TRUCK & TRACTOR PULLING & MUD HOP
Refreshments available
Gov. Robert F. McDonnell yesterday unveiled his plan to privatize Virginia's state-run liquor empire. It's a big business. Residents drank a healthy $322 million worth of distilled spirits last year, pouring $115 million in net profit into Richmond's coffers. Wresting this bottle from state lawmakers would represent a significant victory for Mr. McDonnell, but it comes at a cost to consumers.Each of the commonwealth's 332 government-operated stores is highly lucrative, averaging $335,000 in annual profit. That's not surprising, considering the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) has armed agents ready to put potential competitors behind bars. If the state ran grocery stores and fast food under the same monopoly conditions, these also would bring in tidy sums. Government has no legitimate reason for involvement in any of these private enterprises.
To fix this problem, Mr. McDonnell would sell the ABC stores and distribution warehouses, auctioning off 1,000 licenses to the private vendors, convenience stores and supermarkets willing to take over the business. Given the demonstrated profit margins, it won't be hard to find buyers.
The difficulty comes in considering what to do about the $226 million in alcohol taxes these stores collect. There's a markup of 69 percent to 79 percent on each bottle, which is then taxed 20 percent at the wholesale level and once more at 5 percent at the retail level. According to Tax Foundation data, that averages out to $20.13 per gallon of spirits - the third highest levy in the nation. By comparison, the same tax in the District and Maryland is a mere $1.50. Not surprisingly, many of the District's liquor stores report that Virginians account for half of their sales. Rather than go cold turkey, Mr. McDonnell proposes to rearrange the way taxes are collected so that the cash flow remains roughly the same after privatization, contrary to some early news reports.
"There is no tax increase, period," said Stacey Johnson, a spokesman for the governor, to The Washington Times. "Under this proposed privatization plan, it will keep the ongoing revenue to the state equivalent to what it is in the current monopoly setup."
It's unfortunate that the General Assembly's big spenders will stay sloshed with alcohol taxes that ought to be reduced or eliminated, not maintained at their current sky-high levels. Worse, the sale of ABC stores, warehouses and licenses would generate about $468 million in upfront cash that would be deposited in the Virginia Transportation Infrastructure Bank. Like the federal infrastructure bank proposed this week by President Obama, this newly formed state government entity would subsidize public-private transportation partnerships, such as the controversial scheme to turn Interstate 95/395 into a toll road. In theory, such projects allow private companies to relieve Richmond of the significant burden of maintaining an expensive highway. It sounds great until you realize the burden shifts to a public hit with tolls plus the cost of all the subsidies that would be doled out to the well-connected firms landing such contracts.It would be a far more palatable plan if Mr. McDonnell were to proceed with the sale of the stores without the tolling boondoggle. Earlier this year, the Virginia chapter of Americans for Prosperity released a 140-page plan for the Old Dominion that outlined how the legislature could save billions by not spending like a drunken sailor (no offense to drunken sailors). By dumping wasteful programs like the $5 billion Dulles Metro extension, there would be no need for tolls or booze taxes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The top two national security advisers in President Obama's Cabinet on Wednesday denounced plans by a small church in Florida to burn the Muslim holy book to commemorate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying it would inflame tensions and put Americans abroad at risk.Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said the plan was ill-advised and echoed concerns first raised by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who warned that the proposed weekend event would place the lives of American troops in jeopardy there and elsewhere. U.S. officials in Iraq agreed.
In remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, Mrs. Clinton called the plans "outrageous" and "aberrational" and said they do not represent America or American values of religious tolerance and inclusiveness.She also lamented that the tiny Dove World Outreach Center congregation in Gainesville had gotten so much attention for what she called a "distrustful and disgraceful" means of marking the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"It is regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Florida, with a church of no more than 50 people can make this outrageous and distrustful, disgraceful plan and get the world's attention, but that's the world we live in right now," Mrs. Clinton said. "It is unfortunate; it is not who we are," she said.
Through a Pentagon spokesman, Col. David Lapan, Mr. Gates added his voice to the growing controversy.
