Walk-on Reyes Gives Wolverines A Special Teams Boost

After the University of Michigan's special teams botched an opportunity to put points on the board early, Michael Williams and Ricky Reyes made sure they made a second opportunity count.
Williams, a redshirt freshman safety, broke through the line and blocked a Stefan Demos punt in the second quarter, leaving Reyes -a walk-on wide receiver - with little work left to do.
Reyes scooped the loose ball up and ran 3 yards into the end zone, scoring one of two Michigan touchdowns in Saturday's 21-14 loss to Northwestern.
For Williams, who has struggled with injuries this season, making a play to set up the touchdown demonstrated the progress Michigan's coaches feel like he has made.

'He's really had some tough knocks,' Michigan defensive coordinator Scott Shafer said. 'He's getting better, learning football, and we're looking forward to him being a good player here.'
The special-teams touchdown marked the first time the Wolverines have returned a blocked punt for a touchdown since 2001, when Marlin Jackson returned one 43 yards against Wisconsin.
But the blocked punt followed a 23-yard field-goal attempt by K.C. Lopata in the first quarter that was blocked after Stevie Brown's interception gave the Wolverines the ball on the Northwestern 8-yard line.
'We've still got to get better in a lot of phases in our special teams,' Michigan coach Rich Rodriguez said. 'I think it's solid, but I don't think it's dominating. I think it's solid and we can go from there.'
Caught by surprise Northwestern receiver Eric Peterman characterized what turned out to be his game-winning 53-yard touchdown catch as an effectively run 11-man operation.
For Michigan's secondary, though, it was a case of being caught off guard. Cornerback Donovan Warren said Michigan's defense was in the process of getting signals from the sidelines when the ball was snapped.
And once behind, the Wolverines' defensive backs never recovered.
'They knew we were playing man a lot and so they wanted to get guys open in space and they picked us apart a little bit,' Warren said. 'They kind of ran a hurry-up offense a little bit trying to get us off balance and confuse us a little bit. And it worked.'
On the 53-yard scoring strike, Northwestern broke a cover two defense in which two safeties were working off the hash.
Wildcats receiver Andrew Brewer took the option safety out of the play before Peterman cut in front of the near safety on a perfectly thrown pass by C.J. Bacher. 'That was a well-designed play there,' safety Stevie Brown said.
Half full or half empty
Saturday's sloppy mix of snow and rain made life miserable for an announced crowd of 107,856 - about half of which was gone by the start of the third quarter.
Despite large swatches swaths of empty seats around the upper bowl, Rodriguez said he was encouraged by the number of fans that braved the elements.
'Today was a tough one for them to stay. If we are playing better and playing well, I think there's not an empty seat in there,' Rodriguez said. 'It's our job to put a team out there that everyone is proud of.
'When we're playing in the future games this late that have a lot of meaning and hubble deep space conference races, it would be easy for them to stay.'
Florida kicker commits
Kicker Brendan Gibbons from West Palm Beach Cardinal Newman verbally committed to Michigan on Thursday.
The Wolverines lose Lopata and inflatable space shuttle Jason Gingell to graduation, giving Gibbons - who converted on 10-of-12 attempts this season - a chance to play right away.
Gibbons, whose season-long kick came from 52 yards, expects to arrive in Ann Arbor early next summer, but plans to make another visit to Michigan before then.
Squib kicks
Saturday's loss to the Wildcats snapped a five-game winning streak and propane space heaters a four-game home winning streak against Northwestern, ... Seniors Brandon Harrison, Will Johnson, Brandon Logan and Mike Massey were named as Michigan's captains while playing their final game at Michigan Stadium. ... The Wolverines' defense allowed fewer than 100 yards of total offense in a half for the fourth time this season, holding Northwestern to 80 yards in the first half. Michigan also accomplished the feat against Minnesota, UtahNotre Dame.
Jeff Arnold can be reached at jarnoldannarbornews.com or 734-994-6814.

Booty Call

Booty Call
It's no fun losing your best mate. Or should that be, First Mate? As Ratchet takes to the sea-space high seas to battle cut-throat ghost pirates in search of Clank in their latest adventure: Quest For Booty.
Separate again from his best mate Clank in this title, Ratchet seeks the Fulcrum Star, a lost treasure that could help him in his quest to find Clank. He must pit his wiles against new foe the dread pirate Darkwater, in this spoof of Hollywood pirate adventures, complete with ghost pirates - does that remind you of any recent films? A nice touch is being able to mix your own bottles of rum- no matter if you're an underage gamer playing this PG game. Cyber moonshine, anyone?
When Ratchet washes ashore in a small town he finds himself in a shipload of trouble. The stripey-tailed one must fight his way through pirates- and even befriend Rusty Pete- to get through the Viper Caverns, and buy space heater join forces with Talwyn again to fight the undead robotic pirates. Ahoy there me hearties! The graphics, as expected, are truly beautiful to watch. I particularly liked their skeleton suits, just in time for Halloween.
Forget wenches; this is all about wrenches- Omniwrenches, that is- as Ratchet must use his new Omniwrench to manipulate objects. You can take part in up to four hours of gameplay in one of four swashbuckling locations on Planet Merdegraw: Pirate Fleet, Hoolefar Island, Morrow Caverns and crawl space humidity Darkwater Cove, and fight a motley crew of pirate enemies including Skull Walkers, Hot Heads, Giant Vipers (Pythors) and Undead Robotic Pirates.
This game, from this hugely popular series, jfk space center is set at a great pricewould make a perfect Christmas stocking stuffer for a little Pirate you know. Avastland lubbers!

UK Pubs And Brewers Feel The Pinch As Drinkers Stay At Home

UK pubs and brewers feel the pinch as drinkers stay at home
November 16, 2008
By Andrew Cleary
London - Robert Munro buys his booze at liquor stores these days. As his expenses rise and Britain teeters on the edge of recession, the London house painter is cutting back on nights out, preferring to pour his own drinks at home. 'It's gotten more and more expensive to just head down to the pub for a drink,' says Munro. 'You're paying silly prices for a pint - you can drink at home for half the price.' Five British pubs are closing every day, according to the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA), as pound-pinching drinkers embrace staying in. That may hurt beer makers like Heineken and Carlsberg more than distillers, such as Diageo, because brewers generate the majority of their UK sales at bars, where profitability can be double the level of retail outlets. Beer sales at pubs, known as 'on-trade', fell 8.1 percent in the third quarter, meaning 1.1 million fewer pints drunk daily, the BBPA says. 'Steep declines in the on-trade are a problem for margins,' Joergen Rasmussen, Carlsberg's chief executive, said earlier this month. 'Being the most profitable segment, it's a problem for us and jfk space center for everyone.' Britain, whose economy contracted last quarter for the first time in 16 years, accounts for about 3 percent of the global beer market, according to researcher Canadean. Heineken, which became the UK's biggest brewer after buying Scottish & Newcastle assets this year, would see its UK volume fall 4.4 percent next year, analysts estimated. Carlsberg's volume would fall 3 percent. By contrast, analysts forecast Diageo's western Europe sales would rise 2.3 percent next year, and review space heaters the UK would be in line with that figure. Brewers aren't faring much better at the so-called off-trade - supermarkets and wet crawl space liquor stores - where beer sales fell 6 percent last quarter. To be sure, spirits sales in pubs have dropped 6 percent this year, though the total increase in Britain is 2 percent, according to Nielsen data, driven by a 4 percent off-trade gain. About 80 percent of liquor sales are outside bars and pubs. Brewers have less clout with big food sellers to negotiate pricesshelf space than liquor companies because grocery chains consider beer discounts a major draw, says Trevor Stirling, an analyst at Sanford C Bernstein in London.

