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Joseph and Mary watched baby Jesus sleep. He stretched, smiled, then let out a little complaint as Mary removed a piece of hay scratching His neck. His little face relaxed into deep, silent night sleep.
His eyes moved back and forth in rapid eye movement sleep. Sometimes He smiled when He dreamed. Sometimes deep agonizing pain came across His face.
Mary asked, "What do you think He's dreaming?"
Without looking away Joseph whispered, "I really don't know."
There's no guide-book on how to parent the Savior of the world. The immensity of raising a son, who's also the Son of the Living God, is beyond comprehension. They really didn't know what to do except the things that were in front of them minute by minute.
The sleeping newborn was completely, physically dependent on His parents, but there was so much more. How could Mary and Joseph understand that as they smiled upon their sleeping child, He smiled upon them? How could they fathom their dreaming baby was hearing people praying to Him at that very moment? How could they know He was dreaming in human form, but in God form knew everything?
It was beyond the wildest imagination to know baby Jesus was dreaming of creation, because He was there from the beginning. It was impossible to grasp that their baby dreamt of the ages when He sat by His Father on high. There was no way to realize their baby boy dreamed of the choruses he'd heard angels sing, the constant expanse of the stars, and circling path of a hydrogen atom.
There's no way to appreciate that while Jesus was dreaming, He was also counting the number of breaths Mary breathed in her lifetime, the number of hairs on the leg of an ant, and watching an egg in a bird nest as the chick tapped itself free from inside.
They couldn't envision that time and history would be measured from this day, the day their child was born.
There was no way to grasp that their baby dreamed of the faces of all people who had, were and would, live on earth. Or that he dreamed of what He was sent to do, healing the lame, giving sight to blind, walking on water, raising Lazarus from the dead. And yet, baby Jesus dreamed.
Jesus dreamed of things that were, are, and will be. He dreamed of willingly placing Himself in the confinements and frailty of a human body, and how Mary and Joseph could not even look upon Him had He not cloaked His light and glory in human flesh.
The restrictions of a human body were so restraining compared to His infinite glory. The requirement for sleep was limiting, for He had never known sleep nor slumber. The need for food was a new twist for an all-powerful God now wrapped in swaddling clothes, yet he dreamed mankind would know Him as the Bread of Life.
Not since creation had Jesus tried on the bodies of every plant, fish and animal in creation. And now, now He placed Himself in the midst of creation, and He dreamed of His huge purpose for becoming flesh and blood. He felt so small, so dependent, so needy in his new human form, yet He knew it was only for a season and that eternity hinged on the days of His earthly life.
Baby Jesus stirred. A look of pain shot across his face. It wasn't a normal pained face of a baby, but rather a pained face from a broken heart.
Baby Jesus' dream turned to the fall of man, how man willingly disobeyed and turned away from the God Who loved them. He dreamed of the searing burn of what a righteous, holy, pure God must require of Him as a substitute for man's sin. He knew the plan, the awful, yet beautiful plan. He knew that redemption, mankind's forgiveness, and restoration rested upon his tiny little human shoulders.
Baby Jesus dreamed how He would be falsely accused by those He was sent to save. He dreamed of the pain He would feel while being scourged with a whip of nine tails, and winced at how His man flesh would be cut, ripped and torn with every blow of the soldier's whip.
Baby Jesus cried louder. It was a painful cry. This was Mary's firstborn, but she had sat and cared for babies before. She looked at Joseph with a desperate, perplexed look, for this was not a wet, hungry or tired cry, but a painful cry, unlike any she had ever heard before.
The new parents tried to comfort Him, but sensed they could do nothing to soothe His pain, nothing, but offer physical comfort.
Mary held Him close as her baby dreamed of nails hammered through his wrists and feet. The baby moved, as if seeking relief, as He dreamed how He would struggle for each breath while hanging naked on a cross.
Mary rocked Him. Joseph reached to cradle His head, yet their baby dreamed how salty sweat and livid spit from hating men would burn into His wounds. In His dream, He heard the taunts, jeers and mockery of His heavenly purpose.
Baby Jesus cried louder. Mary spoke softy, assuring Him He was OK, safe, and at the end of the day, it would all be alright. The baby heard his mother's assurances, felt her love and compassion as she rocked Him back and forth, but Mary could not save Jesus from what He intended to give.
Mary rocked more fervently as Jesus struggled in her arms, as if fighting off invisible attacks, for Jesus dreamed how Lucifer and the demons of hell would surround Him on the cross.
He dreamed of the torment, torment invisible to the human eye, torment He would endure on the cross. He felt every blow, every strike, every talon dug into His spiritual being as demon by demon, principalities, rulers of darkness each took turns torturing His spirit that He willingly laid down as a sacrifice for mankind.
Baby Jesus tensed in Mary's arms. Somehow in this new human form, He felt what was to be. The dream was too real, too fast, too sorrowful, but the dream continued.
Baby Jesus dreamed of spiritual, lonely pain as God, the Father Himself, turned His back on His Son. He dreamed of the indescribable pain as every sin, every wrong, every mistake, injustice, illness and death in the history of mankind was laid upon Him. He dreamed how in both physical and spiritual realms how He must willingly accept man's penalty.
He felt the point of Lucifer's dagger as he ran it across His chest. He dreamed how Lucifer stood above His spirit, writhing in a devilish, ecstatic, gnarly hatred of the Holy One. He heard the demonic army as a steady beating rhythm, a cadence of talons and claws, drummed in unison, working into a frenzied anticipation of the death of the Son of God.
Baby Jesus dreamed how Satan worked his evil army into a crescendo of hellish anger, raising the dagger above Him, then plunging it deep into His spiritual heart at the exact moment in time that His earthly body died on the cruel cross of man.
Joseph sat motionless. Mary wept. The baby became still.
Baby Jesus settled deep into the comfort of Mary's tender arms. A warmth surrounded the babe's body, and His dreams turned to dreams of light, hope, grace, peace.
The baby dreamed of the day a miraculous surge of power would sweep through his lungs and cause a cold heart to immediately beat warm life. He dreamed how He would burst forth as the risen Savior of mankind, and through His love, blood and sacrifice, claim victory over sin, death and the legions of hell.
Jesus dreamed of the sheer amazement and hope of His disciples as the realization of what He had taught them finally made sense. He smiled in His dream as Thomas felt His scars, how John would hug and not let go, and how Peter would jump and swim from a boat just to reach Him faster.
He dreamed of what they, and many throughout time, would endure for His name's sake. He felt empathy for their future, but smiled upon them all, knowing that He had persevered, passed through the valley of the shadow of death, and no human need ever fear evil again if only they believe and follow.
Joseph's voice broke the silence of night in heightened alert. He asked Mary, "Why are these men, these shepherds, coming here?"
Mary laid Him in a manger.
Baby Jesus woke from His sleep and smiled, for Mary was right in what she said. At the end of the day, it would all be alright.


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Grechko, Andrei Antonovich
Grechko, Andrei Antonovich əndrā´ əntô´nəvĭch grĕch´kō [key], 1903–76, Soviet army officer and minister of defense. As a World War II commander he took part in the liberation of the Caucasus, Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. In 1953 he assumed command of Soviet troops in East Germany, suppressing the East German workers' rebellion of that same year. He became first deputy minister of defense in 1957, under the ailing Marshal Malinovsky. Assuming the top defense post in 1967, he deftly organized the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet and other Warsaw Pact troops (see Warsaw Treaty Organization) to suppress liberalization in that country. In 1973 he became a member of the Politburo. He is credited with modernizing the Soviet army.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Russian, Soviet, and CIS History: Biographies

subset: commoncrawl


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NEW YORK, N.Y. – Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the world's largest retailer and the nation's largest private employer, is making a pledge to hire every recently discharged veteran who wants a job.
The plan is set to be announced as part of an address delivered in New York on Tuesday at the annual retail industry convention by Bill Simon, president and CEO of Wal-Mart's namesake U.S. business.
Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Ark., says it projects it will hire more than 100,000 veterans in the next five years. Honourably discharged veterans will have a "place to go", says Wal-Mart's Simon, according to prepared text supplied by the discounter. The hiring pledge, which will begin on Memorial Day, covers veterans within 12 months of leaving active duty. Most of the jobs will be in Wal-Mart's stores or its Sam's club locations. Some will be in the company's distribution centres.
"Let's be clear; hiring a veteran can be one of the best decisions any of us can make," Simon plans to say in his address to retailers gathered on the third day of the four-day National Retail Federation convention. "Veterans have a record of performance under pressure. They're quick learners, and they're team players. These are leaders with discipline, training, and a passion for service. There is a seriousness and sense of purpose that the military instills, and we need it today more than ever."
Wal-Mart says it believes it is already the large private employer of veterans in the country.
The company says that it has spoken to the White House about its commitment, and said the First Lady Michelle Obama's team has already expressed an interest in working with Wal-Mart and with the rest of the business community.
In the next several weeks, the White House will convene the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defence and major U.S. employers to encourage businesses to make significant commitments to train and employ American's returning veterans, according to Simon's prepared text.
First lady Michelle Obama, who's spearheaded a White House drive to encourage businesses to hire veterans, praised Wal-Mart's announcement, calling it "historic."
"We all believe that no one who serves our country should have to fight for a job once they return home," Mrs. Obama said in the statement. "Wal-Mart is setting a groundbreaking example for the private sector to follow."
Wal-Mart which also operates Sam's Clubs, employs more than 1.4 million workers in the U.S.
Associated Press writer Mark S. Smith contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.


