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Charlie Sheen revealed on the "Today" show Tuesday morning he was diagnosed with HIV and said he informed ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller in 2011.
The "Two and a Half Men" star also said he told any and all partners of his diagnosis prior to engaging in sexual acts with them. But ex-girlfriend Bree Olson, who Sheen had called a "goddess," said that wasn't true. She claimed on "The Howard Stern Show" that she had no idea.
"He doesn't even value my life...if someone goes without knowing, and there's plenty of girls I'm sure he's had in his life where they don't go get tested regularly like I do with the types of lives that they lead," said Olson, who said she had high-risk sex with Sheen, who used lambskin condoms.
"When it turns into AIDS then it turns into a whole different ballgame," she said.
Host Howard Stern asked her if she's going to confront him about the news, but Olson said she has been too upset to focus on anything.
PHOTOS: Charlie Sheen's road to rehab
"I haven't even thought about anything, but all I know right now is now because of him anytime someone hears my name they think of HIV right next to it," she said.
In response to her interview, Sheen's manager tells E! News that the actor was not HIV-positive at the time of their relationship.
"Bree Olsen was with Charlie in March and April of 2011 when he fired her from the [Violent Torpedo of Truth] tour," Mark Burg said in a statement to E! News. "Charlie was not HIV positive at that time and tested negative two times after he got back from the tour."
"He didn't tell her because he wasn't HIV positive at the time. He has not spoken to her since April 2011."
Sheen told Matt Lauer that since his diagnosis he has had unprotected sex with only two women, but insisted they were seeking medical attention to make sure everything was safe.
"The two people that I did it with were under the care of my doctor and they were completely warned ahead of time," Sheen explained.
He also insisted that everybody he encountered sexually had been informed.
In response to his revelation, Mueller released a statement regarding her own health status. "Brooke has been inundated with calls from friends and family," her spokesperson, Steve Honig, told E! News. "To put their minds at ease, Brooke can confirm that she and the boys are not HIV positive."
NEWS: An in-depth look at Charlie Sheen's tumultuous life
E! News also learned that Richards and her children, Sam Sheen and Lola Sheen, are all HIV negative.
Sheen said he told his oldest daughter Cassandra just recently because he didn't want to burden her with stress. "It hit her hard but she recovered, but she's tough like her dad," he said.
"She was a rock star about it."
E! News has reached out to Olson for comment.
To learn more about HIV/AIDS and to contribute in the fight against the diseases, visit amfAR.
(E! and NBC are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)
PHOTOS: A timeline of Charlie Sheen's troubled times


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Marchand Beauticians - Pennsylvania
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Rico Rodriguez (b. 1998) is a child actor best known for his role as Manny Delgado on the ABC sitcom Modern Family.
Rodriguez appears in 42nd season of Sesame Street and has a cameo as himself in The Muppets. He tweeted about the latter experience: "My childhood is coming alive right now. I'm filming with the Muppets for their new movie! It's pretty epic!" Ironically, in his appearance in the film, he doesn't recognize Kermit, and ends up mistaking him for "one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles."
Among Rodriguez's other credits are appearances on My Name Is Earl, ER and the Disney Channel series Good Luck Charlie (as Leo).
External links
- IMDb
- Muppet tweet on Twitter, @Rico Rodriguez's Twitter feed
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.


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As part of ongoing domestic disputes involving Ravens linebacker Terrell Suggs and the mother of his two children, Suggs was required last month to surrender several firearms, according to Justin Fenton and Jeff Zriebiec of the Baltimore Sun.
"The guns were surrendered over to police pursuant to the court order, and they [Suggs and Candace Williams] are resolving their issues," Suggs' lawyer, Warren Alperstein, told the Sun. "All I can tell you is that he's in rightful and lawful possession of the guns but turned them over pursuant to the requirements of the law."
The catalyst for the recent order isn't clear; however, the Sun reports that two 911 calls were made from Suggs' address on November 21.
In 2009, Williams claimed in an application for a protective order that Suggs "threw a soap dispenser at her head, hit her in the chest with his hand, and held a bottle of bleach over her and their 1-year-old son." The allegations were not investigated by the authorities.


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Grand Theft Auto: Criminal Russia is a modification for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was started in 2004 by a group of people, located mainly in Russian Federation. This ambitious modifications aimed at replacing the whole GTA world with a custom map, new vehicles and a new storyline. The development process was frozen for some time but at the moment team is working on a new version of the mod, with few demo-versions already available and one due on 23rd of February.
History and the effect
It all has started in 2004 when a person known as Labukh, Ukraine, set up a small team whos aim was to create a small Russian town for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. In notime the project became popular and many other people, considered as the best modellers on RuNet, joined the team. Unexpected success gave the developers faith, and the next important stage of the project was the decision to replace the whole map.
Summer 2005, GTA San Andreas came out for PC and that was another important stage. The team has decided to change the platform from VC to SA due to the large amount of new features, endless possibilities regarding the map and the weather conditions as well as many other things. Since then and until October 2007 the team worked hard to achieve its ambitious targets.
During 3 years of development there were enough models produced to replace at least half of San Andreas map. However, the main problems that the team encountered was that many developers were too busy with their private life; did not find the project successful or were in deep conflict with the manager of the project, who, on a number of occasions, has expressed his concerns regarding Ukraine and Russia's today's and past relationship. Every time the developer left, the team lost its models, which sometime made up over the half of the map. One of the most discussed moments was when Predator, Lioshenka and GexoDiver left, nearly at the same time, leaving the team with no map at all. Another problem was that at that stage there was no person in the team left who knew how to convert models into SA. The team had only couple of months to finish off the promised demo-version and they have successfully managed to do it, although not without some troubles. Developer ED, who has done most of the modelling for demo-version, has done the impossible, learned to import models and made a new town basically from scratch.
It would be unwise not to mention that the team hasn't influenced the GTA modding community. For its 3-year old history the team had almost all well-known Russian modellers working for them, who, despite the fact they left, brought even more public attention to the project. The countries, where the modellers came from include, but are not limited to: Russian Federation, Ukraine, Belorussia, Kazahstan, Moldavia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, UK, USA, Germany and Austria. The team has build the confidence and faith in itself and the project is considered as one of the most successful of all time like GTA: Myriad Islands, GTA: United and GTA: Gostown. It is the only global Russian mod that reached the successful demo-version stage.
Original GTA:CR
Location and storylineAccording to the project's brief the game was planned to be located in Russia and Ukraine with slight variations depending on the amount of team members willing to participate. Timewise it was year 1991-1993 - the time, when CIS countries were at their worst stage ever regarding crime and corruption.
The map includes 3 large cities (a capital in Russia, a small city in Russia and yet smaller city in Ukraine); over 100 new missions, Russian vehicles (including aviation, railway transport and boats), new pedestrians and characters, new and improved Russian wireless stations.
The beta-version was due to be released in Autumn, 2006, however it was released on the last day of 2006 as a New Year present for all its fans across the globe. As planned it included some map and vehicles changes. Second beta was due to be released in Spring 2007, but instead a number of patches were released for the original version which was proved to be very unstable and glitchy. Final version was expected to hit the Web at the end of 2007, which did not happen.
The demo-version which received warmest greetings by CR fans included:
- Palomino Creek replaced with the town of Ehdovo (pronounced as Eh-doh-voh with the emphasis on the first syllable). It was called so by the name of the one of the developers - ED, who has done most of the work to finish the demo by the deadline.
- Many cars replaced by Russian ones
- Russian militia
- A Russian radio station
- New weapons
- New user interface, menu, loading screens, intro videos
- Auto-installation using a custom made installation wizard
Although the demo was a very successful start with over 90 000 downloads from the official site within a year, many users have expressed their concerns about the games performance; one of the issues was the usage of memory (around 120 Mb when launched and over 800 Mb 30 minutes later). The team has released few patches and a final demo-version which, unlike the original one, had radio, cars and town all in one package rather than three different archives.
See the full list of modified vehicles at /Vehicles.
Interesting fact
The introduction video that came with the demo originally had a different soudtrack. It was influenced by Young Maylay's rap and was later replaced with the extract from Korobeiniki by OZMAon request by Labukh, but because the video was made for a different song, Korobeiniki ends on a half-note.
Closure of the project
October 2007 became the black month for all CR fans. It was officially announced that "GTA: Criminal Russia" is frozen until further notice and that the Full Beam (lorry driver simulator) will be made instead. The new game uses its own engine and it was promised that after Full Beam the team will fix bugs and glitches, improve the engine and use it for GTA-like game which will be also called Criminal Russia. At the moment it seems that they have done quite a lot of Full Beam, but the lack of information provided to fans is times less compared to GTA: CR development. Many have accused the team of unfair treatment of the fans and the project seems to be rather unpopular.
The site hasn't been updated for 2 years since last patch was released. Official Russian forum is abandoned at the moment - but a new forum available at new address. He also announced, that the site is going for rent and even can be sold if our requirements are met. However, many people knew CR Team for the wonderful GTA: CR mod and they were hoping that eventually the team will return to what everyone was waiting for - live breathing Russian map for GTA or on its own engine.
New GTA: CR - URM
New life, new people
It was annonunced by Labukh in the beginning of 2008 that it would be a shame if the mod was discontinued. After talks with Yegorchik, another modeller who was developing his own mod, he became the owner of GTA: CR brand. He started new city, but became known for a very slow production rate, ignoring people comments and wishes, also it is often mentioned that his models do not satisfy the standards set by CR. There are few more Russian modifications for GTA that had their threads on the same forum and in Summer, 2008, few of them have successfully agreed to work together. Yegorchik turned down any offers, explaining that he is capable of doing it himself and claiming that his team has done quite a lot but doesn't show screenshots. The United Russian mod has gained some popularity over the next few months, while Yegorchik's CR was still in its early development stage.
On 14/07/2008 Labukh expressed concerns on Russian forum about new Criminal Russia's development. He said, that after talks with United Russian mod developers he has decided to hand over original CR's models to them if the team maintains its steady progress.
On 29/07/2008 Labukh has handed over 200 Mb worth of old (but never seen) CR models to United Russian mod, and added that more models will be given in the meantime.
He also said, that he is not going to discontinue New CR mod yet, but stressed, that he is more interested in helping United Russian mod as New CR failed to produce any strong evidence of its development.
In late July, 2008, Labukh officially announced that United Russian Mod will be released under the name of GTA: Criminal Russia, with Yegorchik's team joining the development.
New CR includes people from many mods, such as GTA: Arzamas, GTA: Batyrevo, GTA: Lytkarino Stories, GTA: GTT, GTA: CR as well as some models from GTA: La Mystique de Russie. GTA: Kyshtym's leader who originally helped new CR with the high-quality madels of monuments and statues has left the team on 01/10/2008 due to the aggressive and overreating behavior of one of the leading team members.
New mapNew map was released shortly, and combines all finished towns as well as some planned areas. Some towns bear the real name of their prototypes with few changed letters. Some are very common in Russia, and some can be translated into English e.g. Yuzhnyi - South city. The map is constantly updated, although no more villages are planned.
Second Official Beta
In late December, 2008 it was announced that the new beta can be expected in February, 2009. Later it was confirmed that the date would be 23rd of February - official state holiday in Russia, Day of Fatherland's Defender - meaning it would be a present for all GTA fans (most of whom are male and celebrate this holiday).
The second demo version was released in Spring 2009 and had few patches released after to fix bugs. It had a number of villages and cities, road system, 3 new wireless stations, few new pedesrian models, almost all vechicles were replaced by new ones. Empty area between towns was filled with fields and forests, which were generated by script.
The mod was locked and adding new cars or modifying the map remains impossible until the release of special application which will allow that. The beta appears to be a great success for the team. In June there was an MTA server launched which proved to be very popular, and at some points had over 15 people playing at the same time. At the moment the server is down but it is believed it will be started again soon.
The next upcoming beta is believed to have most of the map finished, including the countryside. It will contain all cities and towns as planned.


