey Neil and wife Mary Brooks, of Lebanon Junction, Kentucky; 19 grandchildren; several great grandchildren.
He was preceded in death by his parents.
Graveside service will be at 11 a.m. Thursday, at Mitchell Cemetery with military rites by American Legion Post No. 250 and Veterans of Foreign Wars Post N0. 9107.
Friends may call from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Wednesday at Chastain Funeral Home & Cremation Center.
Condolences may be sent to the family at www.chastainfuneralhome.com.


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Snap is a tiny little app that automatically assigns keyboard shortcuts to the first 10 items in your dock, making it easy to launch them and switch between them via your keyboard. Additionally, you can manually assign keyboard shortcuts to any other app beyond the initial 10, whether it's in your dock or not.
To use it, all you have to do is launch snap and press anything from Command + ` to Command + 9. (Command + 0 isn't an option for some reason.) This will either launch the corresponding app if it's closed, focus/show it if it's open, and hide it if it's the app that's currently in focus. You don't need to set anything up to get Snap working, but you can alter its functionality and add new shortcuts manually by selecting Preferences from its menubar icon. If you don't like the default shortcuts and want to change them a bit, this is where you do that.
That's pretty much all Snap does, but it's handy if you like to navigate via the keyboard and you find OS X's built-in app switcher a little too slow.
Snap ($1) | iTunes App Store
You can follow Adam Dachis, the author of this post, on Twitter and Facebook. Twitter's the best way to contact him, too.


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Cross-border crime cannot be tackled by nation states acting alone. Criminals do not stop at national borders. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Crime is becoming increasingly international and, in many cases, increasingly complex and sophisticated.
European co-operation in police and judicial matters is a great success story. Since the introduction of the European Arrest Warrant, over 4,000 criminals have been deported and removed from the UK. Thanks to the warrant, many criminals have been extradited back to the UK to face justice – the bomber who fled to Italy, the school teacher who abducted a 15 year old pupil and was found in France and, most recently, one of Britain's most wanted fugitives, Andrew Moran, who was tracked down by the Spanish and British police working together. Prior to the introduction of the warrant, extradition took years, in some cases decades, rather than weeks or months.
European co-operation has also made inroads into tackling one of the world's most chilling and horrific crimes: human trafficking – boys, girls, women and men traded by criminal gangs like commodities across borders. This modern-day slavery can only be rooted out by police forces co-operating closely. The Metropolitan Police and the Romanian National Police recently worked together to track down and bring to justice a Romanian gang that trafficked children into the UK, resulting in the arrest of 126 people for crimes including human trafficking, benefit fraud, theft, money laundering and child neglect.
Time and again, the Conservatives let their obsessive euroscepticism blind them to what is in the national interest. This case is no exception. The claim that it would be better to withdraw from cross border co-operation with our European neighbours in order to tackle cross border crime is illogical and ludicrous. The truth is that eurosceptics believe that anything that has Europe in the title must be bad, even if it helps the UK track down suspects, extradite foreign criminals and seek justice for victims of crime.
The consequences of pursuing the policy the eurosceptics advocate would be to turn the UK into a haven for foreign criminals fleeing justice in their own country. This danger has been highlighted by the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Law Society and the intelligence services.
Decisions about European policy should be guided by the national interest, but instead the decision whether to opt back into 130 European police and judicial measures is subject to horse-trading within the Tory-Lib Dem government. Yet again, the Prime Minister is running scared of his backbenchers on all things European. He should start to lead rather than follow his party and put the national interest before his party's interest. It falls to Labour to speak up for the victims of crime and call for policies which would help the police prevent and tackle crime and terrorism using the vital and necessary cross border co-operation that makes it possible. In this area, the advantages of our EU membership are clear for all to see.


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CumBlastCity Video
Last updated: 01/03/2024
Asian babe Yuki Mori is in the bathroom when a large cock appears through a hole in the wall. – that's what about in this cumblastcity video. The horny asian is reluctant to jerk it, and is crazy about this scene but when the stud appears from behind the glory hole, the asian hot chick starts sucking and slobbering on his extra large cock. As his throbbing extra large cock finally erupts, her face is splattered with buckets of jizz. Yuki sure knows how to please a guy, and today she got herself a random stud that she couldn't wait to fuck. And so she took him to a private rest room where she'd get to have her way.
