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Eric Holder under fire — again
Already facing calls for a congressional investigation into his ties to Georgia's most notorious abortion doctor, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. may be headed for more trouble.
Documents obtained by Watchdog.org reveal that Holder failed to disclose his wife's ownership of the building where the doctor operated.
The attorney general's financial disclosure reports for 2008 through 2011 show Holder neglected to report his wife's co-ownership, through a family trust, of the building located in the Atlanta suburb of College Park.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch in Washington, D.C., said he was "surprised there is this trust out there and (Holder) hasn't reported it."
"It looks to me like the sort of thing that should be disclosed. If he and his spouse are gaining income off this trust, generally that would be subject to disclosure," Fitton said. "I mean, if you have an ownership interest, you get the income. You may not be making the day-to-day decisions about the investments, but you are certainly benefiting from them."
Holder did not respond to several requests for comment.
Dana Cody, an attorney and the president and executive director of Life Legal Defense Foundation, a pro-life legal defense organization in Napa, Calif., agreed that Holder should have "disclosed any financial interest he had in the abortion industry."
Under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, high-level federal officials are required to "disclose publicly their personal financial interests to ensure confidence in the integrity of the federal government by demonstrating that they are able to carry out their duties without compromising the public trust."
The law further requires disclosure of the "holdings of and income from the holdings of any trust, estate, investment fund or other financial arrangement from which income is received by, or with respect to which a beneficial interest in principal or income is held by, the filer, his spouse, or dependent child."
Those found violating the law can face penalties ranging from criminal and civil fines to imprisonment, according to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. This includes fines of up to $50,000 and a maximum of a year imprisonment, if the non-disclosure was done willfully, according to the Office of Government Ethics.
Like any area of the law, this one is subject to interpretation, and some experts said it was possible to argue that the family trust is constructed in a way that allows Holder to deny any interest. Contacted by Watchdog.org in October, Holder's sister-in-law, a co-manager of the trust with Holder's wife, was apparently relying on the trust when she claimed she and her sister did not "technically" own the building.
That explanation didn't fly with Cody and others, however.
"Assuming for the sake of argument that he was not required to do so, or wasn't aware he was required to do so, to avoid an appearance of any wrongdoing, he should have been forthcoming and disclosed the interests his wife holds in the building where (the doctor) operated an abortion clinic," Cody said.
Michael Norton, the former U.S. attorney in the District of Colorado and senior counsel at the Alliance Defending Freedom, also agreed Holder should have disclosed the property in his financial disclosure reports.
"It was not proper for him to not disclose his interests in the building co-owned by his wife," Norton said. "It appears to me to be an conflict of interest that should have been disclosed and, in all candor, requires Mr. Holder to recuse himself from matters of this nature."
Interestingly, though he did not disclose his connection to the abortion practice, Holder did disclose his wife's ownership of a D.C.-area medical practice and her pension.
Even if Holder should have disclosed the relationship, some argued that Holder's interest in the family trust doesn't constitute a formal conflict of interest.
Bob Stern, the former general counsel for the California Fair Political Practices Commission and the former president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles, said he disagreed that Holder's wife's interest in the property constitutes a conflict of interest.
"They are accusing him of bias, not legal conflicts," Stern said. "There is clearly no legal conflict. The only conflict question would be whether he was considering the case of the doctor, but even that is questionable. It's a state case, not a federal case. There seems to be no conflict questions."
Fitton agreed Holder's interest in the property isn't a conflict of interest.
"I don't think he has a conflict of interest," Fitton said. "When it comes to the prosecution of pro-life counselors, contrary to the First Amendment, Eric Holder doesn't need a financial interest to do that. He's an ideologue.
"Now, if the renter was specifically subject to action by the Department of Justice — either someone being prosecuted outside his office or directly prosecuted by the Department of Justice — certainly you would look at that more closely in terms of conflicts of interest. But even then, presumably, unless the attorney general himself is making key decisions there, he … would only need to recuse himself, arguably, if there were decisions he was making related to the person's prosecution, or the prosecution of someone at the building; let's say a pro-life counselor."
Fitton questioned why the "liberal establishment" and media haven't raised more questions about Holder's interest in the property.
"Certainly, if someone like (former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft) owned a building that was, for instance, rented to Operation Rescue, or had an ownership interest, however indirect, in a building that rented to Operation Rescue, all the sirens in Washington would be going off among the liberal establishment and the activist groups," Fitton said.
The controversy comes as Georgia Right to Life, the National Black Prolife Coalition, Alveda King, the niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., and other pro-life supporters and organizations have called for a congressional investigation into the matter.
Georgia Right to Life President Dan Becker said in a prepared statement that he was "sickened" by the prospect that Holder's family may have a financial interest in Old National Gynecology, "a troubled Atlanta metro-area abortion site.
"If these allegations are true, it only adds to President Obama's reputation as heading the most extreme pro-abortion administration in history," Becker said. "It also demonstrates that abortion's blood money may reach the highest levels of government."
Becker called on Congress "to conduct a full investigation of this issue in order to ensure that our nation's top law enforcement officials are truly impartial, especially when dealing with the sanctity of life."
King, the pastoral associate and director of African-American Outreach with Priests for Life and founder of King for America, said Holder's interest in the property is a conflict of interest.
"I believe that Mr. Holder's knowledge, or even lack of knowledge, of the connection between his wife and the property has created a conflict of interest because how can he stand in judgment in investing allegations against any abortion clinic when someone in his family has financial ties to the abortion industry," King said.
On Oct. 31, a Watchdog story detailed Holder's connection to the abortion doctor – a man whom the National Black Prolife Coalition describes as "Planned Parenthood's preferred abortion provider in Georgia."
A statement from the Georgia Department of Law reveals the building was home to Old National Gynecology, the medical practice where Dr. Tyrone Malloy performed abortions. A grand jury indicted Malloy, Old National's owner and operator, and his former office manager, CathyAnn Edwards Warner, on two counts of Medicaid fraud in December 2011.
The indictment alleged Malloy and Warner accepted nearly $390,000 in federal medical assistance payments for medical office visits associated with the performance of elective abortions and for ultrasound services that were never performed.
Malloy and Warner refused to enter a plea in the case, arguing the indictment was constitutionally flawed. A judge entered a not guilty plea on their behalf and denied their motion challenging the constitutionality of Georgia's Medicaid law. Malloy and Warner appealed to the Georgia Supreme Court. The defendant's brief was due on Nov. 5, but their lawyers sought an extension to Nov. 26.
Fulton County tax records show Holder's wife, Dr. Sharon Malone Holder — an obstetric and gynecological doctor at Foxhall OB/GYN in Washington, D.C. — and her sister-in-law, Margie Malone Tuckson, co-own the building.
In an interview last month, Tuckson told a Watchdog.org reporter that, "We are not technically on this deed." Public documents reviewed by Watchdog.org show the family transferred ownership to a family trust in 2009, eight months after Obama's inauguration. But even the new deed directly names Holder's wife and sister-in-law as "co-trustees of the testamentary trust."
"While the ownership may be a technicality, the attorney general's conflict of interest is not," wrote Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, in an "FRC Action Update" last week in response to the Watchdog story.
"If anything, this development fits right in with the Justice Department's track record of turning a blind eye to Medicaid fraud, accusations of rape cover-ups, and even violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the billion-dollar abortion industry. With the Obama administration so personally invested in the abortion business, there's little chance that these clinics will get the justice they deserve."
"This matter rises to the level of being egregious because the attorney general is charged with upholding the laws of the land," said Catherine Davis, president of the Restoration Project and co-founder of the National Black Prolife Coalition. "Yet, he has not investigated or prosecuted one abortion provider for taking taxpayer money illegally. We can only wonder if he is turning a blind eye because his family profits from the industry."
Davis, whose organization brought the issue to the attention of Watchdog, said Holder is not the "model that we would want other attorney generals to emulate, whether it's in his office or at the state level."
Meanwhile, Perkins criticized what he described as the "long line of national embarrassments at the Obama Justice Department, which have included everything from deadly gun-running schemes to the mishandling of terrorist trials."
"If the Justice Department keeps ignoring its job, Eric Holder could be the only attorney general to leave office as the subject of more investigations than he's headed up," Perkins wrote.
As this report was published, the CBS Washington affiliate was reporting that Holder was weighing a decision to leave government within a few months.
Troy Anderson is an investigative reporter for Watchdog.org, a project of the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity.


