Company also plans dolls of Mary and Moses at start, with dolls able to recite Bible verses.
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A talking Jesus doll is due to go on sale in May, along with versions of Moses, the Virgin Mary and David, as a teddy bear maker tries to find a market with churches and religious families.
The foot-tall Jesus doll will be able to recite five Biblical verses at the push of button on its back, while the Moses doll will recite the Ten Commandments. The Mary doll will recite a long Bible verse.
Joshua Livingston, one of the original founders of Valencia, Calif.-based Beverly Hills Teddy Bear Co. has returned to the company to head its new Biblical doll unit, One2Believe. In the past, Beverly Hills Teddy Bear mostly manufactured bears and other plush toys on a contract basis for other retailers.
This will be the company's first attempt to sell direct to consumers via the Internet, Livingston said.
He said that the idea for the religious dolls has been a long-time desire of David Socha, who is the other founder of the teddy bear company. The company has hired a marketing firm with expertise reaching out to churches and church schools to generate sales, Livingston said.
"In the beginning we don't feel it'd be right to put it in Toys R Us and be next to a Barbie or a Bratz," he said.
The company expects to sell about 50,000 of the Biblical dolls by the end of the year, with the Jesus doll -- not surprisingly -- expected to be the top seller. It hopes to also bring out an Esther doll by the end of the year and hopes to have other Biblical character dolls introduced in future years.
The line of Biblical dolls is known as Messengers of Faith.
The dolls will cost $24.99, although Livingston said there will be discounts for churches as well as free shipping for those who buy three or more of the dolls. They will have hand-sewn period clothing, with Jesus wearing sandals and veils for the Virgin Mary. They will also have movable limbs and hands that can grip objects.
While Socha is Catholic and has been active in giving time and money to church groups for years, Livingston is Jewish. He said it doesn't seem strange to him selling the Jesus doll, though.
"I have a very open mind and believe people can have their own beliefs and religion," he said.
By FRANCIS X. CLINES New York Times April 8, 2005
The 1,130 soup kitchen guests, as they're respectfully called, began gathering outside the church doors an hour early, curling around the corner in a long line to await a free main meal - their safety-net highlight in another day of being down and out, part of the working poor, or surviving somewhere in between.
The repast, at 2,500 calories a serving, steamed aromatically: chicken à la king, rice, buttered spinach, peaches. A staff member in the nave of the building, the Church of the Holy Apostles cued dozens of volunteer helpers: "Ladies and gentlemen, it's showtime. Thanks be to God." And from Ninth Avenue in Manhattan, the diners flowed in.
The sight of masses of Americans gratefully chowing down on free food is indeed a show, an amazingly discreet one that is classified not as outright hunger but as "food insecurity" by government specialists who are busy measuring the growing lines at soup kitchens and food pantries across the nation. There were 25.5 million supplicants regularly lining up in 2002; they were joined by 1.1 million more the next year. And even more arrive as unemployment and other government programs run out.
Much as the diners at Holy Apostles peered ahead to see what was being dished up at the steam tables, soup kitchen administrators across the country are currently eying governments' trilevel budget season and wincing at all the politicians' economizing vows. They know that "budget tightening" eventually means longer lines outside their doors.
"It's a desperate thing," said the Rev. Bill Greenlaw, director of the Holy Apostles charity, one of the largest among 1,298 kitchens and pantries regularly helping more than one million residents in New York City. "Every level of government seems to have the same mantra, that these programs are vulnerable.
"We're bracing that all three levels of government are coming down at the same time."
Most immediately, food charities are pleading against further cuts in the federal emergency food and shelter program, which directly fights hunger. Last year, 48 soup kitchens closed in the city as supplies were exhausted, and hundreds of others reported to be making do by cutting back on daily portions.
Beyond that, however, administrators know that the myriad of severe program cuts looming in Washington - for everything from low-income wage supplements to health care spending for poor people - can only lead to further cuts down the revenue food chain in statehouses and city halls and, finally, longer lines of people silently begging for food.
The budget debate in the Republican-run Capitol presents a Hobson's choice between the House's five-year, $30 billion-plus in program cuts for the poor and the Senate's $2.8 billion in cuts - one-tenth the pain, but focused most heavily on nutrition programs. The compromise cuts are likely to lean toward the House, levying more than their fair budget share on the poor, even as President Bush and the G.O.P. leaders argue that still more upper-bracket tax cuts are somehow justifiable.
So Father Greenlaw can only turn to pleading for even more charity from the city's better-off residents.
According to a survey by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, seven out of 10 of the city's pantries and kitchens are "faith based," using the terminology of the Bush administration. But their besieged directors overwhelmingly warn that government, not charities, must take the lead if poverty is to be properly confronted.