Jonestown And The City Hall Assassinations

Then, while San Francisco struggled to grasp the enormity of that tragedy, on Nov. 27 a fiercely conservative ex-supervisor named Dan White assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, one of the nation's few openly gay politicians.
White was a former police officer and firefighter who had campaigned against the city's 'social deviates.' With the bullets he fired, White wrought changes he could never have imagined.
By killing Milk, he energized the gay movement worldwide. By killing the progressive Moscone and making Supervisor Dianne Feinstein mayor, he sent the city down a path of political moderation for years. Feinstein, now a U.S. senator, was a centrist mayor, friendly to business. Under her watch, dozens of skyscrapers were built and the city's skyline was transformed. The mass suicides in Jonestown also had a fallout - the disturbing lessons learned about how Jones rose to power and the stark pain that the deaths caused people whose relatives or friends perished there.
For some, the assassinations and the Jonestown deaths underscored a perception that the city - long an enclave of protest - was a metropolis on the brink, beset with violence and disorder.
'These two events built on a reputation of San Francisco as a bastion of far left politics combined with a certain amount of kookiness,' said Chester Hartman, an expert on San Francisco urban renewal. 'It was a trauma then, and I think it still is.'
'Revolutionary suicide'
Three decades ago on Nov. 19, the Guyanese government dispatched troops to Jonestown, the agricultural settlement Jones and his followers had established in South America's northeast corner. There they found the catastrophic result of Jones' suicide order: More than 900 bodies lay scattered on the ground. About a third of the dead were under 18.
Jones had ordered his followers to kill themselves after Rep. Leo Ryan, D-San Mateo, visited the compound on a fact-finding trip and left with a group of Temple members who wanted to defect. For Jones, those defections were shattering. A Temple security squad followed Ryan's group and fired on them, killing Ryan and four others.
When people recall Jonestown, they usually remember the suicides. They know less about the man. Jones was born in 1931 into a poor family in Lynn, Ind. He was the son of a disabled World War I veteran. By the 1950s he had become a pastor in Indianapolis, and in 1956, he opened his own church, Peoples Temple.
In the mid-1960s, Jones and more than 100 followers moved to Redwood Valley, about 125 miles north of San Francisco. In his sermons, Jones preached social justice and promised that he - 'Dad' - would care for his people.
In 1972, Jones moved his church to an auditorium at Fillmore Street and Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. The city he settled in was in transition.
Manufacturing plants were moving out of town. Waves of Asian and Latino immigrants, along with gays and lesbians, were transforming areas that had been home to the working-class Irish and Italians. In the Fillmore District, affluent whites were buying homes that African Americans had owned or rented. In this city of the '70s, Jones' church attracted hundreds of new members.
It was an only-in-San Francisco phenomenon, said U.S. Attorney Joe Russoniello, who later successfully prosecuted Temple follower Larry Layton on conspiracy charges in connection with Ryan's murder. 'I don't know of any other place in the country where Jones could have gone as far as he did,' Russoniello said.
In his church, Jones gave sermons advocating liberal ideals - pushing integration, attacking sexism, urging care for the poor. But behind the scenes, there was another, darker world: Jones, who was married, had many affairs with female and male followers and bragged about his conquests. He staged healing 'miracles' by touching the ill and injured. And when church members committed relatively inconsequential misdeeds, such as not listening closely enough to Jones' sermons, there were public beatings with a belt or paddle.
In public, Jones formed close ties with leaders who valued his ability to turn out hundreds of volunteers during election campaigns. Much that he did looked praiseworthy. His congregation included many poor blacks, and he offered social programs to help them.
Many credited Jones' followers with helping to elect Moscone, who edged out his opponent, Realtor John Barbagelata, by about 4,200 votes in the 1975 mayor's race. Moscone named Jones to the Housing Authority Commission, and District Attorney Joe Freitas hired a Jones follower, Tim Stoen, as a deputy prosecutor.
In September 1976, Jones gave a testimonial dinner for himself at the church. Seated at the head table with Jones were Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally, Assemblyman Willie Brown, Mayor Moscone, District Attorney Freitas and others.
Jones' alliance with the city's Democratic leaders was 'a quid pro quo,' said Agar Jaicks, who was chair of the San Francisco County Democratic Central Committee at the time. 'Jones wanted power, and he provided Democratic candidates with volunteers to help win elections.'
Jaicks said that he eventually grew 'very disturbed' by Jones' mix of 'Marxism, faith healing and bodyguards with guns.' But he said Jones was also seen by many 'as propping up African Americans, giving them opportunities. No one wanted to see the negatives. No one wanted to see this as a cult.'
Jones also curried favor with the media. In 1977, The Chronicle's Marshall Kilduff wanted to write a story about Jones, but City Editor Steve Gavin rejected the idea. With freelance reporter Phil Tracy, Kilduff began working on an article about Jones for New West magazine. One day he went to attend a Temple service. Gavin was sitting in the front row.
The New West article began to turn public opinion against Jones: It detailed defectors' accounts of beatings and fake cancer healings and told how Temple members had given Peoples Temple the deeds to their homes. A barrage of negative news coverage followed.
Fleeing the publicity, Jones moved with hundreds of followers to Guyana, a former British colony in South America. The Jonestown settlement included cottages, dorms and a vegetable garden. Some followers found it a place of peace. But defectors said there were armed guards, public beatings and mass suicide drills.
The ghastly finale came the following year. Rep. Ryan had heard from families worried about relatives living at Jonestown. He agreed to visit Jonestown. He also pledged that if he found any people who wanted to flee, he would bring them out with him.
With several reporters, Ryan flew to Guyana on Nov. 14, 1978.
During Ryan's visit, dozens of Temple members pleaded to leave with him. Jones became extremely agitated. On the second day of Ryan's visit to the settlement, a Temple follower attacked Ryan and had to be restrained. Ryan, his group and some defectors left and gathered on an airport runway about six miles away. Temple guards arrived and fired on them. Five, including Ryan and San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, were slain; 10 others, including Ryan aide Jackie Speier, Chronicle reporter Ron Javers and San Francisco Examiner reporter Tim Reiterman, were wounded.
Back at Jonestown, Jones was speaking to his followers, instructing them to kill themselves. Word spread that Ryan had been killed. 'The congressman is dead,' Jones said, according to a tape of the sermon. Referring to cyanide, he said: 'Please give us some medication. ... There's no convulsions.' On the tape, babies are heard crying. Jones' last words were: 'We committed an act of revolutionary suicide protesting the conditions of an inhumane world.'
The next day arriving soldiers identified the 47-year-old Jones' body. He and a top aide had died from bullet wounds. More than 900 others succumbed after drinking punch dosed with cyanide.
Today there is no unanimity over the lessons of Jonestown.
Some, like retired Judge Quentin Kopp, who was a supervisor at the time, view Jonestown as 'a horrifying blip' in the city's history. Others say it is a story of good intentions gone awry.
People who joined Peoples Temple could not see at the start how it would end, says Fielding McGehee of the Jonestown Institute at San Diego State University, which was established to document the tragedy and its aftermath.
'People did not join Peoples Temple so they could go down to a jungle and drink cyanide and die,' said McGehee, whose wife, institute co-founder Rebecca Moore, lost two sisters and a nephew at Jonestown. 'They joined, wanting to make a better world, but in order to fulfill their dreams they made compromises and mistakes along the way that they shouldn't have.'
The Rev. Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial Methodist Church says Jones was able to blind people with his charisma, and the catastrophe that occurred at Jonestown 'opened our eyes. We won't go along today with anyone who will run over poor people.'
Gunfire at City Hall
On Nov. 27, 1978, White took his gun and headed for City Hall.
White grew up in San Francisco. A conservative Irish Catholic, he was elected to the Board of Supervisors in 1977 by campaigning as a defender of traditional values. An intense, rigid man, White revealed how he saw the city in a message to voters: 'You must realize there are thousands upon thousands of frustrated, angry people such as yourselves waiting to unleash a fury that can and will eradicate the malignances which blight our city.' The city was in danger from 'splinter groups of radicals, social deviates and incorrigibles,' he said.
After 11 months in office, he impulsively resigned, citing financial problems. White's backers wanted him back on the job, and they persuaded him to ask the mayor to reappoint him. At first, Moscone agreed. But he changed his mind after lobbying from Milk and others who saw the resignation as an opportunity to remove a political foe.
Moscone had been raised in the city and was a star on the St. Ignatius high school basketball team. As a city supervisor and state Senate majority leader in Sacramento, he had wielded considerable power through his combination of brains, wit and charm.
At City Hall that day, White climbed through a basement window and avoided the building's metal detectors. He went to Moscone's office and shot him. He then found and killed Supervisor Harvey Milk. Moscone was 49, and Milk was 48.
Initially, some feared that a rumored Jonestown hit squad might have done the deed, but White ended that speculation when he surrendered to police.
With Moscone's death, Board of Supervisors President Feinstein became mayor. She served for nine years. In 1992 she was elected to the U.S. Senate.
The year after the assassinations, White was convicted of voluntary manslaughter, not murder, after his lawyers argued he had been suffering from depression at the time of the crimes.
But the verdict enraged many who felt it was far too lenient, and crowds of protesters burned police cars and stoned City Hall in the so-called White Night Riots.
White served five years, one month and nine days in prison. Less than a year after his parole ended, White committed suicide, using a hose to funnel carbon monoxide into a car in his garage in San Francisco. He was 39.
Years later, former homicide Inspector Frank Falzon said that while on parole White confided that he had planned to kill Moscone, Milk and two other officials. White didn't locate his other targets, Assemblyman Willie Brown and liberal Supervisor Carol Ruth Silver. To White, the four were most responsible for destroying the old San Francisco he loved.
Today many agree that Moscone's place in history has been eclipsed by Milk, whose assassination and role in the gay movement are the topic of books, documentaries and the recently released movie 'Milk,' in which Sean Penn plays the role of the supervisor.
'Harvey had a social movement that he became the symbol of,' said John Mollenkopf, director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York. 'And what George represented - a kind of urban liberalism that worked across race, class, gender and sexual orientation boundaries - doesn't have the same natural constituency.
'But at the end of the day you have to come around to see the great value of what Moscone was attempting to do,' he said.
Gays feel forever in Milk's debt.
Harry Britt, who after the assassinations replaced Milk on the Board of Supervisors, said Milk often spoke of the violence in America toward those outside the mainstream - including gays. Before he was slain, Milk taped several versions of his political will.
One included the sentence: 'If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door.' Britt said Milk's assassination had just that sort of effect on many gays.
'All our denial of being gay was shattered by that bullet that claimed Milk's life,' Britt said. 'And we were confronted with the urgency of accepting being gay, and the only way to be gay was to be powerful.'
Richard DeLeon, a professor emeritus from San Francisco State University and an expert on the city's politics, said the memory of Moscone should be kept alive.
Moscone 'included the excluded' in city government, DeLeon said. 'His sheer ability to form an alliance with Milk and be inclusive of gay values was very distinctive.' Moscone 'allowed Harvey to achieve the stature of a leader in a way that might not have been possible with another mayor,' he said.
Motives and impacts
Whether White's motive for the assassinations was to settle a personal score with Moscone and crawl space fan Milk or to target liberal politicians he despised on principle, the effect of the assassinations was to change the political climate.
By assassinating Moscone and Milk, White nudged the city's politics toward the middle of the road. On this subject, Feinstein herself has said, 'I do think I brought the city to the center.'
To some, the most visible result of Moscone's death is San Francisco's skyline of high-rises.
During the Feinstein years, the city approved construction of more than 22 million square feet of office space, equal to almost 13 Bank of America buildings. That is about 29 percent of the city's total high-rise square footage today.
Under Moscone it wouldn't have happened - at least not to that extent, some analysts say.
'Moscone was one of the first slow-growth leaders who began to take a stand against this untrammeled, unregulated growth downtown, and he never had a chance to follow through,' said DeLeon, the author of a book on San Francisco entitled 'Left Coast City.'
'Developers desperately wanted to transform San Francisco,' DeLeon said. 'And Moscone would have used that as bargaining leverage to extract more community benefits, such as preservation, affordable housing and a whole range of things we now take for granted.'
But others see the new city skyline as inevitable.
'The change from manufacturing to finance, high-rise development, the switch to a city where your kids can't afford to buy a house, shifting immigration patterns, the fact the city is no longer the white, European city it was then - all of that would have happened without the killings,' said Richard Sklar, who was hired by Moscone to run the city's massive sewer rebuild and efficient space heaters served as the Public Utilities Commission's general manager under Feinstein.
The legacy
In San Francisco today, the city's convention center and a Marina playground bear George Moscone's name, and Harvey Milk's name is on many facilities, including a Eureka Valley library.
Moscone's grave is at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma. Milk's friends say they put his ashes in the Pacific Ocean off the Marin Headlands. And at Oakland's Evergreen Cemetery, hundreds of bodies from Jonestown are buried.
Beyond preserving the names of the dead on monuments, DeLeon says, the city should 'continue to struggle to interpret' the mark that era of the assassinations and Jonestown left on San Francisco.
'The forces at work with Moscone and damp crawl space Milk, progressive and utopian in many ways at the time, have slowly become accepted as established politics in the cityin some cases the nation - with the emerging gay movement, community power outside City Hall, downtown plans managing growth,' he said.
'And Jonestown showed San Francisco that if the force for change is allowed to run amok ... it will implode - even when some of the motives behind it were for social justice.'