The guy himself was not disappointed one bit as he knew that he'd be getting to have some serious fun with this cute and perky Asian babe for the day. As soon as they were in private, this sexy little lady decided to take off his pants completely, and you get to see her use her slutty and tiny little hands to jerk off on his big dick. Well the guy was a bit too eager as you will see, and this sexy ghettogaggers babe ended up getting all of her sexy body covered in a nice and sticky layer of jizz as the dude blew his load all over her today. Check out the past cumblastcity updates too everyone and enjoy!


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What kind of music can we offer You? The wonderful piano pieces by great masters of classical music: Bach, Beethoven, Chopin, Glinka, Handel, Mozart, Schumann, Tchaikovsky, to name just a few. We have also a collection of traditional music, songs in the original language. Among them you'll find scores with guitar chords, patriotis and folk song, The Internationale mp3, "O Holy Night" sheet music, tabs & video and others. NEW: Christmas Carols We have popular songs lyrics and guitar tabs . And, of course, last but not least, music for children (also in the Piano Room), pieces for children's choir. Here You'll find free music pieces of varying difficulty levels: from sheet music for absolute beginners to intermediate/advanced playing level.
Whether you are interested in choral or vocal free music in Russian, please visit the Russian version of this page.
You may download the programs Finale and Sibelius in the Piano Room. We update and expand our free music collection so please, check back frequently. If you're looking for more 100% free sheet music, visit our Links
We hope You'll find our site to be a helpful source and You'll enjoy the beautiful music! If you like this page please tell about it to your friends! You can vote for us and find thousands of free sheet music here:
The only non free sheet music on this site:A unique collection of 15th-18th century music
Have a nice time! Yours, The Makhorina Easy Free Sheet Music Team
P.S. And... If what we created has benefited you in some way, please consider donating (using our secure online donation form: PayPal).We are always very grateful to receive donations of any size. It helps us to develope the Music Archive.


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After a long, quiet period of Microsoft dominance, the PC browser market has been broken wide-open again in recent years, with Firefox and Chrome challenging Internet Explorer, and Opera sniffing at the margins.
Earlier this year, in fact, Chrome overtook Internet Explorer in one major measurement of browser market share, in what was hailed as a watershed moment for the new browser wars.
Read Network World's other tech arguments.
However, for a number of reasons, it's difficult to say who's on top in this four-way scrap. For one thing, different methods of measuring market share often provide very different numbers - while data from NetMarketshare.com shows IE in front with 54% of the market for October 2012, StatCounter gives a slight edge to Chrome, about 35% to 32%. W3Schools' information paints another picture again, showing a big lead for Chrome (44%) over about 32% for Firefox and just 16% for IE.
The difference is understandable - all of the sites measure different data. W3Schools simply measures its own traffic, and, as a web development education site, it is likely to be visited by people with more of an interest in non-IE browsers. (The site has an Alexa ranking of 220, however, giving it a large sample size.) StatCounter tracks visitors to a network of 3 million associated sites, while NetMarketShare counts unique visitors to a smaller network of 40,000 sites. It's easy to see why the numbers can look so different.
But it certainly makes it tricky to say unequivocally that one browser is the one to beat, and that's part of the reason why the browser question is the subject of such a big argument in the tech world (and this doesn't even include mobile browsers, a relatively small market for now).
Either the most-used or second-most-used browser in the world, depending on whom you ask, Chrome has rocketed to prominence since its introduction in 2008. A browser made by the Internet's most powerful company could hardly fail to gain some traction, but the speed with which it has achieved seeming parity with Internet Explorer surprised many - not least those behind Mozilla Firefox, which had labored mightily to reach a respectable second place behind IE.
Chrome's focus on performance and simplicity has paid off well - through its many versions, which are deployed quickly and silently through an automatic update process, the emphasis has been on a smooth, streamlined experience.
Criticism of the browser generally centers on privacy issues. Soon after it was launched, there was an outcry over the Suggest feature, which transmitted keystrokes back to Google HQ. Google's business model, which depends on the use of personal data for accurate ad targeting, hasn't won it many favors among privacy advocates.