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Parkour, a made-up word, cousin to the French parcours, which means "route," is a quasi commando system of leaps, vaults, rolls, and landings designed to help a person avoid or surmount whatever lies in his path—a vocabulary, that is, to be employed in finding one's way among obstacles. Parkour goes over walls, not around them; it takes the stair rail, not the stairs. Spread mainly by videos on the Internet, it has been embraced in Europe and the United States by thrill seekers and martial-arts adepts, who regard it as part extreme sport—its founder would like to see it included in the Olympics—and part gruelling meditative pursuit. Movies like its daredevil qualities. A bracing parkour chase begins "Casino Royale," the recent James Bond movie. It includes jumps from the boom of one tower crane to that of another, but parkour's customary obstacles are walls, stairwells, fences, railings, and gaps between roofs—it is an urban rather than a pastoral pursuit. The movements are performed at a dead run. The more efficient and fluid the path they define, and the more difficult and harrowing the terrain they cross, the more elegant the performance is considered by the discipline's practitioners.
Parkour was created in Lisses, a medium prosperous suburb of Paris, in the early nineteen-nineties, by a reserved and restless teen-age boy named David Belle. His father, Raymond, who died in 1999, was an acrobat and a hero fireman. In 1969, he appeared in newspaper photographs hanging from a cable attached to a helicopter above Notre Dame. The night before, someone had hung a Vietcong flag on the cathedral's tower. Raymond was lowered like a spider on a thread, and he grabbed the flag. David Belle is now thirty-three. He has an older brother, Jeff, who is also a fireman; they have the same father but different mothers. (A third brother died a few years ago, of an overdose.) David was raised by his mother's father. On the few occasions when he tried to live with Raymond, their temperaments clashed. David's grandfather told him stories about Raymond that revolved around his exploits—"Spider-Man stories and Tarzan stories," David says—and left him wishing to emulate him. He wanted to be Spider-Man when he grew up.
The parkour scene in "Casino Royale" is performed by a childhood friend of Belle's named Sébastien Foucan, who has developed a parallel pursuit to parkour, called freerunning. Belle appears in two kinds of films, movies that show him performing parkour for its own sake, and movies and commercials in which he appears as an actor performing parkour. All of the films have the kind of vaudeville improbability of a video game. He leaps gaps between rooftops that it doesn't seem possible to cross. Or he jumps from a rooftop to one that is so much lower that he gets smaller and smaller, descending like a spike about to be driven into the ground. If parkour has a shrine, it is the climbing wall in Lisses, called the Dame du Lac, where Belle played as a teen-ager. The wall is about seventy-five feet high, and the films I like best show him fearlessly racing up and down it as if it had stairs. All are so steeped in risk that there are none I can watch without anxiety.
A young man who practices parkour is called a traceur; a woman is a traceuse. A traceur, Jeff Belle says, is someone "who traces David's footsteps, the way David traced our father's." Enthusiasts also say that a traceur is someone who goes fast. The video of Belle that traceurs seem to find most compelling, judging from how often they mention it, is one in which he crashes into a cement wall. I have found it on YouTube, using "David Belle fall" as the search term. Belle is attempting to leap over a double-wide ramp that leads to an underground parking garage. The ramp is enclosed by cinder-block walls, about three feet high. Belle arrives at a run from the left. He lowers his hands but they appear to miss the first wall entirely; he seems to be looking at where he means to land. Incredibly, while aloft, he turns, so that his shoulder, not his head, strikes the opposite wall. Ten feet beneath him, at the bottom of the ramp, a cameraman is lying on his back in order to shoot from below. Belle manages not to land on him. His first gesture is to see if the cameraman is all right. Then he begins walking briskly up the ramp. Toward the top, he turns and can be seen to be grinning.
Parkour has no explicit glossary, but traceurs typically describe the fundamental maneuvers as the cat leap, the precision jump, the roll, and the wall run. There is also the tic-tac, in which a nearly horizontal traceur takes at least one step and sometimes several steps along a wall and launches himself from it; and the underbar, in which a traceur dives feet first through a gap between fence rails, like a letter going through a slot, then grabs the upper rail as his shoulders pass under it. In addition, there are several vaults, including the lazy vault, the reverse vault, the turn vault, the speed vault, the dash vault, and the kong or monkey vault, in which a traceur runs straight at a wall or a railing, plants his hands on top, and brings his feet through his hands. All these moves link to one another, so that a traceur might say that he went cat to cat, or that he tic-taced a wall or konged it, then did a roll and a wall leap. The intention is to become so adept that the movements recede in one's awareness and can be performed without reflection. Jazz musicians occasionally say that a novice needs to learn all about his instrument, then he needs to learn all about music, then he needs to forget everything and learn how to play, which is a paradigm that also fits parkour, especially because both activities at their most proficient are improvised. A jazz musician wants to be comfortable in any key. Similarly, a traceur wants to be sufficiently fluent so that he can cross any terrain in flight without compromise.
Parkour's most prominent disciple in America is Mark Toorock, who lives in Washington, D.C., and runs a Web site called American Parkour. Toorock is thirty-six. In 2002, a brokerage firm where he worked as a computer technician sent him to London. "Some guys in my office were talking about this 'nutter' who was jumping across rooftops in an ad on TV—David Belle," Toorock says. "I started looking for him on the Internet, and I found a French forum where he was mentioned. Back then, there weren't any parkour sites. I made an attempt to speak to the people in the forum, but they were less than interested in talking to anyone who spoke English, and they weren't polite about it. I found out later that they didn't really want parkour spread. It was theirs, or so they felt. It's a very narrowly defined discipline, and they didn't want it misunderstood."
A few weeks later, Toorock discovered a British Web site called Urban Freeflow, which had just started up. Toorock arranged to meet some of the people involved in a park, and they went around climbing walls and jumping over benches. After two years, Toorock was transferred back to the United States and ended up in Washington, where he began his Web site.
Toorock is a little old for parkour. He says that he concentrates on "stuff close to the ground, on speed and efficiency." At his apartment, he showed me a photograph of a parkour artifact—a sign posted in a park in Bethesda, Maryland, that reads, "No skateboards, bicycles, rollerblades, parkour type exercises or similar activities." "The only one in the world," he said. "So far as we know."
In 2005, Toorock organized a team of American traceurs—ten men and two women, who call themselves the Tribe—and when I asked him who among them was the most adept he said Ryan Ford, who is a sophomore at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Ford is five feet nine, and he weighs a hundred and forty-five pounds. His face is round, and his eyes are slightly slanted. He has Sioux and Navajo blood, and bristly dark-brown hair. Everyone in the Tribe has a nickname. Ford's is Demon, but, being earnest and unassuming, he's not very comfortable with it. He lives in an apartment in a rambling house with two roommates. We sat in the living room. Ford said that he discovered parkour on the Internet toward the end of his junior year in high school, in Golden, Colorado. He wanted to learn how to run up to a wall, plant his foot on it, and do a backflip. Looking for instructions, he found images of David Belle, among others. In the fall, he quit the football team, on which he was a wide receiver, to pursue parkour.
"I was always climbing rocks and trees, so parkour was already kind of in me," he said. "Pretty much everyone you talk to will tell you that parkour was always part of them." His parents were unhappy with it, though. "To them, it just looked like I was jumping off stuff recklessly for no reason," he said. "But I kept saying, 'It's not pointless, there's a whole philosophy to it.' "
I asked how he had learned.
"A key factor in parkour is gradualism," he said. "You can't find the highest thing to jump from in order to practice your rolls. You get down on the ground first and practice your rolls, then maybe you find something three feet high to launch yourself from. When you can do something correctly a hundred times out of a hundred, you increase your task. Maybe. If you feel confident. People wonder how David Belle can leap between buildings and fall thirty feet. He started low and built up the difficulty."
It was a warm day, and the windows were open. We heard a dog bark, and a woman tell it to stop. "Parkour is about repetition and practice," Ford went on. "To say that no one in the U.S. has reached David Belle's level doesn't mean that there aren't extremely skilled people doing parkour; it means that he's trained for years, and no one here has. When I see a skilled traceur, I admire the dedication and the mental strength. There are some people who just have superior physical ability, but there are no secret techniques in parkour. A lot of the things traceurs do aren't necessarily impressive physically, anyway. From a traceur's point of view, the task is often mental. Some people can master fear. Other people might have more determination and, in the end, accomplish more things. I see myself fuelled more by determination than by the ease of putting fear in the back of my mind. I overthink, and I don't have the craziness some people do, but I have the determination."
"How often do you practice?"
"I try to do something every day," he said. Then he frowned. "One thing we say is we do parkour, but a lot of the time we aren't; we're practicing for parkour. True parkour is hardly ever done. If I'm practicing a vault and I turn around and do it again, that's not parkour, because it's continuing a circle—it's not making a path. The videos on the Internet are spliced together, so that's not really parkour, either.
"My fantasy is to be walking late at night on the street in New York City and have some guys try to rob me, and I use parkour to get away from them, but I've never had to use parkour, so in a way I could say I've never really done parkour. I practice parkour not because I think I'm going to have to use it but because I see it as making me stronger physically and mentally, just the way people don't go into martial arts because they plan to fight someone—they keep fit or get discipline. Everyone's different, but the philosophy of parkour that drives me is that progression of ability, being better than I was the day before. There's a quote by Bruce Lee that's my motto: 'There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. A man must constantly exceed his level.' If you're not better than you were the day before, then what are you doing—what's the point?"
The next morning, I drove to Denver with Ford; his girlfriend, Kathryn Keller, who is brown-haired and petite and was a gymnast in high school but had to give it up when she hurt her back; and a tall, skinny high-school boy with freckles and a turban named Sat, whose full name is Sat Santokh Khalsa. Sat's American mother and father had converted to Sikhism, and when Sat was nine they sent him to a Sikh boarding school in India, called Miri Piri Academy. He had gone there for six years—he was now fifteen—and had just started Boulder High School. When he came home from India at the end of the school year, a friend had shown him a parkour video, and then he found Mark Toorock's Web site.
We drove downtown, to a small park called Skyline Park, outside a Westin hotel. Ford had invited several other traceurs to join us, and when we arrived one of them, a Russian named Nikita, was sitting beside a fountain that had been drained. Nikita was twenty. He had shaved his blond hair, and he had a small face, avid eyes, thin lips, and a sharp nose. He was six feet two and weighed a hundred and sixty pounds. He looked like a big spider. He said that he was from Belarus. "I grew up in a village," he said. "It was just five houses." In New York, where his father now lived, he had trained for two years to be an ultimate fighter. "We paid money to a manager to arrange the fights, and he left," he said. "After that, my trainer went into the movies." He shrugged off a backpack. "Two more days, and it will be one month I have done parkour."
The fountain in Skyline Park is a collection of reddish-brown concrete forms, squares and rectangles, stacked like children's blocks. It is about twenty feet tall. "We call this the Cat Fountain," Ford said, "because there's a lot of cat leaps here." There is a fountain in a park nearby, designed by the same architect, which is called Precision Fountain, Ford said, "because it has a lot of precision jumps." The Cat Fountain was set into the plaza, so that from the pavement to the blocks there was a gap several feet wide and a few feet deep, which would be filled by water in warmer weather. Making a run toward the gap, Sat made a cat leap to one of the blocks. He was so slight that it seemed as if he had been lifted into the air by a wire. Once he had grabbed the block, his feet slid against it as he pulled himself up. "The slips are part of the technique," Ford said. "It's controlled. When you first start, you rely more on the equipment to hold you in place, your sneakers, then you learn to use your strength."
Warming up, Nikita twisted from side to side, like a screw. Ford did a handstand but had difficulty maintaining it. "My handstands are not so good," he said. "I fall over, since I got hurt."
"What happened?"
"Separated my shoulder," he said.
"Where'd you do that?"
Ford walked about ten paces. "Right here," he said. "Kong vault over this eight-foot gap. I should have landed in that flower bed, but I clipped a foot and fell into the gap and hit the wall. At first, I thought I broke my collarbone. I also cut my head. I drove home using one arm."
Keller said, "He left a message on my answering machine: 'I got hurt pretty bad, so just call me back.'"
While we stood looking at the wall and the flower bed, another traceur, a high-school boy named Dan Mancini, came walking across the plaza. He was tall and thin, with brown hair, and wore a T-shirt and jeans. Ford clasped his hands above his head and stretched, then said, "Shall we hit some stuff on the fountain?" When Ford talks about people naturally gifted for parkour, one of the people he means is Nikita. We watched him pace off a ten-foot gap from the border to the fountain, then approach it at a run. The first time, he landed short of the wall, and the second time he cleared the gap but couldn't hold on to the wall and dropped to the bottom of the fountain.
"I did that once," Ford said. "Never again."
Nikita said that he wanted to try one more time.
"You should," Ford said. "I'll film it."
"You shouldn't tell me," Nikita said.
Ford got a video camera from his knapsack. He stood on a block beside the one Nikita was attempting to surmount and filmed Nikita as he came rushing forward, leaped into the air, and struck the block feet first, like a hawk, then grabbed the edge and pulled himself to the top. He stood on top of the block, jiggling his hands, and said, "Scary vault."
They grew tired of the fountain shortly and began hoisting themselves onto a railing a few feet above the ground and walking along it on all fours: a maneuver called a cat balance or a cat walk. The railing framed three sides of a rectangle. The longest section was about thirty feet. "Cat walking is very tiring," Ford said. "Your legs start to burn." Nikita went up one side of the railing and made the turn and passed us. "Your legs burning yet?" Ford asked. Nikita shook his head. He turned the second corner. "Now burning," he said.
After Nikita got off the railing, he paced out a cat leap from the plaza, over a gap of about eight feet, to a block in the fountain.