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Andre Perkins is a character mentioned on the Liberty Tree promotional website for Grand Theft Auto III. Perkins is a writer for the Liberty Tree in 2001. Perkins writes an article on the delay of the opening of the Porter Tunnel, quoting Winston Cole.
- Because of his surname, is possible that Andre is familiar to Millie Perkins, one of CJ's girlfriends in GTA San Andreas.

subset: commoncrawl


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Father Jeffrey Keefe, O.F.M. Conv., a priest ordained in 1952, is also a member of the Franciscan Order, founded in the 13th century by St. Francis of Assisi. In addition, he is Father Jeffrey Keefe, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, who continues to provide a counseling service and remains swamped with work at age 88.
Subsequent to his ordination to the priesthood, Father Keefe obtained a graduate degree in education with a minor in biology as well as a graduate degree in theology.
After teaching for seven years, Father Keefe returned to graduate school to obtain a doctorate in clinical psychology in order to evaluate incoming candidates for the priesthood or religious life and assess their psychological stability for this life.
Father Keefe completed a three-year graduate program of studies at Fordham University in New York City and then took another year to complete a dissertation. He next interned at Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital in New York City, then the largest psychiatric hospital in the world.
Subsequently, Father Keefe spent the next five years on a Fellowship at Staten Island Mental Health Society, Inc., which is a clinic for emotionally disturbed children, and also served at the adjacent St. Vincent Hospital of Richmond where he assisted in outpatient psychological services to adults.
Father Keefe grew up on Syracuse's Northside and returned to Syracuse in 1970 to be stationed at the Franciscan Friary of Assumption Church.
Though the Conventual Franciscan Order was motivated to have Father Keefe complete screening and evaluations for its own candidates, Father Keefe's work burgeoned. With the passing of time, he has found himself working for several male and female religious orders as well as several dioceses throughout the United States and Canada. Not too infrequently, a religious order would actually fly a candidate to Syracuse. As a result, to date, he has completed evaluations of about 2,200 candidates.
For each candidate, Father Keefe gives a series of paper and pencil tests which takes about three hours to complete. The testing is followed by individually administered tests and an interview. After putting together these data and writing a report, Father Keefe offers a feedback interview with the candidate. All in all, each evaluation takes about 10 hours. The purpose of the screening is to assess that the candidate's psychological health and suggest areas of growth.
Father Keefe has also found that his background in biology is a help because each person evaluated is a composite of physical, psychological and spiritual components.
When he returned to Syracuse, he also initially worked as a counselor at the former Onondaga Pastoral Counseling Center headquartered at the Methodist Church on East Genesee St. He was then director of the former Personal Resource Center, a psychological service, run by the Syracuse Catholic Diocese.
Father Keefe points out that some individuals prefer to see a counselor who shares the same religious values as they do. Also, a given psychological problem may be intertwined with one's spiritual life.
Father Keefe has also taught psychology courses through the years: pastoral psychology at St. Anthony on the Hudson Major Franciscan Seminary in Rensselaer, N.Y.; adolescent psychology at the University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Ind.; and Notre Dame College, now part of St. John's University, on Staten Island, N.Y.
He points out that depression might rank as "the common cold" of psychological problems. However, he sees an increase of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder due to ongoing wars and increased domestic violence due to family disintegration.
Father Keefe believes that cognitive therapy, initiated by Aaron Beck at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid 1980s, has become a helpful therapy. According to Father Keefe, "Beck came up with the notion that we all have an individual set of automatic thoughts, and we tend to interpret everything that happens to us in terms of those automatic thoughts.
"Let's say, for example, that a person goes out to his car in the morning, and the car won't start because of a mechanical problem. The person may become upset and then enlist a number of automatic thoughts which are applied to the situation.
"For example, the individual might favor the notion, 'Another bad day,' or 'Nothing good ever happens to me.' Beck's approach was to identify those automatic thoughts and then urge the client to come up with an alternative way of looking at the situation. For instance, a more positive approach would be for the individual to say, 'It's not the end of the world. I will have to get the car fixed. It will be an expense and a difficulty, but it is not a disaster.'"
However, in Father Keefe's judgment, affect-focused dynamic psychotherapy, which has been the new thrust in psychotherapy in the last 20 years, is a more potent therapy. Affect-focused dynamic psychotherapy, which focuses on the emotions rather than on the intellect, has been proven to be beneficial and helpful for many clients.
In regard to the current news about clergy sex abuse, Father Keefe maintains, "It is certainly a sad situation. It is one that makes all priests ashamed and unhappy to see what has happened, particularly during the 1970s and 1980s.
"I believe the sexual abuse problem resulted in large measure from the situation the Catholic Church found itself in after the Vatican II Council which was held in the early 1960s. Some untoward and very liberal views became prominent in some Catholic circles, and the attitude gained ground that morals were basically relative. In addition, catechesis became somewhat careless. Laxity in morals in some circles was dubbed progressive thinking.
"But I will also say that, in my judgment, the press has overplayed the extent of the problem among Catholic clergy. Public school teachers have a substantial rate of sexual abuse of minors, as do physicians, police, fathers and stepfathers or live-in boyfriends.
"In fact, sexual abuse of minors has become almost an epidemic problem. Thus, I think sometimes people focus on scandals among clergy, yet they avoid other more egregious records of abuse."
Since 1980, Father Keefe has also been involved with Courage, a Catholic outreach to homosexual persons who are trying to follow the teachings of the Church in regard to sexual morality. In the late 1970s, he was an adjunct Psychology professor at the St. Anthony on the Hudson Major Franciscan Seminary in Rensselaer, New York, along with Father John Harvey, a theology professor, who founded Courage. The two professors became acquainted and together gave seminars on homosexuality in Albany and Cleveland.
Father Keefe also assisted Father Harvey when he began the first Courage support group at the Mother Seton Shrine in the Battery of Manhattan. Today, there are more than 100 Courage chapters in the United States and others in eight foreign countries. Courage also holds a national conference each year. Father Keefe is in close contact with the London Courage group and visited there recently.
In 1997, Bishop James Moynihan of the Syracuse diocese, now retired, asked Father Keefe to begin a Courage chapter in the Syracuse diocese.
Father Keefe was also engaged to write an essay on the Catholic Church's teachings about homosexuality for the most recent edition of the Catholic Encyclopedia. He has also written chapters for works on the question of homosexuality from both a scientific and Catholic ministerial standpoint.
In addition, he has written articles with regard to what he considers every pastoral minister needs to know about homosexuality. A two-part article appeared in The Priest magazine, June and July 2011 issues.
Father Keefe does some counseling with homosexual clients who strongly desire to move to predominant attraction to the opposite sex, to predominant heterosexuality. He cites clients who pursued this goal in psychotherapy and are now successfully married.
Father Keefe periodically joins a telephone conference of a dozen psychotherapists in order to discuss individual cases of men seeking change. It includes therapists in Jerusalem, Switzerland and Germany, and others around the United States.
Father Keefe is a member of The National Association of Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). Founded by Father Joseph Nicolsi, the approximately 1,000 therapist members follow an affect-focused approach to help their clients move toward heterosexual development that had been blocked by early life trauma.
Unhappy and untoward events occur, especially in the early life of a boy, that can undermine his sense of masculinity and, through the buildup of shame, shift his attraction to the same sex. The members of NARTH do not hold that a person is born homosexual, that it is impossible to change, or that to try to change is harmful. They admit that some genetic factors may be predisposing but not predetermining.
"A common pattern would be the under-involvement of the father as father and the over-involvement of the mother with the boy. Another element would be that the mother demeans the father to the boy. All three factors spawn same-sex attraction."
In a therapeutic setting, the psychologist looks for those patterns and tries to uncover both the patterns and the feelings that were sparked by and joined to those patterns. Father Keefe maintains that affect-focused dynamic psychotherapy has been particularly helpful in releasing blocked heterosexual attractions.
To date, Father Keefe has had more experience in helping homosexual men than women. Why? He finds that women are much more cautious about revealing their homosexual tendencies, for they are fearful that their homosexual orientation might become widely known by others. Moreover, women clients do much better with a woman therapist, men with a male therapist.
However, Father Keefe also notes that attitudes are changing nowadays because people are accepting homosexuality as an alternative life style much more than they did in the past. Nevertheless, in his judgment, homosexuality is a developmental anomaly. Father Keefe maintains that when sexual desire fails to match sexual anatomy, it is evidence of a psychological problem.
Explains Father Keefe, "There is no evidence that people are born homosexual or heterosexual. Sexual orientation is a condition that develops. The so-called homosexual gene is a myth. In 2008, the American Psychological Association admitted that the beginnings of homosexuality could not be explained genetically. That is a major admission because, up to recent times, the Association held that sexual orientation was genetic.
"Up until 1973, scientists viewed homosexuality as a disorder, but now homosexuality is viewed as simply an alternative sexuality," continues Father Keefe. "As a result, in 1973, homosexuality was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). However, three years later, a poll was taken among psychiatrists, and 70 percent said that they still considered homosexuality to be a psychological maladaptation."
Father Keefe is also active in parish ministry. He occasionally writes commentaries on Sunday Scripture readings for The Catholic Sun, the Syracuse diocesan newspaper.
Since 2002, Father Keefe has served as spiritual director of North American Lourdes Volunteers, founded by Marlene Watkins of North Syracuse. She organized the first American group of volunteers to visit Lourdes to assist the seriously sick and handicapped. Now a Public Association of the Faithful, North American Lourdes Volunteers sends 20 groups of pilgrims and volunteers to Lourdes each year. Father Keefe has accompanied groups 10 times to date and also serves on the Board of Directors of this expanding ministry.
In addition, Father Keefe provides spiritual direction for individuals who wish to deepen their spiritual life, form a more intimate relationship with Our Lord and Savior, and grow in Christian perfection based upon the biblical injunction: "Be you therefore perfect as also your heavenly Father is perfect" (Mt 5:48).
In regard to current moral issues, Father Keefe follows the pope and those theologians who maintain that the biggest cultural problem today is that society largely has adopted the view called Relativism, whereby all morality is subjective.
Explains Father Keefe, "What an individual personally decides is right or wrong becomes that person's basic criterion. The result follows that any objective assessment of morality is absent."
Thus, according to Father Keefe, "The root problem is that many people fail to accept any kind of authority in making moral judgments. The difficulty is both philosophical and theological."
MR. ALBINO, a writer-photographer, lives in Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright © 1996-2018 Our Sunday Visitor, Inc.