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Can microblogged data fit the information needs of humanitarian organizations? This is the question asked by a group of academics at Pennsylvania State University's College of Information Sciences and Technology. Their study (PDF) is an important contribution to the discourse on humanitarian technology and crisis information. The applied research provides key insights based on a series of interviews with humanitarian professionals. While I largely agree with the majority of the arguments presented in this study, I do have questions regarding the framing of the problem and some of the assertions made.
The authors note that "despite the evidence of strong value to those experiencing the disaster and those seeking information concerning the disaster, there has been very little uptake of message data by large-scale, international humanitarian relief organizations." This is because real-time message data is "deemed as unverifiable and untrustworthy, and it has not been incorporated into established mechanisms for organizational decision-making." To this end, "committing to the mobilization of valuable and time sensitive relief supplies and personnel, based on what may turn out be illegitimate claims, has been perceived to be too great a risk." Thus far, the authors argue, "no mechanisms have been fashioned for harvesting microblogged data from the public in a manner, which facilitates organizational decisions."
I don't think this latter assertion is entirely true if one looks at the use of Twitter by the private sector. Take for example the services offered by Crimson Hexagon, which I blogged about 3 years ago. This successful start-up launched by Gary King out of Harvard University provides companies with real-time sentiment analysis of brand perceptions in the Twittersphere precisely to help inform their decision making. Another example is Storyful, which harvests data from authenticated Twitter users to provide highly curated, real-time information via microblogging. Given that the humanitarian community lags behind in the use and adoption of new technologies, it behooves us to look at those sectors that are ahead of the curve to better understand the opportunities that do exist.
Since the study principally focused on Twitter, I'm surprised that the authors did not reference the empirical study that came out last year on the behavior of Twitter users after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake in Chile. The study shows that about 95% of tweets related to confirmed reports validated that information. In contrast only 0.03% of tweets denied the validity of these true cases. Interestingly, the results also show that "the number of tweets that deny information becomes much larger when the information corresponds to a false rumor." In fact, about 50% of tweets will deny the validity of false reports. This means it may very well be posible to detect rumors by using aggregate analysis on tweets.
On framing, I believe the focus on microblogging and Twitter in particular misses the bigger picture which ultimately is about the methodology of crowdsourcing rather than the technology. To be sure, the study by Penn State could just as well have been titled "Seeking the Trustworthy SMS." I think this important research on microblogging would be stronger if this distinction were made and the resulting analysis tied more closely to the ongoing debate on crowdsourcing crisis information that began during the response to Haiti's earthquake in 2010.
Also, as was noted during the Red Cross Summit in 2010, more than two-thirds of respondents to a survey noted that they would expect a response within an hour if they posted a need for help on a social media platform (and not just Twitter) during a crisis. So whether humanitarian organizations like it or not, crowdsourced social media information cannot be ignored.
The authors carried out a series of insightful interviews with about a dozen international humanitarian organizations to try and better understand the hesitation around the use of Twitter for humanitarian response. As noted earlier, however, it is not Twitter per se that is a concern but the underlying methodology of crowdsourcing.
As expected, interviewees noted that they prioritize the veracity of information over the speed of communication. "I don't think speed is necessarily the number one tool that an emergency operator needs to use." Another interviewee opined that "It might be hard to trust the data. I mean, I don't think you can make major decisions based on a couple of tweets, on one or two tweets." What's interesting about this latter comment is that it implies that only one channel of information, Twitter, is to be used in decision-making, which is a false argument and one that nobody I know has ever made.
Either way, the trade-off between speed and accuracy is a well known one. As mentioned in this blog post from 2009, information is perishable and accuracy is often a luxury in the first few hours and days following a major disaster. As the authors for the study rightly note, "uncertainty is 'always expected, if sometimes crippling' (Benini, 1997) for NGOs involved in humanitarian relief." Ultimately, the question posed by the authors of the Penn study can be boiled down to this: is some information better than no information if it cannot be immediately verified? In my opinion, yes. If you have some information, then at least you can investigate it's veracity which may lead to action. I also believe that from this philosophical point of view, the answer would still be yes.
Based on the interviews, the authors found that organizations engaged in immediate emergency response were less likely to make use of Twitter (or crowdsourced information) as a channel for information. As one interviewee put it, "Lives are on the line. Every moment counts. We have it down to a science. We know what information we need and we get in and get it…" In contrast, those organizations engaged in subsequent phases of disaster response were thought more likely to make use of crowdsourced data.
I'm not entirely convinced by this: "We know what information we need and we get in and get it…". Yes, humanitarian organizations typically know but whether they get it, and in time, is certainly not a given. Just look at the humanitarian responses to Haiti and Libya, for example. Organizations may very well be "unwilling to trade data assurance, veracity and authenticity for speed," but sometimes this mindset will mean having absolutely no information. This is why OCHA asked the Standby Volunteer Taskforce to provide them with a live crowdsourced social media may of Libya. In Haiti, while the UN is not thought to have used crowdsourced SMS data from Mission 4636, other responders like the Marine Corps did.
Still, according to one interviewee, "fast is good, but bad information fast can kill people. It's got to be good, and maybe fast too." This assumes that no information doesn't kill people. Also good information that is late, can also kill people. As one of the interviewees admitted when using traditional methods, "it can be quite slow before all that [information] trickles through all the layers to get to us." The authors of the study also noted that, "Many [interviewees] were frustrated with how slow the traditional methods of gathering post-disaster data had remained despite the growing ubiquity of smart phones and high quality connectivity and power worldwide."
On a side note, I found the following comment during the interviews especially revealing: "When we do needs assessments, we drive around and we look with our eyes and we talk to people and we assess what's on the ground and that's how we make our evaluations." One of the common criticisms leveled against the use of crowdsourced information is that it isn't representative. But then again, driving around, checking things out and chatting with people is hardly going to yield a representative sample either.
One of the main findings from this research has to do with a problem in attitude on the part of humanitarian organizations. "Each of the interviewees stated that their organization did not have the organizational will to try out new technolo-gies. Most expressed this as a lack of resources, support, leadership and interest to adopt new technologies." As one interview noted, "We tried to get the president and CEO both to use Twitter. We failed abysmally, so they're not– they almost never use it." Interestingly, "most of the respondents admitted that many of their technological changes were motivated by the demands of their donors. At this point in time their donors have not demanded that these organizations make use of microblogged data. The subjects believed they would need to wait until this occurred for real change to begin."
For me the lack of will has less to do with available resources and limited capacity and far more to do with a generational gap. When today's young professionals in the humanitarian space work their way up to more executive positions, we'll see a significant change in attitude within these organizations. I'm thinking in particular of the many dozens of core volunteers who played a pivotal role in the crisis mapping operations in Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, Russia and most recently Libya. And when attitude changes, resources can be reallocated and new priorities can be rationalized.
What's interesting about these interviews is that despite all the concerns and criticisms of crowdsourced Twitter data, all interviewees still see microblogged data as a "vast trove of potentially useful information concerning a disaster zone." One of the professionals interviewed said, "Yes! Yes! Because that would – again, it would tell us what resources are already in the ground, what resources are still needed, who has the right staff, what we could provide. I mean, it would just – it would give you so much more real-time data, so that as we're putting our plans together we can react based on what is already known as opposed to getting there and discovering, oh, they don't really need medical supplies. What they really need is construction supplies or whatever."
Another professional stated that, "Twitter data could potentially be used the same way… for crisis mapping. When an emergency happens there are so many things going on in the ground, and an emergency response is simply prioritization, taking care of the most important things first and knowing what those are. The difficult thing is that things change so quickly. So being able to gather information quickly…. <with Twitter> There's enormous power."
The authors propose three possible future directions. The first is bounded microblogging, which I have long referred to as "bounded crowdsourcing." It doesn't make sense to focus on the technology instead of the methodology because at the heart of the issue are the methods for information collection. In "bounded crowdsourcing," membership is "controlled to only those vetted by a particular organization or community." This is the approach taken by Storyful, for example. One interviewee acknowledge that "Twitter might be useful right after a disaster, but only if the person doing the Tweeting was from <NGO name removed>, you know, our own people. I guess if our own people were sending us back Tweets about the situation it could help."
Bounded crowdsourcing overcomes the challenge of authentication and verification but obviously with a tradeoff in the volume of data collected "if an additional means were not created to enable new members through an automatic authentication system, to the bounded microblogging community." However, the authors feel that bounded crowdsourcing environments "undermine the value of the system" since "the power of the medium lies in the fact that people, out of their own volition, make localized observations and that organizations could harness that multitude of data. The bounded environment argument neutralizes that, so in effect, at that point, when you have a group of people vetted to join a trusted circle, the data does not scale, because that pool by necessity would be small."
That said, I believe the authors are spot on when they write that "Bounded environments might be a way of introducing Twitter into the humanitarian centric organizational discourse, as a starting point, because these organizations, as seen from the evidence presented above, are not likely to initially embrace the medium. Bounded environments could hence demonstrate the potential for Twitter to move beyond the PR and Communications departments."
The second possible future direction is to treat crowdsourced data is ambient, "contextual information rather than instrumental information, (i.e., factual in nature)." This grassroots information could be considered as an "add-on to traditional, trusted institutional lines of information gathering." As one interviewee noted, "Usually information exists. The question is the context doesn't exist…. that's really what I see as the biggest value [of crowdsourced information] and why would you use that in the future is creating the context…".
The authors rightly suggest that "that adding contextual information through microblogged data may alleviate some of the uncertainty during the time of disaster. Since the microblogged data would not be the single data source upon which decisions would be made, the standards for authentication and security could be less stringent. This solution would offer the organization rich contextual data, while reducing the need for absolute data authentication, reducing the need for the organization to structurally change, and reducing the need for significant resources." This is exactly how I consider and treat crowdsourced data.
The third and final forward-looking solution is computational. The authors "believe better computational models will eventually deduce informational snippets with acceptable levels of trust." They refer to Ushahidi's SwiftRiver project as an example.
In sum, this study is an important contribution to the discourse. The challenges around using crowdsourced crisis information are well known. If I come across as optimistic, it is for two reasons. First, I do think a lot can be done to address the challenges. Second, I do believe that attitudes in the humanitarian sector will continue to change.