"No one is questioning the right to do these things. We are questioning whether that's advisable considering the consequences that could occur," Mr. Lapan said. "General Petraeus has been very vocal and very public on this, and his position reflects the secretary's as well."
Gen. Petraeus on Tuesday said that "images of the burning of a Quran would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan — and around the world — to inflame public opinion and incite violence." In addition, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the former top commander in Iraq, said Wednesday he feared extremists will use the incident to sow hatred against U.S. troops overseas.
In Iraq, where almost 50,000 American troops are still serving, U.S. Ambassador to Iraq James Jeffrey and the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Gen. Lloyd Austin, joined in the condemnation, calling the plan "disrespectful, divisive and disgraceful."
"As this holy month of Ramadan comes to a close and Iraqis prepare to celebrate Eid al-Fitr, we join with the citizens of Iraq and of every nation to repudiate religious intolerance and to respect and defend the diversity of faiths of our fellow man," they said in a joint statement released by the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.Despite the widespread condemnation, the Rev. Terry Jones, the church's pastor, has vowed to go ahead with the event.
Mrs. Clinton appealed for Mr. Jones to reconsider and cancel. And, in the event he goes ahead with the plan, she suggested to laughter from the audience, that the news media ignore it.
"We are hoping that the pastor decides not to do this," she said. "We're hoping against hope that if he does, it won't be covered as an act of patriotism."
"We want to be judged by who we are as a nation, not by something that is so aberrational, and we will make that case as strongly as possible."
NEW YORK – The imam behind a proposed Islamic community center and mosque near ground zero cautioned Wednesday that moving the facility could cause a violent backlash from Muslim extremists and endanger national security.Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf told CNN that the discourse surrounding the center has become so politicized that moving it could strengthen the ability of extremists abroad to recruit and wage attacks against Americans, including troops fighting in the Middle East.
"The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack," he said, but he added that he was open to the idea of moving the planned location of the center, currently two blocks north of the World Trade Center site.
"But if you don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world," he later said, predicting that the reaction could be more furious than the eruption of violence following the 2005 publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.
Opponents say the center, which would include a Sept. 11 memorial and a Muslim prayer space, should be moved farther away from where Islamic extremists destroyed the World Trade Center and killed nearly 2,800 people. Supporters say religious freedom should be protected.
Rauf, 61, has largely been absent since the debate over the center erupted earlier this year. He has been traveling abroad, including taking a State Department-funded 15-day trip to the Middle East to promote religious tolerance.In the interview with CNN's Soledad O'Brien, his first since returning to the U.S. on Sunday, Rauf responded to a number of questions that have been raised about the project.
He said money to develop the center would be raised domestically for the most part.
"And we'll be very transparent on how we raise money," he said, adding that no funds would be accepted from sources linked to extremists.
Rauf said that, in retrospect, he might have chosen a different location for what he described as a multifaith community center.
"If I knew this would happen, if it would cause this kind of pain, I wouldn't have done it," he said.
RICHMONDThe Virginia Department of Corrections says the only woman on the state's death row has declined to choose the method of her scheduled Sept. 23 execution.
That means lethal injection will be the procedure when 40-year-old Teresa Lewis of Pittsylvania County is put to death for plotting to have her husband and stepson killed in 2002 so she could collect a $250,000 life insurance policy.
State law allows a condemned inmate to select either electrocution or lethal injection. The latter procedure is used if the inmate declines to choose.
Lewis would be the first woman executed in Virginia in nearly 100 years and the first in the U.S. since 2005.
Lewis offered herself and her 16-year-old daughter for sex to two men who committed the killings. She provided money to buy the murder weapons and stood by while they shot her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis Jr., 51, and stepson Charles J. Lewis, 25.
Lewis rummaged through her husband's pockets for money while he lay dying and waited nearly an hour before calling 911.
The gunmen, Rodney Fuller and Matthew Shallenberger, were sentenced to life in prison. Shallenberger committed suicide in prison in 2006.
A 9 year old child was struck by an Accomack County Sheriff's Deputy on Monday August 30, 2010 according to Virginia State Police.