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Washington, DC – Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, thanked President Bush for his letters to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid in which the President promised to veto "any legislation that weakens current Federal policies and laws on abortion."
Fr. Pavone added, "No public official who fails to recognize that children in the womb have human rights is worthy of public office."
Priests for Life is the nation's largest Catholic pro-life organization dedicated to ending abortion and euthanasia. For more information, visit www.priestsforlife.org.
The President's letter to Reid (PDF format)
The President's letter to Pelosi (PDF format)


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posted by Thom Holwerda on Fri 21st Sep 2007 22:16 UTC, submitted by AdamW
Mandriva Linux 2008 RC2 'Kepler' was released today. New features since the release of RC1 include the final release of GNOME 2.20, the inclusion of the new 8.41.7 version of ATI's proprietary driver in the non-free repository to support Radeon HD cards, significant kernel updates that improve support for certain ATA controllers and many audio chipsets, some new features in the urpmi and rpmdrake package management tools, and over 500 bug fixes since RC2. Download information and more is available on the full release information page here, the overall Mandriva Linux 2008 release notes are here, and a guide to the new features of Mandriva Linux 2008 is here.


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Interview with renowned environmental economist and global thought leader in sustainability, Pavan Sukhdev.
Q. There is talk of a revolution taking place in how businesses and governments account for natural capital. Is this real? Are we seeing concrete change in the way decisions are being made in relation to the environment?
I wouldn't call it a revolution quite as yet, but it is certainly a clarion call which is loud and clear and is being heard. We have seen the vanguard moving forward with the likes of Puma, Unilever, Infosys and so many others. I am hoping that as leaders demonstrate what's possible in terms of accounting for natural capital and presenting a more holistic view of performance, not just for shareholders but for stakeholders, it will become more of a movement.
Q. How does natural capital accounting in the private sector relate to the greening of national accounts being done by governments at the national level? What are the synergies and how can we ensure these efforts complement each other?
I think it is important for people to understand that the two are inextricably linked because when we talk about GDP as the bellwether indicator of national performance, people often forget that GDP is actually a combination of several parts including the profits of companies, salaries paid, net interest paid, and so on.
If we are going to adjust the way that we measure and report national performance and if it is no longer going to be traditional GDP, then we have to talk about adjusting the way we measure and report corporate performance because it cannot be on corporate profits alone. So when we say phrases like 'beyond GDP', which is the title of a big campaign from the European Union, we must also say 'beyond profits' because one truly links to the other.
We are already facing disastrous climate change impacts, water shortages, etc. Whatever progress is being made is surely not quick enough? What are the barriers to more widespread and rapid progress?
I think people do not understand or appreciate the urgency of these issues. When we talk about planetary boundaries, there are those that people are largely aware of relating to climate and biodiversity, but they are probably not that aware of the boundaries that we are approaching and have probably exceeded on nitrogen, coral bleaching, fisheries, and ocean acidification. These are being approached now and according to my own estimates, there are boundaries like climate for which by 2020 we need to have changed direction; changed the course of resource use and our economies.
So I think the first challenge is about educating the public about the urgency of these problems and the fact that we do not have all the time in the world to respond. Part of the problem is that by setting targets relating to 2030 and 2050 we have, especially in UN processes, given the person in the street the impression that there is time to respond when there is not. That is my first plea to everyone: stop talking about any timeline beyond 2020; whatever you can do by 2020, focus on that; what you cannot do beyond that may be just academic. The second challenge is recognizing that the private sector makes up around 70% of GDP and employment – how to ensure that it is not only contributing towards our rapid progress towards planetary boundaries but is actually an agent for change, an agent for that revolution you mentioned earlier.
Q. The World Forum on Natural Capital to be held in Edinburgh in November is targeting the private sector – are there really financial gains to be made from more careful and transparent corporate accounting of natural capital use and impacts?
The need to recognize natural capital in the reporting and performance measurement of corporations comes from two angles.
One is that whether we admit it or not, we all depend on natural capital and its flows, for example, a clement climate and relatively cheap and easy supplies of fresh water, without which we could not operate. Nature also provides many opportunities for businesses, such as agriculture. Its beauty and bounty is the source of enjoyment for millions of people, and this translates into business profits. So many businesses in leisure and ecotourism depend on what nature provides them. We need to recognize such flows and benefits more transparently then we do right now.
Following this transparency driver comes a risk driver: By ignoring the flows from nature we could be jeopardizing our own futures. If we do not fully recognize the risk of climate impacts or chemicals on bee populations we could be jeopardizing agricultural businesses, especially for fruit. Bee based pollination makes up almost 8-10% of total agricultural output globally in value terms. If we do not recognize the importance of climate change and its impacts we could be jeopardizing ocean fisheries which still provide animal protein for almost a billion people in the developing world. If we do not recognize the risk of ocean acidification we could jeopardize the entire ecotourism industry around coral reefs. So I think we need to recognize the risks as well as reflect the benefits.
We also need to understand that the unrecognized risks relate to public assets by and large, not to privately-owned assets. After all, bees do not send invoices; and trees do not charge for their monthly cleaning of air or recycling of water. Nature provides its services for free.
So we need to start reflecting the value of these services as well as the risks in some form in our financial reporting. In the financial world there is a concept called 'value at risk'. All bankers are aware of this; they calculate value at risk as a way of limiting their total exposure and therefore keeping enough capital to back the risks they are taking. But none of them ever calculate ecological value at risk. For instance when you see the really big losses that BP made as a result of the platform disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the cost to the environment, to society, to its own shareholders, to its reputation and so on, that was "ecological value at risk" playing out and yet it was not measured, nor managed, by anyone. So I think the time has to come to start thinking along those lines.
In 2008 Pavan Sukhdev took a sabbatical from Deutsche Bank to lead The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) study and the Green Economy Initiative for the United Nations Environment Programme. Sukhdev is currently Founder-CEO of GIST Advisory, a consulting firm which helps governments and corporations measure, value, and manage their impacts on natural and human capital.


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Failing to use a living trust as part of one's estate planning is one of the most common mistakes that people make.
Failing to use a living trust as part of one's estate planning is one of the most common mistakes that people make.
Relying solely on a will or, even worse, the intestate (dying without a will) rules of succession, means that a family is forced to endure complex, stressful and conflict-inducing legal hoops to pass on assets and otherwise handle end-of-life affairs.
A trust is a far superior method of ensuring one's wishes are carried out in as direct a manner as possible, without the need for court proceedings.
What does it mean to fund a trust?
Essentially, funding simply refers to titling assets in the name of the trust so that the trust itself controls those assets. Creating versus funding a trust can be looked at roughly as the difference between opening up a bank account and actually putting money into that account. Those are two different steps, and both must be taken.
Unfortunately, many families still find themselves in tough situations, even though they created a trust, because that trust was not funded properly. In those cases, settling matters is quite complex. Some assets may pass directly via joint tenancy rules or beneficiary designations, while others must still go through probate.
Perhaps the most high-profile example of the consequences of failing to fund a trust involved pop superstar Michael Jackson. Jackson had a mammoth estate, with assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars. A trust was created by Jackson, but it was never properly funded.
At the time of his death, therefore, his estate was thrown into disarray as courts tried to sort out his wishes with an incomplete plan. The battle is still raging, as different parties seek to take shares of his estate. Because the trust was not funded, the court was forced to get involved, opening the door for others to come out of the woodwork and complicate matters.
It is critical to be aware of this straightforward, but essential step.
All details of your assets must be reviewed. In most cases, the trust funding involves titling assets such as real estate and stocks to the name of the trust.
There are some exceptions with assets that should not or cannot be moved into the trust. This includes retirement accounts, which may be left to a trust as beneficiary but should not be put into a trust during your lifetime.
The transfer to a trust would take it out of your name, creating a "taxable event" and requiring all the taxes on the IRA to become immediately due.
Also, the need to ensure proper funding means that updating of estate planning documents is key. If new assets are purchased or acquired, such changes need to be taken into account by titling them directly into the trust. Failure to do so may result in problems down the road.
Bonnie Kraham is an attorney practicing elder law estate planning with Ettinger Law Firm, 75 Crystal Run Road, Town of Wallkill. She can be reached at 692-8700, ext. 119 or at email@example.com. This column is intended to provide general information, not legal advice.