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When Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler arrived at a house party of teenagers in June, he pushed through the crowd, past youngsters dancing on a table and a smattering of red plastic cups. One of the revelers snapped a photo.
As the night wore on, teens at the South Bethany rental home posted tweets, photos and videos of a bash labeled the "eviction party" for its intensity — a celebration where underage participants later confirmed many were drinking alcohol.
Gansler, a Democrat who is running for governor, said this week that he stopped by the Delaware beach house to talk briefly with his teenage son and then left. He said he does not remember whether he saw anyone drinking. But even if he had, Gansler said, it was not his responsibility as a parent or a high-ranking law enforcement official to intervene.
"Assume for purposes of discussion that there was widespread drinking at this party," Gansler said. "How is that relevant to me? … The question is, do I have any moral authority over other people's children at beach week in another state? I say no."
Advocates against substance abuse and underage drinking disagreed, saying adults shouldn't look the other way.
"It's totally inappropriate for an adult, especially for an elected official whose job is to uphold the laws of the state or any state," said Michael Gimbel, an independent consultant and the former alcohol abuse prevention official for Baltimore County.
"For any parent to do this is irresponsible. But for an attorney general who fought for these laws on the books is even worse," he said.
Gansler has publicly advocated against underage drinking, appearing less than a year ago in a video for the Century Council, a nonprofit that works to combat both teen drinking and drunken driving.
"Parents, you're the leading influence on your teen's decision not to drink," Gansler said in a video filmed as part of the organization's "Ask, Listen, Learn" initiative to persuade parents to talk to middle-school children about drinking. "It's never too early to talk with your kids about smart ways to say no."
Century Council's CEO and president Ralph Blackman, upon learning that Gansler had been at such a party, said, "Let me pick myself up off the floor here."
Blackman added that he couldn't judge what Gansler should have done while briefly stopping by a party. But he said that as a parent, he would hope to hold himself to a standard high enough to "not only set a good example and be a good role model for my own kid, but for the wider group of kids who all influence each other."
"You can agree, you can disagree with the legal age," Blackman said. But by looking the other way, "you are somehow suggesting that it is OK to break the law. It's part of the value systems that go into young people's decision making."
Gansler, in a two-hour interview Tuesday about senior week and the June 13 party, said, "My responsibility is only to my child. … Everybody has their own moral compass. Mine is to raise my own child." He said firmly that his son was not drinking.
Gansler had attended a Maryland State Bar Association event in Ocean City earlier that evening. During his brief stay at the teens' party, he was captured in both a video and a photo posted online. He did not dispute the authenticity of those images.
He said he was at the party only for a few minutes to discuss with his newly graduated son when they would leave Delaware the next morning for a college event in Pennsylvania. Of senior week, he said, "For better or worse, the reality is some kids drink alcohol while they're there."
The two-term attorney general and former Montgomery County state's attorney said he had no more responsibility to shut down a party if he saw drinking than to stop teenagers walking down the street with beer cans in hand or investigate tailgate parties.
"Was I supposed to serve as the police officer?" Gansler asked. "No."
Gansler was part of a group of parents who paid for a weeklong stay at a six-bedroom beach house after their sons' graduation from the private Landon School in Bethesda.
The parents arranged for two fathers to serve as chaperones each night, paid for food and negotiated rules that forbade the boys from driving, having girls behind closed bedroom doors or drinking "hard alcohol," according a copy of the rules and planning documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun. The list of prohibitions did not mention drinking beer or wine.
Gansler said that while he didn't write the rules, he attended a meeting where parents discussed them and was one of two adults who explained them to the dozen boys.
"If anything bad happened, if the kids violated the rules, they'd be sent home," Gansler said. "My guess is ... that if someone drank beer, that would not be an offense for which the chaperones would want to send somebody home."
Delaware law, like Maryland's, does not distinguish among types of alcohol in its broad prohibition against underage drinking. In both states, the legal drinking age is 21.
It is legal for parents to allow their own children to drink at home.
In several photos posted online by people at the party, older adults can be seen standing in the background. In videos and photos, young people, both men and women, are dancing on a bar and on a table. In one video, a bucket of clear liquid is poured from the balcony onto dancers below. It's unclear how many teens were drinking.
Some of the videos have since been removed from social media.
"I don't remember much, but it was one of the best parties I've been to, hands down," said one attendee who spoke to The Baltimore Sun this week under the condition of anonymity because some engaged in underage drinking.
Two days after the party, however, the house was in bad shape. Julie Barnes, who has for years cleaned the home after renters, said she arrived on June 15 to find the wooden floors rippled from moisture damage, dents that appeared to be made from high heels on the bar and pool table, and floors sticky from what smelled like beer. According to minutes of a South Bethany Town Council meeting where the vandalism was discussed, the house sustained about $50,000 worth of damage.
Police who investigated did not place blame on the Landon group and classified the damage as likely the result of a burglary that occurred sometime between Friday evening and Saturday when Barnes arrived to clean. The Landon group turned in their keys Friday afternoon, parents said.
A parent who chaperoned the night of the party but would not discuss whether there was drinking said he helped the boys clean up the next morning. He said they left the house in good shape. Another parent said a representative of the realty company ResortQuest called afterward to say the house was fine and minor damage would be covered by the security deposit. The parents asked not to be identified to protect their children's privacy. Representatives from ResortQuest did not respond to a request for comment.
Gansler said the parents assume that someone broke in and trashed the house after the boys checked out.
"Apparently, the night before, the parents who were chaperoning it kicked kids out" because it was getting too crowded, Gansler said. "The thought was [the damage] was so malicious that they were trying to get revenge or back at the parents who were chaperoning for kicking them out."
The home's owner, Timothy Dickson, lives in Virginia and said he thought he and his wife were renting to several families vacationing together, not to a dozen recent high school graduates. He said they were dismayed by the teens' behavior at their beach house as displayed on social media.
Baltimore Sun community coordinator Michael Gold contributed to this article.