"The last guy who did that hit his face," Ford said.
"Bit through his lip," one of the others said.
Nikita soared over the gap and held on to the block, and the others shook their heads. Ford said, "You guys want to move? I got another cat leap for you."
We crossed the street to a ramp that led to an underground garage. The boys leaned over the walls on either side of the ramp and looked down soberly. At the deep end, the drop to the pavement was about fifteen feet, and the distance across about twelve.
"This is the smallest parking-garage ramp in Denver," one of them said.
"Yeah, we scouted it," another said.
"Those French guys do it at the deepest part."
"Yeah, but in France the cars are smaller, so it's as deep but not as wide."
They walked to the head of the ramp in a little pack. A few of them climbed up on the wall around the ramp and made tentative standing jumps to the pavement, landing at the far wall and grabbing the edge of it with their fingers, but no one wanted to try it for real. Embedded in the wall were pieces of gravel, making it rough to the touch. Nikita stood on a rail several inches above the wall, wobbling, as if on a branch. Through a window of the hotel, about ten floors up, a man watched him. Nikita bent his knees, thrust his arms forward, and leaped, his path making a little arc in the air. His fingers grasped the wall, but he landed hard and banged his shin. He lifted his pants leg to see if he'd cut himself. Then he said, "Let's get out of here," and everyone followed him across the street. His hands were scraped and bleeding. On a Velcro strap around his chest he had a zippered wallet from which he took some tape and wrapped his fingers.
After crossing several streets, we came to an apartment building and a concrete parking garage that was four floors tall. Between the levels, running nearly the length of each wall, were broad openings like slits. Each was about a foot tall. Using them, the boys began climbing. One said, "Is this, like, the Asian place where the lady yelled at us to get out?"
A door at the top of a flight of stairs in the apartment building opened and a small, black-haired woman stepped out. "What are you doing climbing here?" she yelled. "Are you supposed to be up there? Get off. The stairs are for going up and down." She glared at them, and one by one they sheepishly climbed down. We took the stairs to the roof, which was connected to a walkway leading to a row of stores, all of them closed—it was Sunday. By one of the stores were two sulky girls and a boy dressed in black clothes.
"Are you guys some kind of youth group?" one of the girls asked.
"No, this is just us using the buildings to keep fit," someone said.
"Oh, I understand," the girl said. "That's cool."
"She does not understand," Kathryn said.
"Oh, my God," the other girl said. "It's like Spider-Man."
I turned and saw Nikita climbing a drain pipe to the roof of one of the stores. While I was writing "Spider-Man" in my notebook, his shadow as he leaped from one roof to another passed over the page.
Jeff Belle has an office in Paris, where he handles fire-department business. To speak with him, I brought a translator, Susan Chace, an American novelist who lives in Paris. Belle, who is forty-five, is small and wiry. He has a round face, a sharp chin, dark eyes, and black, cropped hair with flecks of gray. He was wearing a fireman's uniform, a dark-blue garment like a jumpsuit. The legs ended just above the tops of his black combat boots. Over the uniform, he wore a long coat that had "Pompier de Paris" written on the back. We met at his office, then he took us to an empty, low-ceilinged room with a bar and an espresso machine and some tables stacked on top of each other. On the wall were photographs of firefighters.
Jeff said that David was a restless boy. "He was always exercising in front of the TV," he said. "He still takes whatever's next to him, maybe a big book, and starts lifting it. He can't sit still. He lives with it." The brothers did not see much of each other until David, at fourteen, moved to Lisses to live with his mother. Then Jeff, who was already a fireman, began to look after him. He would show him how to climb ropes and perform gymnastic maneuvers, and David would go off and do it his own way. Now and then, David would go to the climbing wall in Lisses with his father and show him things he had taught himself, and Raymond, thinking that he was being encouraging, would say, "I could do that when I was nine."
Through Jeff, David was exposed to the methods of Georges Hébert, a French sports theorist, whose motto was "Be strong to be useful." Hébert believed that modern conveniences such as elevators were debilitating. He thought that Africans he had met while travelling were healthier and stronger than Europeans, and that the proportions of the bodies he saw in Greek and Roman statues were ideal. The philosophies and the exercises he developed, which are part of a French fireman's training, were also meant to cultivate courage and discipline. Inspired by Hébert, a Swiss architect developed an obstacle course called a parcours. "David took Hébert's ideas and said, 'I will adapt it to what I need,' " Jeff said. "Instead of stopping at a reasonable point, he just kept going."
David was briefly a fireman recruit, until he hurt his wrist. While he was recuperating, he started thinking things over and saw that the life of a fireman had too many rules, and not enough action, and he decided to join the Marines, but he didn't find the same values among them, the "traditional values." He left the Marines and went to India, where he stayed for six months. When he came back to Paris, he was twenty-four, and he didn't know what to do with himself.
"He came to see me at my house," Jeff said, "and he told me he didn't know where his life was going. He was only interested in parkour. You could be a super policeman or a firefighter using it, but you can't earn your living, because there's no championship. I said, 'Maybe if we film what you're doing.' "
It was 1997, and Jeff was involved in planning an annual ceremony in which recruits perform firefighting drills. He decided that David should put on a show. He told him to get a group together, so that he wouldn't look insignificant by himself. David collected two of his cousins and some other kids from the neighborhood, including Sébastien Foucan, with whom he ran around doing parkour. Jeff choreographed a routine for them. They dressed as ninjas and called themselves the Yamakasi. "It means 'strong spirit' in the language of Zaire," Jeff said, "but it sounded Asian." During the show, David climbed a tower and did a handstand at the top. He also scaled a fireman's ladder and did a backflip from it. After the demonstration, David began getting invitations to perform.
Jeff is proud of David, but worries about him. "This was a kid who refused any kind of system, who just wanted to live his life," he says. "If he's surrounded by the right people, he can do what he wants. Ordinary life really upsets him, though, because this world the rest of us live in is not where he finds his pleasure. He's easily disturbed by ordinary things. But he's also asking, 'Why am I doing this parkour?' All his family who did this physical stuff were doing it for a reason, but he's asking, 'Why am I doing this, what does it mean?' " Jeff added, "He's simple in his purposes. He doesn't like talking very much. He's someone who is looking for his way." I asked what sort of routines David observed in his training. Jeff shook his head. "He's still eating Big Macs and drinking Coke," Jeff said. "He likes chicken sandwiches. He trains when it comes to him. He's usually sleeping in the morning. He's really a night guy."
We arranged to meet with David the following day, in Lisses, where he was staying with his mother. When David is in France, he lives either with her or with Jeff. "He doesn't really have a lot of money," Jeff said, "although people think that he does." He added that David was very easy to live with. "We don't know about the inside of his head, but outside he's very neat. His room is always in perfect shape."
The next day, I took a taxi with Susan Chace to Lisses, about half an hour south of Paris. When we were under way, the driver asked why we were going there. Chace said, "To see David Belle." The driver nodded. Chace asked if he knew who Belle was, and the driver said, "Of course. Il est unique." We left the highway and, following Jeff's directions, went around a rotary and came to a collection of low, flat-roofed, two-story buildings, like shoeboxes, painted light brown. We stopped in front of Belle's building. Chace knocked, the door opened, and the driver said, "That's him!" Belle had his chin tucked slightly, like a man looking out from under the brim of a hat. He had dark hair cut short like a pelt and a thin, asymmetrical face, with a sharp chin and a hook nose. He was wearing a red fleece top and jeans. As I paid the driver, Jeff Belle drove up behind us. We went into the apartment. The kitchen was by the door, and there was a living room beyond it with a circular stairway leading up. In the living room was David's girlfriend, Dorine Sane. David had his fleece top zipped to his chin—he had a sore throat—and he seemed subdued. He had just come back from three weeks in the Czech Republic, where he was making "Babylon AD," which stars Vin Diesel, and is based on a French science-fiction novel. David plays the head of an Internet gang that does parkour, and he choreographed scenes for ten actors.
Jeff and David spoke for a few moments, and then Chace said that David was going to rest, while Jeff took us to the Dam du Lac. Outside, we crossed a parking lot, then took an asphalt path through a park. Several hundred yards off, the Dam du Lac rose up against the side of a small lake. It was the color of sandstone and had the shape of an arch. "David was afraid of it in the beginning," Jeff said. "Now he walks on it like it was solid ground." The lac turned out to be made of concrete. As we walked along the edge, ducks paddled away from us. For some time now, a fence has enclosed the wall, but it was easy to climb around it. The wall was slightly concave, and the top was intersected by a horizontal slab, which had roughly the dimensions of a king-size mattress and was curled up at one edge. Here and there on the face of the wall were footholds and handholds in the form of slots the size of bricks. On one side was a rectangular box, open at one end, like a cave, which is called the cabana. Below, sticking straight out from the wall and about fifteen feet tall, was a form in the shape, more or less, of a hammer. Jeff said that the first maneuver David had done was a backflip from the cabana to the hammer. About twenty feet from the ground was a sign saying, "Escalade Interdite." On it were signatures. "The kids climb up and sign their names," Jeff said. "David also went barefoot on it." He pointed at the top. "And at night sometimes he slept up there."
For a few minutes, my mind screened images of David in videos I had seen—running up and down the wall, doing a hair-raising handstand at the top—then we began walking back toward the apartment. We passed a low building with picture windows—a nursery school—and Jeff said that when David and his friends were young "they jumped over the bushes beside it to the roof. That was their first trick." While we were looking at a stairwell that appears as a prop in videos for a series of David's cat leaps, Jeff's cell phone rang, and it was David saying he was ready to talk.
When we got back to the apartment, David sat on a couch with Dorine, and I sat next to them. Jeff made coffee. For the most part, David sat quite still, like a machine at rest. The only part of him in motion was his right hand, which moved from Dorine's hand, to her knee, to her lap, and so on. I asked how he knew whether a movement was too dangerous. "It's just intuitive," he said, shrugging. "My body just knows if I can do something or not. It's sort of an animal thing. In athletics, they have rules—you have to take your distance and stop and jump, everything has a procedure—but I never did it that way. I don't take a risk, though, that I know I can't do. I like life too much."
He said that parkour hadn't changed much, since he started it, but his intention had become more specific. "When I was younger, I was playing, the way kids play at parkour, but now I ask the question 'Is this going to be useful for me to get to the other side?' The movement is simple. I don't do anything special, because I want to get to the other side. What I'm interested in for parkour is the utilitarian thing of getting to the other end, whether as a task or a challenge, but in film they like a little entertainment, so I do that, too, but it's not what I'm interested in.
"You always have to get through the first obstacle that says, 'I can't do it,' whether in your mind or for real, and be able to adapt to anything that's put in your path. It's a method for learning how to move in the world. For finding the liberty men used to have."
I asked David why he had gone to India, and he said that he had friends there.
"How did you pass the time?"
"I just kept training," he said. "I was training in the trees." Jeff handed me a scrapbook with a photograph of David leaping from the limb of one tree to another. He was stretched flat out, horizontal to the ground, like Superman.
"I was at a waterfall one day," David went on, "and there were huge trees all around, and in the trees were monkeys. There were fences and barriers around them, so they couldn't get out, but I went around the barriers and played with the monkeys. After that, I watched them all the time, learning how they climbed. All the techniques in parkour are from watching the monkeys."
He then showed us, on a computer, a documentary called "Warriors of the Monkey God." It was about a tribe of monkeys who live on the rooftops of Jodhpur. The people regard the monkeys as holy. We watched them leaping from rooftop to rooftop and through the trees. The scene that made David smile was one in which numbers of them leaped onto, then off, a piece of corrugated tin that was loosely attached as a roof to some stakes. Their landings made the tin shake. Some of the monkeys were leaping from the ground, turning on their sides in the air, landing on the stakes and shoving off from them—a tic-tac.
Watching the movie, which was about forty-five minutes long, took only about fifteen minutes, because David kept advancing it to scenes of the monkeys in flight, looking exactly like traceurs. When it was finished, he said that after coming home he had just continued perfecting what he had learned from the monkeys. He had plans, he said, to make a movie with them.
I asked about the fall on the Internet, the one that the American traceurs always talk about. David gave a little smile. "I was a bit tired," he said. "It was the end of the day. I was just doing stuff with a bunch of kids. I fall all the time—I fall like the monkeys—but it never shows up on film, because they just want the spectacular stuff."
I thought of Nikita with his bleeding hands and said, "You never wear gloves?"
He said that he wanted to be able to feel the surfaces he was grabbing. He held his palms out for me to feel, and they were as hard and slick as linoleum.
I told him that I had been to see people do parkour in Colorado, and that they had imagined themselves as preparing to use it for an escape, and he said, "That's good. If you're really thinking about how to defend yourself, how to be useful, then that's a very different mind-set from just doing things to look good."
Last fall, David said, he had discussions with Sam Raimi, the director of "Spider-Man," about playing the role of Spider-Man's double, but he decided he wasn't interested. "That was a childhood dream, to be in a Spider-Man costume," he said. "Now I'd rather appear on a poster with my own name, not as a character, saying, 'This is me performing.' " He was planning to tour the world doing parkour, he said. A French film company partly owned by the director Luc Besson paid his expenses to perform last winter in Madagascar, and David had also given exhibitions in Italy, Germany, and Portugal.
He yawned and rubbed his throat, and I took it as a sign that he was at the end of his interest in talking. I thanked him and stood up. We shook hands. He seemed to think for a moment, then he said, "I'm still learning. I'm not sure of anything yet, I'm just trying to be as complete as I can."
I nodded.
"What I do is not really something that can be explained," he said. "It can just be practiced." Then he went to call us a taxi. ♦