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Suicide Bombings Not Originally Islamist
The never-ending series of suicide bombings in recent years has led to the widespread notion that this weapon is of Islamist origin. But the history of suicide bombings shows that this is not the case. Joseph Croitoru takes a closer look
Suicide bombings are not of Islamist origin. They were originally not practiced by religious terrorists but rather by secular Marxist-oriented groups. Already in the 1970s, long before the suicide bombings by the Lebanese Shiite Hizbullah, the Palestinian Fedayin practiced this form of terror in Israel. It was the Palestinian "People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine" (PFPL) operating from Lebanon that first introduced this weapon.
Its links to North Korea led to a collaboration with the "Japanese Red Army" (JRA), a terror organization that also had contact with North Korea. The cooperation between these two Marxist, anti-imperialist groups resulted in the first improvised suicide attack, an incident in which three members of the JRA committed a massacre against civilians at the Israeli airport in Lod on May 30, 1972.
The attackers made no attempt to flee, apparently because the attack was planned as a suicide mission. One of them was shot down by Israeli soldiers, another blew himself up with a hand-grenade, and the third was arrested before he could kill himself. But their plan cannot only be understood as an internalization of Japanese Kamikaze attacks of the Second World War.
Involvement of Lebanon and North Korea
The three Japanese terrorists had received special instruction in a training camp in Lebanon, in which North Korean military experts were purportedly involved. In the transfer of the suicide attack method from the Far East to the Middle East, it seems that Korea played a central role. During the Second World War, Koreans were forced to take part in Kamikaze attacks for the Japanese, and those who survived these missions passed on their knowledge of the method.
In North Korea, which was and still is communist ruled, there exists to this day a national tradition of honouring suicide soldiers as heroes who are prepared to protect the nation at all times by acting as "human bombs."
The massacre of Lod – in which the suicide attack method directed against military targets mutated into the assassination of civilians – had an unexpected effect on Palestinian terror organizations.
Qaddafi's reproach of Palestinians' inaction
They were confronted with the accusation by the Japanese that they were exploiting the Japanese in the name of an Arab cause. And despite the Arab world's elation at the success of the attacks, the Libyan President Qaddafi reproached the Palestinians for not being able to carry out such attacks for themselves.
It was probably a combination of wounded honor and terrorist strategizing that led, just two years later, to several Palestinian organizations dispatching death squads instructed to carry out the duty of blowing themselves up.
The first of these groups was the "People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command" (PFLP – GC) led by Ahmad Jibril, which had split off from the PFLP a few years earlier and become its rival. Supported by Syria, which had close ties to North Korea at the time, the Marxist-oriented PFPL – GC dispatched its first three suicide assassins on April 11, 1974.
Instructed by their commanders to blow themselves up if the hostage taking did not succeed as planned, the group members made their way into the northern Israeli town of Kiryat Shmona and, equipped with bombs, created a bloodbath. According to Israeli reports, hostages were never taken in this incident.
The perpetrators fired on pedestrians as they made their way toward a residential area where they continued their killing spree and finally barricaded themselves in the top story of a building. When Israeli soldiers stormed the building, an explosion killed the terrorists. To this day the PFPL-GC has maintained that their men blew themselves up intentionally, while the Israelis claim that they themselves had fired the shot that caused the explosion.
The strategic use of the media
Whichever version of the story is correct, what set the trend for the further tradition of suicide bombings was not the fact that the group members blew themselves up, but the way in which their exit was orchestrated for the media. Concerning this aspect, the Palestinians had clearly picked up on the dramatic exit scenes of the Japanese Kamikaze pilots and further developed this tradition.
The last days of the suicide bombers were documented, their photos taken, and their wills recorded on tape in order to be played back during a press conference organized by the group directly following the attack.
The attack on Kiryat Shmona touched off a long series of suicide bombings committed by rival Palestinian organizations, which were characterized by increasing brutality. The declared political goal of these attacks was to signal an unwillingness to compromise and a ruthlessness towards the Israeli opponent, a goal which was inaugurated with a strict refusal to build any ties to Israel – something that Yassar Arafat in particular strived for in the mid-1970s.
It was in fact the suicide bombings that led to an escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as the incomparable brutality of the attacks brought increasingly tough retaliatory strikes by the Israelis. And Arafat's Palestinian adversaries were eventually able to convince the Fatah to carry out suicide bombings during a period when the Fatah was struggling to assert its authority.
Secular organizations exploiting tradition of Islamic martyrs
Those who carried out the suicide bombings of the 1970s may have been secular officially, but those who gave the commands celebrated the attackers as Shuhada, Islamic martyrs. Secular organizations were thus able to cleverly exploit the religious tradition of the Islamic warrior martyrs, yet without having to represent them as purely religious.
Thus for example the testaments of the suicide attackers did not explicitly address the paradise that is traditionally said to reward Islamic martyrs, but their parting words definitely indicated that they believed in the afterlife. The suicide bombings organized by the Hizbollah in the early 1980s in Lebanon – which were based on the Palestinian suicide bombings of the 1970s and had been further developed to include car bombs – were the first to explicitly incorporate religion into their understanding of suicide bombings.
Islam officially bans suicide
The decisive innovation on the part of the Hizbollah was the creation of the term "amaliya istishhadiya" ("operation martyr's death"), which replaced the secular term "amaliya intihariya" ("suicide operation") used by the Palestinian organizations.
Despite the Hizbollah's ability to instrumentalize the Shiite cult of martyrdom to serve its own purposes yet without having to lend it a theological justification, the Hizbollah was not the group which would formulate a "theology" of suicide terrorism that could find a way to circumvent Islam's official ban on suicide. This was left to the Palestinian Hamas in the mid-1990s.
Joseph Croitoru
© Qantara.de 2003
Translation from German: Christina White
Joseph Croitoru (b. 1960) has worked as a freelance journalist in Israel, since 1992 he has also been publishing in the German press. He regularly writes for Germany's daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He specialised in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. In 2003 he published "Der Märtyrer als Waffe. Die historischen Wurzeln des Selbstmordattentats" (The Martyr as a Weapon. The Historical Roots of Suicide Bombing) at Hanser Verlag, Germany.
For more information on "The Martyr as a Weapon", click here. To read excerpts from "The Martyr as a Weapon", click here.


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Enjoy unparalleled access to wildlife deep in the heart of the Amazon Rainforest
The rainbow-coloured chaos of the macaws descending on the clay lick at Heath River is an unforgettable scene. The fifth-largest in the world, this clay lick on the Peruvian bank of the river has seen up to 260 birds on it at once.
Independent Experiences
Independent travel, without the stress. Peregrine's Independent Experiences are a range of short 'mini tours' that you can add to other Experiences or as an extension to a longer tour, to craft your perfect holiday itinerary. Independent Experiences are for 1-4 travellers, come accompanied by a local Peregrine guide and depart daily. /experiences
Please note, on this trip the services are not private. You may share services with like minded travellers who have booked through other companies.
- Start
- Puerto Maldonado, Peru
- Finish
- Puerto Maldonado, Peru
- Destination
- Peru
- Style
- Independent Experiences
- Code
- Physical rating
- Ages
- Min 5
- Group size
- Min 1, Max 4
Why you'll love this trip
Whether on an early morning river cruise, a trek through the jungle at dusk or a night walks in search of nocturnal creatures, the Amazon is remarkable in every light
Staying at remote lodges in the middle of the Amazon rainforest provides unequalled access to wildlife
Watch as a huge variety of animals gather around naturally-formed clay licks in search of extra nutrients
Look for sloths, howler monkeys, black caimans, jaguars and tapirs along rainforest trails
Explore the wildlife-rich jungle enclosing Sandoval Lake
Is this trip right for you?
The rainforest can be extremely humid during the day and very cold at night. It's important to pack a range of clothing for all types of weather, including waterproof clothing.
Mosquitos are widespread in the Amazon, so please bring tropical-strength insect repellent and clothes to cover your arms and legs. Please see important notes about protection from mosquitoes in the "Health" section of the trip notes.
The terrain of the rainforest trails can be unpredictable and boggy. Please bring durable, comfortable footwear and thick hiking socks.
Office details for passengers that are in Puerto Maldonado prior to the tour start date. Please note if you are in Puerto Maldonado prior you will need make your own way to the lodge office on day one, please ensure you are there by 12pm
Heath River Lodge Office Puerto Maldonado:
Jr San Martin, 755, Puerto Maldonado, Peru
Phone:+51 82 573755
Notes: Please ensure your flight into Puerto Maldonado arrives prior to 1 pm.
- Heath River lodge or similar (1 night)
Meals Included
- Lunch
- Dinner
Meals Included
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Heath River lodge or similar (1 night)
Meals Included
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
- Sandoval Lake Lodge (1 night)
Meals Included
- Breakfast
- Lunch
- Dinner
Meals Included
- Breakfast
Meals4 breakfasts, 4 lunches, 4 dinners
TransportMinibus, On foot, Riverboat
AccommodationJungle 4 Nights
Dates & availability
Trip search is unavailable.
There are currently no scheduled departures on our Remote Amazon Experience- Independent trip. If you are interested in other trips in the region visit one of the links below.
Jump to a departure month
Important notes
Please note, on this trip the services are not private. You may share services with like minded travellers who have booked through other companies.
Essential trip information
Want an in-depth insight into this trip? Essential Trip Information provides a detailed itinerary, visa info, how to get to your hotel, what's included - pretty much everything you need to know about this adventure and more.View Essential Trip Information