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Disconnected Youth
David Jason Fischer
In recent years, public and government attention has begun to focus on New York City's "disconnected youth"—young residents between the ages of 16 and 24 who are neither in school nor working. A January 2005 report by the Community Service Society of New York estimated that nearly 170,000 city residents met this description; other measures that include unemployed young people who are actively looking for work peg the number above 200,000.
As is true in general for those in poverty, disconnected youth are not a uniform group. Some became disconnected when they dropped out of high school; others might be struggling to raise their own children; still others contend with physical or mental health problems or other barriers to education or employment. Roughly half have at least completed high school or a GED.
Given the differences in life circumstances, educational attainment and work readiness among the disconnected, there is no single-bullet strategy for reconnecting them to school or work. For many, high school or GED completion is the goal; others, particularly those with high school degrees and family responsibilities, are more likely to be tracked toward job readiness and employment. Unfortunately, the combination of severely limited public resources and bureaucratic confusion among numerous city agencies and programs has led to very small numbers receiving services: a 2005 report from the Young Adult Task Force estimated that fewer than 10,000 disconnected young New Yorkers were reached by city programs.
The Mayor's Commission for Economic Opportunity identified "young adults," including disconnected youth, as one of three groups to target for poverty alleviation. Its recommendations include expanding the alternative-education programs and settings now offered by the Department of Education, such as the Learning to Work program and Young Adult Borough Centers; increasing and strengthening "school-community collaborations" that combine education and community service to help keep youth connected; making available more programs that help young adults transition from GED attainment to college; and focusing on the most vulnerable groups -- ex-offenders and young people aging out of foster care -- with a range of services.
My organization, the Center for an Urban Future, noted in a May 2006 report that the problem of disconnected youth also creates a tremendous opportunity for New York City. As pending Baby Boomer retirements create a new and urgent need for workers in key New York City industries like health care and construction, we can work with stakeholders in these and other industries to create training curricula and career tracks that can reconnect young New Yorkers to jobs that will benefit all city residents.
David Jason Fischer is the project director at the Center for an Urban Future, a think tank focused on issue of economic development in New York City.
Lifting Children Out of Poverty
Donna Lawrence
Fifty percent of the children who are born in New York City today are born into poverty. That is a really frightening statistic. Once children are born into poverty it's very hard to lift them out.
So, we need to ring the alarm on that alarming number. This report, this commission, is a good first step.
As a blueprint, it's great. It sets out a framework and covers the critical areas for children and families. The fact that the mayor has done this and is taking leadership is a good signal. But the specific recommendations are going to be key.
For example, the report talks about providing health insurance to children who are uninsured. In New York City, there are about 300,000 children who do not have health insurance, and about 75 percent of those 300,000 are currently eligible for it. So it is good that the mayor recognizes that that children should get health insurance, but the plan does not go into any detail about how he will do that.
We need to know how he is going to reach those kids, what kinds of mechanisms will be put in place to insure that those kids don't lose coverage and how to simplify the system so that families can get coverage and maintain that coverage.
The Children's Defense Fund is trying to bring together the food stamp application with the health insurance application. Any child receiving food stamps should be eligible for health insurance, but there are a huge number of kids who get food stamps who don't get health insurance and vice versa. This is very technical. A lot of federal regulations would need to be waived to bring those application processes together. The mayor talked in broad strokes about trying to bring the systems together. What we would want to see in six months is how far he has gone.
We need to look at things like enrolling children in health insurance at the time they're born and enrolling parents. Now, when a mother who is uninsured comes to the hospital to give birth, there is no mechanism to enroll her or her children into health insurance.
The childcare issue is critical as well, and it's good that the mayor is addressing it. To get mothers to go out in the workforce, we need to insure they have quality childcare. The challenge is going to be finding physical facilities. Where do we build these childcare centers, how do we get more programs up and running?
This report is a good first step. There is nothing like a mayor taking leadership on an issue like this, but he has got to keep the momentum going and make sure that the details that are filled in meet the overall recommendations.
Donna Lawrence is executive Director of the Children's Defense Fund-New York.
What Government Should – And Should Not – Do
Heather Macdonald
The government should focus on doing the things it can do and recognize what it cannot do. The dismal legacy of the War on Poverty, which destroyed the black family to the misery of generations of children, suggests that government has very little capacity to engage in what sociologist Nathan Glazer has called "social uplift."
Government can, however, create the backdrop for individual success. New York should become the opportunity city by creating the most efficient public services in the country — the best roads, rails, communications services and parks — that allow all individuals to seize opportunity and to better themselves.
New York can become much more economically vibrant by cutting taxes and ineffective social programs that only enrich social workers. The tax burden in New York prevents many entrepreneurs from opening businesses here and creating more and better paying jobs. As Mayor Bloomberg himself says, the best antipoverty program is a job. But as long as the middle class is priced out of the city, our job growth will continue to lag far behind the rest of the country.
New York schools should be unfailingly rigorous and demanding; students should be drilled in spelling, writing, and their multiplication tables. Children should graduate not just with academic skills but also having learned to control their impulses and to show respect for legitimate authority. So far, our schools are far from achieving those goals, in large part because the educational bureaucracy remains in thrall to the knowledge-crushing nostrums of progressive education.
Government is responsible for public safety, and here, New York leads the entire country. Mayor Bloomberg and the New York Police Department come closer everyday to ensuring that residents of every neighborhood enjoy the right to safe streets.
What government cannot do is create personal responsibility and drive in individuals. Yet that is what Mayor Bloomberg is attempting to do by paying people to send their children to school or to keep medical appointments. This payment system creates a very odd situation for the long term, as well as the short term. Will the recipients ever be weaned off their payments? The entitlement mentality will inevitably suck in a larger and larger range of paid-for activities. Not just attending classes, but refraining from hitting your teacher, not bringing a gun to school, showing up for an exam, bathing your kids and feeding them -- all will be candidates for a bribe. How will the city choose which individuals to pay and explain to those it is not paying why they should act in their self-interest for free?
Finally, the single most effective way to reduce child poverty would be to restore the norm of marriage to the inner city. Children growing up in single parent homes are five times as likely to be poor as those raised by married parents. They are also many times more likely to fail in school, become juvenile delinquents, suffer mental problems, and, for girls, become teen mothers. Restoring marriage as the norm for raising children does not lie within the power of government. But the mayor can call on private groups to campaign for such a change, and put his own considerable rhetorical stamp on marriage. If successful, such an initiative would be the most important social change in a century.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor at the Manhattan Institute's City Journal.
Don't Forget Those Who Aren't Working
Ketny Jean-Francois
I am one of the 400,000 New Yorkers on public assistance. I am also one of the 13,000 people in the city's Work Experience Program (WEP), administered by the Human Resource Administration. For over a year, I have been stuck doing dead-end and unpaid work. Each day I have to pull weeds from the streets and clean toilets. I do not receive a wage, benefits or a title in exchange for my labor. Instead I receive a public assistance grant. I am forced to do work that does not give me any experience to further my employment prospects. I am interested in entering the health care sector but am currently assigned to the Sanitation Department. Even if I wanted a full time job in the Sanitation Department, there is no pathway from WEP into a paid job at the Sanitation Department. This is the same for most city agencies with WEP workers.
The idea of the Commission for Economic Opportunity is a good and necessary one. But so far it is not clear how the commission's new report will actually change the lives of people like me. It does not target the unemployed or public assistance recipients, overlooking some of the worst off in New York City.
To her credit, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs, who oversees 11 city agencies including the Human Resources Administration, seems interested in discussing the challenges faced by public assistance recipients. Here are a few things I think the agency should do:
First, caseworkers must be re-trained in screening clients for employment and training. This screening should consider past employment experience and current interests, and should be used to place public assistance recipients in employment and training programs that will help them develop skills and access jobs that they want.
Second, the city should expand the paid transitional job programs, such as the Parks Opportunity Program, to all city agencies. This program should include different job types and positions to meet the varied interests and career aspiration of participants.
Third, as is being proposed by the commission for other populations, the Human Resources Administration should create career ladder training programs for public assistance recipients. This would enable us to get onto the first rung of the ladder and out of the revolving door of the public assistance system.
Fourth, the Human Resources Administration should work with other city agencies so that public assistance recipients can benefit from workforce development resources and programs targeted at the working poor.
Overall, while cost-efficiency tells the commission to focus on programs and populations where success is most likely, social justice requires it to not forget those of us most in need.
Ketny Jean-Francois is a member of Community Voices Heard, an advocacy organization composed of low-income New Yorkers. She lives in the Bronx with her three year-old son.
Strategies to Create Jobs
Bich Ha Pham
The establishment of the New York City Commission for Economic Opportunity and the issuance of its recent report are promising developments. The recommendations of the economic opportunity report that were particularly encouraging in regards to the adult working poor include improving and expanding benefits that support work along with ACCESS NYC (a web-based pre-screening tool for over 20 city, state and federal benefit programs), and increasing access to training for those who are working.
As the city looks to implement the strategies in the report, officials can look to a number of promising and model programs from around the country that have raised earnings and family income. These include wage supplement programs that provide cash payments on top of earnings from wages in order to raise an individual's income to a certain level. That level can be a targeted percentage above the poverty level or a living wage level.
The transitional jobs program for one-time offenders contained in the report can be expanded to include all job seekers, including welfare participants, who along with people who have recently left welfare comprise a segment of the city's working poor. As it implements the report's strategies, the Human Resources Administration should try to provide opportunities to increase access to education and job training, including vocational job training and vocational and educational programs at community colleges.
Lastly, though it may seem like a minor part of the report, the city should not promote policies that imply that working poor people and the poor have behavioral problems. Low-wage, part-time jobs with little or no benefits are proliferating in our city and country. Consequently, so are the working poor. People are poor, not because of poor behavior, but because of a lack of jobs adequate to sustain families and of the vocational training and college education needed to get those jobs.
Bich Ha Pham is executive director of the Hunger Action Network of New York State
Barriers to College
Lynne Weikart
Though the Bloomberg report recognizes that college is an important way out of poverty, it does not address many of the obstacles that keep New Yorkers from getting a college education.
Because of structural, cultural, financial, and political barriers, millions of young people do not even contemplate college, are unprepared to attend the college of their choice or struggle to complete their studies. And those who do finish college often find themselves overburdened with debt. A new "report card on higher education," by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education found that, for many American families, college is becoming less affordable. Whereas Pell grants for low-income students covered 70 percent of a year's cost in higher education in the 1990s, they now cover less than half.
The report gave New York a failing grade for affordability. In 2003, City University Chancellor Matthew Goldstein stated that almost half of CUNY students came from families in which neither parent had attended college and that 40 percent had adjusted gross incomes of less than $15,000. The cost of attending public universities and community colleges in New York represents nearly half of a low or middle-income students' annual family income. New York does have tuition assistance but that alone does not solve the problem since New York State is investing less and less in higher education and depending more and more on tuition for revenue.