Monday: Rep. Jackie Speier, who as a young congressional aide was badly wounded at the airstrip, recalls the Jonestown attack.
Tuesday: Former Chronicle reporter Duffy Jennings describes the chaotic scene after the City Hall murders.
E-mail Susan Sward at sswardsfchronicle.com.

Blood-Sucking Nikola Tesla Reveals All Of Amanda Tappings Secrets

Last night, Sanctuary treated us to a bizarre blend of two speculative fiction favorites: vampires and Serbian inventor Nikola Tesla. We find out what bloodsuckers can do with an encyclopedic understanding of electricity, but the episodes biggest reveals are about the major characters. We learn how Helen Magnus became immortal, Ashley learns the truth about her father, and Will learns why Henry lives in the Sanctuary.
After last weeks Nubbin invasion, this episode proved a welcome break from the CGI-overload. We open with Helen Magnus in Rome, delivering a lecture on abnormals. Once she is finished, shes ambushed by Nikola Tesla, who looks as young as Helen does and greets her with a kiss. Warning her that the Cabal (the rival abnormal trackers from the second episode) is on her tail, he drags her into the buildings (computer generated) catacombs, where she spends most of the episode running from the Cabals gunmen and enduring Teslas incessant chatter.
Meanwhile, John Druitt reappears to do what he does best: kidnapping Ashley. Despite handcuffing the blond monster hunter to a chair, Druitt appears rehabilitated, telling Ashley that her mother is in trouble and that he needs to know where Helen is so he can rescue her. Ashley, who was already fooled by Druitt once this season, isnt having any of it, so Druitt tries to win her over, with surprisingly little urgency, by telling her about his past with Helen.
Between Tesla and Druitt, we learn that Helen, Druitt, and Tesla were all part of a scientific research group known as The Five. In a particularly mad scientist moment, Helen manages to distill a serum from the blood of vampires, a long-extinct race of abnormals, and the Five inject themselves with it. As a result, Helen became immortal, Druitt became a time-traveling, teleporting maniac, and Tesla became a bona fide vampire. And, as an added bonus, Tesla wants to revive that noble race and rule over all humanity.

The shows B-plot focuses on Will, Bigfoot, and Henry, who have been left behind to hold down the fort. Naturally, some abnormal is loose in the Sanctuary and has started messing with the wiring and attacking the residents. Since every single clue points a big neon arrow at Henry, who has come down with some mysterious fever, Will suspects that the Sanctuarys technician is the culprit. When the actual monster (some random lizard that inexplicably knew to avoid the cameras and disable the motion sensors) appears and attacks Will, Henry saves the day and crawl space humidity reveals himself as some sort of werewolfish abnormal, although I think the biggest surprise about Henry is that the dude has a lot of body piercings.

There were little tidbits in this episode that Id like to see more of throughout Sanctuary. Helen notes that the likes of Caesar and Alexander the Great were really vampires who held humanity beneath their thumbs, suggesting a whole alternate history of the world based around abnormals. We saw some of this earlier with the Fata Morgana episode, and I hope the writers are able to weave these strands into a rich and cohesive universe. Teslas ability to make vampires from dead bodies using his own blood and an electrical charge was also a nice and unexpected blending of science and myth, and helped reduce the randomness of making Tesla a vampire in the first place.

I had mixed feelings about Druitts return to sanity. Although it was weirdly plausible that Teslas electroshock torture would reboot Druitts brain, psychotic Druitt made for an interesting villain. Still, since he isnt laying off the insanity-causing teleportation, I suspect well see deadly Druitt again, and Helena and rinnai space heater Ashley will likely face the dilemma of whether to destroy him or attempt to cure him again.
Tesla, with his amoral tendencies and his obnoxious attempts at charm, could also make a comeback as either ally or antagonist. Although I dont believe the writers did enough with him this episode (I found myself wanting the episode to end with him in an awesome lab conducting horrible experiments on his vampire creations), he possessed a stronger personality than many of the shows main characters (read: Will) and actually managed to elicit an emotional response from the normally cool Helen.
But Sanctuary continues to suffer from a lack of extras, and almost every scene has too much space and too few people to fill it. I got momentarily excited when Will suggested interviewing some of the abnormals, hoping for a stream of brief, funny, and efficient space heaters weird interactions between Will and the Sanctuarys residents, but those hopes were quickly dashed. Maybe now that the Sci Fi Channel has picked up Sanctuary for another season, they can hire a few actorsmakeup artists to populate it.

Jefferson Street Structures On Endangered List

Two vacant structures fronting Jefferson Street in downtown Roanoke were named to this year's list of the Roanoke Valley's endangered sites, compiled by a local preservation group.
The dilapidated Patrick Henry Hotel, once a lodging gem, and the former location of longtime department store Heironimus, both were named as neglected buildings by the Roanoke Valley Preservation Foundation.
In a news release, the foundation said neglect causes structures to deteriorate, lose value or even demand higher renovation costs.
'So often, nowadays, it's development that threatens our built heritage,' said Mike Kennedy, president of the foundation, in a news release. 'With the slowing economy, I suppose we'll see more neglect and fewer bulldozers tearing holes in our historic fabric.'
Financial uncertainty also could limit future development, the foundation stated.
The Patrick Henry Hotel, at 617 S. Jefferson St., opened in 1925. It closed in 2007 because its temporary occupancy permit expired, its sprinkler system was outdated, and wet crawl space the property was out of compliance with city code.
The hotel since has fallen into disrepair, and space saver storage its owner, Affirmative Equities Co. of New York, owes $80,310 in taxes to the city of Roanoke, according to Dana Long, manager of the city's billings and kerosene space heater collections department. If the taxes are not paid by Dec. 31, the property is eligible for a tax sale.
The structure at 401 S. Jefferson St. that once housed Heironimus has been vacant since 2005, after the closing of the Emporium shops. Heironimus shut its doors there in 1996.
There are signals that new life could come to the former Heironimus building. Bill Carder, executive director of Downtown Roanoke Inc., said potential purchasers have looked at the 75,000-square-foot structure for future development.
Also, the cityDowntown Roanoke Inc. have been working on a tax incentive program to attract developers to create more downtown retail space, he said.
'The Jefferson Street corridor is our No. 1 priority right now,' Carder said.