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Next Episode of Grange Hill is
not planed. TV Show was canceled.
Grange Hill is one of the most successful television children's dramas of all time. The drama takes a look at teenagers and their dilemmas in a Secondary school. Grange Hill has been running for over 20 years and many of the actors have gone on to star in other well known programmes such as Brookside, ER and Eastenders. Its Powerful storyline's, brilliant characters and superb cast. It's no wonder Grange Hill is a brilliant success. Grange Hill was previously filmed in London but now the show creator Phil Redmond has moved filming up to Liverpool so a lot of Actors have not made the move from London to Liverpool.
Stuart Organ(Mr. Robson)
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While it's not quite the 20 percent firesale we've grown accustomed to, Best Buy's 15 percent off of iTunes gift cards still represents a healthy discount on your possibly overpriced movie rentals and season passes. Get it while it's hot! Which it should be all day.
Oh, and if you ever wanted a strong argument against online reviews, please note that the $50 iTunes gift card is rated significantly worse than the $15 iTunes gift card even though they're both, you know, just stupid gift cards. [Best Buy via 9to5 Mac]


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Williamsburg Oil Paints source the best raw materials in the world. Each is carefully ground to enhance the beauty and luminosity specific to each pigment. These paints are uniquely hand-crafted and of the highest quality available.
Color Swatches created using heavy application/medium application/50% tint and were applied on acrylic primed canvas (7 oz) material.
organic, monoazo
This Hansa yellow is a transparent yellow. It has great brightness and tinting strength and its drying time ranges from average to slow.
Hansa Yellow makes more intense tints and cleaner secondaries than Cadmium Yellows, especially when mixed with other organic or modern colors like Phthalo Blue and Green. Because they are more transparent, they have great value as glazing colors.
This Hansa Yellow has fair to good permanence, particularly in the lighter shades.
Hansa Yellow has no significant acute hazards, though its chronic hazards have not been well studied.
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Arylamide Yellow, Arylide, Arylide Yellow, Azo, Brilliant Yellow, Monoazo, Monolite Yellow, Permanent Yellow.
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Titanium White is the most brilliant of the white pigments. It is considered an all purpose oil color useful in all techniques and the best all around white. Its masstone is neither warm nor cool, placing it somewhere between Lead White and Zinc White. It is less prone to cracking and yellowing than Lead White, but it still yellows easily. Titanium White dries slowly in oil form, more slowly than Lead White but more quickly than Zinc White. It is opaque in oil and acrylic forms and semi-opaque in watercolor form. This pigment has good chemical stability, and its tinting strength is superior to both Lead White and Zinc White.
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Titanium is the ninth most abundant element in the Earth's crust, however mineral deposits that are economical to mine are less common. Titanium dioxide was first discovered in 1821, although it could not be mass produced until 1919. Widespread use of the pigment began in the 1940s. Since that time, it has become the most commonly used white pigment. The name comes from the Latin word Titan, the name for the elder brother of Kronos and ancestor of the Titans, and from the Greek word tito, meaning day or sun.
chromium(III)-oxide dehydrate
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Viridian is the standard green and is stable, powerful, and cold with an emerald green undertone. It has a transparent hue, good tinting strength, a dark masstone that can be almost black at full strength, and a slow drying time in oil form. Viridian is commonly replaced by the darker, more saturated, and staining Phthalo Greens, but its properties make it a necessary part of the palette of an experienced landscape painter.
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Emerald Chromium Oxide, Emeraude Green, French Veronese Green, Guignet's Green, Pannetier's Green, Permanent Green, Smaragd Green, Transparent Oxide of Chromium, Vert Emeraude. Casali's Green and Mittler's Green are varieties of Viridian. Viridian has historically been sold under the name Emerald Green, but they are currently considered to be and are marketed as two different pigments.
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A very clever variation of the typical SOMA cube type puzzle. Eleven pieces must fit together in order to form the tower and allow the top piece to fit in place.
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Last week, I spent some time with thirty black high school students from rural Alabama as a part of a summer enrichment program. After leading a session discussing Zora Neale Hurston's "How if Feels to be Colored Me," I had the students break into small groups to talk about how it feels to them in 2010. I mean, Zora talked about feeling "so very colored" at times in the 1920's, what does it feel like to be a young black person in 2010?
There were lots of interesting answers. Some of the students were excited about the Obama family being in the White House, others discussed the pressure to do well in school and prepare for college, and still more talked about violence and drugs plaguing their communities. When I asked, "how does it feel to be a young man or woman?" don't you know that the floodgates opened up?! Now, generally, a teenager's favorite subject is themselves, but the already deep conversation got even deeper. Let me share a bit of what they said.
One young woman said, "It's really, really hard being a young black woman. We have to prove ourselves in ways that boys don't have to." Many of the girls heartily agreed and gave examples from personal experience. Without having read Frances Beales or Kimberle' Crenshaw, these women were able to articulate notions of intersecting oppressions that could give some of my college students a run for their money. In another group, a student answered the question saying that as a young black man he was greatly offended by folks immediately thinking he was uninterested in school, a juvenile delinquent, or that he intended to be a "deadbeat dad." "Those aren't my goals," he said. "I may be a kid, but I'm a responsible person. I don't want to be stereotyped before someone even gets to know me." What could I say? I mean, that'll preach itself.
In both cases we talked about how these inequities made them feel and discussed strategies for dealing with racism and gender discrimination. Invariably the notion of "working hard" and not letting things get to you came up. But I was also interested in how many times the students amended that advice to acknowledge that working hard was not enough, that it helped to have a supportive network of family, friends, and teachers behind you. I thought to myself, the sooner you learn this, the better!
Listening to the different narratives being shared in the various groups definitely gave me pause. I mean, on the one hand, a whole lot hasn't changed since I was in their shoes fifteen years ago. Indeed, in some ways these kids are under pressures that I didn't have to deal with in quite the same way. I mean, being a kid during Reaganomics was not cute, but neither was growing up under Dubya. Add in the current state of affairs–endless wars of attrition, an economic depression…er, um recession, an effed up environment, and so on–and the future–their future–looks like a hot mess.
On the other hand, my spirits were somewhat buoyed. I felt like, damn, this next generation has a rough way to go, but there are some sharp critical thinkers in here with feminist politics, even if they may not identify them as such. That just made my heart sing as a feminist educator. I remain committed to being an advocate for them because, like I said, working hard is not enough. I may not have any children (I know my feline furbaby doesn't count), but I am definitely invested in helping the children in my community doing well. And after what I've heard working with young people, I can't wait to see what they come up with.