Other New Yorkers are legally precluded from attending college, since most people receiving public assistance are required to work and have no time to attend a four-year college program and do what they need to do to continue to receive their benefits. Race, ethnicity and citizenship status often affects a student's ability to even contemplate higher education.
Moreover, recent studies suggest that policies adopted by federal and state agencies as well as institutions of higher education have discouraged low-income and minority students from attending or completing college. These practices include admitting low-income students but denying them meaningful financial assistance or conversely, encouraging wealthier, higher achieving students to attend a particular college by offering tuition discounts.
In New York and throughout the nation, the transition between high school and college is totally inadequate. Many high school students have an alarming ignorance of what academic and career avenues will be open to them after graduation. A few schools have adopted strategies to address this issue. We need to study these college readiness strategies and pay more attention to the issues of access to and funding for higher education.
Lynne A. Weikart is a professor at Baruch College School of Public Affairs
Tough Times for Seniors
Bobbie Sackman
Twenty percent of New Yorkers over 65 live in poverty, more than twice the national average. The typical elderly New Yorker living in poverty is a woman, minority, over the age of 75, living alone. Social security provides 80 to 90 percent of her income.
Unfortunately, the number of elderly people living in poverty looks like it will continue to increase dramatically. Growing numbers of minorities are reaching retirement age already poor – or near to it. Middle class seniors are moving out of the city, while the number of poorer elderly immigrants is increasing.
For the first time in history, the fastest growing segment of the city's population is people over 85. Old age brings with it declining income and wealth. Nearly 25 percent of all households headed by the elderly in NYC have incomes below $10,000, according to the census. Thousands more are near poor, which in New York City means having about $3 a day left for expenses after rent and food. A significant number of elderly New Yorkers spend over half of their income on rent. The Food Bank reports that 25 percent of people utilizing soup kitchens and emergency food banks are seniors, and that proportion is increasing.
If the city is going to address poverty in a comprehensive way, here are some things it should do to help poor seniors.
• Strengthen community-based services helping seniors to "age in place" in their homes and communities. These include senior centers that provide nutritious meals and social services, accessible transportation, affordable housing, case management to assist homebound elderly, home care, Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities, adult day services for people with Alzheimer's, and caregiver support services.
• Help seniors access existing public benefits such as food stamps and the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption Program, which protects seniors living in rent controlled or regulated apartments from increases. Currently such programs are significantly underutilized.
• Advocate for increased Supplemental Security Income benefits from the state and federal governments.
• Create jobs and incentives for seniors who are able to work.
Bobbie Sackman is the director of public policy at the Council of Senior Centers and Services of New York City.
Getting Foster Teens Beyond the System
Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff
Most young people who "age out" of the foster care system at 18 can expect to live in poverty. Too many are not prepared for college and too many end up homeless, jobless, and incarcerated. They lack the financial and educational resources they need to become successful adults.
Young people from foster care have the aspirations and potential to become fully participating citizens -- to work in accounting, design, health care, web design, the entertainment industry. The main challenge is convincing adults around them that these youth can – and must-- take on more responsibility while they are still in foster care to prepare for a future of economic opportunity. The culture of low expectations for teens in foster care and the lack of accountability for their success or failure must change.
The foster care system has been given the responsibility of raising thousands of teens to adulthood, but its primary purpose is to protect children from imminent harm, not bring teens to adulthood. As a result, the services provided by the foster care system for teens are typically inadequate, and do not focus enough on future planning as a way for the young people to rise above poverty.
The city has to set high expectations for foster care teens and give them the tools, skills, and education to make the contributions that they can for our society.
The teens themselves can speak most passionately and articulately about what they want for their lives--not just today but for the future. If given responsibility, education and opportunities, they are the best advocates for themselves. And thousands of dedicated and experienced professionals in the foster care system can help lift teens out of poverty if they are given the support and tools to treat each teen as an individual with potential.
But, if we are to be successful in helping foster teens avoid poverty, the broader community must be involved. Leaders from the private sector, experts on higher education, national service, the arts, etc. must get involved -- whether it means giving advice to individual teens, providing scholarships and internships, or participating in policy discussions about preparing teens for adulthood. We all should share in the challenge and responsibility for helping young people in our custody escape poverty and achieve economic opportunity.
Betsy Krebs and Paul Pitcoff, co-founders and directors of Youth Advocacy Center, are authors of Beyond the Foster Care System: The Future for Teens, a book about the development of a program that brings teens, the system, and the outside community into active collaboration to increase opportunities for teens in foster care.
To End Poverty Among Immigrants, Address Language Barriers
Chung-Wha Hong
It is almost unimaginable to talk about any aspect of city life without talking about immigrants. Immigrants and their children make up two-thirds of the city's population, and over half of births in the city now occur in immigrant families.
Immigrants have contributed enormously to our great city by stopping significant population declines, revitalizing our neighborhoods, and fueling our economy with their hard work and entrepreneurial initiative. Yet over half of all New York City immigrants live at less than twice the poverty level.
We think a comprehensive approach to poverty should include several key policies and programs specifically addressing immigrants.
1) Greatly Increase Adult English Classes and Workforce Training Opportunities
While English may not be required for many low-skilled jobs, there is clearly a link between English proficiency and earning power. Over a third of limited-English-proficient immigrant adults live in poverty, far more than the 14 percent of the English-proficient immigrant adult population. Helping immigrants learn English, and providing English instruction through contextualized workforce training programs is perhaps the most important investment the city can make to reduce poverty in New York's immigrant communities.
2) Eliminate Language Barriers at City Agencies
Language barriers can prevent the immigrant working poor and their families from navigating vital government programs and gaining access to needed income supports to which they are entitled. For example, many immigrants and limited English proficiency tenants are living in unhealthy and unsafe living conditions, and yet over 60 percent do not know that there is a city agency, the Housing and Preservation Department, designed to help them address their housing needs. There is a need for a comprehensive city translation and interpretation system across all city agencies – similar to recent improvements in city schools, hospitals and welfare offices.
3) End the English Language Learner Dropout Crisis
Over half of the city's school children come from homes where English is not the primary language. Almost one-in-seven of all city students are classified as English language learners, and therefore in need of quality bilingual education, English-as-a-second language, or dual language instruction. These students face the same tough conditions that all students encounter – a lack of quality teachers, overcrowded classes, and insufficient instruction time – but with the added burden of learning English on top of meeting all other State Regents standards.
Over half of public school students classified as English Language Learners drop out, the highest dropout rate of any subgroup of city students. Additional investments must be made in recruiting and retaining qualified ESL and bilingual teachers, increasing extended day and weekend instructional programs, and fully aligning the English language learners language arts curriculum with the mainstream curriculum.
Chung-Wha Hong is the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. This piece was adapted from a letter sent in response to the report published by the Commission for Economic Opportunity.
Banking and Poverty
Sarah Ludwig
If you live in a poor neighborhood in New York City, it's not the pick-pocket or loan shark you need to watch out for. It's financial services companies – check-cashers, payday lenders, rent-to-own stores, money transmitters, and unscrupulous tax preparers – looking to strip all the assets they can from you and your community.
Graffiti in Harlem
Some estimate that low income New Yorkers pay as much as 10 percent of their income for financial services. Perhaps that's no surprise, given that many low income neighborhoods of color still have no bank branches, immigrants wiring money to other countries pay as much as 15 percent of the amount sent, and conventional bank mortgage or small business loans are few and far between.
Unequal access to credit and financial services in NYC corresponds crudely to neighborhood demographics Lacking access to fair and affordable financial services, low income neighborhoods are flooded with solicitations for fast cash, predatory mortgage loans, foreclosure rescue scams, and a growing array high cost credit offerings ("Bad credit? No problem!"). This unequal provision of capital access:
• Reinforces residential segregation, limiting people's mobility and fair housing choice;
• Thwarts local economic development, affecting the viability of small businesses;
• Diminishes homeowners' equity and appraisal values, and impedes one's ability to borrow against assets to pay for higher education or needed repairs, or pass along wealth to one's family;
• Hampers community revitalization, including schools, crime prevention, and health care improvements;
• Impedes immigrants' ability to gain an economic toehold in this country; and
• Adversely affects one's ability to build savings and gain economic security.
The pervasiveness of destabilizing, high-cost credit in New York's low income neighborhoods is reflected back in people's credit reports, further perpetuating poverty for millions of New Yorkers.
If you're among the millions of low-income immigrants in New York City, the situation is grossly magnified, since most of the banking world appears at a loss for how to serve you given the morass of anti-terrorist and money-laundering regulations, which have chilled many banks from even opening accounts for many new immigrants.
What can we as New Yorkers do about all this? The reality is that most banking policy matters fall within state and federal level jurisdiction, not the city's. That said, the city can, and should, be part of the solution. For starters, the city can:
• Ensure a living wage;
• Refuse to do business, invest pension funds, or otherwise enter into contracts with companies that are known to engage in predatory financial practices, or that fail to serve communities equitably;
• Stop partnering with companies like H&R Block to do Earned Income Tax Credit outreach to low income New Yorkers, when H&R Block is a major purveyor of usurious tax refund anticipation loans that target low income neighborhoods of color in our city; and
• Press mainstream financial institutions to accept a broader array of identification for people to open accounts and adopt a policy of not asking people about their immigration status when they seek to open an account.
Sarah Ludwig is the co-director of the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project.
Implementing the Commission's Recommendations
Betsy Gotbaum
Government has a responsibility to help lift working families out of poverty so they have the opportunity to join the middle class, and I commend the mayor for convening the Commission for Economic Opportunity. But I would also like to raise a few issues and questions.
Will Private Funding Be Enough?
It is to this administration's credit that it is willing to set ambitious goals for the reduction of poverty, but we cannot expect city agencies to do more without additional resources. I applaud the mayor's pledge to raise at least $24 million in private funds to underwrite the commission's recommendations. An influx of private donations will certainly give this new anti-poverty initiative a shot in the arm. But private donations are not necessarily reliable or sustainable over the long term, and it is crucial that the funding to carry out the commission's recommendations be institutionalized so that it outlives the present administration.
Expanding Benefits
The commission's report calls for "improving and expanding benefits that support work." I urge the administration to interpret this as a mandate to adopt tools like the Able Bodied Adults Without Dependents waiver and remove obstacles such as the finger-imaging requirement for food stamp applicants, steps that would help more New Yorkers put food on their tables and bring more federal dollars into the city economy.
Don't Forget Single Mothers
The report also recommends that the city "expand programs that help prepare fathers for job opportunities, skills-building and legal, financial, and emotional responsibilities of parenthood." I, of course, strongly support this recommendation. But in a city where the poverty rate among single mothers is 41 percent and the labor force participation rate for single mothers with no more than a high school education has risen to nearly 58 percent, I would hope that the commission's recommendation could be broadened to include single mothers as well.
Betsy Gotbaum is the public advocate of the City of New York. This piece was adapted from comments she made at a City Council hearing on September 21, 2006.