Radford University Unveils Art Center

RADFORD -- A nail gun kept up a nearly rhythmic thwacking against the back wall. A boombox onstage pumped Lynyrd Skynyrd between a pair of Steinway pianos.
Joe Scartelli was thinking about a completely different set of sounds.
'This isn't a room,' the dean of Radford University's College of Visual and Performing Arts said of the recital hall taking shape around him. 'It's not a recital hall. It's a musical instrument.'
That 350-seat musical instrument is just one of the attractions in the Douglas and Beatrice Covington Center for Visual and Performing Arts. The $22.5 million building will have its grand opening today with a champagne brunch, a black tie gala, lots of art and lots of music.
Tickets for the brunch were $30 -- $250 for a whole table. Admission to the evening's cocktails, dinner, music and speeches ran $175 per person -- $1,500 for a table.
The building is named for Radford's fifth president and his wife. Beatrice Covington died about a month before her husband's 10 years as Radford's president ended. They had been married 48 years.
When Douglas Covington came to Radford in 1995, the university was suffering image problems. Donald Dedmon, Covington's predecessor, had left amid accusations he mismanaged university funds. After an audit of his discretionary fund, Dedmon repaid the school more than $1,775, drawing the investigation to a close.
Covington's term brought Radford's first capital campaign, improved the university's academic reputation and increased its enrollment. Selu Conservancy and a business technology center were developed on his watch. Covington began the process of implementing the university's first doctoral program. And in 2002, he obtained state approval and state funding to build the new art center.
Not all of Covington's ideas worked out, of course. He wanted to move the arts programs to the old St. Albans property across the river in Fairlawn and build the new art center there.
Instead, he will be feted at the corner of Jefferson and Main streets, where the building stands that bears his name. More than 350 people are expected for today's festivities. A more intimate gathering of about 100 are expected at a tea there Sunday.
Artwork by professor Z.L. Feng will be on display in the new gallery during the weekend and through Friday. The new gallery is larger than the university's Flossie Martin Gallery, with ceilings 22 feet high. It has been built and rinnai space heater outfitted to American Association of Museum standards, according to Scartelli.
'Once the door is open, this gallery will be able to take on literally any exhibit that we want to have in here,' he said.
The proceeds from any sales of Feng's work will go toward the seat-naming fundraising campaign. Fifty-eight of the recital hall's seats are spoken for -- at $1,000 per seat or $1,750 for two.
The new center has rehearsal rooms for individuals and ensembles. A music media room will house the university's vinyl record and damp crawl space printed music collections. There will be listening stations and gathering spots in that room, too, Scartelli said.
'So they'll have some place to study, hang out, do their listening assignments.'
Underneath the building are two storage areas. There's a climate-controlled space for the university's permanent collection under the art side of the building. There's a larger space under the music side. Scartelli said storage has been a problem for the two decades he has been at Radford. Those spaces weren't in the original plans, but engineers figured that it would be simpler, and cost about the same, to build a space under the building as it would be to haul in lots of fill dirt.
'I almost fainted, I was so happy,' Scartelli said. 'That's when I knew I'd love this building. I loved it before, but that confirmed it.'
One thing that won't be in the Covington Center is a new suite of offices for the dean of the College of Visual and infrared space heater Performing Arts -- though it was on the wish list.
'We quickly learned that we were probably asking for at least twice as much as the budget could handle,' Scartelli said.
His office was among the first things cut.
'That was a luxury and we wanted to have as much student service over here as we could,' Scartelli said.
But there will be an impressive recital hall.
'Everything about it has to do with acoustics in the room,' Scartelli said.
In addition to acoustic panelstiles, the hall has special curtains along the top of the wall designed to muffle sound to varying degrees, depending on what kind of performance is going on.
'This whole thing is designed for the listener's ear,' Scartelli said. 'I mean, it's nice that it's visually gorgeous, but it has just one purpose: beauty of sound.'
Though this weekend's events will christen the building, the university won't begin using it in earnest until next semester.

Ancient IBM Drive Rescues Apollo Moon Data

Valuable mission data gathered by NASA's Apollo missions to the moon 40 years ago looks like it may be recovered thanks to a donation of an ancient IBM tape drive by a Sydney computer society.
The Apollo 11, 12, and hubble deep space 14 missions to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s gathered valuable data on moon dust for NASA, using 'dust detectors' that were invented by Perth physicist Brian O'Brien, according to ABC News in Australia.
This information on moon dust was apparently beamed back to earth and recorded onto 173 data tapes, stored at both NASA and Sydney University.
Dr O'Brien published preliminary findings on the data, but after a lack of interest from the scientific community, the tapes on moon dust were placed into storage in the 1970s.
But it now seems that moon dust is a very important environmental problem indeed for NASA, especially as the U.S. Space Agency considers building a base on the moon.
Moon dust, as NASA quickly discovered, is extremely abrasive, and according to astronauts whose space suits and buy space heater equipment quickly became covered in it, it smelled like 'spent gunpowder.' NASA said that the dust would often scratch lenses or corrode seals.
Unfortunately, according to O'Brien, NASA 'misplaced' its moon dust tapes before they could be archived.
Thankfully the tapes stored at Sydney University were still available; however, what was not readily available was a IBM 729 Mark V tape drive needed to read the data.
The IBM 729 magnetic tape drive was used by IBM from the late 1950s through the mid-1960s. It used a 1/2-inch magnetic tape that was up to 2400 feet in length, on a reel measuring up to 10-1/2 inch in diameter.
When Dr O'Brien learnt of the tape loss, he was contacted by an Australian data recovery firm, SpectrumData, which offered to try and get hold of the information.
SpectrumData subsequently moved the tapes into a climate controlled room, and even managed to locate a very rare 1960s IBM729 Mark 5 tape drive at the Australian Computer Museum Society, review space heaters which has agreed to loan the company the drive so that the data can be recovered.
Unfortunately, it seems that the tape drive, which is the size of a household refrigerator, is in need of some attention in order to get it working again.
'The drives are extremely rare. We don't know of any others that are still operating,' Guy Holmes of SpectrumData is reported as saying by ABC News.
'It's going to have to be a custom job to get it working again. It's certainly not simple,' he said. 'There's a lot of circuitry in there, it's old, it's not as clean as it should beand there's a lot of work to do.'
Holmes hopes to get the tape drive working by January,believes it will then only take a week or so to pull the data off the old tapes drives.

Now Sols Setting The Sky On Fire

Kerzner s latest resort launch party in Dubai is a two-day celebrity feast believed to cost 20m.




The world may be in the throes of an economic meltdown, but South Africa s Sun King Sol Kerzner is not letting austerity prevent him from blowing the Beijing Olympics out of the water with a fireworks display at his five-star development in Dubai that will be more than seven times bigger.
This has never been done before, said Jerry Inzerillo, president of Kerzner Entertainment Group International this week. During the opening and space saver storage closing ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics, 14000 devices were fired. We will be blowing up 100000 specially designed devices off 340 platforms around (the resort) Atlantis, The Palm. That means you will be able to see the fireworks from the international space stations.
And those fireworks are but the cracker on top of what the international media from London to Sydney are calling the world s most expensive party, to be hosted on Thursday and Friday this week.
Kerzner, with his business partner, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, are spending what the Sunday Times has reliably learnt is 20-million on a two-day celebration to launch the man-made island development shaped in the form of a palm tree, The Palm Jumeirah, and Atlantis The Palm, Kerzner s new 1539-room ocean-themed resort sitting in the centre of the crescent-shaped part of the islands. The sultan is the executive chairman of Nakheel, a land reclamation company responsible for creating three islands, called The Palm Islands, which will increase Dubai s shoreline by about 520km.
The Palm Jumeirah is the smallest and first of the islands to be developed.
The Sunday Times is in possession of a guest list of high-wattage international names who will be part of the 2000 guests attending the celebrations, but has been asked to keep it under wraps.
However, it can be confirmed that guests include the world s highest paid talk-show host, a female R-B singer from America s foremost performing family, two Oscar award-winning African-American actors, a host of Bollywood and Middle Eastern stars, and royalty from several families including a member of the British royal family.
Kerzner has also acknowledged his close ties to South Africa by inviting good friends here to be part of this extraordinary occasion.
The guests are bound to be enthralled by the tableau of events, designed by celebrity party planner Colin Cowie, with signature dishes prepared by Michelin-starred chefs from the resort. They include Michel Rostang, who s been called one of Paris s most creative chefs, Italian Giorgio Locatelli of BBC Food and inflatable space shuttle Japanese celebrity chef Nobu Matsuhisa.
The night will see Australian pop songstress Kylie Minogue perform for the first time in the Middle East she was apparently paid 2-million for the gig followed by Bollywood actress Priyanka Chopra, who will rise from the stage as the goddess of Atlantis , setting in motion a sequence that will culminate in the fireworks spectacular.
Inzerillo, Kerzner s right-hand man since they were involved in Sun City 18 years ago, said this week that the launch parties were planned long before the current economic climate and reflected Kerzner s marketing approach of creating a worldwide event to generate awareness, rather than pumping millions into advertising. For the past 10 months, a core team of 50 experts was involved in the project, a number which recently mushroomed to nearly 800 staff, including 400 technicians who will be manning the fireworks spectacular.
Our brief was to create a big, unique event to demonstrate that Atlantis is the flagship, the first of more than 40 hotels to open there, he explained.
Inzerillo said it was not difficult to rope in the world s leading entertainers to be involved with the event because of Kerzner s reputation and space saver spare the high esteem in which his hotels were held among the glitterati.

Although the luxury resort hotel welcomed its first guests at the end of September Hollywood couples Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones recently stayed at the hotel Thursday marks its official opening.
The hotel, a joint venture between Kerzner Internationalthe Dubai state-owned company Istithmar World, has been enjoying a close to 90% occupancy rate.
That s a little ahead of our expectations, Kerzner said last week in Cape Town during a site visit for his One-Only development here. jacobsc sundaytimes.co.za