Basket Bingo To Benefit The Mar-Va
POCOMOKE CITY, Md. - The trial for a murder suspect has been postponed in Worcester County._Port_HiRes.jpg)
RICHMOND, Va. — A federal document that immigrants use to prove they are legal U.S. residents is not longer good enough to get a Virginia driver's license.Gov. Bob McDonnell ordered the Department of Motor Vehicles to no longer consider Employment Authorization Documents evidence that a person is in the country legally. About 20 other federal documents will still be accepted.
The governor acted after a 23-year-old Bolivian national with drunken driving convictions in 2007 and 2008 was involved in a crash that killed a nun and injured two others in her order in Prince William County. Police say Carlos Martinelly Montano was drunk at the time.
Montano had used the form to get a Virginia license even though he faced deportation proceedings, authorities say.
WTOP radio in Washington, D.C., reported Tuesday that a grand jury indicted Montano on a murder charge that could land him in prison for 40 years if he's convicted.
Prince William police chief Charlie Deane last week asked federal authorities to stop issuing employment authorization cards, known as I-766 documents, to immigrants who face deportation. The cards are issued by the Citizenship and Immigration Service arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
An advocate for immigrants said the governor's response was political pandering that ignores what she said was the problem of scant punishment for repeat drunken drivers.
"The governor should be asking why he (Montano) was released from jail after serving just 20 days instead of the full 364," Claire Guthrie Gastanaga, a Richmond-based lobbyist on behalf of immigrants' rights. Montano had been sentenced to a serve a year on his second DUI conviction."The real situation here is we're not enforcing our drunk driving laws," she said.
Montano got his I-766 card, in January 2009 as federal deportation actions were pending. He presented the card to the DMV to establish legal presence in the U.S. But he did not have a Virginia license on Aug. 1 when his car slammed head-on into a car carrying three Benedictine nuns on their way to a retreat.
Sister Denise Mosier was killed in the crash. Sisters Connie Ruth Lupton and Charlotte Lange were critically injured.
"We must ensure that documents accepted as proof of legal presence are reliable," McDonnell, a Republican and a Roman Catholic, said in a news release. "Virginia law is clear in the requirement that an individual be lawfully in the United States to be eligible for an identification card or to have the privilege to drive."
Gastanaga said the federally issued cards are not given to illegal immigrants, and that they are merely records information about the bearer's physical appearance such as height, weight, hair and eye color information.
Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli in August advised police across Virginia that they have the authority to ask about the immigration status of anyone they've stopped or arrested. His advisory opinion, which lacks the legal force of a court ruling, would give Virginia officers many of the same powers police in Arizona have under a new law there intended to crack down on illegal immigration.
The American Civil Liberties Union urged police to ignore Cuccinelli's guidance, saying lacks any legal foundation and conjures constitutional conflicts.
OCEAN CITY -- A 34-year-old Pennsylvania man died after being found unconscious outside an Ocean City nightclub, police said. Ocean City Police said Christopher Paul Cherenyack of Sugarloaf, Pa., was found about 3 a.m. Tuesday lying between two buildings at The Party Block at 17th Street and Coastal Highway. He was unconscious and not breathing. Police said two people were there performing CPR on the victim.
Cherenyack was taken to Atlantic General Hospital in Berlin, where he was pronounced dead, according to Ocean City Police spokesman Pfc. Mike Levy.
There was no immediate indication of a cause of death. Police are waiting on results of an autopsy to be performed at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland in Baltimore.
Party Block co-owner Rob Rosenblit said the victim had been found by an employee, who called over a manager. The manager tried to wake Cherenyack, thinking he was asleep, but was unable to revive him. The manager also could not find a pulse, and then called 911. Another staff member trained in CPR tried to resuscitate the victim until paramedics arrived.
Rosenblit said Cherenyack had been in the bar earlier in the evening. At one point Cherenyack lost a shoe, and staffers helped him find it. Rosenblit said he was friendly, polite and non-confrontational. The victim also turned down the offer of a taxi ride home, he added.
"Our thoughts and prayers go to his family," Rosenblit said. "It was a very startling thing at the end of the night."
A female family member reached by phone at Cherenyack's residence declined to comment.