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Georgie Moore
(Australian Associated Press)
Australia's agricultural sector is underprepared for cyber attacks and must act now to better protect sensitive commercial data.
An organisation focused on the long-term prosperity of producers has warned they must learn from the health sector, which became a cyber crime target after digitising patient records.
AgriFutures Australia released a report on Monday calling for industries to take urgent action.
"In recent years there has been a rapid uptake of technology, and with this, an increased risk of digital attacks," the report said.
"Australia's agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors are in a similar position to where the health system was five years ago, a slow but gradually increasing adoption of new technologies, with a largely unmanaged cyber security risk."
The group found hackers were seeking to profit from agricultural research, intellectual property and other commercial sensitive data, including through online payment portals and computerised machinery.
Lucrative personal and financial information was being put at risk, exposing people to identity theft.
A survey of about 1000 agriculture, fisheries and forestry producers found they overestimated threats from activists and competitors, while underestimating the risk of supply chain data breaches.
"This points to the possibility that the sectors don't really understand their cyber threats as well as they should," the report said.
It also found many organisations had not adopted comprehensive cyber security controls.
People on average reported their understanding of and confidence in cyber risk as 3.5 out of 5, while just 16 per cent had an incident response plan in place.
Many respondents also lacked the ability or knowledge of how or where to get assistance for a cyber attack.
Ransomware, phishing, scam emails, malware and data breaches were among the most common attacks.
Last year, wool sales across the country were halted for more than a week after hackers disabled the sector's major trading system.
Australia exports between $60 million and $80 million of wool a week. During the ransomware attack, about 70,000 bales scheduled for sale were grounded.