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French firm Keolis wins commuter rail contract
French firm Keolis wins commuter rail contract :Keolis — a French transit company with experience running rail systems in the United States, Europe, and Australia — will take over operation of the Massachusetts commuter rail system starting July 1, the state Department of Transportation's board of directors decided Wednesday.
The company won the state's largest operating contract in history with a bid that was 6 percent lower than that of the current operator, the Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad Co., which has operated the system since 2003.
MBTA general manager Beverly A. Scott, making one of the highest-profile decisions since she took over the T a little more than a year ago, said the agency will save $254 million over the term of a full 12-year contract.
"Keolis's proposal presents the best combination of technical quality and price, and is more advantageous to the MBTA," Scott said.
For the 127,000 people who ride the commuter rail's 14 lines each day, much will remain the same. The new contractor will have no control over fare prices, and most of the trains and other equipment will remain the same. The new company will, however, face more frequent inspections of its trains and stiffer penalties for poor service.
Keolis officials now must mobilize quickly to take over the system in just over five months. By Feb. 1, the company's Massachusetts operation, Keolis Commuter Services, is expected to have a management team in place, Scott said.
Keolis's chief executive of international operations, Bernard Tabary, who flew from Paris Tuesday for the vote, said the company is prepared for a quick takeover.
"We've been working on this bid for over two years, and that includes mobilization," Tabary said. "It's going to be a lot of work, but it's positive work, and we look forward to it."
On Tuesday, state officials revealed the price tag for the contract: $2.68 billion over eight years, with the possibility for two two-year extensions that could bring the total price to $4.3 billion.
Keolis will be paid $304 million in the first year of its contract. This year, Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad was paid $316 million for base operations.
Much of the difference between the two bids came down to profits, Scott said. Keolis's estimated profit margin was 77 percent lower than its rival, achieved in part with a promise to pay lower salaries for administrative positions.
The Massachusetts contract will be the biggest US system for Keolis. Some transit specialists suggested that Keolis may be willing to operate the system with a smaller profit margin in order to have a major American commuter rail system in its portfolio, a feather in its cap that could open doors to other high-profile transit contracts in North America. Keolis currently runs the Virginia Railway Express, a commuter rail in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with 32 trains and 21,000 passengers daily.
Scott's recommendation of Keolis as the winning bidder was unanimously approved by the MassDOT's board of directors. Scott said the French company scored well on a number of criteria.
Aside from the pricetag, in other measures considered during the procurement process, Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad received an overall rating of acceptable, while Keolis received a higher overall rating of good. For example, Keolis has a better record on engineering services, management, and information technology, according to the T. But Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad has a better record of contracting with minority businesses.
The T will also save money on the new commuter rail contract because potential rewards that would be paid to the operator for meeting on-time performance — a controversial practice during Mass. Bay's tenure — were removed from this contract. Scott also told the board that the contract contains more potential penalties for poor service, $12 million per year versus $3 million per year.
"Bottom line, in the new contract these incentives and offsets have been eliminated," Scott said.
The new contract also increases daily inspection requirements for the trains, puts in place a remedial action plan if Keolis fails to meet expectations, and allows the T to relieve Keolis of certain duties if they are not performed well, for example, snow removal. If that were to happen, Keolis would not be paid for that work.
Before making its decision in a public meeting Wednesday, the MassDOT board listened to two hours of public comments.
The Rev. Bruce H. Wall, who had lambasted Keolis last month for allegations of discriminatory practices, made an about-face, saying that after talks with the company, he "wholeheartedly" endorsed Keolis.
James O'Leary, chairman of Massachusetts Bay Commuter Railroad and a former general manager of the T, told the board that he believed the procurement process had failed to conduct a thorough vetting of the companies, a move that was particularly galling, he said, after 10 years of partnership with the T.
"After all that, we had a sum total of a 45-minute interview," he continued. "We can only conclude that our proposal was never seriously considered or understood."
Ronald J. Hartman, chief executive of the rail division at Veolia Transportation, Mass. Bay's largest shareholder, warned that the T did not know enough about the differences between the two companies. "My only question is, Do you really know what you're getting with the proposal you're about to review?" Hartman said. "And do you know what you would have gotten from our proposal, had you had that kind of in-depth discussion and evaluation?"
Scott countered that the T had conducted several written exchanges with each bidder and that the MBTA responded to more than 1,000 questions from both.
Though the MassDOT board voted unanimously in favor of Keolis, their questions seemed to indicate that it was not without some reservations.
Board chairman John R. Jenkins said he needed to know that the T had a plan in place to quickly usher in a new contractor, a process that will cost the T $9 million. Jenkins said Governor Deval Patrick had expressed concern that there might be interruptions in service for commuters.
"They're going to have to get their feet on the gas pedal," Jenkins said after the meeting. "They've got to keep this thing moving in order to make sure that we do get there on time."
Janice Loux, another member of the board and a union organizer, said she was also concerned that the smaller pricetag for Keolis's services could have an effect on union workers' next contracts.
"The proposed savings are remarkable, just remarkable!" said Loux, with a touch of sarcasm in her voice. "Has the general manager verified that the savings are true and achievable? What are the impacts to the size of the workforce, labor agreements, and benefit packages?"
She continued, "I'm looking forward to seeing this workforce taken care of."
Representatives of various commuter rail unions — including former state senator Steven A. Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO — expressed similar concerns, saying they were dismayed to learn of the change.
Daniel N. Tavares of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said he doubted Keolis would be able to offer improved service while receiving millions less than its predecessor.
"There's training, there's a learning curve; a new company coming in just doesn't sound responsible," Tavares said.
Andrew Mannion, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said he was concerned that the deal would go the same way as the T's much-criticized contract with Bay State Transit in 1999, a maintenance contract that was given to the lowest bidder, only to blow up when the company proved incapable.
Mannion said union officials would not accept lower salaries for members. "Under no scenario would we agree to terms that does not fairly compensate our members," Mannion said.
Source : www.bostonglobe.com
We, Net Translation Services Limited, are in your disposal with our experienced translator team of 35 persons specialized in Rail Systems Terminology in English, German, Russian, French languages Please visit website: Nettercume.com.tr for our references.