Levy said the incident is being treated as an unattended death, with no criminal implications at this time. Unattended deaths of people of all ages happen several times each year in Ocean City, usually in homes and sometimes hotel rooms, he said.
The Party Block consists of three nightclubs and a pool bar, and is a popular nighttime hotspot during the summer season.
MIDDLE RIVER, Md. -- State police aviation crews, as well as commercial pilots, will join forces today to discuss the dangers of laser pointers that target aircraft in flight.When pointed at an aircraft in flight, the laser pointers can cause a flash of light in the cockpit that blinds the flight crew.
Recently, a Maryland State Police helicopter crew was targeted with a laser pointer while trying to land in Ocean City to pick up a trauma patient, state police said in a news release. Baltimore County Police recently charged an individual with reckless endangerment for ‘lasering’ their helicopter while in flight.
At an event at 10 a.m. today at the State Police Aviation Command in Middle River, Md., helicopter crews will discuss the danger created when flight crews are temporarily blinded by laser flashes. Helicopters from area law enforcement and a commercial provider will be on display. A demonstration will also be conducted using a helicopter simulator.
NEW YORK, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- The imam of the Farah mosque in New York said Tuesday "we are proceeding" with plans for Cordoba House near Ground Zero despite "the furor" surrounding it.In an op-ed article published by The New York Times, Feisal Abdul Rauf, the chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, offered his first public comments on the controversy surrounding the project, also called Park51. He has been out of the United States for two months, speaking about religious tolerance and cooperation, and said in the newspaper article that he and "nearly everyone" he met had "been awed by how inflamed and emotional the issue of the proposed community center has become."
"The level of attention reflects the degree to which people care about the very American values under debate: recognition of the rights of others, tolerance and freedom of worship," Rauf wrote.
"We are proceeding with the community center, Cordoba House. More important, we are doing so with the support of the downtown community, government at all levels and leaders from across the religious spectrum, who will be our partners. I am convinced that it is the right thing to do for many reasons."
Rauf said the community center "will amplify the multifaith approach that the Cordoba Initiative has deployed in concrete ways for years."
"Our initiative is intended to cultivate understanding among all religions and cultures," he said.
Rauf said the initative's "broader mission" is to "strengthen relations between the Western and Muslim worlds and to help counter radical ideology" and he said it was essential to confront polarizing issues rather than avoid them.
He said he is "very sensitive to the feelings" of survivors of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack that took almost 3,000 lives and destroyed the World Trade Center twin towers.
"We will accordingly seek the support of those families, and the support of our vibrant neighborhood, as we consider the ultimate plans for the community center," Rauf said. "Our objective has always been to make this a center for unification and healing."
BALTIMORE, Sept. 7 (UPI) -- A University of Baltimore professor said he is basing his English 333 curriculum around zombies.Arnold Blumberg said his class will involve screening 16 zombie film classics, zombie comic books as required reading and the option for students to write a screenplay or draw storyboards for their ideal zombie movies as final projects, The Baltimore Sun reported Tuesday.
"Zombies are one of the most potent, direct reflections of what we're thinking moment to moment in our culture," Blumberg said.
Jonathan Shorr, chair of the university's school of communications design, said the class is part of a new minor in popular culture.
"It's a back door into a lot of subjects," Shorr says. "They think they're taking this wacko zombie course, and they are. But on the way, they learn how literature and mass media work, and how they come to reflect our times."
The 2011 Old Farmer's Almanac has predicted a cold and snowy winter for the Eastern Shore, according to its Winter Weather Map. The Almanac predicts snowfall will be above normal in the mid-Atlantic states from November through March.
Maybe we should start preparing now..................
A new school year begins today. Hundreds of students will descend upon the public schools in Accomack and Northampton County today as the school systems, continuing to face the burdens of state budget cuts, will work to keep quality education their main goal.
Richmond, Va. -- Marilyn Kay Plantz, executed in 2001 by the state of Oklahoma, persuaded her younger lover and his pal to kill her husband for insurance money and stood by as they brutally did so.More than 1,200 men have been executed in the U.S., since the death penalty resumed in 1977. If she is put to death as scheduled Sept. 23, Lewis will be just the 12th woman and the first in Virginia in almost a century.