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Generous 'Angels from Heaven' renovate scam victim's kitchen for holiday
The tradition continues.
Rose Marhefka has always hosted Christmas Eve at her house in Boynton Beach. She makes a traditional Italian feast for her children and grandchildren. But she thought she'd have to cancel this year.
More than a year ago, Marhefka decided to renovate her kitchen. The man she hired, Joe Nemet, only tore the kitchen apart and did very little work. Police arrested Nemet in November, accusing him of being a con man and stealing about $26,000 from Marhefka.
WPBF 25 News aired that story in November and shortly after, Andre Chaves stepped forward. His company, Spazio Marble and Granite, offered to build Marhefka a new kitchen for free. And he promised it would be ready by Christmas.
Sure enough, Christmas Eve saw Marhefka in her brand new kitchen, cooking for all her loved ones.
"I can't believe it," she said. "I just can't believe what they did for nothing."
Added Marhefka's daughter, Patti Rohwedder: "It's just like a miracle."
"I get up during the night and look at it," Marhefka said. "I can't believe it's there. I look all around and I can't believe it's actually done."
And as for the people who worked so hard to build her new kitchen?
"They're angels from heaven."


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For Immediate Release
King Crimson's "THRAK – The Complete Scores" Full Band Transcriptions Book Now Available!
King Crimson's "THRAK – The Complete Scores" is now available! For the first time ever, full band transcriptions of this classic from the King Crimson double-trio era. Six musicians: two guitar players, two bassists and two drummers.
All parts transcribed and most of the essential bits tabbed for the various instruments and tunings: Adrian Belew's guitar in standard tuning, Robert Fripp's guitar in new standard tuning, Tony Levin's fretted and fretless basses, Trey Gunn's Chapman Stick and Bill Bruford and Pat Mastelotto's acoustic and electronic drum transcriptions.
Transcriptions by Gabriel Riccio
Editing and tabs by Trey Gunn
Produced on high-quality paper in 9″x12″ format, spiral bound for lay-flat-open reading.
Official release date: September 24, 2017
Track listing:
Coda: Marine 475
Walking on Air
Inner Garden I & II
One Time
Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream
VROOOM VROOOM: Coda
and a bonus track from the "VROOOM EP": Cage
To purchase: King Crimson "THRAK – The Complete Scores": http://tinyurl.com/THRAKSCORES
From Trey Gunn:
A book of King Crimson transcriptions is a built-in contradiction – Crimson rarely steps in the same puddle twice.
This is a band known for stretching beyond even its own limits, meaning most of the arrangements are given freedom to grow and change as the spirit moves. My own experience in the group was that about every one to two weeks some part of the compositions had significantly morphed into something else. For example, in the VROOOM coda, the Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream "Spider Fingers Freakout" and THRAK every night saw the musicians heading into unexplored territory. As a result, any book of transcriptions can only reflect a slice in time of what this particular Crimson was doing on this particular day during this particular performance.
The approach Gabriel Riccio and I have taken with these THRAK recordings was to adhere strictly to what is on this record. While we've referred to the 2015 re-mixes and various live versions of the pieces, we have generally stayed with notating what is in the 1995 original mixes and performances.
These particular recordings, made at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios in the UK, were live performances. In my memory, we played each piece as a group once or twice through, picked a take and then quickly added overdubs accordingly. In most cases the overdubbing was very minimal. The record was largely completed in two weeks time, including all of the vocals.
Gabriel Riccio on some of the challenges of this score book:
THRAK has been one of the most challenging records to transcribe thanks to the dense 6-player arrangements. This often made it difficult to tell who is producing each sound. The title track is perhaps the most exciting piece to see on paper, as many of the band's greatest tricks are on display – hocketed polymeters, symmetrical scales, and fiery improvisation.
The hardest part was figuring out how to write down the electronic drum parts. Bill Bruford provided some valuable input on that front, breaking down his sounds into four main categories which I used as labels throughout. The drums in the 'Sex Sleep Eat Drink Dream' freakout are a great example of the complexity of this music – Bruford plays sextuplets phrased in 5s against Mastelotto's 4/4 groove.
For more information:
Press inquiries: Glass Onyon PR, PH: 828-350-8158, firstname.lastname@example.com


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Pennsylvania man nabbed in toilet theft scam, police say
WINDBER, Pa. – Police say a western Pennsylvania man's toilet theft scam didn't end with a clean getaway.
Thirty-two-year-old Bobby Clifford Smith III faces theft and related charges for allegedly exchanging a toilet he didn't buy for gift cards at a Somerset County home improvement store.
State police say Smith, of Windber, entered the store on Aug. 28, grabbed a toilet from a shelf and immediately went to the return line to exchange it for more than $600 in gift cards.
Investigators say surveillance footage from the store captured the entire episode.
The Johnstown Tribune-Democrat reports Smith was arraigned Tuesday and held on $30,000 bail. Court records don't list an attorney for him.


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Hello there,
Today I have a different version of the Mothers Day class 3d frame.
This one I have made for my Zoe and you could make something similar if you don't want to make the Mother's Day Version, but remember, Thursday is the last day to book in for this class :-)
This colour combo for Zoe's frame is Lucky Limeade, Melon Mambo with White as the neutral. I used this colour combo as it matches her bedroom.
Message me if you would like to come along and join us for this class
Thansk for visiting today,


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jblackburn· Administrator, Resident Tater Salad
17,974 Posts
Its time to see who you think deserves the COTM Title for November!
To view Each Members' Submissions, scroll down to their posts.
Be sure to check out each members' ride before voting!
We have some new prizes this month for the contest winners. The winner will receive:
-A $25 discount code from Bad News Racing
-Their choice of one of two products from Titan Synthetics*,
-A pair of Diode Dynamics' HP3 license plate lights.
-A COTM badge and a reserved place in the "COTM Hall of Fame".
-Your car will be featured at the top of the CruzeTalk Facebook page for 1 month.
*One bottle of Amsoil P.I. Performance Improver or one can of Amsoil Miracle Wash
Polls will close on November 30th.


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16x7 Hot Rod Wire Wheel | 5x5.5 bolt | Chrome | Discontinued
This 16x7 inch chrome Hot Rod Wire wheel offers premium fitment for hot rods and street rods using a large Ford bolt pattern (5x5.5 inches). Quality primer finish is ready to paint to match your project. These street rod wire wheels feature a strong 52 spoke design available in sizes from 14x5 through 20x4.5 inches in many popular bolt patterns. 1932-35 O.E. Ford caps apply or choose from dozens of caps to get a completely custom look (accessories sold separately). Chrome Wire Wheels are warranted for a period of three (3) years from date of purchase against defects in materials and workmanship excluding the finish. Coker Tire Company warrants chrome and finish wheels and accessories to the original purchaser for a period of fifteen (15) months from the date of purchase. Oxidation or corrosion due to improper care, and/or adverse weather or chemicals is not covered by this warranty. Wheels that have been mounted, painted, or powder coated are considered used and cannot be returned. Please test fit the wheels before you mount or paint them. Made in USA!
Please Note
- Please Note: Discontinued products are available in limited quantities and cannot be back ordered if the ordered quantity exceeds available stock on hand.