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Datsyuk, Tatar lead Red Wings past Flamesby Aaron Vickers
CALGARY -- The Detroit Red Wings gave coach Mike Babcock plenty to be happy about against the Calgary Flames.
They also gave him reason for pause.
The Red Wings coughed up a two-goal second-period lead, but rebounded with goals from Tomas Tatar and Justin Abdelkader to earn a 4-3 victory against the Flames at Scotiabank Saddledome on Friday.
"I thought we got back to being what we've been sometimes this year which is unacceptable and un-Red Wing like," Babcock said. "We've got to learn to play and play consistently and do it each and every night. Some nights, you're not going to win, you do good things, but you give yourself a chance. I thought we had two good periods and one tough one."
The win was the Red Wings' (8-4-2) second consecutive to start a five-game trip away from Joe Louis Arena. The Flames (5-6-2) dropped their final game in Calgary before a four-game road trip.
"It's huge," said goaltender Jimmy Howard, who made 19 saves. "It doesn't matter what the score is as long as you get the two points on the road. You take the two points and you run with them."
A lucky goal swung momentum in Detroit's favor early in the third.
After letting a 2-0 lead slip away in the second period, Tatar put the Red Wings back up just 1:25 into the third. Joakim Andersson fired a shot on Flames goalie Joey MacDonald from below the goal line, glancing it off Tatar's skate and finding a hole to give Detroit a 3-2 lead early in the period.
"He said he didn't touch it," Andersson said. "It was a lucky bounce. Sometimes you need those lucky bounces to win games. It was nice to get it."
"Goalie makes a mistake, it goes in the net," MacDonald, who once played for Detroit, said. "Guys make lots of mistakes on the ice, but once we make one, everybody knows. It's one of those things. I've got to stop it, but 99 times out of 100 you stop them."
MacDonald bailed out forward Curtis Glencross at 9:20 to keep the Flames close. Shorthanded, Glencross turned the puck over on a clearing attempt, leaving MacDonald to make a pad save off Daniel Cleary. MacDonald continued to keep Calgary in the game, denying Cleary with a glove save with 6:10 remaining.
But with 3:24 remaining, MacDonald couldn't stop Abdelkader, who worked his way out from behind the Flames net and fired another sharp-angled shot by MacDonald to give the Red Wings a 4-2 lead.
The goal became a game-winner after Glencross extracted a little redemption with 9.8 seconds remaining in the game in scoring his fourth goal.
It wasn't all good news for the Red Wings in the final period though. Johan Franzen, who missed Detroit's 2-1 win against the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday, left the game after just one shift in the third.
"He was sick," Babcock said. "I don't know exactly if he's got the flu. I don't know what it is, but he's sick and he left. He was feeling nauseous and couldn't play."
It didn't take long for the Red Wings to start rolling in the first period despite being heavily outshot by the Flames.
Though the Flames were able to keep stars Alex Ovechkin and Phil Kessel off the scoresheet in back-to-back games earlier in the week, the Red Wings' duo of Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg ensured early that they wouldn't be shut down.
Datsyuk opened the scoring for Detroit, tapping a Jakub Kindl rebound behind MacDonald for his sixth of the season at 10:57 of the first period. He added an assist when Zetterberg scored his seventh goal of the season with 2:45 remaining in the period. Parked just off the far post, Zetterberg converted a cross-crease pass from Todd Bertuzzi to give Detroit the 2-0 lead.
The Flames rebounded in the middle period though.
"We were not pleased with our first period," coach Bob Hartley said. "I felt that the guys regrouped very well in the locker room. I came in and they were already talking between themselves. … I knew that we would get a good second period, and we did."
Just 54 seconds into the second, Mike Cammalleri was sprung on a breakaway, but was denied by Howard's pad. Three minutes later, Glencross picked up a Brendan Smith turnover in the slot, but the Red Wings goaltender again was equal to the task.
Hartley's Flames took just 2:32 to erase Detroit's two-goal lead.
Calgary finally broke through Howard at 10:15 of the second. Chris Butler's blast from the high slot deflected off the stick of Andersson and jumped by Howard to cut Detroit's lead to 2-1.
With the 250th assist of his career, Cammalleri helped pull Calgary even at 12:47.
Cammalleri plucked a dump in off the boards, spun and fed Sean Monahan cutting to the net. The Flames' rookie rifled a shot over the glove of Howard to record his seventh goal of the season, prompting Detroit coach Mike Babcock to call a time-out to calm his troops.
"We didn't execute and we turned over way too many pucks in the second period," Babcock said. "When you do that, they look fast and you look slow. I think after they scored their second goal, we really turned things around and got playing again. I thought we finished the second strong and then had a real good third period."