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Dragonball Evolution: Z Edition (US - BD RA)
Gabe collects all 7 Dragon Balls and wishes he didn't enjoy this dumb movie
Thousands of years ago the evil alien Piccolo (James Marsters) came to Earth, and with the help of his servant Oozaru brought the planet to the brink of destruction. Piccolo was defeated by five mystics, who trapped him in a mystic jar. Centuries later a talented martial artist named Goku (Justin Chatwin) is taught special Ki harnessing techniques by his grandfather, all while living as a social outcast. But then Piccolo returns, and begins a destructive quest for the seven magical Dragon Balls, which will give him the opportunity to make a single, perfect wish, to rule the world.
Confession time: I watch Dragon Ball in its many incarnations ( Dragon Ball Z, Dragon Ball GT), and I don't have a valid excuse like many of you – I didn't watch the series as a kid, and thus can't claim stupefying nostalgia. I was introduced to it as an adult via Cartoon Network when it played during my lunch break a few years back. I was initially rightfully disgusted at the cheap animation, the long winded and repetitive dialogue, and the thin plotting. Eventually I found myself drawn into the series several hundred episode super-plot, but even this wasn't a credible excuse, as creator Akira Toriyama basically lifted all his arcing ideas on other popular stories (not to mention the brutally slow pacing of each episode). The original origin of Goku, as seen in Dragon Ball, is liberally taken from the classic Chinese epic 'Journey to the West', while the sci-fi retcon of Dragonball Z is a pale shadow of the Superman myth, with the important distinction of Goku being rocketed to Earth to destroy it. Later story arcs stole from Cameron's Terminator series, of all things. The only reasons I can gather for my unnatural affection towards the series, which doesn't even feature exciting or coherent action, is Toriyama's characterizations – which are arch, but somehow pleasingly convoluted in a Soap Operatic fashion – and his bizarre sense of humour (I find his visions of a red-tape strangled afterlife is a constant source of laughs).
The big hurdle in converting Dragon Ball into live action is that Toriyama's world is equal parts anachronistic and futuristic, so it doesn't make sense when adapted to a realistic setting. During the series the fate of the world constantly rested in the hands of a small group of kung-fu fighters in a time of advanced technology, technology several times beyond simple nuclear weapons. This adaptation takes the futurist elements more seriously than the fantasy elements, but the overall otherworldliness is maintained, only without the dinosaurs and alien Gods. Piccolo's spaceship is a good sample of the mixed look, inexplicably running on some kind of dueling propeller and jet power, and appearing far rounder than most villainous big screen aircraft would ever dare. If the production had only topped $10 million or so I'd probably be more impressed with this pseudo original filmic universe director James Wong conjured (the scene in which Goku and Bulma discover Roshi's old fashion house in the middle of a Blade Runner-like cityscape verges on magical), but apparently the film cost something north of $100 million (or $50 million, or $120 million, depending on who you believe), so it's hard to genuinely respect these plasticized images, even if the look was intended.
Producer Stephen Chow probably should've taken the reigns on directing this bad boy, but his production influence in apparent in some of the funnier scenes. The more obviously Chow inspired stuff (which is in-keeping with Toriyama's sense of humour) is almost all equally un-American in tone, and generally speaking, the more Dragonball Evolution reminded me of Chow's other films, the more I liked it. All the high school antics aren't just out of place thematically (even if Goku's son did have some traditional high school adventures towards the end of DBZ), but they're stuffed with tired clichés, and exist far outside of the realms of the delightfully foreign humour of the rest of the film. This stuff was clearly added in hopes of making the film more acceptable to American audiences.
Chow probably could've handled the film's combat scenes a little better than Wong as well. The epic level kung-fu destruction that accompanied the relatively low-budgeted Shaolin Soccer and Kung Fu Hustle draw easy comparisons to Dragon Ball's action excesses, and when Chow was first announced as being involved in Dragonball Evolution I personally took it as a good sign. Wong's pretty good with suspense and dark humour (as seen in Final Destination and Willard), but his action work has always been lacking real energy (save one or two shots in the otherwise dreadful The One). Wong manages to keep things visually intriguing, but he's a practiced director, and on the whole the film appears disappointingly amateur. Last year's equally youth-aimed Forbidden Kingdom, which was also loosely based on 'Journey to the West', features vastly superior martial arts sequences. First time action director Rob Minkoff had the advantage of working with Yuen Woo-ping, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li, but Wong really doesn't achieve much beyond a few quick kicks and punches. The final battle, in particular, is a huge disappointment, even with low expectations firmly in place.
The adaptation is relatively true to the original show, or at least the basic character elements are. Master Roshi collects porn, Bulma's a smartass, but gets things done, Chichi is dull, Piccolo is pissy and proud, and so on and so forth. Despite fans likely hating everything about his involvement in the project, Chow Yun Fat's hammy comedy performance as Roshi is just about the most spot on element in the entire thing (not to mention the most entertaining). The big exception in the character front is Goku, who's written as an angsty and angry teen, with very few of his cartoon counterpart's dimwitted charms (on the show Goku's power is somewhat associated with his idiotic innocence, which is a novel heroic aspect to Westerners). The story itself is a loose adaptation of the original Dragon Ball arc (which, again, is basically an adaptation of ' Journey to the West' with the added MacGuffin action of the dragon balls), mixed with elements of the two King Piccolo arcs, which is a reasonably clever way to set up this film as the precursor to a series of films, which I'm assuming would've delved deeper into the science fiction aspects of the more popular Dragonball Z series.
Taking all the lack of originality into account, the lack of a compelling, villainous threat is still a large problem. Sure, he destroys entire landscapes with a simple flick of the wrist, but Piccolo doesn't feature any actual character traits beyond being evil and green. Even the deleted scenes don't tell us how he escaped from his damn bottle prison. Perhaps if the screenwriters hadn't given him a sexy lady sidekick to do his bidding he would've at least gotten some screen time (Nerd Alert: Mai was the name of a different character's sidekick in the series), but then we wouldn't have gotten to look at Eriko Sakamoto in that sexy outfit. Tit for tat I suppose, if 'tat' means character development. On the whole, the film appears to have been produced with the shortest possible run time in mind (like every genre film that comes out of the Fox studio), so perhaps Piccolo was a casualty of brevity. Actually, beyond the God awful dialogue (which was to be expected), the relentless pacing is probably the film's biggest downfall, though some viewers will probably find the runtime painlessly brief. The story is basically broken into three distinct parts – the 'real world' of high school, the hero's journey, and the incoherent last act battle/revelation – and each part feels like an entirely different, unfinished movie. Perhaps without the first half hour of misplaced high school hijinx the protagonists could've actually hunted down more than two of the five remaining dragon balls, and the last act wouldn't have felt quite so tacked-on or attention deficit inspired.
It's stupid, and the CG is about as believable as first grade Photoshop work, but it looks pretty sharp in high definition. The clarity makes the cartoony aspects appear even more unrealistic, which ends up a sort of mixed blessing. Because it's based on a cartoon, and generally aimed at children, I tend to like the cartoony aspects, but I'm sure the aging fans of the original series expected some kind of grim reality. In hi-def the less than stunning effects, candy coated colours, lumpy sets, and flashy costumes really stick out. There's quite a bit of grain over the entire print, but it's very fine in thickness, and very consistent. Compression noise is visible during a few scenes, mostly in the reddened flesh tones. Minus the grain and a little digital noise, this is an impeccable transfer, and the bright colours rest nicely against each other without any hue perversion or unintended blooming. Contrast levels seem a little inconsistent, but the final battle features some of the cleanest samples of fine colour details against rich blacks.
The LFE track apparently lives within Piccolo's ship, which vibrates at an almost deafening rumble. There's a little oomph shared with some of the explosions and punches for good measure. The DTS-HD track's successes are found in its aggressive otherworldly sound effects, which fill the channels, and move believably through them. It would've been a little more fun to feature at least some of the series' more memorable sound effects (such as the sound it makes when characters charge their powers up), and the effects chosen are somewhat uninspired, but for purposes of the Blu-ray's sound quality things sound just great. The problems are found in the dialogue track, which is clean and clear, but often unnatural. It appears that several scenes required ADR work, and that certain actors were entirely dubbed in post. Lip-sync is generally pretty accurate, but the inflections and actual sounds often don't quite match. Brian Tyler's (a name that keeps coming up lately) score rips-off Gustav Holst on several occasions (which isn't a surprise), and generally feels like a less memorable version of a John Williams sleepwalking session, but the music does its job, and I'm thankful the filmmakers didn't go for the goofy rock scores that met the US releases of the series (well, for the most part). The mix keeps the score pretty remarkably understated on the track, but it has a constant presence.
Wilhelm Alert: The team discovers a training ground, and Chichi is fighting on a big fake rock. When Chichi knocks her male opponent off the rock a low level Wilhelm scream can be heard.
The rather tepid extras start with an interactive mode called 'Goku's Quest' (Nerd Alert: the menu refers to Goku as a 'Saiyan', which the movie never does). This game requires the viewer to hit the red button on their remote every time a dragon ball icon appears on the screen. If you find all seven you get a prize. I didn't find all seven, so I can't tell you what the prize is.
Next are eight deleted and extended scenes (11:00, HD). The final film feels like its missing chunks of plot, but these scenes aren't really what the film needed. Goku learns more about controlling his 'Ki', lifts a car, gets to know Bulma a little better, ditches his grandfather for the girl (pathos alert), gets a little more training, and fights monsters slightly longer. Yamcha also murders Mai by stabbing her in the back. The briefly extended stuff probably could've been put back in, but still wouldn't complete the final product. The scenes are hi-def, and presented in 5.1 surround, but obviously aren't finished products, as digital grading is missing.
'Goku's Workout' (4:50, HD) is a brief how-to fight exercise thing that ironically opens with a 'don't try this at home' warning. Next are two Fox Movie Channel featurettes. 'Making a Scene' (9:30, SD) covers the production of the Chichi vs Chichi fight scene, and the 'Life After Film School' (25:00, HD) kids interview actor Justin Chatwin. Chatwin is actually a fantastic interviewee, and I genuinely feel sorry for the script he was dealt. The disc ends with a gag reel (2:20, HD) featuring a much different Oozaru design, and Brian Anthony's 'Worked Up!' music video (3:21, HD). Personally I would've liked some kind of featurette concerning the adaptation, comparing the live action and cartoon counterparts.
Dragonball Evolution will not and should not be mistaken for a good movie, but I have to shamefully admit that I found it sort of stupidly entertaining. Perhaps with a polish it could've been something more than not awful. The stilted dialogue and lack of originality are to be expected, but the script shows some promise as a relatively true adaptation, and the art design is occasionally inspired. At the very least it's a better movie than the unofficial Hong Kong version, which was kind of a nightmare. I actually would've liked to see what these guys did with a sequel, but terrible returns seem to have undone that possibility. The Blu-ray is light on extras, but looks pretty great, and sounds good, even if the dialogue is a little off in some parts.
* Note: The images on this page are not representative of the Blu-ray release.
Review by Gabriel Powers
Some material may not be suitable for children
Disc Details
Release Date: 28th July 2009
Discs: 2
Disc Type: Blu-ray Disc
RCE: No
Video: 1080p
Aspect: 2.40:1
Anamorphic: No
Colour: Yes
Audio: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 English, Dolby Digital 5.1 French, Spanish, and Portuguese
Subtitles: English SDH, Spanish, Portuguese, Cantonese, Mandarin
Extras: Guko's Quest Game, Deleted Scenes, Guko's Workout, Making the Scene, Life After Film School, Trailers, Digital Copy
Easter Egg: No
Feature Details
Director: James Wong
Cast: Justin Chatwin, Chow Yun-Fat, James Marsters
Genre: Action, Adventure and Fantasy
Length: 85 minutes
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Lovely gig
Steve Shanyaski
Saturday, 27th January 2018
The very best in live comedy!
Enjoy the finest stand up comedy acts with our triple headline shows. One of the finest MCs in the business will guide you through the UK's top headline acts including some very special TV names.
Please note our shows do sell-out so we do recommend advance booking.
Doors open at 7.15pm and the show starts at 8.00pm prompt. To avoid disruption to the show please aim to arrive by 7.45pm at the latest. The fun continues after the show with a live band upstairs, dancing until late and a free shot from the bar!
Meal deals are also available on request please call 0800 177 7575 for further details.
Line-up may be subject to change.
Chris Cairns
You don't get booked to compere some of the largest rooms in the UK regularly without havi...
Tom Wrigglesworth
Yorkshire funny man Tom Wrigglesworth became a national have-a-go-hero when he rescued a l...
Neil Fitzmaurice
Neil is a very well known face on our TV screens. He is the only actor who can boast roles...