It is a gender gap that largely, if not entirely, can be explained by the relatively few capital crimes committed by women.
The accompanying acts that frequently qualify murders as death-eligible crimes -- such as rape and armed robbery -- overwhelmingly are committed by men.
Mary Atwell, a professor of criminal justice at Radford University and author of "Wretched Sisters: Gender and Capital Punishment," says it is no accident that Lewis, Plantz and their crimes have much in common.
Like many of their male counterparts, females sentenced to death often have histories of substance abuse and mental-health issues.
Unlike men, women usually kill intimates, not strangers. So, too, did Plantz and Lewis.
"There are so many similarities it's almost uncanny," Atwell said. Among other things, she said, "both of these women had borderline mental retardation and yet they were accused of being the mastermind in the case."
Masterminds or not, the murders were savage.
Plantz's husband, James, 33, had $300,000 in life insurance. Court records show that when he returned home early one morning, he was beaten with baseball bats by his wife's lover, William Bryson, and his friend Clinton McKimble, both 18.
Plantz, in her late 20s, was in a bedroom. Her husband still was alive when Bryson and McKimble later set him on fire in his pickup truck.
In Lewis' case, the court records show she persuaded Matthew Shallenberger, with whom she had a sexual relationship, and his friend, Rodney Fuller, to murder her husband, Julian Clifton Lewis,Jr., 51.
Her husband's son from a prior marriage, Charles J. Lewis, a soldier visiting home, had a $250,000 life insurance policy that Teresa Lewis would receive if the two men died.
It took repeated shotgun blasts to kill the father and son in their beds early on the morning of Oct. 30, 2002, while Lewis waited in the kitchen of the family's Pittsylvania trailer. She provided the $1,200 to buy the murder weapons and left the trailer door unlocked so the killers could enter.
Atwell said insurance money often is the motive in cases where women face the death penalty, and it appears to be one of the things that courts consider a vile aspect of such crimes, she said.
"Maybe because it's a sort of betrayal of trust," she said.
In Virginia, before imposing a death sentence, a judge or jury must decide if a killer remains so dangerous that he or she requires execution, or that the crime was so vile that it warrants execution.
Lewis, Shallenberger and Fuller all pleaded guilty, Fuller with the understanding he would receive life in exchange for his cooperation.
Before sentencing Shallenberger on July 11, 2003, Judge Charles Strauss said, "This is a murder for hire which, just the thought of that, sends chills through most of us."
But, Strauss said, "it's not just a business killing. This is a murder that involves so many other things. . . . It's laced with nightmarish violations of trust, respect, love, the bonds of matrimony that existed between Mr. and Mrs. Lewis for a man she vowed to love and cherish.
"There is no question in the court's eyes that she is clearly the head of this serpent."
Strauss said he could not sentence Shallenberger to death if the other shooter received life.
Lewis, said Strauss, "was in a league all her own." The judge said of the crime, "Unfortunately it reminds us of what man is capable of doing, even to ones they're intimate with."
Atwell said that if there is sometimes a reluctance to sentence women to death, "the other side of that issue is that when a woman is perceived by a court -- judge, jury, prosecutors, whoever -- as having really violated what I call 'gender expectations,' that that makes her more worthy of death."
Among other things, Plantz and Lewis both were cheating on their husbands with younger men.
"The vileness standard is subjective," Atwell said. If a murder is particularly vile, she contends, "it could be more of an argument for punishing the actual killer. In these cases, the 'vileness' was connected to the idea of being a 'mastermind' of a merciless killing, and it is doubtful that either woman could be a mastermind."
David N. Grimes, the Pittsylvania commonwealth's attorney, strongly disagrees where Lewis is concerned.
"If there's a hierarchy of evil among the three, I had no question that she was at the top, with Shallenberger fairly close behind," he said. Grimes also sought the death penalty for Shallenberger.
"She manipulated them and manipulated the whole works. She is the one who determined how they would be killed and when they would be killed."
Shallenberger was 22 at the time, Fuller was 19, and neither had much of a criminal record. Lewis was 33 and had been convicted of forging a prescription.