"We're faith-based by the old rules, not the new ones," Father Greenlaw carefully noted. "We'll be feeding more guests unless and until society decides we don't have to tolerate a huge underclass in our cities."
In the meantime, the pungent scene in the nave at Holy Apostles is unabashedly hunger-based. People are being fed, not proselytized, at dining tables where the pews used to be. A midday hubbub of satiation rises up, plain as the pipes of the church organ, as the line lengthens outside.
By The Associated Press
04.13.05
CHICAGO —The Secret Service sent agents to investigate a college art gallery exhibit of mock postage stamps, one depicting President George W. Bush with a gun pointed at his head.
The exhibit, "Axis of Evil: The Secret History of Sin," opened last week at Columbia College in Chicago. It features stamps designed by 47 artists addressing issues such as the Roman Catholic sex-abuse scandal, racism and the war in Iraq.
None of the artists is tied to the college.
Secret Service spokesman Tom Mazur would not say yesterday whether the inquiry had been completed or whom the Secret Service had interviewed, but he said no artwork had been confiscated.
The investigation began after authorities received a call from a Chicago resident.
"We need to ensure, as best we can, that this is nothing more than artwork with a political statement," Mazur said.
Two federal agents arrived at the exhibit's opening night on April 7, took photos of some of the works and asked for the artists' contact information, said CarolAnn Brown, director of the Glass Curtain Gallery.
Brown said the agents were most interested in Chicago artist Al Brandtner's work titled "Patriot Act," which depicted a sheet of mock 37-cent red, white and blue stamps showing a revolver pointed at Bush's head.
Brandtner did not return a call to his design studio yesterday.
The exhibit's curator, Michael Hernandez de Luna, said the inquiry "frightens" him.
"It starts questioning all rights, not only my rights or the artists' rights in this room, but questioning the rights of any artist who creates — any writer, any visual artist, any performance artist. It seems like we're being watched," he said.
Last spring, Secret Service agents in Washington state questioned a high school student about anti-war drawings he did for an art class, one of which depicted Bush's head on a stick.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld can now also be called bushi, cheneyi and rumsfeldi, or simply slime-mold beetles.
Two former Cornell University entomologists named three species in the genus Agathidium after the U.S. leaders, Cornell announced on Wednesday.
Quentin Wheeler and Kelly Miller christened 65 new species of slime-mold beetles, named for the fungi-like molds on which they feed, which they discovered after collecting thousands of specimens for a study of their evolution and classification.
Wheeler, who after 24 years as a professor of entomology and plant biology at Cornell is now the keeper and head of entomology at the Natural History Museum in London, said the U.S. leaders were being honored for having "the courage of their convictions."
The bushi beetle is found in southern Ohio, North Carolina and Virginia; the rumsfeldi is from Oaxaca and Hidalgo in Mexico, and the cheneyi is known from Chiapas, Mexico, Wheeler said.
ROME (Reuters) - Cardinals start choosing a new pope next week, but the successor to John Paul will be all sewn up well before the secret conclave opens.
In a cobblestoned street behind Rome's Pantheon, tailor Filippo Gammarelli is adding the final stitches to an item that Monday's meeting will not start without -- the white vestments the new pope will wear when he first appears to the world.
Because Gammarelli has no clue who that pope will be, he is making three versions of the silk and wool outfit, in small, medium and large, to clothe the most lean or corpulent cardinal.
"We deliver the three sets to the Vatican before the conclave and that is the last we hear about it until the new pope appears on the balcony of St. Peter's," Gammarelli, the fifth-generation of this famous tailoring family, told Reuters.
"The nuns make any temporary alterations but we go back to the Vatican the day after to fit the vestments properly."
Gammarelli's is probably the world's most elite personal tailor. Its tiny door, set back on a cobblestone square, has never lowered itself to taking orders for an English earl's shooting tweeds or a tuxedo for a U.S. billionaire.
Since its founding in 1798, the tiny shop, piled high with damask silk bolts, has restricted its services to the highest echelons of the Roman Catholic Church. Its trade is chasubles and miters, stoles and lace surplices, Roman collars and cardinal red socks, packed thick into its dark wood cupboards.
"If we diversify too much we are simply not able to guarantee the quality to our customers," said the sprightly 63-year-old whose family has numbered five popes among its former clients, including John Paul.
An undelivered zucchetto, or skullcap, for the dead Polish Pontiff sits on a red silk stole in the window out of respect.
By the end of this week, it will be briefly replaced with the three sets of papal vestments, wide enough for Milan's papal pretender Dionigi Tettamanzi and narrow enough for his leaner rival Camillo Ruini.