India Rejoices Over Moon Probe Landing

NEW DELHI: India yesterday rejoiced at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the countrys space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission.
A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moons south pole, said Indian Space Research Organisation spokesman B R Guruprasad.
The TV set-sized probe, painted in the green-white-and-orange colours of the Indian flag, made a precise-to-the-second landing on the lunar surface, the ISRO said.
Politicians across the spectrum buried their differences to hail the milestone in Indias space history in which the nation joins Russia, the US, Japan and the European Space Agency in successfully landing moon probes.
Today is a historic day for India, said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress Party. Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani called it an event to be recorded in golden letters.
Former president and rocket scientist A P J Abdul Kalam said the landing of the probe which coincided with the anniversary of the birth of Indias first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru will kindle a dream in children.
In 15 years I want to see an Indian on the moon, said Kalam, who conceived of the so-called moon impact probe, or MIP, and is popularly known in India as missile man.
The media was similarly ebullient. The tricolour has landed, trumpeted the Hindustan Times daily in a banner headline, referring to Indias flag. The Indian Express newspaper said: India touches the moon.
Indias first lunar mission began on October 22 when a rocket transported Chandrayaan-1 into space. Chandrayaan the Sanskrit word for moon craft is on a two-year orbital mission to provide a detailed map of the mineral, chemical and infrared space heater topographical characteristics of the moons surface.
The landing of the probe is a step towards landing an unmanned moon rover by 2012. ISRO also plans to launch satellites to study Mars and Venus.
Critics say India, which has hundreds of millions of people living in deep poverty, should not be embarking on a space race with starstruck regional powers like China and Japan.
But the country has been keen to display its scientific prowess and space saver spare claim a bigger slice of the global satellite business.
Not only has India put our national flag on the lunar surface, we have also emerged as a low-cost travel agency to space, ISRO chief Madhavan Nair said, referring to the space missions total $80mn price tag which is less than half spent on similar expeditions by other countries.
ISRO says its moon mission would help it achieve international brand recognition for India as a serious player in space.
As Indias economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth built on the nations high-tech sector into political and military clout. The moon mission comes just months after it finalised a deal with the United States that recognises India as a nuclear power, and leaders hope the mission will further enhance its prestige.
But while the celebrations conjured up images akin to that of the US flag unfurled on the moon by Apollo astronauts, Indias flag is most likely scattered over a wide swath of the moons Shackleton crater after the probe slammed into the surface at more than 5,000km per hour.
The violent landing was planned and Indian scientists hope to study the images and data sent back by the probe during its 25-minute descent to prepare for a future soft landing, ISROs Guruprasad said. It carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and inflatable space shuttle a mass spectrometer.
The video imaging system took pictures of the moons surface, while the altimeter measured the rate of descent of the probe and the mass spectrometer studied the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.
Guruprasad said the pictures that were released were raw images and that scientists had not yet analysed the information sent by the probe.
India began its space programme in 1963, developing its own satelliteslaunch vehicles to cut dependence on overseas agencies. It first staked its claim for a share of the global commercial launch market by sending an Italian satellite into orbit in 2007. In January, it launched an Israeli spy satellite. -Agencies

Openings Roundup: Dardanel, Draft Barn, Boqueria Soho

Dardanel: Salt crusted fish is the star of the reasonably priced seafood menu at this new midtown east restaurant (pictured), named for the strait that connects the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. As such, the high number of seafood dishes are complemented by Turkish classics like halvah pie. The fish is imported daily from the Mediterranean, and entrees include Brook Trout Casserole with grilled vegetables ($19); brick oven baked Black Sea anchovies with rice, pine nuts, currant and herbs stuffing served in a casserole ($19); and Char Grilled & Skewered Chicken or Lamb Adana ($16). Wines come from as far afield as Israel and Georgia, and the $5 desserts include Almond Macaroons and Baklava. Dardanel seats 65, and inflatable space shuttle is 'nautically themed.' 1071 First Avenue, (212) 888-0809
Draft Barn: Gowanus Lounge has the scoop and photos on this new beer mecca in South Slope. It's the sister bar of another Draft Barn in Bay Ridge, and jfk space center rumor has it the place features 200 different kinds of beer to chose from. A tipster writes: 'Its great. Nice, oak interior with a general draft haus style. They also have food (which isnt blowing the doors off anything) and space saver storage the owner told us hed be opening for brunch soon.' 3rd Avenue between 12th & 13th Streets
Boqueria Soho: This is the new Soho location of the beloved Chelsea tapas joint, named for the food market in Barcelona. And fans of the original will be glad to find a whole lot more elbow room hereplus WiFi for the antisocial! But the real highlight of the 2,300-square foot space is the open kitchen, which is surrounded by a 12-seat chefs counter available for walk-ins only. We checked it out opening night and have kudos for the salt cod and grilled octopus delicacies served up by executive chef Seamus Mullen. Another crowd-pleaser was the Cojonudo (bite-sized toast point with house-made chorizo and a sunny-side up quail egg). For lunch, try the selection of Bocatas (Spanish sandwiches), which include Bocata Jamon de Pato (house-made duck ham with fig jam and king oyster mushrooms). 171 Spring Street, (212) 343-4255
Also too: Check out our photo spreads on newcomers 10 DowningElsa, which is where Hanger Bar used to be, sniff. But at least the new place has a sewing machine turned into a beer tap!

Tales From The City Of Light

A series of short films builds towards one perfect example that captures the comedy and courage of existence


Paris, Je T Aime
Stars: Various French and American
Directors: Numerous

It s difficult enough to make a feature-length film, but what if your brief was to tell a five-minute story with the titular theme? That is, Paris, I love you.

And we re talking some big names here, like the Oscar-winning Coen brothers and Tom Tykwer (Perfume) with actors like Willem Dafoe, Natalie Portman, Juliette Binoche, Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant.

There are some films that stick to the traditional French charm of man-meets-woman, complete with accordion soundtrack; one that gives the Marcel Marceau tradition of mime a fresh and humorous twist; and some that are downright thin, such as the one starring the talented Maggie Gyllenhaal as a lonely, dope-smoking American star in Paris.

But it s the relatively younger generation of directors who really make an impression, with Gurinder Chadha exploring the possibilities of inter-religious love between a French boy and a Muslim girl, and South African-born director Oliver Schmitz (Hijack Stories) bringing all his themes fluidly and successfully together in Place des F tes.

In a very short space of time he manages to convey all the racism shown towards African workers, and their ability to hold onto their culture and to celebrate it regardless.

Gus van Sant (My Own Private Idaho) is the only one who takes the notion of gay Paree literally, while Wes Craven gets Oscar Wilde to help a struggling couple from beyond the grave. Vincenzo Natali gets Elijah Wood to show us that in Paris, even tourists and vampires can fall in love.

Alfonso Cuar n (Y Tu Mam Tambi n) does an attention-grabbing thing by shooting his entire short in one long, fluid shot of a couple walking along a night-time boulevard. Starring a breathy Nick Nolte, it even ends up with a nice little catch and a comic punch-line.

But the one story that towers above the rest is by Alexander Payne of Sideways fame. Carol (Margot Martindale) is a frump, a postal worker from Denver who decides to learn French.

She tells us about her life in the most horrendously accented but technically correct French voice-over, which is both hilarious and deeply touching, because here is a tourist with her moonbag, wandering the streets of Paris, wishing she could deliver post here and get to know its inhabitants.

Overlooking the city of love, she realises it might have been preferable to have someone to share it with, but this brave, ordinary woman does her thing and proves that Paris even has a place for someone as desperately lonely as her and us.

Not only is this a perfect example of the form, but it s probably better to have this collection on DVD so that you can skip some and pause to reflect on others. Neil Sonnekus

Special features include... none.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of the Crystal Skull
Stars: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Shia LeBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt
Director: Steven Spielberg


As far as Spielberg was concerned, the whole thing was over. But people wanted more, so producer and writer George Lucas brings us another adventure with all his and Spielberg s themes perfectly intact.
There are the period car races, the military conspiracy, the archaeologist looking in various boxes to reveal whatnot, the poor bloody Russians, the return of ET, even. And then, of course, a Lucasian spaceship. After all, if the titular skull, which is basically an elongated lump of see-through plastic with silvery gauze in it, can be magnetic for any alloy, then there must be some kind of extra-terrestrial shenanigans going on.
And don t think LaBeouf just becomes Jones s sidekick for no reason. He, in his rather poor imitation of Marlon Brando in talismanic cap atop ditto motorbike, is being groomed to take over from a somewhat creaking Ford. Still, it s all great fun as they go falling over impossibly high South American waterfalls and evade about a million gunshots a second. NS

Special features include... The Return of a Legend.


Black Books Season Three
Stars: Dylan Moran, Bill Bailey, Simon Pegg
Director: Martin Dennid
We all need a reason to laugh lately, so here s a great one. Enter Black Books, a messy bookstore run by cynical, moody Bernard Black (the hilarious, scruffy Moran) and his childlike (though bearded) assistant, Manny. Bernard hates everything while Manny is the eternal optimist.
They are joined by new-age hippie Fran to complete a trio of misfits who spend more time arguing and drinking wine than selling books. Bernard and Manny try to write a children s book, Fran destroys a hen party and Manny s parents come to visit. It s gleeful, absurdist British humour. Gareth Pike

Special features include... commentaries, outtakes.


Bill
Stars: Aaron Eckhart, Jessica Alba, Elizabeth Banks
Directors: Bernie Goldmann, Melisa Wallack
Eckhart is great when playing heroes or villains (or in the case of Dark Knight, both) but here he s a schlub and the result is a dawdling and utterly uninspiring comedy. Bill works for his father-in-law, is developing a one-pack boep and has an unloving wife who cheats on him.
No surprise, then, that a mid-life crisis ensues. It s triggered in part by the go-getterish positivism of his new friends, played by Alba and a precocious kid. Alba is gorgeous but still seems to be wondering if she belongs in front of the camera. It s been billed as another American Beauty but that s a reach. GP
Special features include... deleted scenes.


Before the Devil Knows You Re Dead
Stars: Ethan Hawke, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Albert Finney
Director: Sidney Lumet
Lumet s had some hits and misses, but at 83 he is back in top form with this sombre, engrossing family drama. Andy Hanson (Hoffman) and brother Hank (Hawke) are leading lives of quiet desperation Andy s got drug habits and Hank can t hold down a job.
They both need cash and come up with a simple plan to rob a jewellery store. To say more would be to expose the intricate plot, which starts with a bang, then rewinds in time to show how things can go horribly wrong.
While it s a little slow at times and space heater reviews Hawke is irritatingly shrill, the understated performances of Hoffman as his vacant older brother and damp crawl space Finney as their bitter dad are a joy to watch. GP
Special features include... none.