If nothing else, Lewis might have saved her wounded husband's life by promptly reporting the shootings, which were staged to look like a robbery, Grimes said.
"It was the better part of an hour before she even called," he said. "She was calling it in like there was an intruder who had done all this and didn't mention to anybody that the husband was still alive and that he might need medical help," he said.
"We believe he was conscious throughout and horribly wounded and possibly could have been saved. He died from blood loss; he didn't die from any particular organ being damaged."
Atwell says that while Lewis "may have set the events in motion and delayed in calling for help, the real brutality was done by others."
Lewis' lawyers contend that Shallenberger, who committed suicide in prison in 2006, was the mastermind and have a letter he wrote in which he says the crime was his idea.
They argue that Lewis, who has a low IQ and a personality disorder, could not have been the mastermind, and an affidavit from Fuller says Shallenberger was in charge of Lewis.
Her lawyers cite the cases of two Virginia women who committed similar crimes and received life sentences.
According to the evidence, in addition to her relationship with Shallenberger, Lewis also had sex with Fuller, as did Lewis' then-16-year-old daughter.
After her husband was shot but still was alive, Lewis entered the bedroom, retrieved his pants and wallet, and divided the money with Shallenberger and Fuller.
"The women who are executed, in every case, they've been portrayed in the court and in the press usually as not real women -- they were promiscuous, they were bad mothers, they violated the norms that were expected of women. Not only did they kill . . . but they did something that was beyond what a normal woman would do," Atwell said.
"It's not just that she killed her husband, but she violated all these other rules of behavior as well," Atwell said of Lewis.
Grimes, however, sees ample cause for a death sentence for her role in the murders alone.
Lewis' lawyers will not permit her to be interviewed by the news media. She is being held in segregation at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women. She has an appeal and request for a stay of execution before the U.S. Supreme Court and a clemency petition before Gov. Bob McDonnell.
Fuller, an inmate at Sussex I State prison, declined to be interviewed.
A Florida pastor's plan to burn Qurans at his church on Sept. 11 ignited a protest today by hundreds of Afghans, who burned American flags and shouted "Death to America," and drew a comment from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan that the preacher could be increasing the threat to his troops.The crowd in downtown Kabul reached nearly 500 today, with Afghan protesters chanting "Long live Islam " and "Long live the Quran," and burning an effigy of Terry Jones, senior pastor from the Dove World Outreach Center in Florida who is planning the event.
The protesters were well aware of the pastor's inflammatory comments, such as the "Islam is an evil religion," since they have been spread wide on the Internet. Jones has also authored a book, "Islam Is of the Devil."
The protesters' anger wasn't limited to Jones, however. Chants of "Death to America" echoed through the crowd, and U.S. flags were set ablaze alongside the effigy of Jones.
"America cannot eliminate Muslims from the world," one Afghan man told ABC News.The angry crowd pelted a passing U.S. military convoy with rocks.
Gen. David Petraeus said he is outraged by the pastor's decision to burn the Quran, which he said could "endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort here."
Former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Jack Keane, an adviser to Petraeus, called it "outrageous" and "insulting to Muslims."
"It's also insulting to our soldiers in terms of what they stand for and what their commitment is to this country and to the Muslims in this country," Keane told ABC News.
But late today, Jones vowed he would go ahead with the Quran burning, even knowing the concerns of Petraeus and Keane for the safety of U.S. troops.
"What we are doing is long overdue. We are revealing the violence of Islam that is much, much deeper than we'd like to admit," Jones said in an interview with ABC News.
A Facebook page dedicated to the day, entitled "International Burn A Koran Day" has more than 8,000 fans.
"On September 11th, 2010, from 6pm - 9pm, we will burn the Koran on the property of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, FL in remembrance of the fallen victims of 9/11 and to stand against the evil of Islam. Islam is of the devil!" the page declares.
Over a hundred other pages have sprung up for and against the event on Sept. 11, incidentally the same day as a Muslim holiday called Eid, celebrating the last day of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting. 
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Despite the struggling economy, officials with the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon say contributions and pledges from this year's Labor Day event totaled $58.9 million.The amount was down from nearly $60.5 million last year and a record $65 million in 2008. But Lewis says he's heartened by Americans' ability to help others in need even when they're struggling financially.