"We would not even expand into nun's clothes, their requirements are completely different and, anyway, they are very handy with a needle themselves," Gammarelli said.
PRESTIGIOUS
Given its select appeal and the falling numbers of European clergy, Gammarelli's is usually quiet and its all-male staff are often left twiddling their thumb needles.
But the papal passing has brought not only the vestments commission but a crowd of cardinals and archbishops taking the opportunity of the funeral to do some shopping.
On a recent afternoon, Spain's Cardinal Antonio Maria Rouco Varela perused shelves of chasubles embroidered with vine leaves while young priests came in from the street to kiss his ring.
English bishops bought shoes, a newly-appointed U.S. archbishop came in for a fitting. A delegation from Gabon spent several thousand euros on chasubles in a rainbow of colors. A cardinal's red biretta hat alone costs 35 euros ($45).
"I cannot tell you whether it is the best as I would need to compare all the papal tailors, but it is the most prestigious," said Bishop Mathieu Madega Lebouankehan of Gabon's Port Gentil.
For Gammarelli, only one thing could sour the mood.
"If the new pope has his own tailor we would not be able to serve this pontificate. We pray that won't be," he said.
By Candy Sagon
Washington Post Staff Writer
C'mon, admit it. You eat Twinkies. You love 'em.
Maybe you feel a little guilty about it, but you're not alone. Americans spent $47 million on them in the past 12 months. That's right. The junk food we love to ridicule.
We joke that they're made from so many chemicals that they'll last forever. We sneer about how college students dropped one from a six-story building and it was barely dented. We shake our heads at how one guy used them as a defense in a famous murder trial.
And yet despite it all, Hostess makes 500 million of them every year. And sales are increasing, according to Information Resources Inc., a Chicago firm that tracks retail sales and trends.
This month, the little cream-filled, yellow spongecake celebrates its 75th birthday -- and no, it's not because the same ones have been on the shelf for that long. That's just one of the urban myths surrounding the snack cakes that were invented in 1930.
Back then, James Dewar, manager of Chicago's Continental Bakery, wanted to find another use for his company's shortcake pans. He decided to fill the small, oblong cakes with a banana-cream filling and name them after the "Twinkle Toe" shoes he saw advertised on a billboard in St. Louis. Banana cream-filled Twinkies -- selling two for a nickel -- debuted as part of the Hostess baked-goods line. During World War II, when there was a banana shortage, the filling flavor changed to vanilla.
By the 1950s, Twinkies had become a school lunchbox staple. In 1999, President Bill Clinton and the White House Millennium Council selected the Twinkie to be preserved in the nation's millennium time capsule, calling it an enduring American icon.
Nutritionists scoff at them for being fatty and sugary, but that doesn't keep Hostess from turning out about 1,000 per minute. And just in case you wondered exactly how that happens, the cakes are baked for 10 minutes, then the cream filling is injected through three holes in the top, which is browned from baking. The cake is flipped before packaging, so the rounded yellow bottom becomes the top.
The Twinkie factory is still in Chicago, which also happens to be the American city with the highest per capita consumption of Twinkies. Chicagoans who want their Twinkies gussied up can go to comfort-food restaurant Kitsch'n for Twinkie Tiramisu. Or they can get a fat infusion at hot dog shop Swank Frank, which sells those state fair favorites, deep-fried Twinkies.
The cakes' sturdiness and longevity have led to the myth, say Hostess officials, that Twinkies have a shelf life measured in years, even decades. Roger Bennatti, a science teacher at George Stevens Academy in Blue Hill, Maine, kept one perched atop his chalkboard for 30 years. "It's rather brittle, but if you dusted it off, it's probably still edible," he told the Associated Press when he retired last year.
In reality, Twinkies' shelf life is more like 25 days, says Theresa Cogswell, who calls herself the Twinkie guru and is vice president for research and development at Interstate Bakeries Corp., the parent company of Hostess. She admits she got a good laugh out of the 30-year-old Twinkie story but says she wouldn't want to eat one quite that old. "You can eat older Twinkies, but they're just not as good as when they're fresh. Then they're awesome."
Still, a 25-day shelf life is pretty long. That's because Twinkies contain no dairy-based ingredients that could quickly go bad. Twinkies are basically flour, sugar (three kinds of it), oil, eggs and chemicals (mainly preservatives and stabilizers). They're 150 calories each, about a third of that from fat. Cogswell doesn't think that's so bad. "There's no bad foods -- just bad quantities," she says.
Lewis Browning, a retired milk-truck driver, has been eating one or two Twinkies a day for 64 years. "Had one for breakfast this morning with a banana and a glass of milk," he says in a phone interview from his home south of Indianapolis. The 22,000 he's eaten have earned him an appearance on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" and a lifetime supply of Twinkies from Hostess.