The long-time unchallenged leader of the pack, IE is no longer quite as dominant as it was a decade ago, when few used any other browser. However, time and anti-trust litigation notwithstanding, Microsoft's browser still commands a huge user base.
Competition, in a very real way, has been a positive thing for IE, forcing Microsoft to modernize and innovate far more rapidly than it did during its unchallenged period. The past few versions - most notably IE 8, 9 and now 10 - have all boasted substantial performance increases and added support for new standards like HTML5, designed to bring it more into line with Chrome and Firefox.
Still, particularly among highly technical types, a powerful dislike of IE runs deep. Saying "IE 6" to a web developer is practically guaranteed to provoke gritted teeth and shudders of frustration (at least!), thanks to a widespread perception that Microsoft's lack of innovation held back the development of new web standards for years.
Microsoft has worked to overcome that antipathy with recent versions of the browser, but is it enough to recover an unchallenged lead in the market?
Since 2004, Firefox has been stuck as a perpetual second-fiddle - first to IE, then to Chrome. It's perhaps a little unfortunate that the browser that first began to erode Microsoft's iron grip over the marketplace has never enjoyed its own period of dominance, but Firefox nonetheless has a huge number of users, and is said to be the most common browser in many parts of the world, particularly Europe and Africa.
Firefox was the first to introduce tabbed browsing, also known as "the reason why you don't have about 46 different windows open on your desktop right now," and pioneered an ecosystem of plug-ins, allowing users to modify the browser in many ways. An open-source project - curated and managed by the Mozilla Foundation - Firefox is dedicated to open web standards and helped bring about a climate in which they could thrive.
Unfortunately, however, the past year or so hasn't been particularly kind to Firefox. It's now pretty clearly in third place behind Chrome and IE in terms of market share, and missteps like a me-too move to a rapid development schedule irritated crucial enterprise users.
While it still has a vital development community and millions of users around the world, Firefox has to make a big move to catch up with its main rivals - which, importantly, are both backed by enormously wealthy corporate titans.
There's no getting around it - Opera is the iconoclast of the group. It was the underground browser long before the rise of Firefox, and, well, it's still the underground browser. That said, it has a devout and influential following among the geekiest echelons of the tech world.
Despite a number of innovative features like "turbo mode" - which uses Opera's own servers as a compression proxy to help users on slow connections - and powerful integrated features like a mail client and BitTorrent support, Opera has struggled to build much of a user base outside of Eastern Europe. It is the leading browser in just one country - Belarus.
It may be that Opera has simply missed the boat - even though it pioneered features like mouse gestures and a speed-dial home screen, its more popular rivals have simply adapted too quickly to be caught. Still, Norwegian parent company Opera Software has created many mobile versions of the browser, which could prove important if smartphone and tablet use continues to increase dramatically.
Email Jon Gold at email@example.com and follow him on Twitter at @NWWJonGold.
Read more about software in Network World's Software section.


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Record Number of Feds Withdrew Retirement Investments in October
TSP board looks to switch default investments from government securities to lifecycle funds.
More than 14,000 federal employees turned to their retirement investments for cash in October, marking a new monthly record for the Thrift Savings Plan.
Between 10,000 and 12,000 TSP participants make hardship withdrawals in a typical month, according to Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board officials, with the October jump coming as a result of the 16-day government shutdown that delayed paychecks for most federal workers.
Roughly 900,000 federal employees were furloughed and unsure if they would receive pay for the time they missed when the shutdown began, while the remaining employees required to work were guaranteed retroactive pay when government reopened. While Congress opted to make all federal employees whole, thousands of workers took hardship withdrawals of at least $1,000 on their plans.
Employees who made the withdrawals had to prove negative monthly cash flow or extraordinary new expenses, such as medical or legal bills, and are now banned from contributing to their accounts for six months. This means they will also lose their agency's matching contributions for that time period.
"It is very unfortunate that these employees were forced to withdraw money that should be saved for their retirement to make ends meet," said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. "This is yet another negative and harmful effect of the shutdown that will reverberate into the future."