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Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for firefighters, but Warwick Fire Department Lt. John Halloran is hoping to change that for the better. His solution: a vegan diet.
"Science has shown us that the further away from animal products in our diets and the closer we get to plant-based foods, we greatly reduce our chance of suffering heart disease," said Halloran, who recently beat out more than 100 people from across the country to become one of 10 male contestants to advance to the final round in PETA's Sexiest Vegan Next Door 2013 contest. The winners – one male and one female – will be announced May 9. Each will receive a free vacation for two to Maui, Hawaii, courtesy of HumaneTrip.com. "If anything that can come out of this, [it] is to get firefighters more on track with reducing that rate of heart disease."
Halloran, a 41-year-old Wakefield resident who also stars as the vocalist for cover band Those Guys NPT, said that while the guys at work enjoy poking fun at him for entering the contest, they're gradually becoming open-minded to his vegan lifestyle. To learn more about it and improve their health, a group of firefighters have been eating vegan at the station the last few weeks.
On Thursday, Halloran brought in bean-based veggie wraps, along with some healthy side dishes. After preparing everything at home, he quickly cooked up the wraps and served them to a hungry bunch of firefighters. The men slathered their wraps in fresh avocado and veganaisse, a veggie-based mayo, and piled their plates with organic beets, as well as couscous tossed with red onions and pineapples.
"It's been pretty good so far," said firefighter Mike Moretti. "It's healthier."
Firefighter Matthew Maraia, along with firefighter Steve Ciambrone, agreed.
"I think it's very eye-opening to the stuff you put in your body," Maraia said. "It does make you feel better."
"You don't have that afternoon drag," Ciambrone added.
Lt. Gary Oatley feels the same. He recently began a four-day stretch of work at the department and ate only vegan.
"It's the first time I've left work lighter than I've gone in," said Oatley. "It's definitely healthier."
After finishing their wraps, Halloran served a medley of organic strawberries, blueberries and bananas for dessert.
"This is awesome," firefighter Scott Jensen said.
Halloran is pleased that his fellow firefighters are supporting him, but he's more excited that they are making healthy changes to their diet.
"They may not be sticking with it seven days a week, but it's making a difference," he said.
For Halloran, who grew up in Lincoln and has been a member of the WFD since 1997, becoming vegan has certainly made a difference. Between two jobs, he often works 70 to 80 hours per week, sleeping an average of five to six hours a night.
He started the process of living a vegan lifestyle four years ago, avoiding consuming and using animal products. Soon enough, health issues he dealt with, such as high cholesterol and acid reflux, began to fade.
"I'm a singer, so the reflux was really affecting me vocally," he said. "Once I got rid of all the animal products, it was noticeably different for me."
Prior to changing his diet, his cholesterol was just under 200 and his energy level needed a boost. He also needed to lose the 20 pounds he gained since joining the WFD.
"Now, I'm the same weight I was when I graduated high school in 1989," said Halloran, noting that his cholesterol dropped to 141 and continues to remain at a healthy level. "I feel like my body found its natural weight. If you're eating good quality food, it's basically like medicine for your body. Your body is loving it. There is that expression, 'You are what you eat,' and it's so true."
He credits his former physician, Dr. Carla Cesario, for planting the seed in his head to go vegan. Instead of giving him medications, she put the responsibility of his health into his hands.
"She said, 'I could give you a pill, or you could make some changes,'" Halloran said. "It really got me thinking."
Halloran then slowly began to eliminate animal products from his diet. He started with dairy before moving on to red meat and pork, then chicken and fish. While he went through a bit of a withdrawal phase for red meat, he doesn't crave it – or anything else.
"I don't miss any foods," he said. "My five food groups are beans, vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and nuts and seeds. I know those are sides for most people, but for me they are the main dish. The staples in my everyday life are beans, whether it be lentils, black beans, garbanzo beans. They are packed with micro-nutrients, fiber and protein."
He also read a few books to help him along the way, including "Eat to Live" by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, which discusses specific plant-based foods designed to take care of functions in the body at the cellular level to protect it from chronic illness. Another book, "The China Study," as well as the documentary, "Forks Over Knives," which examines the relationship between the consumption of animal products and chronic illnesses, also left lasting impressions on him.
"Watching 'Forks Over Knives' and reading 'The China Study' should be a requirement for firefighters," Halloran said. "I'm getting the word out that you can change your health by changing what you eat."
Not only does eating vegan improve health, it also saves animals. According to PETA Associate Director of Campaigns Lindsay Rajt, going vegan saves more than 100 animals a year from the violence of factory farms, slaughterhouses and fishing nets.
Halloran strongly opposes factory farming, noting that the animals are treated horribly before they are killed and sold for human consumption.
"It's simply not right," he said.
On a high note, Halloran has full support from his wife, Maryellen, and their three children. He said Maryellen, who suggested he enter the contest, never ate a lot of red meat but brought her consumption level down even more after he made the switch.
As for the firefighters, they are trying to do the same. Resisting urges to eat meat hasn't been easy, especially with temptations literally being delivered to them at Station 8.
"A delivery showed up here with a large meat-lovers pizza all paid for from Station 4," Moretti said. "We didn't take the pizza. We told the delivery guy he could have it."
To vote for Halloran, visit http://features.peta.org/sexiest-vegan-next-door/Finalists.aspx. Click on his photo under the "Male Finalist" section and then click the "Vote Now" button. But hurry, as voting ends on Friday at 12 p.m. EST.
Halloran is 41 and still working? Must be a misprint.
I'm all for him eating healthier and promoting a healthy lifestyle but partnering with the often violent PETA people is too much. They are closely associated with their off-shoot terrorist organization, Animal Liberation Front, homegrown terrorists responsible for millions of dollars of damage accross the country. PETA people routinely physically attack human beings that wear fur or otherwise disagree with the militant viewpoint of animals being equal to humans, etc. So Mr. Halloran....eat your veggies but distant yourself from PETA.


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Thought I would make a quick thread on a couple of MMO mice I picked up recently and breakdown the plugins they have for WoW.
This has been my gaming mouse of choice since its debut in 2005.
Its comfortable, accurate and easy to use thumb buttons.
Only problem is... not enough buttons.
To date myself, my first pc (Tandy 1000 EX) didnt have a hard drive or a mouse... So I grew up using the keyboard.
And I still play to this day clicking keys as much as possible (as opposed to "screen" clicking).
I PVP ALOT and do not like taking my eyes off of my opponent to either find a button or click on the screen.
So I hotkey everything I can. Problem with that is MMO's often have more powers than I have keys.
I then create macro's to help and alt buttons to "shift" hotkey...
Even then I often still do not have enough, plus as a game ages, more powers come out and more and more... etc.
Since I am under utilizing my right hand with a mouse, I have decided to look in to mice with more than 2 alternate buttons.
I did try the latest "upgrade" from logitech (my preferred mouse vendor) but it only had 4 extra thumb buttons.
So I tried out the 2 mice below:
Cyborg MMO7
The most solidly built mouse I have ever used and the most EXPENSIVE.
13 programmable buttons which instantly become another 13 upon pressing the pinky "shift" button.
Naga Hex
Its small, comfortable and has 6 mechanical thumb buttons.
It also has, for no reason what so ever, a third finger rest, which adds to the time it takes to get used to the handling of it.
Honorable mention:
Naga Epic
Some cats at work have had a great deal of success using the Naga and the Naga Epic.
I personally do not like how all 12 thumb buttons are sooooooo close together and many are located too far back.
My thumb is entirely too fat and not double-jointed enough to use this mouse.
*More to follow, Will add more to this as I get time*


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by Clara Parkes
The premise of this column has always been that I would pick one garment, something that has piqued my knitterly curiosity for one reason or another, and see what happens if I bypass the recommended yarn and try something different. My goal has never been to tell you what yarns to substitute, but, rather, to get you thinking about yarns in a different, broader, more experimental way.
Sometimes, the projects Kate has assembled for an issue are all so tantalizing that it's painful, nay, impossible to choose just one. Which is why, instead, I'd like to share my thought process behind five projects I'd love to swatch in this issue.
First, Wencke Lucas's charming cardigan, Keynote. The original sample is knit in CEY Classic Elite Yarns Verde Collection Woodland, a gently heathered, reasonably well-rounded yarn with a good degree of fuzz to it. It's really quite a lovely solution. But what if…? My mind turns to the smoother but still well-rounded yarns several hand-dyers are using lately, including Spirit Trail Fiberworks, that contain a dusting of silk. Not so much that the garment becomes heavy—there's a bit of patterning along the front panels—but enough to add a hint of shimmer and accent to the stitchwork?
Up next, Susanna IC's shawl, Isen. Again, the yarn she chose, Halcyon Yarn 2/5 Gemstone Silk, is already a perfect match. The worsted-spun silk has luxurious drape and a modest sheen that helps the beaded accents really pop. With stockinette-based patterning atop a smooth sheet of reverse-stockinette, what if you bypassed the shimmer and clarity of each stitch in favor of a cozier, fuzzier effect? Not overpoweringly so, but, say, any wool-based yarn with at least 20 percent baby alpaca or angora. Why stop there? Budget willing, a 100-percent cashmere yarn could also fit the bill nicely.
Two projects are ideal candidates for the worsted-woolen swap I so enjoy. First, Sandi Rosner's Peloponnese cardigan with clever geometric slipstitch around the yoke, quite striking in its current form and made in Miss Babs Hand-dyed Yarns & Fibers Northumbria DK. But if your tension and confidence are still lacking, swapping an airy woolen-spun yarn would give more forgiveness to the fabric and produce a softer, gentler patterning.
Second, Rachel Coopey's colorwork hat and mittens set, Ceana. She's chosen some lovely colors of Sunshine Yarns Merino Sport that benefit from an appearance of faint variegation. Moving to a woolen-spun yarn would reduce the crispness and clarity of the motif. You could counter this with two much more dramatically contrasting colors, or you could augment the sense of nuance by pairing two colors that fall much closer on the spectrum. Either way, you'll get lovely results.
Finally, it's only fair that we turn the tables and propose a woolen-worsted swap. Here Kate Gilbert's Quill vest, a symphony of ribbing and undulating cables, offers the perfect forum for such an experiment. The sample has been knit in a gorgeous, earthy grey heathered yarn with loads of farm-housey fuzz: Briggs and Little Regal. Both the muted coloring and blurred surface texture help quiet a stitch pattern that could otherwise, in a well-rounded worsted-spun Merino or Merino blend, be quite bold and striking. In a solid, the cables would take on a sculptural quality; flickering semisolid, the whole vest would come to life. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
Clara Parkes is the brilliant mind behind knittersreview.com and the author of several fantastic fiber books.


text:
Downton Abbey Living In Old Chester Hills. This...
8 N Chester Ct, Huntington
- 6 Beds
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School District: Elwood
Downton Abbey Living In Old Chester Hills. This Captivating 1930's Colonial Estate Is Located On A Quiet Cul De Sac. A Stunning Classic Home Situated On Two Acres Surrounded By Beautiful Landscaping, Patios, Gunite Pool, Pond And Gazebo. Incredible Details ...