A year ago, Browning was in a hospital intensive-care unit with pneumonia. "My wife asked the doctor if she could bring me some Twinkies. He said it wouldn't hurt me, so I even ate a Twinkie in intensive care," says Browning.
Others save their Twinkies for special occasions. Like weddings. Philip Delaplane, 50, a chef and instructor at the Culinary Institute of America in New York, says he's loved Twinkies since he was a child. So does his wife, Pam. For their wedding last year, Delaplane built a four-tier wedding cake out of Twinkies and other Hostess snack cakes. "We didn't want anything too stuffy. We wanted something fun," he says.
Although he had back-up desserts in case guests balked at eating junk food, he needn't have worried. "They devoured the cake," he says. "I had used toothpicks to attach the snack cakes to Styrofoam forms and they just yanked them all out. It was the talk of the wedding."
While people like Delaplane maintain a nostalgia for the Twinkies of their youth, the snack cake has been linked to several not-so-sweet events.
When Minneapolis city council candidate George Belair served Twinkies and other refreshments to two senior citizens' groups in 1985, he was indicted for bribery in what the newspapers dubbed "Twinkiegate." Although the charges were eventually dropped, the case led to a Minnesota fair campaign act, popularly known as the "Twinkie law." The law was repealed in 1988.
And, of course, there's the famed courtroom defense in the 1979 trial of former San Francisco supervisor Dan White, accused of shooting the city's mayor and another supervisor. White's attorneys argued that he suffered from severe depression that had been exacerbated by junk food bingeing. Although Twinkies were only mentioned in passing, the term "Twinkie Defense" was quickly coined by journalists to explain the legal strategy that led to White's conviction on a lesser charge.
Having a product linked to such dubious outcomes might upset some companies, but Hostess officials seem unperturbed. "[Twinkies] are a constant in your life. They always come back around," says Cogswell, who's worked for Hostess for 20 years. "The way we look at it, sometimes you just need a sugar fix."
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc. said on Tuesday that the latest major update of its Mac OS X operating system, code-named Tiger, will be available on April 29.
The Cupertino, California-based maker of Macintosh computers and iPod digital music players has long said that Tiger would be shipped by the first half of the year.
The updated operating system -- which serves as the nerve center controlling the functions of all the features of the computer -- is expected to fuel interest in Apple's computers, already energized by products including the Mac Mini and the iPod digital music player. However, some consumers may delay a decision to buy until the new software is released.
Tiger, which will sell for about $129, includes new features such as Spotlight, Apple's advanced desktop search function that scours the computer's hard disk drive to find documents, e-mail, pictures and music, similar to the way Google searches the Internet.
The operating system also has Dashboard, which is a collection of Internet-enabled programs to give users instant information on airline flights, movie times, weather, stock prices and other information.
Microsoft Corp.'s next major version of its operating systems, code-named Longhorn, has been delayed a number of times and is now expected in 2006. Microsoft's Windows operating systems dominates the global market.
Apple said it will sell a "family pack" version of the software, for $199, that serves up to five computers in a single residence.
Shares of Apple rose to $42.40 on Inet on Tuesday morning, up from Monday's Nasdaq close of $41.92.
The Associated Press
Feline lovers holding pictures of cats, clutching stuffed animals and wearing whiskers faced-off against hundreds of hunters at meetings around Wisconsin to voice their opinion on whether to legalize cat hunting.
Residents in 72 counties were asked whether free-roaming cats — including any domestic cat that isn't under the owner's direct control or any cat without a collar — should be listed as an unprotected species. If listed as so, the cats could be hunted.
The proposal was one of several dozen included in a spring vote on hunting and fishing issues held by the Wisconsin Conservation Congress. The results, only advisory, get forwarded to the state Natural Resources Board.
Statewide results were expected Tuesday.
La Crosse firefighter Mark Smith, 48, helped spearhead the cat-hunting proposal. He wants Wisconsin to declare free-roaming wild cats an unprotected species, just like skunks or gophers. Anyone with a small-game license could shoot the cats at will.
At least two other upper Midwestern states, South Dakota and Minnesota, allow wild cats to be shot — and have for decades. Minnesota defines a wild, or feral, cat as one with no collar that does not show friendly behavior, said Kevin Kyle with that state's Department of Natural Resources.
Every year in Wisconsin alone, an estimated 2 million wild cats kill 47 million to 139 million songbirds, according to state officials. Despite the astounding numbers, Smith's plan has been met with fierce opposition from cat lovers.
Critics of Smith's idea organized Wisconsin Cat-Action Team and developed a Web site — dontshootthecat.com. Some argue it is better to trap wild cats, spay or neuter them, before releasing them.