FRTIB also announced it will move forward with its plan to automatically enroll new federal employees in its lifecycle funds, rather than its safer government securities offering, after receiving an endorsement from federal employee groups at a meeting Monday. The Employee Thrift Advisory Council -- made up primarily of federal employee unions and professional associations-- originally opposed the switch, saying members simply wanted the near-guarantee of TSP's government securities fund.
The TSP overseers warned this was unsound fiscal logic, as employees would see much higher returns in the L Funds, which move federal employees to safer portfolios as they near retirement. As of April, the various lifecycle funds -- L Income, L2020, L2030, L2040 and L2050 -- had grown between 35 percent and 43 percent since their inception in 2005, while the G Fund had grown 28 percent in the same period. The board has found that many enrollees do not take the time to re-allocate their investments.
Since August 2010, all new federal employees have automatically had 3 percent of their base salaries contributed to their TSPs, unless the individual actively opted out of the plan. All employees receive at least a 1 percent agency contribution into their plans. More than 400,000 G Fund-invested, auto-enrolled accounts show no investment activity. These employees' accounts would not be affected by the switch, as it would only apply to new hires.
With ETAC's backing, TSP officials will consult with the plan's Senate-confirmed, five-member board and subsequently propose the change to Congress, as the switch would require legislative action.
"While there may be concern that we are exposing a participant's retirement savings to the risk inherent in the capital markets, we believe the L Funds appropriately address those risks in their design," FRTIB wrote in a memorandum to announce the proposal. "Further, and importantly, those participants who conclude they do not want to assume market risk will always have the ability to change their allocations or move their account balances to the G Fund."
In a move that could perhaps put some detractors of the switch at ease, FRTIB also announced the lifecycle funds will now allocate a larger proportion of their total configuration to the G Fund. The board contracted a consulting firm to review its L Funds allocations and opted to make the change in light of the findings.
(Image via Mario Aguilar/Shutterstock.com)
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7122.0.55.001 - Stocks of Grain Held by Bulk Handling Companies and Grain Traders, Australia, Jan 2011 Quality Declaration
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 28/02/2011
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ABOUT THIS PUBLICATION This publication provides estimates of stocks of wheat, barley, and selected other grains and pulses held by bulk grain handlers. These estimates are compiled from the Grain Handlers Stocks Survey (GHSS) conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). In addition to the monthly wheat estimates, quarterly estimates for barley and selected other grains and pulses are available in a separate data cube from the 'Downloads' tab of this publication. Stocks of barley and other grains and pulses were not updated for the December 2010 quarter. Updated estimates for the March 2011 quarter will appear in the March 2011 issue of this publication, after which no further updates will be published. The publication of monthly data on stocks of wheat grain held by bulk handlers will continue unchanged. For more detailed information on wheat use and stocks, see Wheat Use and Stocks, Australia (cat. no. 7307.0). The ABS welcomes any comments from readers regarding the usefulness, range and quality of the statistics presented in this publication. Comments can be forwarded to: Environment and Agriculture Business Statistics Centre, Australian Bureau of Statistics, GPO Box 66, Hobart TAS 7001. Alternatively, email: firstname.lastname@example.com, or phone (03) 6222 5939. EFFECT OF QUEENSLAND FLOODS ON FUTURE PUBLICATIONS Extensive flooding began in late December 2010 in Queensland and was more extensive in both Queensland and other states in January 2011. It is expected that the impact of these floods will be reflected over the next few months, starting with this January 2011 issue. Further details will be provided in future issues if necessary. KEY POINTS At the end of January 2011, Australia's bulk storage of wheat grain was estimated at 22.2 million tonnes. This represents an increase of around 4.0 million tonnes of wheat grain stored compared to December 2010. Unfavourable harvest conditions contributed to both Queensland and Western Australia reporting decreases in stocks of wheat grain from December 2010, with falls of 67 thousand tonnes and 581 thousand tonnes respectively. All other states recorded increases in stocks of wheat grain in January 2011 compared to December 2010. At the end of January 2011, New South Wales had the highest amount of the wheat grain stored by bulk grain handlers with 7.8 million tonnes, followed by South Australia with 5.4 million tonnes. The wet harvest season has resulted in a lower quality yield of wheat grain than in previous times. Of the total wheat grain stored by bulk grain handlers, milling grade accounted for 12.5 million tonnes (56%) and feed grade accounted for 9.7 million tonnes (44%). This compares to 86% milling grade and 14% feed grade in January 2010.