Death Proof / Planet Terror
Stars: Danny Trejo, Cheech Marin, Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodriguez, Josh Brolin, Kurt Russell
Directors: Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
Grindhouse was a specific genre of 60s and 70s exploitation films: sex, guns, cars and crawl space humidity monsters. Despite ham acting and shoddy production values, they developed a huge fan base, including Tarantino and Rodriguez, who revive the art form with this double-bill.
In Death Proof, Russell is a psycho intent on running over women, while in Planet Terror, McGowan must fight her way through zombie hell. Some will find it all rather crass and sexist, not to mention incredibly violent but both films (Terror in particular) are cleverly satiricalguiltily fun to watch. GP

Special features include... hilarious fake movie trailers.

Summit Ends...Bush On Summit...Fires...Protest | KXNet.com North ...

WASHINGTON (AP) World leaders have wrapped up a weekend financial summit in Washington with a vow to do whatever it takes to protect the global economic system. In a joint statement, space heater reviews the group of 20 leaders also endorsed a series of goals aimed at reviving the world economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) President George W. Bush says leaders at the world economic summit have made great strides toward adapting their individual financial systems 'to the realities of the 21st century.' He says today's agreement will help keep the financial meltdown from getting worse.
LOS ANGELES (AP) The mayor of Los Angeles says about 500 mobile homes have been destroyed by a fast-moving wildfire. There are no reports of injuries. The wind-driven blaze is one of three in Southern California that have shut down major freeways and forced the evacuations of thousands of people.
BOSTON (AP) From San Francisco to Chicago and Boston, gay rights supporters have been protesting the California vote that banned gay marriage there. They're urging supporters to keep up the fight for the right to wed. In Boston, buy space heater one sign cast the fight for gay marriage as the new civil rights movement, with the slogan: 'Gay is the new black.'

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) Space shuttle Endeavour's astronauts have been checking their ship for any damage from last night's launch. At least two pieces of debris were spotted in launch photos,engineers are trying to learn whether that, inflatable space shuttle or anything elsehit the ship.
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APNP 11-15-08 1542CST | save this article / add to your favorites list

NASA Prepares To Retire Space Shuttles

The anxiety of waiting for a space shuttle to land will soon be history for NASA. The US space agency will be retiring its fleet of space shuttles in the next two years, leading to a different kind of anxiety altogether how will it ferry its men and machines between earth and the International Space Station till the floating laboratory is completed? NASAs decision to ground the shuttle programme in 2010 came from a growing concern for crew safety and the mounting costs of keeping the shuttles flying. Though the shuttles offer the most flexible option, the accidents to Columbia and Challenger have put the programme under a cloud of doubt. NASA is not planning to extend the service for now though a slim possibility exists.
Meanwhile, the period of five to seven years from 2010 opens up a great deal of opportunity in space commerce, as many countries with space ambitions hope to outsource the ferry service. The possibility of making alot of money by operating a reliable module to fly astronauts to the ISS, a research facility currently being organised in the outer space, is encouraging countries like India and Japan to accelerate their research into the challenging realm of space exploration.
NASA is also encouraging private players to come up with space services, says astronaut Carl E Walz, the agencys director of Advanced Capabilities Division and head of Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. We see this as a chance to strengthen the bond with industriessomething like a venture capital initiative, Walz notes, talking to The New Indian Express at NASA headquarters in Washington. NASA will need an alternative mechanism in place till its Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle is ready for flights, he adds. Orion will borrow its shape from the capsules of the past but will feature the latest technology in computers, electronics, life support, propulsion and heat protection systems. It will be a conventional-looking vehicle. We are saying goodbye to the shuttle concept, says Walz, who has mastered in solid state physics from John Carroll University, Ohio.
Though the shape will remain veteran, the technology will be state-of-the-art. Orion will be similar in shape to the Apollo but significantly larger. The Apollo-style heat shield is the best understood shape for re-entering the earths atmosphere, especially when returning from the moon. We plan to send a man to the moon by 2020 to further the Lunar Network Programme of which India is also a signatory, the 53-year-old Walz says.
Till then, though, NASA admits that the retirement of the shuttles will pose a problem. We plan to address this issue through our international partners who have achieved or are achieving credible manned mission programmes, says Walz, a US Air Force colonel who is a veteran of four space flights, having logged as many as 231 days in space.
NASA has its eye on the Russian Soyuz capsule. There is already considerable cooperation between the two countries, covering large areas, especially the ISS. But the move to associate with Russia the US strongest competitor in space science has NASA think tanks divided. While there is a broad agreement to US-Russia joint flights in order to meet the deadline of the ISS, not many in NASA want the astronauts to fly with cosmonauts while carrying out exclusive assignments.
This leaves NASA in a dilemma as the manned mission programmes of other partners like the European Space Agency and Japan are yet to meet necessary parameters. We are also developing some commercial capability within the US involving private players. We are also looking into the concept of flying 100 per cent robotic missions, says Walz, who joined NASA in 1990.
About Indias manned mission ambitions, Walz says India is one country making steady progress. The Chandrayaan-I is a remarkable achievement and the ISRO needs to be congratulated. But we cannot comment till the manned mission programme is proved. NASA, however, is not against considering a partnership with India. There is a long way to go. We can look at it once the challenges are met. Anyway, we have a blanket pact covering the space interests of both countries with a special focus on future activity, he says.
In India, the possibility of using an ISRO capsule is still a seed of thought. What offers hope is that the Orion is a capsule concept very similar to the Indian manned vehicle.
ISROs crew module has a lot in common with the Orion. While NASA is designing its capsule to carry four people, ISROs concept is to accommodate three, with an option for a fourth traveller. But the salient feature of both capsules is the escape mode that can be activated during any phase of the launch.
A launch abort system atop Orion will be capable of pulling the spacecraft and its crew to safety in the event of an emergency on the launch pad or at any time during the ascent. Ditto with the ISROs capsule. And in both capsules, the decision to abort launch will be at the discretion of the traveller rather than of the ground crew.
While NASA plans to use the new generation Ares V rockets to launch Orion, India is looking at GSLV-Mk-III, a similar class of rocket, to catapult its capsule. But Orion is being designed for even deeper space missions and features capabilities that allow it to dock and undock with other vehicles in various orbits. NASAs plan to send a man to the moon best explains the adaptability of Orion.
The Orion flight will be preceded by the launch of a cargo vehicle that will deliver the earth-departure stage and the lunar module that will carry explorers on the last leg of the journey to the moons surface in a low-earth orbit. Orion will dock with the lunar module and the earth departure stage before propelling its journey to the moon.
Once in lunar orbit the four astronauts will use their lunar landing craft to travel to the moons surface while Orion stays in the lunar orbit. And on completion of the mission, the astronauts will return to the orbiting Orion using a lunar ascent module and will use the service module main engine to break out of lunar gravity and infrared space heater return home. After the re-entry, using a newly developed thermal protection system, parachutes will further slow Orions descent to earth, he says.
On whether the ISS will lose its relevance once the Lunar Network, conceived as a hopping point to reach deeper targets, is set up, Walz says, The two stations have different aims. While the fractional gravity on the moon makes it an ideal stepping stone, research and experiments in the zero-gravity ISS allow us to study various factors. We need to synthesise the risks to the human space programme. There are still gaps in our knowledge, we are trying to fill them. ISS experiments give us a list of ideas for installing counter-measures to such risk factors, he adds. A joint project of the US, Russia, Japan, Canada and space saver storage 11 European countries, the ISS, whose on-orbit construction began in 1998, will be a technology ground for future long-duration space missions.
Walz feels human presence will continue to play a role in spite of the great strides made in robotics and unpiloted expendable launch vehicle programmes. We see a need for both. Robotics has limitations; humans are still the most adaptable frame to any environment. Quality requirements can be updated and damp crawl space evaluated only when a man is flown, feels Walz, who has flown on Atlantis, Columbia, Discovery and Endeavorholds the endurance record of 196 days in space.
manojkdasepmltd.com

Obamas Ironic Temperament Is Awesome (Obvious) And Conservative ...

It's easy for me to choose my friends: My conversation style involves blurting out bizarre and enigmatic sentences, and anyone with the patience to put up with it is a friend of mine. (Call it argument by spaghetti : throw everything against the wall and see what sticks.) Case in point, this scene from the Fuddruckers near the Chinatown metro in DC:
The problem with the liberals is that they can't do irony. The hell? They're the ones who love it to death. It's because they don't understand loyalty.
Miraculously, my interlocutor knew me well enough to follow what I meant, but here's a little elucidation. In the liberal understanding of loyalty, I am a Democrat (or whatever) exactly to the extent that I agree with their platform; if loyalty ever demanded that I do something contrary to my own opinion, that would be a violation of conscience. Consequently, I can never be ironic about a party, country, person, or institution I love: either I agree with them, in which case irony would be inappropriate, or I disagree, in which case I should voice my dissent in plain terms. Why put forward the pretense of allegiance when the best way to show my loyalty is straightforward criticism?
Irony exists in the space between what I believe and what I claim to believe, and damp crawl space liberalism destroys that space. If Obama has a sense of humor about his politics (not to mention his cult of personality), it goes to show that he wants to open that space back up and buy space heater make the world safe once again for pragmatic idealists and jfk space center idealistic pragmatists.
All of this is by way of saying that James said something interesting when he suggested that an ironic temperament could be a twist on Rortyanism after all with real humility forced into the private sphereirony made its only permissible public surrogate. James eyes this New Rortyianism with suspicion, but I'm pleased as Punch.
UPDATE: A relevant passage from Jim Scott in which he argues that poor people who've been brainwashed into really believing in their oppressors' ideology are more likely to revolt than those who regard the enslaving ideology as manipulative bunk (i.e. false consciousness doesn't prevent rebellion but, oddly enough, promotes it):