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flashcrawler needed a new logo design and created a contest on 99designs.
A winner was selected from 70 designs submitted by 17 freelance designers.
This is for an adult video site but I do not want any adult images as described by guidelines. Im just looking for a simple design so that I can brand the Logo. My theme colors are red,grey and black. You do not have to use all the colors in the logo.
I would like nudevibes.com in small letters under the Logo. The site is shut down during the duration of the contest.
- Item 1...Something in red and grey. The background of the site is going to be black.
- Item 1...No Adult Images or content.
Find out how a design contest works or learn more about our logo design services.


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The union covering hospitality workers and cleaners in Australia has launched a campaign to expose unscrupulous employers who exploit international students.
Australian Network News, by Kate Arnott for Newsline, 22 October 2013
United Voice says the students are among the most exploited when it comes to the worst paid jobs in Melbourne.
"We've heard stories in the hospitality industry of international students being paid as little as 7 or 8 dollars (AUS) an hour," said Jess Walsh, the Victorian secretary for United Voice.
"Now in Australia the minimum wage is just over 16 dollars an hour,"
Dr Mark Zirnsak from the Justice and International Mission with the Uniting Church said there are cases where overseas students working as cleaners have neither met their employers nor seen a pay slip.
A recent union survey of 200 international students found one quarter received 10 dollars an hour or less and 60 per cent earned less than the minimum wage.
As well, United Voice says students reported being subjected to discrimination and abuse.
"What can happen is a group of international students perhaps Chinese students or Indian students might start working in a building and they find they are systematically treated differently from the other cleaners who are doing the same work," said Jess Walsh from United Voice.
"Perhaps given some of the tougher jobs perhaps reprimanded more severely if they make a mistake."
Financial struggles
As part of their visa conditions, international students are allowed to work a maximum of 20 hours per week.
Many international students need to work to support themselves while they study, but the union says their vulnerability means they are taken advantage of by unscrupulous employers.
"We recognise that many of those caught in this situation find it difficult to make complaints or to go to the authorities or to stand up or even to get involved in union activity because of the fear of retribution against them," said Dr Zirnsak from the Uniting Church.
One student, who did not want to be identified told the Australia Network's Newsline program, he found it difficult to find a job that would help him pay his rent.
He came to Australia in 2009 and found it difficult to get work to help him pay the rent and had to settle for a $AUS10 an hour job as cleaner.
He eventually found a cleaning job for $17 an hour - a big improvement on his dishwashing wage, but was still $7 an hour less than a city-wide agreement for office cleaners.
Uniting Voice says this student and many others like him, are employed by cleaning subcontractors, who are notorious for illegal underpaying.
Fighting back
Companies using those subcontractors are increasingly finding themselves the target of noisy protests.
In September, United Voice raided 13 office buildings in Melbourne and found subcontractors used in 9 of them were paying international student cleaners sub-standard wages.
Some companies have already been taken to task by workplace tribunals and fined in court.
But the union and its supporters says repeat offending is common and catching the companies out is not easy.
Click here to read the original report at Australian Network News.