Lewis, national chairman of the Tucson-based Muscular Dystrophy Association, praised the progress the organization is making for people living with muscle diseases.
The 45th annual telethon originated for the fifth consecutive year from the South Point Hotel in Las Vegas and reached some 40 million viewers through 170 television stations.
Dozens of performers joined the 21-hour event, including Barry Manilow, Michael Feinstein, Carrot Top and Norm Crosby.
HAMPTON ROADS, Va. (WAVY) - A member of the Virginia Aquarium Stranding Response Team told WAVY.com two dolphins washed ashore Monday.One of the dolphins was a badly decomposed bottlenose dolphin that washed ashore at 15th Bay in Ocean View, according to one of the team members. A necropsy will be performed on the dolphin, but team members say it could be weeks before the results are in.
The other was found in the water by 64th Street at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. Members of the stranding response team are currently on the scene and will bring the body back to the aquarium for a necropsy. Of course, those test results may also take time.
School busses will be on the road today as the Virginia students start their first day back to class from their summer vacation. Please be on the look out for children waiting for the bus and children getting off the bus.
COUNTY SCHOOL TIMES
ACCOMAC -- Accomack County Public Schools has announced bus arrival and instructional day conclusion times for its schools for the 2010-2011 school year, which begins on Tuesday.
For Accawmacke, Kegotank, Metompkin and Pungoteague elementary schools, buses will arrive at school at 8 a.m. and the instructional day ends at 3:20 p.m.
For Chincoteague Elementary School, buses will arrive at school at 8:15 a.m. and the day ends at 3:30 p.m.
For Arcadia and Nandua high schools, buses will arrive at 7:45 a.m. and the instructional day ends at 3:18 p.m.
For Chincoteauge High School, buses will arrive at 7:40 a.m. and the instructional day ends at 3 p.m.
For Arcadia and Nandua middle schools, buses will arrive at 7:55 a.m. and the instructional day ends at 3:07 p.m.
Thanks, Cindi ! Have a great time!
Cal Ripken Jr. was never big on self-promotion as a Hall of Fame player for the Orioles and though his name is now attached to a stadium in Aberdeen, a street outside of Camden Yards and a youth baseball league, he is still not one to remind anyone of his greatest career achievement.
Though it seems doubtful that anyone will ever break Ripken's record, the man who played every game for 16 straight seasons in a 21-year career thinks it can be done.
"Buck turns on my baseball brain," Ripken said. "I had a chance to sit and talk with him when he came up to Aberdeen to watch [Manny] Machado up there perform. Our conversations wouldn't be that interesting to other people. I always thought Buck was one of the best baseball guys I ever had a chance to talk to. I still have my timetable… and I still value the flexibility and the time that I have now, and you wouldn't have that if you came back to the big-league scene."
WASHINGTON - The cure for drug-resistant infections, like flesh-eating bacteria, may be coming. The silver bullet? Green skin.There are compounds in frog skins that could be used to fight MRSA and other antibiotic-resistant diseases.
Dr. Michael Conlon recently told the American Chemical Society that biochemists at United Arab Emirates University have found a way to tweak the molecular structure of the strong natural antibiotics on frog skin that makes them less toxic to humans.
Researchers say they have identified and purified the chemical structure of about 200 substances -- a treasure trove of antibiotics just waiting to be used.
One has already been found to be effective against "Iraqi-bacter," a drug-resistant infection turning up in wounded soldiers returning home from Iraq.
Conlon says it's important to preserve the bio-diversity of frogs. He says scientists are just scratching the surface of the potential antibiotics that could be found in more than 6,000 species of frogs.
"The focus of my administration will be... drug related crime, gang related crime, and child sex crimes"Well that seamed really great to me and the interview was going well until Overholt said something that completely turned me off and he lost my vote with one simple statement which follows, Overholt went on to say;
"Of course if I have to chose one of those areas which is most serious it's gonna be drug related crimes"WHAT! drug related crime is the "most serious" over a child sex crime? I don't think so Mr Overholt. I hope he will clear that statement up right here on this blog.