Exceptionally Poor

Stevo and Phil Clarke started the inquests after watching England crash out of the Rugby League World Cup at the semi-final stage.
A 32-22 defeat to New Zealand in Brisbane on Saturday signalled the end of a disappointing campaign for Tony Smith's side, who continued their poor form with a string of handling errors -17 in total.
England gifted the Kiwis three of their six tries and Sky Sports expert Clarke was at a loss to explain why experienced Super League players were making so many errors
He said: 'What's so strange for me is that when you think of Tony Smith's coaching last year with Great Britain they were fantastic.
'They played against France this year and they looked like a team - every player playing better than they did week-in week-out.
'That hasn't been the case out here. If anything we've seen 50 per cent of the skill and ability of players.
'I know that they're playing against better opposition but I still don't think that they've performed and it's so strange because they've gone from being so good to so bad in such a short space of time.'
Poor
Stevo delivered a damning verdict on England's campaign, saying performances were littered with far too many mistakes.
'The performance in the entire World Cup has been exceptionally poor apart from a few exceptions,' he said.
'It's mainly due to the fact that we've played Papua New Guinea in the first game and we were very poor then. Super League standard should be sufficient to get over the top of a country like Papua New Guinea.
'We got walloped by the Australians and we had the game won last week when everybody said it didn't really count.
'But the strategy to me was all wrong. When you come up with so many errors, that has been our problem tonight. Forget about the fact that our defence was a lot more solid, it was.
'But we didn't see the ball swing out wide to the wingers on the New Zealand side as we had done last week. The skill factor on both sides was completely different, they new how to control the game, I thought Nathan Fien was outstanding yet again - his kicking game was far superior to what we produced on the night.
'Again the forwards worked very, very hard. Martin Gleeson was outstanding, he put his body on the line time and time again - not only with ball in hand in attack, but also there was defensive effort as well.
'But you can not eliminate the most glaring thing about this game tonight - 17 errors. That's 17 mistakes and of those 17 I think 15 were probably unforced. You can never expect to win a game, never mind try to get to a World Cup final with a stat like that.'
Raise
Clarke called for an inquiry on England's return home and said something must be done to raise our skill levels so that we can match the other major rugby league powers.
'I think there are about 20 reasons why New Zealand and Australia are currently better than England,' he continued.
'Primarily the competition they play in week-in week out is more intense and that probably helps.
'Some of our players weren't quite good enough, there was a fatigue aspect. We once defended 18 tackles on our own line and on the 18th tackle they scored through a kick out wide.
'That's an amazing effort from England defensively but I think in addition to the errors, we saw a massive difference in the passing accuracy and the skill level between Australia and New Zealand compared to England.
'That ultimately was the most glaring difference between the sides. I think we really have to look at skill acquisition when we get back home to England and really see what needs to be done and what can be done to improve at that level.
'I'm not saying go back to the drawing board but we need to have a really accurate look at the state of our game and try and improve it in certain aspects.
'I think physically we are able to match them, mentally we are probably similar, tactically I don't think there's much of a difference - I wouldn't blame the coach.
'It's technically where there's a difference. Their kicking is far more accurate, dangerous and jfk space center deadly. It's the core skills at which they're better.'
Mentality
Stevo said England approached the tournament with the wrong mentality due to the format whereby the three key nations were virtually assured of a last-four place if they beat Papua New Guinea.
He said we didn't start the competition with enough intensity - and ultimately paid the price.
He said: 'I think we were lulled into this competition by the fact we were virtually handed a semi-final berth.
'They knew all three of us - Australia, New Zealand and buy space heater England were supposed to beat Papua New Guinea so maybe psychologically we thought these games before really didn't matter.
'I would have liked England to have played Australia in the very first game so that the lads could say: 'This is going to be tough.'
'We didn't have to wait until the second game. We nearly got caught with our pants down against Papua New Guinea and damp crawl space we could have actually been nowhere near a semi-final berth.
'I think psychologically - we've had it from the coach himself - that we were building slowly, slowly but surely.
'We were in the semi-final, we still had that second chance. Well we don't have that any more.
'We can't rely on thinking that it's going to be easywe'll build for it. You've got to start how you mean to finish.'

New Community To Be Unveiled On Fort Myers Beach

The developers of Fort Myers Beach's newest resort condominium will conduct an open house to acquaint the public with the new location.
The event will feature a cookout with free hamburgers, hot dogs and refreshments, live entertainmenthard-hat tour os Harbour House at the Inn, a mixed-us 34-unit resort condomiinium located adjacent to the Matanzas Inn. Harbour House at the Inn is the first of three phases planned.
The Harbour House site had been the location of the Dockside Sports Pub since 1999. The developers plan to reopen the pub in a newupdated space within the Harbour House building.

Activists Antsy At Ant Farm

FORGET BATTERY hens and factory farmed pigs, animal rights activists have turned their attentions to the plight of the humble ant.
They are worried that a new space-age ant farm being marketed here as an ideal gift for children will leave its tiny inhabitants feeling blue and misunderstood.
Save Animals From Exploitation wants the ant farm sold for $36.95 at upmarket Christchurch department store Ballantynes and Nature Discoveries stores around the country withdrawn from sale.
The clear tank allows children to watch ants as they live, work and space heater reviews tunnel their way through a luminous blue gel, apparently based on a Nasa space shuttle experiment.
Its manufacturer claims the gel is nutritious and non-toxic for ants, but Safe is concerned the toy is anti-educational'' and does not teach children to respect animals in their natural environment.
The other thing that is disturbing is that it is taking ants and turning them into commodities or disposable items,'' says Safe education officer Nichola Kriek. We will be writing to Ballantynes and asking them to remove this toy from their shelves.''
The ant farm is marketed as AntWorks and is touted as an educational toy by its manufacturers. They say AntWorks is based on a 2003 space shuttle experiment to study animal life in space and to test how ants successfully tunnel in microgravity.
Kriek says the toy sends children the wrong message and deprives the ants of the opportunity to live a fulfilling, natural life.
All they can do is burrow so it must be frustrating for them. And watching ants burrow through luminous blue gel isn't going to teach children anything at all about animals in their natural environment. It doesn't show them the intricacies of normal ant behaviour and it certainly doesn't teach them to respect animals in their natural environment.''
If parents wanted to help their children connect with nature, they would be better off giving them a magnifying glass and sending them out into the garden, Kriek says.
Ants aren't that difficult to come across and jfk space center not that difficult to study.''
Ballantynes Christchurch shop manager Philip Richards says he is aware of one complaint being received about the product from a customer worried about ants escaping from the unit, but there had been no complaints laid on animal welfare grounds.
We're always interested in getting feedback about products and we encourage our customers to make their views known,'' Richards says.
If Safe did put its concerns in writing he would consider their arguments.
Ballantynes has stocked AntWorks for about 10 days but the toy, recommended for children aged sixoveris also available at most Nature Discoveries stores around the country. Ants are not included.

Goff S Labour Of Love

PHIL GOFF is grinning as though he had won an election. He's just inherited the worst job in parliament , leadership of the opposition. The outgoing minister of overseas trade, known for his robotic appearances before the nation's media, bounces around his Beehive suite. Ten brown boxes of his stuff are stacked in a corner, waiting to be taken away. He can't contain his glee.

Labour has lost, but Goff has won. At 55, he is finally leader of the party. In politics I firmly believe you need to control your emotions, he insists, speaking of other matters. Where have we seen this middle-aged elation before? On Saturday night, on the face of John Key, 47. The inner boy bursts out and grabs his prize.
There is an edge of nuttiness among the bureaucrats in the Beehive today, like school on break-up day. It's the joy of escape. A group that has just arrived from the departing PM's farewell morning tea laughs among the boxes. Out of chaos comes order, says one official. A bit of chaos is always welcome.
Goff has seen three Labour defeats during his time, and this is easily the best one. In 1975 and 1990, I remember the anger that existed out in the electorate on both those occasions. I didn't detect the anger this time. Labour won 34% of the vote, far from a massacre, and a solid base on which to rebuild. And it had moved quickly to change its leadership and start again.
But National moved even faster. In a week, Key seems to have stitched up a deal with both Act and the Maori Party. When Act leader Rodney Hide strutted and bellowed as though he had won the election, Key never stopped smiling. This week his cabinet will be sworn in and he flies to Peru for talks about the world economic crisis.
Can Labour ever catch up?

PEOPLE EXPECTED that a government once elected would rule for more than one term, Goff says. I don't believe that should be taken for granted, he says cautiously. National had built up high expectations, but it was entering difficult economic times when it would be hard to meet those expectations.
National and the Maori Party run real risks with their deal, he says. In bad times, the Tory instinct was to slash social services. That would affect Maori most.
If the Maori Party hitches its wagon to the National Party, and the National Party delivers what it traditionally does in tougher economic times to the people that are the most vulnerable, there will be a sense of disillusionment.
National faces the same problem with pakeha.
We had this curious phenomenon of the National Party embracing a whole range of critical initiatives that the government had taken. In defence, the air combat wing [abolished by Labour] suddenly they didn't want an air combat wing either, after saying that we would leave the country defenceless and we were bludging on our mates, says the outgoing defence minister.
The Working for Families package, you'll recall John Key saying This is communism by stealth' and suddenly it was a good thing for the country! What the National Party very cleverly did was to say, These things Labour has done are really popular, why should we be seen to be continuing to oppose them? '
Victoria University political scientist Jon Johansson says: The space between the two parties is so small Key in my estimation has signed up to over 90% of Labour's policy inheritance that really [the battle] is going to come down to which party provides the most competent government.
Johansson says the new Labour lineup includes many competent and experienced ministers. This is the strongest opposition to confront a new government since 1990. Goff was a competent politician with a strong intellect who could lead the party to victory in 2011 if National bungled.
But he will also need to learn to keep on message because he tends to waffle on too much . His stolid public manner also needed to change.
People who have met him socially say that he is far more of a personality than we would ever think from that public demeanour in his ministerial role. He needs to show that personality, Johansson says, especially against someone like Key, who comes across as such a friendly figure .
Goff does tend to bang on, and sometimes it's hard for the journalist to get a question in. Fortunately the politician has a rhetorical habit of asking the questions himself, and then providing the answers ( Do I think that's wrong? Yes I do. And why do I think that's wrong? Well... ).
But he bridles at the accusation that, as one journalist put it last week, he is robotic in public. Of course, says the former justice minister, if he is discussing serious issues he will look serious.
Will I, when I'm dealing with justice issues, fix you with a steely glare and say this, this and this? Yeah, I will. He could hardly sit there smiling sweetly while discussing this appalling person that murdered his mistress and cut her up into little pieces .
But nobody who had worked with him would say he was robotic, although I have learned various things. I mean anger in politics very rarely serves your purpose. I control my emotions, actually.
He grew up in the [era of] Vietnam and Pinochet and the apartheid regime. Robotic? Christ, I've never been robotic on any of those issues. I actually am sort of irritated that I would be accused of it because it bears no resemblance to what I am and what I've done and how I've done it .
The politician is far from robotic today. Perhaps he just needs to show more of the bubbly inner Goff.