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Most of us simply take it for granted that when our car needs routine maintenance or repairs, we have the right to choose where to have it serviced.
If a mechanical problem is covered by the warranty, you'd be foolish not to head to the dealer. When you are paying for the work, you might prefer an independent shop.
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In a recent survey, Consumer Reports readers gave independent repair shops significantly higher marks than dealers for service, satisfaction and price.
But here's the rub. Independent repair shops can't always work on a car because they don't have access to the same technical information and complex computer diagnostic equipment provided by manufacturers to their dealers.
"Because of this, consumers are often forced to go to a dealership where repair prices can be up to 38 percent higher than at an independent repair shop," says Sandy Bass-Cors, executive director of the Coalition for Auto Repair Equality, which represents repair shops and auto supply stores.
Jeff McLeod of Marshfield, Mass., experienced that frustration when he took his 2006 Kia Sedona minivan his trusted mechanic. The engine light was on, but the mechanic couldn't diagnose the problem because he couldn't read the computer code.
The Kia dealer a few miles away (where McLeod bought his car) had closed, so he had to drive 20 miles to a new dealership.
"The people were total strangers to me," he says. "It was inconvenient and I was put out by it. I bought the car, and I should have the right to decide where to service it."
The Motor Vehicle Owners Right to Repair Act of 2011 (HR 1449) would level the playing field between dealers and independent mechanics. The bill, which has bipartisan support, would require the manufacturer of any motor vehicle sold or leased in the U.S. to:
- Make all information necessary to diagnose, service, maintain or repair the vehicle available to vehicle owners and service providers. (Automakers could charge a licensing fee for this information.)
- Offer to sell the vehicle owner and service providers any related tools or equipment.
- Provide aftermarket tool companies with information allowing them to produce diagnostic and repair tools similar to the ones used by dealers.
Automakers oppose the bill, saying it is unnecessary. Daniel Gage, director of communications for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, says all the information independent shops need is already posted online. They simply have to buy a subscription.
Gage says dealers pay "very significant fees to be a dealer and be involved in the manufacturer's service program." Manufacturers say independent mechanics should pay, too.
Consumer groups support the concept of a right to repair legislation.
"You pay a lot for the car and the technology that goes into it," says Chris Plaushin, director of federal relations for AAA. "You should be able to have access to that technology in order to have it repaired at a facility of your choice."
Why do we need a
Right to Repair Act?
As stated in the bill, this act would do three things:
- To protect motor vehicle owners' right to choose a service provider for the diagnosis, service, maintenance, and repair of their motor vehicles.
- To promote competition in price and quality among service providers.
- To promote safety and fuel efficiency by allowing consumers to choose among competing service providers.
The bill points out that the availability of aftermarket tools and parts provides jobs to more than 5 million American workers and generates $200 billion in annual sales.
"There's the potential for consumers to have more choice, flexibility and possibly save some money" says Ami Gadhia of Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports.
Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., is co-sponsor of HR 1449. In a letter to congressional colleagues, he says a system that forces car owners back to the dealership for repairs is "a hardship for low-and-fixed income motorists, and removes the very basic tenets of ownership choices from those who need it most.
"Basic consumer choice in vehicle repairs means fair-market competition, which keep repairs affordable. Our constituents need help in many areas and this is one that we can easily deliver," he writes.
Service bulletins: Your right to know
The Right to Repair Act would also require carmakers to make their technical services bulletins available to everyone via the Internet.
"Service bulletins go to both safety and economic issues," notes Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety. "They give details about problems with a particular model and how to fix them right the first time. This saves the consumer money."
Dealers automatically get this information. But it doesn't go to independent shops or even the person who owns the car.
"The person paying an average of $30,000 for a new car today should have the right to have that car serviced properly for its entire life," Ditlow insists. "That means getting access to this technical information."
The bill would require the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Transportation to publish these service bulletins on a government website. This would make it possible for you to see if there's a problem with your vehicle rather than hope an independent shop catches it when you bring it in.
More must-read stories
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- Cyber-thieves create fake Kelley Blue Book site
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- Can you live on $9 an hour? Play the game
- Wild Wall St.
My two cents
I like my car dealership. It has a great service department. But I also have a trusted repair shop that has taken good care of me. I should be able to choose where to go for service.
What if I have a breakdown or my "check engine light" comes on when I'm away from home and there's no dealership around? Should I be forced to drive my car or have it towed to a dealer? I don't think so.
And consider this: If service bulletins were publicly available, it would prevent so-called "secret warranty" repair programs. This is when a manufacturer knows it has a problem with a vehicle, tells its dealers about it and they will fix the problem if a consumer makes a big enough fuss. That's just not fair. If there's something wrong with your car, you have the right to know about it.
Competition is good for the marketplace. As long as manufacturers are not required to give away any trade secrets – and this bill specifically protects against that – then I believe Congress should move forward on the Motor Vehicle Owners Right to Repair Act.
Want to keep up with the latest on consumer news, follow the ConsumerMan on Facebook .


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Google Street View v188.8.131.52864541
Google Street View v184.108.40.206864541
Minimum Requirements: 4.4+
APK Description: With Google Maps Street View, you can explore the world at street level.
Explore world landmarks, discover natural wonders, and step inside locations such as museums, arenas, restaurants, and small businesses with Google Street View.
Also create photo spheres to add your own Street View experiences. Start with your phone's camera or add a one–shot spherical camera (like the Ricoh Theta S) for easy 360º photography. Then, you can publish to Google Maps to share your photo spheres with the world.
Content galleries:
• Browse Google's most popular special collections
• Explore all of Street View (including contributions from others)
• Review your public profile of published photo spheres
• Manage your private photo spheres
Creating and sharing photo spheres:
• Use your phone's camera (no camera accessories required)
• Connect to a spherical camera to capture in one tap
• Share to Google Maps as immersive photo spheres
• Share privately as flat photos
• Use Live Preview mode to look through your 360 camera in real-time and tweak exposure settings.
• Edit the location of published photos.
• Reach Local Guide Level 5 or trusted photographer status to try a new way to connect and reposition your photos.
• Lots of feature improvements and bug fixes.
This app has no advertisements
More Info:
Download Instructions:


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We can also take payments over the phone, give one of the team a call before 2pm Monday - Friday for same day shipping.
All prices are in GBP Copyright © 2019 Trend Clothing.


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Herman Survivor Timber II
Great work boots at a great price. I bought these…
Source: bought it new
Price Paid: $55
Great work boots at a great price.
- Very durable, long lasting
- Good ankle support
I bought these boots when I started a new job. I figured I would buy a better pair after a few paychecks. After 2 and a half years of 50 hour weeks, yard work and countless trips to the woods, I went back to Wal-Mart and bought another pair. Great boots at a great value. In 2 and a half years I'll buy another pair.
These boots suck. Designer should be stomped with…
Source: bought it new
Price Paid: $64
These boots suck. Designer should be stomped with them!!
Bought the Timber Two boots, wore them for one day and lost skin on back of ankles typical breakin in then second day ankles swelled up so bad couldn't walk, two days later now stopped wearing them and these boots are a piss poor design. Whoever did it should get the boot in his ass, obviously he never wore a pair!!!
I bought a pair of boots wore them about 5 times the…
Price Paid: $49.99
I bought a pair of boots wore them about 5 times the heel came off? not in water just around town dry.
I took them back and the ones I had were lined with lambs wool not the new ones, they have a vynl linning?
I see walmart is sending the work to china? They're not USA anymore. the sole on the replacement boot is thinner, cheap liner, poor fit.
i will return these boots in the morning. Americans have to stand up to walmart and other companys sending work to other countrys, American companys being closed and work being farmed out for cheap labor in china to save a dollar, Walmart has no concern for the american people. Im very disappointed
Very comfortable, however, just like everyone else…
Very comfortable, however, just like everyone else says the sole split within two months. Not worth the money you pay if it is only going to last two months.
These are comfortable, but don't last more than a…
Price Paid: forget
These are comfortable, but don't last more than a few months...Sad, I thought going back to this boot was a good idea when i should of put this money into a better pair. I know now not to buy boots at Wal-mart ... I WANT MY MONEY BACK ... rip offs! (r&d cant leave a good thing alone) always trying to save on the CAPITAL with more yields !ARG
These are some of the most comfortable boots I've…
Materials: leather
Use: work
Break-in Period: 2 weeks
Weight: unk
Price Paid: $49
These are some of the most comfortable boots I've ever worn, but that means nothing if they don't last. After a few months, the soles split wide open letting water and debris in. Sole composition is obviously inferior. I shant ever buy boots from Walmart again.
My husband bought these shoes at the end of August,…
Price Paid: $49.98
My husband bought these shoes at the end of August, not even 2 months later the bottom still looks new, but the sole is split all the way through. That is crazy. He should get a new pair for free. We will never buy this brand nor will we ever recommend your product. In fact we will make a point to let people know that your company makes a horrible boot and you suck.
Where to Buy
The Survivor Timber II has been discontinued.reviewers paid:
$49.00 - $64.00
The Herman Survivor Timber II is not available from the stores we monitor.