INQUIRIES For further information about these and related statistics, contact the National Information and Referral Service on 1300 135 070. Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window. |


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'60 Minutes' Exposes Congressional Insider Trading
Most people understand that insider trading is illegal. However, what most people probably aren't aware of is that Congress is exempt from that law. Senators and congressmen are legally able to trade stock based on the private information they have received from their official positions. According to CBS News' "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night, Congress utilizes this power to the best of their ability.
The program exposed various congressional leaders for their alleged unethical trades. The program was based on a book by Peter Schweizer titled Throw Them All Out: How Politicians and Their Friends Get Rich Off Insider Stock Tips, Land Deals, and Cronyism That Would Send the Rest of Us to Prison. Schweizer is also a scholar for the conservative think tank, Hoover Institution.
"The reason for the exemption is presumably separation of powers, not wanting executive agencies that Congress oversees to have leverage over members of Congress – along with the idea that members have the check of balance of elections, have to disclose their holdings, and can recuse themselves," said Norman Ornstein, scholar at American Enterprise Institute, to The Christian Post.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and House Speaker John Boehner's investments were questioned in the segment as it was revealed that they bought stocks around the same time that Congress was making laws that would affect those companies. However, no proof was provided that the two committed any unethical violations.
According to CBS, Pelosi and her husband bought a lot of shares in Visa in 2008. Two days later, the stock went up dramatically. It is reported that around this time a piece of legislation, that was opposed by credit card companies, was being voted on in the House.
Boehner also caused speculation in the segment when it was revealed that he bought health insurance stocks in 2009. All of his stocks increased in value after the GOP killed the public option portion of the legislation, according to CBS.
Both Pelosi and Boehner deny any wrongdoing.
"I have not made any decisions on day-to-day trading activities in my account – and haven't for years. I don't – I do not do it, haven't done it and wouldn't do it," Boehner said to CBS.
Pelosi's spokesman, Drew Hammill, was also on the defensive after the CBS segment. Hamill released a statement saying: "Congress has never done more for consumers nor has the Congress passed more critical reforms of the credit card industry than under the Speakership of Nancy Pelosi. It is very troubling that 60 Minutes would base their reporting off of an already-discredited conservative author who has made a career of out attacking Democrats."
Both Pelosi and Boehner seem to have escaped the public angry. However, Rep. Spencer Bachus of Alabama is not so lucky.
CBS unearthed that in September of 2008, Bachus was a ranking member on the House of Financial Services. He met with the Treasury Secretary and Federal Reserve Chairman amid the collapse of the global economy. After that meeting, the segment revealed, Bachus bought and traded stock options.
Business Insider received a copy of Schweizer's book that goes into detail about Bachus' trades: "The next day (after his meeting), September 19, Congressman Bachus bought contract options on Proshares Ultra-Short QQQ, an index fund that seeks results that are 200% of the inverse of the Nasdaq 100 index. In other words, he was shorting the market. It was an inexpensive way to bet that the market would fall. He bought options for $7,846 on a day when the Dow Jones Industrial Average opened at 8,604. A few days later, on September 23, after the market had indeed fallen, he sold the options for over $13,000 and nearly doubled his money."
Due to these accusations, many are calling for Bachus to step down. Conservative pundit Andrew Breitbart is one.
"I want to see these people taken down. I want them to suffer Anthony Weiner's fate. I want them to step down. I am calling for Spencer Bachus to step down, not [just] from being the chairman of the House finance committee. I think he should be in Joe Paterno-ville, he should be in exile," said Breitbart Sunday evening in an interview with the conservative Media Research Center, according to Politico.
"His constituency should surround his district office and call for him to be there, with pitchforks. What he did was egregious."
"It is clear that [Congress needs] some additional accountability here, at least through clearer ethical standards and enforcement by their ethics process," said Ornstein.


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Share Your Faith
Using the five fingers on your hand, Share Your Faith Workshops from Evangelism Explosion International (EE) introduces a Gospel presentation that's easy to learn and hard to forget.
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If you would like to Host a Share Your Faith Workshop, please email [email protected]