By Justin Glanville, Associated Press Writer | April 11, 2005
NEW YORK -- A subway train rattles halfway into Manhattan's Union Square station and shudders to a halt. Over a crackle of static, a voice on the PA system announces congestion ahead and says it will be several minutes before service resumes.
Trapped commuters sigh and glance at their watches impatiently. Some simply close their eyes in resignation.
This sort of thing -- and much worse -- has been happening quite a lot lately. Entire subway lines have recently been knocked out for hours on end by failing equipment, including decades-old switches short-circuited by flooding.
So it's no surprise that commuters are greeting with ambivalence this month's launch of fully automated trains on a 24-station line connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn.
L line trains will run without conductors, except in emergencies, coasting along at preordained speeds and stopping automatically at stations, a lone train operator in the front car watching the controls.
San Francisco has had this technology for years, and Paris has one such line.
But the New York City Transit upgrade is a milestone. Never has a city with a subway so large or so old -- it turned 100 last fall -- tried to convert its existing infrastructure to automation.
If all goes well, automation will be phased in on other lines over the next 20 years, and conductors will be phased out.
"We're moving from a 19th-century subway system," said Charles Seaton, a transit spokesman. "It's making the system more efficient, safer and allowing us to run more trains."
The new technology is not without its critics, worried about safety.
Nor has it been fast or cheap. Studies on how to convert the L line began nearly 15 years ago, and more than $250 million has been spent so far on upgrading the L, chosen partly because it's among the shortest and doesn't share track with other lines. If the program proves a success, it could take decades to implement the technology citywide.
Why go to the trouble?
Nabile Ghaly, NYC Transit's chief signal engineer, said the new system lets traffic controllers know exactly where each train is at all times, and it tightly controls train speed. With it, trains can run more closely together -- and therefore more frequently -- and with fewer accidents, transit officials say.
The new system uses "communications-based train control," or CBTC. Computers on trains, alongside tracks in special enclosures and at a new control center monitor a train's location and speed via radio waves.
As in the subway systems in Washington, D.C., and London, screens installed in stations will tell riders when the next train will arrive.
Train operators can adjust speeds themselves, but a warning flashes if they exceed limits set for specific sections of track. If the operator ignores the warning, brakes clench and the train stops -- a precaution meant to head off driver-based accidents.
It was such an accident that first drove the city to try CBTC. In 1991, a motorman who had been drinking fell asleep at the controls of a speeding train. The train derailed, killing five people.
Yet for all its promised benefits, the plan has met some resistance.
Several city council members and Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum have joined the train conductors' union in raising safety concerns. The union acknowledges that its opposition stems partly from the fact that 119 conductors will be made redundant in the first phase of the plan alone, while about 2,700 more could lose their jobs systemwide.
Opponents worry that without conductors, evacuation in emergencies could be slow and disorderly, and train doors could close on passengers. Conductors typically ride in a middle car, checking to see that passengers get on and off trains safely and overseeing the safe opening and closing of doors.
Transit officials counter that in the new system, doors won't be able to close and trains won't be able to depart a station if there's an obstruction.
Opponents are also wary of a system that puts so much trust in computers and automated signals, which they fear could be vulnerable to malfunction or terrorists.
"They're going to be sending signals via radio waves," said Councilman Lewis Fidler, a Democrat from Brooklyn. "I don't want to find out that someone hacks into the system and makes a train disappear and another train rams into it."
Such a scenario is unlikely, said Tom Sullivan, an independent transit consultant with Transportation Systems Design in Oakland, Calif., who helped design the L-line upgrade.
The data carried on radio waves are encrypted, so only an internal leak could compromise its security, he said. Though it's possible to jam the radio signal, he said, that would only make the train stop.
Sullivan, who also helped develop an automated line for San Francisco Municipal Railway in the 1980s, said he knows of no serious problems from hacking or malfunction.
He is more concerned that the piecemeal approach the city is now taking could mean technology becomes obsolete by the time new lines are upgraded in the future.
Compounding the problem, several different companies currently manufacture CBTC equipment, and parts from one company are not compatible with another.
To have a truly integrated system, the city would have to continue buying all its equipment from Siemens AG, effectively giving it a monopoly.
"The challenge is to get the companies to build equipment that's compatible with each other, so different trains can run on different lines," Sullivan said. "You don't want a winner-take-all situation."
160 MPH spy helicopter would track cars from 2000 feet
The fictional police spy helicopter from the movie Blue Thunder is taking a big step toward becoming a reality. Police in the UK have successfully tested a 160 MPH helicopter that can read license plates from as much as 2,000 feet in the air. The Eurocopter EC135 is equipped with a camera capable of scanning 5 cars every second. Essex Police Inspector Paul Moor told the Daily Star newspaper: "This is all about denying criminals the use of the road. Using a number plate recognition camera from the air means crooks will have nowhere to hide."