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|Development Impact
With offices all over the globe, we are where you are.
Contact an IFC office.
Follow us on:
Financial Institutions Group
IFC believes that sound, inclusive, and sustainable financial markets are essential to building shared prosperity and eradicating poverty. They ensure efficient resource allocation, create jobs, spur economic growth and play a critical role in private sector development. Yet it is estimated that 2.5 billion adults lack access to savings or credit, and 200 million micro, small and medium businesses have no access to credit.
IFC investment and advisory teams offer joint solutions to our financial intermediary clients that address their financing needs and offer know-how and tools to use the capital to their best advantage.
The Financial Institutions Group is committed to providing universal access to finance by 2020. Working through financial intermediaries allows IFC to support far more micro, small, and medium enterprises than we would be able to on our own. We work with a network of 900 financial intermediaries in more than 120 countries. Using a combination of investment and advice, we help strengthen financial institutions and overall financial systems - including capital markets – to enable them to play a constructive role in economic growth.
The Financial Institutions Group's total committed portfolio is about $20 billion. At the end of 2012, our financial-intermediary clients provided about 30 million MSME loans to companies which in turn employed more than 180 million people.
We also encourage financial institutions to become more involved in strategic sectors that, while important to the development agenda, might not ordinarily attract much private sector capital. These include women-owned businesses, climate change and agri-finance and underserved regions such as fragile and conflict-affected states. Through our investment clients, we help support a full range of financial services such as insurance, housing, capital market development, trade finance as well as loans for individual micro entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Our investments are often accompanied by advice. This gives our clients the benefit of expertise from seasoned sector specialists and helps to addressing systemic issues such as risk management, corporate governance and the introduction of environmental and social standards. Our projects are tailored to include assistance to banks and specialized financial institutions to improve their ability to provide financial services to micro, small, and medium enterprises.
IFC's approach to environmental and social risk management (E&S) helps build the capacity of our financial-institution clients to assess and mitigate their own E&S risks, in a manner commensurate with the level of exposure to such risks. The 2012 update to the IFC Sustainability strengthened our risk management and transparency with regard to our financial-institution clients.


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Online Womens Clothes - Buy Women's Dresses Online
The dresses are the epitome of the woman appearance. Thereby, they should be up-to-the-mark and sophisticated. No need to roam here and there. We are your ultimate destination for such categories of online womens clothes or dresses, varying from the simplest to the sexiest Womens Prom Dresses. Enter into our website and buy the prom dresses or other Online Womens Clothes, sitting at a single place. Midi dress, short tank dress, sleeveless shift dress, 3/4th sleeves tee dress, off-shoulder dress are some of our products in our closet. Browse our website and find the exclusive range of Women's Dresses Online.
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Product Description
This bonsai has a beautiful shaped trunk with elegant S-Shape and beautifully refined branches giving an overall artistic and oriental appearance.
A great bonsai for beginners and would make a wonderful bonsai gift. Very pretty!
This is the bonsai you will receive!
All the bonsai in our Premium Range come complete with matching bonsai pot and humidity tray. Premium Range bonsai represent the very best in quality. The highest standards are maintained in pruning, styling and repotting, with the use of high grade potting media.
This bonsai includes:
* a premium Chinese Elm bonsai in an ornate ceramic bonsai pot
* Height (cm): 38
* Pot size (cm): 26 x 20
* Pot details: Moss green rectangular ceramic bonsai pot
* Trunk diameter (cm): 2.5
* Approximate age (years): 17
* matching ceramic humidity tray
• FREE bonsai care leaflet
• FREE delivery to most of the UK.
Bonsai Variety
The Chinese Elm (Ulmus parviflolia) makes a truly beautiful bonsai with small bright green leaves. The tree has excellent twig structure and has great character throughout, making it the perfect representation of a woodland tree. In our opinion the Chinese Elm is the most perfectly proportioned, easy to care for and adaptable tree and makes a superb bonsai; which can be grown either indoors or outdoors.


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Published May 27, 2010
Whether it is a comedy or tragedy, everyone loves a great performance. Who puts on the best?
Looking to fix a few dings or to restore an old classic? Who's the best... see the Top 5 →
Who puts the best sounding tunes in your ride? see the Top 5 →
Sometimes it's worth having someone else do the dirty work. Who gets your... see the Top 5 →
We know bikers are passionate about their rides. Tell us who you trust... see the Top 5 →
When it comes to car repair, it's all about trust. Where do you go for a... see the Top 5 →
It's not all about buzz cuts and straight lines these days. Men care about... see the Top 5 →
The 2010 KCRA 3 A-List Contest awards are based on more than 94,000 votes from local Sacramento-area experts.


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Brussels, 18 April 2011
Commission evaluates the Directive on retention of telecommunications data
Today the European Commission adopted an evaluation report of the Data Retention Directive outlining the lessons learned since its adoption in 2006. The Directive established data retention as a response to urgent security challenges, following major terrorist attacks in Madrid in 2004 and in London in 2005. The report concludes that retained telecommunications data play an important role in the protection of the public against the harm caused by serious crime. They provide vital evidence in solving crimes and ensuring justice is served. However, transposition of the Directive has been uneven and the remaining differences between the legislations of Member States create difficulties for telecommunication service providers. The Directive also does not in itself guarantee that data are stored, retrieved and used in full compliance with the right to privacy and protection of personal data, and this has led courts to annul the legislation transposing the Directive in some Member States. The Commission will now review the current data retention rules, in consultation with the police and the judiciary, industry, data protection authorities, and civil society with a view to proposing an improved legal framework.
"Our evaluation shows the importance of stored telecommunications data for criminal justice systems and for law enforcement. Such data are used as evidence not only to convict the guilty of serious crimes and terrorism, but also to clear the innocent of suspicion. Retained data was for example crucial to the success of Operation Rescue which helped reveal the identities of 670 suspected members of an international paedophile network and protect children from abuse in Member States where the directive has been transposed. But the evaluation report also identifies serious shortcomings. We need a more proportionate, common approach across the EU to this issue. I therefore intend to review the Directive to clarify who is allowed to access the data, the purpose and procedures for accessing it", said Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Home Affairs.
The evaluation report analyses how Member States have transposed the Directive and assesses the use of retained data and the impact on operators and consumers.
Its main findings are:
Telecommunications data retained by telecommunications operators is used by police and prosecutors in the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime and terrorism.
The EU, through a number of directives in the last 10-15 years, has sought to regulate the requirement for telecommunications service providers to retain data for a specific period of time.
The Data Retention Directive (Directive 2006/24/EC) requires Member States to ensure that these operators retain certain categories of data (for identifying identity and details of phone calls made and emails sent, excluding the content of those communications) for the purpose of the investigation, detection and prosecution of serious crime, as defined by national law. The data must be retained for a minimum of six months to a maximum of two years (to be decided by Member State in transposing the Directive into national laws).
Law enforcement authorities in most Member States have reported to the Commission that retained data plays a central role in protecting the public against harm through effective criminal investigation. These data provide valuable leads and evidence which have resulted in convictions for criminal offences and in acquittals of innocent suspects in relation to crimes which, without data retention, might never have been solved.
Data protection authorities have criticised the directive on the grounds that it does not provide enough limitation of data retention and safeguards for how the data is stored, accessed and used.
Article 14 of the Directive requires the Commission to provide an evaluation of the application of this instrument and its impact on economic operators and consumers.
Next steps
Building on this evaluation, the Commission will prepare a proposal to amend the Directive. Over the coming months, it will consult law enforcement authorities, the judiciary, data protection authorities, industry and civil society on options for a future legal framework. The results of the consultation will feed into an impact assessment as a basis for the future proposal.
For more information
Homepage of Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Home Affairs:
Homepage of DG Home Affairs:
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Colorado lawmakers to discuss federal, state gun laws in panel discussion Tuesday
A bipartisan panel discussion on the impact of proposed gun laws at the federal and state levels is scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Seawell Grand Ballroom in downtown Denver.
Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper will moderate the discussion that includes lawmakers U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colorado Springs; state Senate President John Morse, D-Colorado Springs and state Rep. Rhonda Fields, D- Aurora.
David Kopel of the Independence Institute and Tom Deland, president of the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police, will join the discussion.
The panel discussion comes in a week where Colorado House Democrats passed four bills that would toughen gun laws in the state. The measures range from a ban on high capacity ammunition magazines to universal background checks for all gun sales — which are both sponsored by Fields and have garnered support from Hickenlooper.
Morse in the coming weeks plans to present what many view as a controversial assault weapons bill that holds manufacturers and sellers of the firearms liable for any harm inflicted with them.
The panel discussion begins at 6:30 p.m. and is sponsored by the non-partisan Counterterrorism Education Learning Lab (CELL), and The Denver Post.
Follow Kurtis on Twitter: @kurtisalee