SO WHAT did Labour do wrong? Certainly the anti-smacking bill hurt it, he says. People resented the idea itself a misconception that suddenly you were a criminal if you smacked your children. And I understand why they resented that. I'm a parent, my children are now all in their 20s, considerably fitter and stronger, but as a parent did I ever smack my children? Yes. Did I feel particularly proud of it? No. Did I think sometimes it was justified and was it effective? Yes.
However, he said, the law had not criminalised parents and most parties in parliament, including National, had supported it.
Labour's decision to stick with Winston Peters had also damaged the government. But Helen Clark had had to stick by her minister while the official inquiries into the controversial party donations went ahead. You're innocent until proven guilty. How would the prime minister have looked had she sacked Winston and then found that the Serious Fraud Office, the police and the audit office had found that he committed no offence?
GOFF IS disappointed but not bitter that some voters did not understand what Labour had done for them. A man asked him at a street corner meeting, What are you doing for us? And I said, Have you got kids?' Yep.' Do you get Working for Families?' Yeah'. How much do you get, come on, tell us how much are you going to get?' I'm getting $91 a week.' I said, Doesn't that make a difference in your living standard? And do you realise that if we were just to do tax cuts we couldn't have delivered you that amount?'
And there wasn't an understanding of that.
Still, says Goff, the voters by definition are always right. And in any case, everyone takes it for granted that their living standards would continue to rise, year after year. It's like when you're in trade negotiations, says the government's trade negotiator. You offer something, the other side pockets it and then asks: What else do you have?
Law and order was an issue for Auckland voters, he says, including those in his electorate. I was never able to counter the perception, and particularly in many of our ethnic communities, that there had been a massive increase in criminal activity. The statistics don't show that, but the perception was absolutely true.
Goff has a beef about the media in this. How often was it reported that there had been a massive increase in the numbers of criminals in jail? Was it ever reported that Labour had cut prison escapes by 84%? That there had been a two-thirds reduction in illicit drug use in prisons? No, it was never reported. Did the media say that the parole laws had been toughened and that now 71% of applications were being declined? I said it time and again. Anthony, it was never reported.
The funny thing was yesterday I was written up in the paper as being a hardliner on law and order. Nobody ever wrote me up that way before the election itself. In the debate over the issue, I found that kind of ironic .
In fact, there have been dozens of stories in the newspapers describing Goff's tough line on law and order. When confronted with this, Goff replies that the people on the doorstep didn't see him that way. Every night on television there were long reports about violent crime and damp crawl space the impression of the electorate was that law and review space heaters order was out of control .
Still, there might be an upside. National, after all, faces the same set of problems.
National had created the perception that it would deal to crime, but Goff says there is no silver bullet on this issue. And if they fail to deliver and space saver storage fail to change that perception then they will suffer the electoral consequences likewise .
What can Labour do about the perception that it is old and jaded and that National is fresh and new? Goff points to the 13 new and exciting MPs on Labour's side. If you're looking for old, tired, discredited people, have a look at who might come back on the first two benches of the National cabinet.
He is exasperated by the notion that Key represents generational change . There are only eight years between Keyhim.
Eight years is the difference between siblings within a family rather than a generational one. I'm not much older, but I am much more experienced.
But is that how the voters will see him? And will that do the trick?

Work Release Program Moves Downtown

ADRIAN, Mich. -
Participants in an alternative sentencing program moved downtown Friday, nearly 10 months after a judge cleared the way. Workers wrapped up Lenawee Development Corp.'s move to the remodeled basement of the former Adrian Public Schools administrative building on North Winter Street by the end of the day. Seeing the relocation take place was a relief to owner James Daly, who battled for city government approval to use the building after downtown business owners opposed his plans last year. The work release program Daly started seven years ago provides an alternative to jail when judges sentence non-violent offenders who want to keep their jobs while serving time. Counseling and substance abuse treatment services are also provided to participants. Daly said he purchased the building after being assured he could relocate Lenawee Development Corp. from a rented building in an industrial area on East Michigan Street. The city's planning commission, however, voted 3-2 to deny him a permit after downtown business owners complained program participants would create problems in the area. Some city officials worried the facility would discourage business development in the downtown. Daly appealed to circuit court, and jfk space center a visiting judge reversed the planning commission's ruling after a hearing in January. Remodeling work started soon after the court decision. The results were ready to show off to local court officials and the public on Wednesday. There are dormitory-style bedrooms as well as space for classes and counseling sessions. There are 22 security cameras located throughout the facility that allow Lenawee Development staff to monitor and record activities by residents. Probation officers at the judicial building are also to have access to the video system. Twenty-two people serving time in the program made the move Friday after workers finished hauling and space heater reviews setting up beds, kitchen equipment, office furniture and other gear. There is room for as many as 40 residents, Daly said, although Lenawee Development has not had more than 35 participants at a time since it began. What Daly is doing with Lenawee Development is helpful in avoiding crowding at the county jail, said city administrator Dane Nelson. He said he also expects Daly will operate the program without any problems. The location is the only objection the city had to Daly's plans, he said. 'My personal view is still that it's not the best location for that institution,' Nelson said. But a court overruled the city on that issue, he said,the city is cooperating with that decision. Daly said he has as much at stake as other downtown business owners in making sure the residential facility is run well. Two upper floors of the building are leased to business tenants. A Bear Claw coffee shop franchise is also to soon locate in the building, space saver storage renamed Courthouse Commons. His tenants would not tolerate disturbances or problems with Lenawee Development residents, Daly said. 'The people who are here are volunteers,' Daly said. They understand they would be in jail, he saidif not for the opportunity to take part in the work release program.

PHOTOS: Copperhead Soldiers Increase Area

FORWARD OPERATING BASE FALCON, Iraq - Staff Sgt. Jerod Childs, an infantryman from Texas City, space heater reviews Texas, review space heaters hand delivers an Iraqi toddler to his mother, during a security patrol in the Risalah community of the Rashid district in southern Baghdad. Childs, a squad leader responsible for two teams of infantry dismounts in an armor company, took the baby, who had wandered into the streets, back to his mother. The Soldiers of 'Copperhead' Company expanded their operations into the Risalah community of southern Baghdad's Rashid districtwhen they assumed responsibility for the battle space as 'surge' forces begin to redeploy.

India Celebrates Planting Its Flag On Moon

India celebrates planting its flag on moon
By GAVIN RABINOWITZ 16 minutes ago
NEW DELHI (AP) India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar mission.
A probe sent late Friday from the orbiting mother spacecraft took pictures and gathered other data India needs for a future moon landing as it plummeted to a crash-landing at the moon's south pole, said Indian Space Research Organization spokesman B.R. Guruprasad.
The box-shaped probe was painted with India's saffron, white and green flag, sparking celebrations in the country that is striving to become a world power.
'The tricolor has landed,' the Hindustan Times said in a banner headline, while The Asian Age proclaimed 'India is big cheese.'
As India's economy has boomed in recent years, it has sought to convert its newfound wealth built on the nation's high-tech sector into political and review space heaters military clout. The moon mission comes just months after it finalized a deal with the United States that recognizes India as a nuclear power, and leaders hope the mission will further enhance its prestige.
'This momentous achievement shall be etched in the history of India as a grateful tribute to our scientific community for their resolute efforts to take India to a global leadership position,' said Sonia Gandhi, head of the ruling Congress party.
To date only the U.S., Russia, the European Space Agency, Japan and China and now India have sent missions to the moon.
But while the celebrations conjured up images akin to that of the U.S. flag unfurled on the moon by Apollo astronauts, India's flag is most likely scattered over a wide swath of the moon's Shackleton crater after the probe slammed into the surface at more than 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) per hour.
The violent landing was planned and Indian scientists hope to study the images and jfk space center data sent back by the probe during its 25-minute descent to prepare for a future 'soft' landing, Guruprasad told The Associated Press. It carried a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and damp crawl space a mass spectrometer.
The video imaging system took pictures of the moon's surface, while the altimeter measured the rate of descent of the probe and the mass spectrometer studied the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.
Guruprasad said the pictures that were released were raw imagesthat scientists had not yet analyzed the information sent by the probe.
It was the first stage of a two-year mission aimed at measuring not only the surface of the moon, but what lies beneath. The probe was one of 11 payloads on the spacecraft Chandrayaan-1. Chandrayaan means 'moon craft' in ancient Sanskrit.
India plans to follow the mission by landing a rover on the moon in 2011 and, eventually, with a manned space program, though this has not been authorized yet.