The use of Automated Plate Number Recognition (ANPR) is growing. ANPR devices photograph vehicles and then use optical character recognition to extract license plate numbers and match them with any selected databases. The devices use infrared sensors to avoid the need for a flash and to operate in all weather conditions.
Within the U.S., two cities are using the technology in a device called "Bootfinder" to identify and tow vehicles with unpaid parking tickets or even overdue library books. One woman's car in Connecticut was towed out of her driveway because she had $85 in unpaid parking tickets. Legislation is pending in Texas to allow the use of RFID to scan and ticket passing motorists who have expired automobile insurance.
Originally intended to detect stolen vehicles and cloned cars, ANPR is increasingly being used in the UK to issue tickets. For instance, drivers who have expired insurance face a £200 fine or if they haven't paid their car tax, they face a £60 fine. In 2004, ANPR teams stopped 180,543 vehicles and issued 51,000 tickets for offenses including failure to wear a seatbelt, use of a mobile phone while driving, and various insurance and road tax infractions.
One of the companies that sells the camera scanning equipment touts it's potential for marketing applications. "Once the number plate has been successfully 'captured' applications for it's use are limited only by imagination and almost anything is possible," Westminister International says on its website. UK police also envision a national database that holds time and location data on every vehicle scanned. "This data warehouse would also hold ANPR reads and hits as a further source of vehicle intelligence, providing great benefits to major crime and terrorism enquiries," a Home Office proposal explains.
Britain began experimenting with ANPR on September 30, 2002 in nine jurisdictions. The UK government is spending an additional £15 million (US $28 million) to provide a mobile ANPR van for each police force in England and Wales. The full national rollout of ANPR is expected in fall 2005.
ROME, Ga. (AP) -- A high school is looking for a few good snitches. Using revenue from its candy and soda sales, Model High School plans to pay up to $100 for information about thefts and drug or gun possession on campus.
"It's not that we feel there are any problems here," said Principal Glenn White. "It's a proactive move for getting information that will help deter any sort of illegal activity."
Under the new policy, a student would receive $10 for information about a theft on campus, $25 or $50 for information about drug possession, and $100 for information about gun possession or other serious felonies.
Informants will not receive the reward if they are involved in the crime, White said.
At nearby Rome High School, there is no similar program because students there have a rapport with officials and are comfortable providing information, said Superintendent Gayland Cooper.
"We feel the reward is the kids knowing they have a safe school," Cooper said.
The idea for the program came from Kell High School in Marietta, an Atlanta suburb. There, student tips earlier this year led to the arrest of a classmate who had brought a handgun to school.
No Model High students have received the reward yet, but some questioned the logic behind it. Jaime Parris, a senior, said that most students already would tell faculty about anything that threatened student safety.
"But if it's not going to hurt other people, I don't think many people are going to tell on their friends," she said.
By E&P Staff
Published: April 10, 2005 11:45 PM ET
WASHINGTON If you're like anyone else, and you hear that President George W. Bush has an iPod, you naturally want to know what's on it? Tex-Mex? Christian rock? ZZ Topp?
Well, Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times has the scoop Monday, finding it loaded mainly with country and mainstream rock/pop. Bush likes to use it when exercising, to help get the old heart pumping.
So it's "heavy on traditional country singers like George Jones, Alan Jackson and Kenny Chesney," Bumiller reveals, plus Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" and John Fogerty's "Centerfield," which was played at Texas Rangers games when Bush was an owner. (He most certainly does not have Fogerty's song "Fortunate Son.") More esoterically, there are selections from great Texas singer/songwriter Alejandro Escovedo and The Gourds. There are 250 songs in all, many purchased at iTunes.
Then there's a mix of song downloaded to his iPod by ex-media strategist Mark McKinnon, including "Circle Back" by John Hiatt and "My Sharona," the somewhat dirty 1979 song.
Joe Levy of Rolling Stone commented: "What we're talking about is a lot of great artists from the 60's and 70's and more modern artists who sound like great artists from the 60's and 70's. This is basically boomer rock 'n' roll and more recent music out of Nashville made for boomers. It's safe, it's reliable, it's loving. What I mean to say is, it's feel-good music.
"The Sex Pistols it's not."
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000874964
John Roach-National Geographic News
When John Rowden asks local villagers on the Southeast Asian island of Borneo what they know about the Bulwer's pheasant, the first thing most people say is that the bird is delicious.