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"During the era of the PlayStation 1 and 2, JRPGs were one of the strongest genres on consoles. Over the past generation of gaming however, JRPGs seem to have dwindled off of consoles and focused themselves more on handhelds." | Explosion.com
If they don't bring in VC3 to the states, I won't support 4 at all. I don't like skipping games.
Brave Fencer Musashi
Dark Cloud
Tactics Ogre
Final Fantasy Tactics
Legend of Dragoon
Rogue Galaxy
Breath of Fire
Tales of
Skies of Arcadia
Ni no Kuni
Star Ocean
Dragon Quest
Unfortunately I doubt we'll see VC3 in the States except by fan translation.


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What was supposed to be a fun boys' weekend away in upstate New York turned into a tragic one for a 35-year-old Co. Kerry man when an SUV hit him head on, resulting in the loss of his right leg from below the knee.
Ballylongford native P.J. Flavin still finds it difficult to talk about that hot summer day in July. A truck plunged right into the motorcycle he was riding, sending him into the air.
The accident cost him three and a half months in hospital, his leg and his job and now he has to figure out a way to pay six months of medical bills, which to date look to be hitting the million dollar mark.
Flavin, whose wife Elaine is from Co. Louth, spoke to the Irish Voice from his living room on Monday.
The accident happened on Saturday, July 16. Now exactly six months later, Flavin is at a loss on how he is going to come up with the funds to pay the bills that are mounting high on his kitchen table.
Flavin's friends and family are organizing a fundraiser at the Kerry Hall in Yonkers for Sunday, January 29 to raise some much-needed money to help offset some of the high medical costs facing the Kerry man.
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Flavin remembers the day like it was yesterday. His best friend from Ballylongford, Tony Collins, was moving back to Ireland with his family so the boys wanted one last weekend away together.
Both Collins and Flavin enjoyed riding motorcycles. Flavin, an owner of six, and Collins, also a bike owner, spent many a summer's day out on the open road. It was a pastime they thoroughly enjoyed.
This particular morning, Collins, Flavin and two other friends, Donnchadh Costello and Eddie Hayes, met for an early breakfast at the Irish Coffee Shop on McLean Avenue in Yonkers before they set off. They were excited and a bit giddy about the weekend.
It was decided a few weeks before that to show Collins a proper send off, they would participate in the Ramapo 500 motorcycle ride. It started in Monroe, New York and was scheduled to finish in Hancock, a town Flavin never got to see that day.
They planned to camp out under the stars and drink a few beers when they reached their final destination on Saturday evening. The ride was 250 miles each way.
"I remember it was pretty cold early in the morning but a few hours into the ride it got so hot I took off my motorcycle jacket," said Flavin. This action he would later regret.
Although there were several bike enthusiasts on the ride, the four friends stuck together. They stopped off for lunch in a small town on the route, reminisced about the good times they all had together during Collins's 14 years in New York and shared many a laugh.
Little did they know that less than 15 minutes back on the road, life for one of them would change drastically.
"We got back on our bikes. I still had my jacket off because it was so hot and off we went," recalled Flavin.
Hayes was leading the group through the small town of Downsville, with Flavin second, Costello third and Collins last. They were just under the 30-mile an hour speed limit.
"It all happened so quickly," said Flavin painfully.
"I could see this big silver truck (a dodge Durango) coming at us at fair speed around a bend; he was way over the double yellow lines on our side of the road and before I knew it he was coming at us head on."
Hayes swerved to avoid the car, hurling him into a ditch. He escaped with minor bruising. But Flavin wasn't so lucky. The oncoming car ploughed through Flavin and missed Costello by a few inches.
"I did everything in my power to turn the bike in the opposite direction but it was too late," said Flavin.
The car hit Flavin at such a high speed that his body and bike pulled off the front wheel of the vehicle. The impact caused the Kerry man to go flying into the air. When he finally hit the ground he skidded a few yards, causing all sorts of damage to his body.
"The next thing I remember is lying on the road trying to figure out where my leg was and what just happened," he said.
Flavin could instantly feel the road burns on his arms from only wearing a t-shirt, and he knew there and then his leg wasn't in good shape.
Seeing his friend in such a bad state, Collins rushed to a nearby house and called 911. Collins later told friends, "PJ took the hit and that impact made the truck cross back to the other side. Only for that we would all have been hit. He saved our lives."
As soon as emergency services reached the scene, Flavin was rushed to a nearby hospital in Binghamton, New York, where he underwent 10 excruciating hours of surgery in an effort to save his life.
"They told me there was a lot of internal bleeding everywhere so they had to spend hours working to stop that. They also did their best that day to stabilize my leg," he recalls.
It was the days that followed that were the most difficult.
"All I can remember is waking up in a hospital bed in some place unknown to me with my friends standing over me and these tubes sticking out of my throat," he shared.
"It was a horrible feeling. I couldn't communicate with anyone."
During that week doctors informed Flavin he may lose his leg but they would do their best to save it.
He underwent several surgeries in that hospital and was finally transferred to New York Presbyterian a few days after the accident. There several other surgeries were performed, including many skin grafts.
"These were some of the most painful surgeries," he recalls.
On August 10, his wife's birthday, Flavin underwent major surgery to have his right leg amputated from the knee down.
"The doctors and nurses were amazing. They did everything in their power to save my leg but infections had gotten so bad that they had no choice," he said.
Flavin, a construction worker by trade, spent the next three months in the hospital trying to learn to use one leg for day-to-day activities. He underwent many more surgeries and had time to come to terms with the loss.
His final two weeks in care were spent in Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains. In total he spent three and a half months in and out of operating theaters and physical therapy rooms. And the surgeries are not over yet.
"They may still need to amputate some more of my leg so we'll see," he said while pointing out a phone-like machine attached to his right thigh that sends waves into his femur to stimulate it in an effort to heal the damage caused. He will also have to undergo surgery to his left knee which was damaged in the accident.
Flavin said he is now able to manage his pain, but the worst discomfort of all is what he calls the "phantom pain."
"This affects me mainly at night when I'm trying to sleep. The brain thinks the leg is still there causing a lot of phantom pain. It's definitely the worst part," he said.
Flavin now spends his days indoors. He calls Ireland for hours each day to pass the time. He uses a walker and a wheelchair to get around.
His apartment, which has steps both inside and outside, has been modified to make it accessible.
He looks forward to visits from his friends on a regular basis and is grateful for their time and support.
"My friends, wife and family have been so supportive and I couldn't get to where I am today without them," he said.
"Even when I was in the hospital people that I would never have expected came to see me, and it gave me a real lift."
Flavin is also thankful to the Kerryman's Association, of which he is a member, for their ongoing support and to the Celtic Bike Club of New York.
Looking ahead, Flavin hopes by the end of the year to have a prosthetic and resume some sort of normal physical life again.
"I'm really looking forward to getting to walk by myself again, getting that independence back that was stolen from me that day in July, but it will take a lot of practice, physio, time and patience but it will come," he said positively.
A benefit will take place at the Kerry Hall (305 McLean Avenue) in Yonkers on Sunday, January 29 to raise as much funds as possible to help with Flavin's mounting medical costs.
Mass is scheduled to be said by Father Brian Coffey at noon, followed by an afternoon filled with music, kids entertainment and fun.
An auction will be held at 6 p.m. for various items donated by people. Numerous raffles will take place throughout the day for many dinners, a Kindle Fire and an iPad.
Entertainment will be provided by local bands including Mary Courtney, Tommy Flynn, Padraig Allen and the McLean Avenue Band, Mary G, Dessie and Marie and the Pride of Moyvane. Rock band Big
Girl's Blouse has also volunteered their time for the evening. Kids entertainment will be from 2-5 p.m.
Auction items include a 2011 team signed Kilkenny hurling jersey, a signed Kerry kersey, a handcrafted motorcycle and a Long Kesh handmade cross. Bids are now being taken on auction items.
Checks can be written to Family Flavin and mailed to P.J. Flavin Fundraiser, c/o Kerry Hall, 305 McLean Avenue, Yonkers, New York 10705.
Alternatively donations can be made directly to any Chase bank. Account name: Family Flavin. Account number: 996131413.
For raffle tickets, donations, sponsorship or any other inquiries call Donnchadh Costello 914-513-8791, Joe Collins 914-804-4206, Kevin Foley 914-473-0739, or April Drew 914-562-5097. Log onto firstname.lastname@example.com for more information.