That is not an answer Rowden savors. The ornithologist with the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society is also a curator of animals at the Central Park Zoo. Since 1999 Rowden has traveled to Borneo several times a year to learn as much as he can about the elusive pheasant.
Also called wattled pheasants, Bulwer's pheasants (Lophura bulweri) are chicken-size birds. Males have bushy white tails and folds of brilliant blue skin on their faces. Females have folds of brown skin. The pheasants are found in the wild only on Borneo and are thought to number no more than a few thousand.
Very few of the pheasants kept in zoos around the world will breed. Rowden travels to Borneo, in part, to learn how to improve the chemistry among captive pheasants.
He believes a new generation of captive pheasants would help raise awareness of the birds and the conservation crisis they face in their native habitat.
Not only are the birds a delicacy for local villagers in Borneo, but the pheasants are threatened by the island's rapid loss of tropical rain forests.
A study published last year in the journal Science found that lowland forest cover in protected areas of the Indonesian province of Kalimantan decreased by more than 56 percent between 1985 and 2001.
Borneo is the world's third largest island and is shared by the countries of Indonesia, Malaysia, and Brunei. Rowden said the logging in Malaysian Borneo is less damaging than in Indonesia only because the boundaries of protected areas are respected.
Bearded Pigs
The ornithologist hopes to learn how Bulwer's pheasants breed in the wild before the birds and their habitat disappear. To that end, Rowden spends a lot of time asking villagers about their insights into the bird's natural history.
For example, the bird expert said that after being told how good the pheasants taste, villages often say, "If you want to find the birds, look for [bearded] pigs."
The bearded pig (Sus barbatus) is distinguished by its elongated head, narrow body, and abundant chin whiskers. It can grow as long as 5.5 feet (1.7 meters) and weigh upward of 330 pounds (150 kilograms).
Rowden said local villagers tell him that the pheasants follow the pigs as they forage for things like tubers and bulbs. While foraging, the pigs roust grubs that the pheasants eat. The pheasants may also eat tuber and bulb scraps that the pigs leave behind.
Erik Meijaard is an expert on wild pigs, including the bearded pig, at the Australian National University in Canberra. He said he has "heard similar stories from villagers in various parts of Kalimantan but never actually witnessed pigs and pheasants together."
Rowden said the reasons for the association are scientifically unknown but that he and other researchers plan further studies. He noted that one hope lies with the government in the Malaysian province of Sarawak, on Borneo.
The government there is interested in learning more about the status of the bearded pig population. The reason is simple: The animal is a major staple of the local diet.
"They want to ensure such an important [food source] is protected … ," Rowden said. "So it gives them an interest in studying pigs and—excuse the pun—I'm piggybacking on that to get more support for the Bulwer's [pheasant research]."
Conservation
Meijaard, the Australian pig expert, said that bearded pigs are an underrated species in Borneo conservation efforts. "They are the most important source of animal protein in many inland communities, and when pig populations decline, there is a hunting shift to other, more endangered species like primates," he said.
Rowden's studies in Borneo, meanwhile, have yet to yield the magic something that compels captive Bulwer's pheasants to breed. However, he said his work has opened the door to a larger conservation project that he believes will help save Borneo's remaining rain forest.
"If we don't have a species [left] to show people [that] this is an amazingly cool bird, that's unfortunate," he said. "But we're doing good work on the ground protecting habitat, and that's ultimately what we're fighting for."
Smoking Outlawed in "Marlboro Country"
ELENA, Mont. Apr 7, 2005-AP — Montana, which has served as Marlboro Country in magazine ads depicting rugged cowboys puffing on cigarettes while riding a fence line, is about to outlaw smoking just about everywhere but the great outdoors.
The state Legislature voted Thursday to ban smoking in all enclosed public places, including bars and restaurants.
The Senate approved the measure 40-10 on Thursday. It passed the House last month.
Gov. Brian Schweitzer said he will sign it. Montana will become one of just 10 states to ban smoking on such a widespread scale. California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island have similar laws.
"The need to breathe smoke-free air has priority over the desire to smoke," the measure reads.
Beginning Oct. 1, the ban will apply to nearly all enclosed places open to the public, including restaurants, stores, office buildings, schools and public transportation. Montana's 1,700 bars will have until 2009 to comply a compromise adopted for the benefit of tavern owners.
Over the years, Madison Avenue has used Montana as a backdrop in some of the Marlboro Man cigarette ads.
Lawmakers acknowledged the health dangers of secondhand smoke and instead argued over whether the ban is the kind of heavy-handed government action that riles Montanans, who have long admired the rugged individualism represented by cowboys.
"Smoking is just plain stupid," said Republican Sen. Joe Balyeat of Bozeman. "But if this Legislature decided to outlaw stupidity, I think two-thirds of us would be behind bars. I just don't think we can legislate against stupidity."
The fines range from a written warning on first offense to $500 for a fifth violation.
Known by Americans chiefly as the pamphleteer with a great turn-of-phrase who wrote Common Sense, Thomas_Paine could be found in Philadelphia decisively turning the debate toward American independence, retreating with George Washington's troops in "the times that try men's souls," in Paris experiencing many of the crucial events and tragedies of the French Revolution, and back in his native England as the very focal point of the debate on political reform. In all these places, Paine called upon ordinary citizens to question not only traditional ideas of government and society but also accepted notions of God and Bible-based faith. Paine's personal story ends in New York City and in nearby New Rochelle where he lived his last years in near poverty and ostracism, but he would inspire reformers well beyond his death. This gallery exhibit, on view from January 18 - April 24, 2005, will bring forth the great pamphleteer's published works along with letters, caricatures, and commentary drawn from The New-York Historical Society Library's rich holdings.
Highlighting the exhibition will be a plaster bust and an oil portrait of Paine by John Wesley Jarvis. Both works were created by the then up-and-coming portraitist as a gesture of friendship for Paine. The artist took in the elderly writer as a housemate and friend during the latter's otherwise difficult last years in New York City. The bust, executed from a death mask also in our collection, was donated by Jarvis upon his own election to The New-York Historical Society in 1817. The painting, the only surviving oil portrait of Paine from life, was considered long-lost until discovered in 1949 and reported in The New-York Historical Society Quarterly. Now owned by the National Gallery, it is being lent to the exhibition in order to reunite the bust and painted portrait for the first time since they left the artist's studio nearly two hundred years ago.
The display will feature a selection of Paine's letters, some as yet unpublished, that reveal his personal approach to the great crises and personalities of the day. They include his persistent and imaginative suggestions for aiding the American Revolution in its lowest days, his handwritten account of his own services to the cause once it was won, and his own convoluted but humanitarian scheme to save a friend, the Irish rebel, Napper Tandy, by appealing to a former enemy, Charles Cornwallis.
Paine's fame as pamphleteer will be demonstrated by examples of his many publications that address the timeless question of the efficacy of violence in promoting reform and the challenge of maintaining human rights in times of war and revolution. The exhibition will include a rare first edition, first issue of Common Sense. It will also display some of the British pamphlet literature generated by the publication of Rights of Man and document Paine's subsequent conviction for sedition that outlawed him from his native England. The Anti-Levelling Songster of 1793 is devoted to anti-Paine songs written for the occasion and it will be paired with samples of hostile, Paine-inspired British caricatures.
The first of Thomas Paine's controversial anti-Biblical tracts, The Age of Reason, will be shown in the context of when it was written, as Paine watched his humanitarian hopes for the French Revolution crumble and as he awaited his own imprisonment during the Reign of Terror. The negative reaction to the deistical Age of Reason in some religious quarters was exploited by Paine's political adversaries and contributed to his ostracism upon his return to New York after his eventful sojourn in Europe. This hostility multiplied with Paine's death in 1809 and colored much of the nineteenth-century view of him. Others of the period embraced Paine's memory as a pioneer in free-thinking, reform, and political engagement by the common person. To illustrate this dichotomy, Theodore Roosevelt's printed epithet, "the filthy little atheist," will be displayed along side of Walt Whitman's published tribute. Now recognized for his contribution to the language and dissemination of rights and democracy in addition to his considerable role in American independence, Paine carries a more positive, if muted, legacy today. The exhibition will invite viewers to contemplate this legacy as well as to learn more about a most eventful life lived out in extraordinary times.
Museum Hours (All Year)
Monday: CLOSED
Tuesday - Sunday: 10 a.m. - 6 p.m.
Admission
Members: Free
Adults: $10
Seniors, Students and Teachers: $5
Children 12 and under accompanied by an adult are free
Directions
The New-York Historical Society is located at
170 Central Park West
Tel. (212) 873-3400
The Daily Record UK
SECRET agents will dress as nuns and priests in Rome today to protect world leaders from terrorists at the Pope's funeral.
Italian officials downplayed the risk of any attack but admitted they were taking no chances.
More than 200 world leaders - including US president George Bush, Prince Charles and Tony Blair - being in St Peter's Square has caused a logistical nightmare.
Typically, the White House have been threatening a diplomatic row unless Bush's armed secret service officers are allowed with him. Scores of bodyguards accompanying heads of state have troubled the Vatican, which frowns on guns inside the Holy City.
Up to 15,000 security forces have been mobilised and anti-aircraft missile launchers have been set up.
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=15378748%26method=full%26siteid=89488%26headline=nuns%2dwith%2dguns-name_page.html