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Biden's warning on oil tests voter resolve on climate change
Oklahoma City – Joe Biden is confronting the harsh political realities of combating climate change.
The Democratic presidential nominee has spent months touting a $2 trillion plan to boost investment in clean energy and stop all climate-damaging emissions from the U.S. economy by 2050. The plan implied that he would wean the U.S. off oil and gas, but Biden wasn't so explicit about the industry's fate – until Thursday night.
During the final moments of the presidential debate, Biden said he would "transition away from the oil industry."
President Donald Trump, trailing Biden in many national and battleground state polls, immediately sensed an opportunity to appeal to voters in competitive states like Texas and Pennsylvania that produce oil and gas.
"Basically what he is saying is he is going to destroy the oil industry," Trump said. "Will you remember that, Texas? Will you remember that, Pennsylvania? Oklahoma? Ohio?"
With less than two weeks until the election, Biden's comment is prompting a sudden test of whether voters who increasingly say they are worried about the climate crisis will embrace steps to confront it. During a season of worsening wildfires, hurricanes and other disasters, scientists are issuing urgent warnings that big cuts in burning oil, gas and coal are needed right away.
Republicans, eager to shift focus away from the president's handling of the intensifying coronavirus pandemic, say Biden's plan would cost jobs.
Biden "just killed paycheck(s) earned by hardworking families in Texas," Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, tweeted after Thursday's final presidential debate saw Trump and Biden spell out their worlds-apart stances on climate-damaging fossil fuels.
"Joe just wants to transition away from Texas. Remember that on election day," Abbott wrote.
Even some Democrats distanced themselves from Biden's comment. Rep. Kendra Horn, a Democrat who flipped a Republican seat in Trump-loyal Oklahoma in 2018, tweeted: "We must stand up for our oil and gas industry."
So did Rep. Xochitl Torres Small, a first-term Democratic congresswoman in a tossup race in New Mexico, in the oil- and gas-rich Permian Basin.
"We need to work together to promote responsible energy production and stop climate change, not demonize a particular industry," she tweeted, adding that she was ready to "stand up to" the Democratic Party.
Polling by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago shows a majority of Americans acknowledge people are causing global warming and link global warming to worsening natural disasters.
But Biden, who has mostly been disciplined in keeping the focus on Trump, seemed to sense the political peril. Shortly after the debate, he told reporters he wasn't talking about any kind of fossil fuel ban.
"We're not getting rid of fossil fuels for a very long time," he said.
Biden's energy plan spells out the time frame – three decades, zeroing out greenhouse gas emissions, which realistically would require substantially cutting fossil fuel use, by 2050.
Campaigning in Atlanta on Friday, Biden's running mate, Kamala Harris, told reporters that he wouldn't ban fracking, the technique used to extract natural gas.
"You know, the president likes to take everything out of context," Harris said. "Let's be clear: What Joe was talking about was banning subsidies, but he will not ban fracking in America."
Biden has said he would ban new gas and oil permits – including fracking – on federal lands only. The vast majority of oil and gas does not come from federal lands.
That's an especially sensitive point in a state like Pennsylvania, which may prove decisive on Election Day. Trump's clearest path to reelection hinges on winning both Florida and Pennsylvania, states that he won in 2016.
National polls show Americans are increasingly skeptical of fracking. And even in Pennsylvania, voters in the suburbs and other spots have spoken out against the drilling and against massive gas pipelines.
Berwood Yost, director of the Center for Opinion Research at Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania, said fracking opinions there fall on regional lines and the comments could hurt Biden's efforts to cut into Trump's support in southwestern Pennsylvania, where the industry is strong.
"Anything that the president can do to try to make sure he's able to maintain the sizable advantage that he had in 2016 in these fracking areas, he's going to do," Yost said.
But Biden's call to end subsidies for the oil and gas industry may be politically popular. Biden must try to thread the needle in explaining his calls for a transition away from fossil fuels without an outright ban, Yost said.
Improving technology and falling prices mean renewables already are making huge gains in the marketplace. Solar, wind and other clean energy will surpass coal and nuclear next year in the share of U.S. electricity they produce, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says.
Rich Fitzgerald, a Democrat and the county executive in Pennsylvania's Allegheny County, said Biden expressed his views in an "inarticulate way" on the debate stage but called Trump's efforts to capitalize on it a "desperation play."
Royalties from a fracking project on land owned by the Pittsburgh airport in 2013 have kept the airport financially afloat, Fitzgerald said. Biden was supportive of that project and another large fracking-related project in a neighboring county during his time as vice president, Fitzgerald said.
He added that while natural gas is important to the regional economy, it's not the only game in town.
"Is natural gas important to Western Pennsylvania? Certainly it is," Fitzgerald said. "But it's not everything we have."
Associated Press writers Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Alan Fram in Washington contributed to this report.


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On Wednesday, a series of trading glitches on the New York Stock Exchange spiked volume to unusually high levels, and led to numerous trading halts just after the opening bell.
The issues arose from a routing error by Knight Capital, one of the industry's biggest market-makers, ultimately affecting roughly 150 stocks.
The New York Stock Exchange later announced that it would affected, including: Wizzard Software, Quicksilver , E House , American Reprographics and China Cord Blood .
The incident was another mark against the industry, at a time when investor confidence is running low. Knight and has not yet disclosed the financial impact from the trading, but traders expect it to take a more than $100 million hit.
The technical snafu at Knight is also the latest in a series of high-profile trading issues that have hit markets.
- The Facebook IPO. The May debut was one of the most anticipated events of the year. A series of computer glitches at the Nasdaq wreaked havoc with the stock's open, costing the exchange, Facebook investors and its market makers hundreds of millions in losses. The trading mistakes shattered confidence in the stock, according to bankers, and helped set the stage for one of the worst opening performances for an IPO in history. Currently, Facebook shares are more than 40 percent below their offer price. (Knight lost about $35 million from the Facebook debut)
- The Botched BATS IPO. The high frequency trading exchange had to cancel its own public debut after the exchange it runs experienced "system issues." On March 23, an erroneous trade on the BATS exchange took 9.4 percent off the price of Apple. The technical issue spread to BATS' stock itself, leading management pulled the plug on its IPO later that day.
- Mizuho's legendary 2005 foul-up. This remains one of the most costly trading mistakes of all time. For the Japanese securities firm, it was supposed to be a simple trade: sell one share of job recruiting company J-Com for 610,000 yen. Instead, it put in the order as: sell 610,000 shares for 1 yen each. A seemingly simple numerical switch turned into a disaster for Mizuho, which ended up selling more than 41 times the amount of shares of J-Com than actually existed. What was done could not be undone and Mizuho ended up losing around $225 million.
- The Flash Crash of 2010. This is the granddaddy of all glitches: At around 2:42pm ET, the market plunge roughly 600 points within a matter of minutes and by 2:47pm ET the loss for the day stood at nearly a thousand points. The issue spawned a massive market fallout, leading to multiple investigations, congressional hearings, and reforms to how many markets function.
— By CNBC's Max Viscio
Questions? Comments? Email us at


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Cars We Remember: Reader recalls Earl Scheib paint centers and seeks recommendation on touch-up paint
Q: Hi Greg, I appreciate all you columns on the old cars. I'm an older car and truck enthusiast and I remember fondly all those great Earl Scheib car painting television commercials and newspaper advertisements. Back then, Earl Scheib could paint any car for only $29.95 and have it ready in one day! I'd love your memories of Earl Scheib. I know getting a car painted costs a lot today, but I do see some Earl Scheib paint centers are still in business.
Also, I have a 1959 Chevy pickup that I'm going to need some help with finding the correct touch-up paint. Any recommendations? Yours truly, Carl R., email from New York.
A: Carl thanks much for your letter. Believe it or not, I had a very close friend named Woody Hatten who died way too soon while editor of a custom car magazine in 1989. He was in the middle of a great career.
It turns out my friend Woody worked for Earl Scheib near Alexandria, Virginia in the 1970s, and he was also known nationally for his work in Super Stock & Drag Illustrated magazine as a drag racing writer and photographer. Notable is that Woody Hatten was also the elusive and always unnamed "Agent 1320" for Super Stock magazine for many years.
As for the Earl Scheib Paint Centers, to make a long story short, there are no longer any original Earl Scheib paint centers, but there are many independent Earl Scheib centers still in business as you note.
Let me explain.
Earl Scheib opened his first paint center in Los Angeles back in 1937. The business grew quickly after World War II and Scheib even expanded his shops into Europe by 1975. Scheib also grew to own a subsidiary that produced his own brand paint, so things were going good. He initially started his ads at $19.95 for a complete paint job, then $29.95 and then the price went up as the years went by. He even offered "medium" and "premium" paint jobs for additional money.
However, when it came to quality or lack thereof, Earl Scheib's famous reputation came more from his large newspaper ads and 60-second television commercials than his automotive paint jobs.
Woody Hatten told me quality wasn't usually in his formula as Scheib promised same or next day service and utilized what he called a production line painting system. As one employee striped, a second masked, a third sanded while a fourth sprayed the paint...all as quick as possible. Scheib's goal was at least five or six cars every day per center.
Woody said that although Scheib's company wasn't the most respected paint center nationwide by the "real" paint and custom body centers, Scheib's was the place to go if you wanted a lower-level paint job. Woody also tipped me that if you did a little pre-work yourself, like removing side stainless trim, hubcaps, car logo letters and then cleaned it up, you got a better paint job as more time was spent applying the paint. In the end, Woody summed that an Earl Scheib paint job was a good example of "getting what you paid for."
Scheib died in February 1992 and his official Earl Scheib paint centers lasted until July 16, 2010. After that, and a most notable move I might add, the company rewarded its Earl Scheib shop managers with the opportunity to become small business owners. Specifically, the company offered them the rights to purchase all the equipment and fixtures in their shops and, most important, use the Earl Scheib name for their own business.
Many managers took advantage and agreed to the terms, resulting in today's independent Earl Scheib paint centers. These modern Earl Scheib centers now offer decent paint jobs at still attractive pricing and most of today's Scheib shops also offer custom painting, collision repair and pin striping. Thus, the employees who took a chance and went into business have now upped the value of their shops and added some needed quality to the Earl Scheib reputation.
As for a touch-up paint recommendation, there are many companies that provide good touch-up paint for cars and trucks. However, the company I use is called Automotive Touchup. All you have to do is go online and enter your car's year, make and model and then select your paint code from the information and color links listed.
It's truly effortless, as Automotive Touchup will then ship whatever you need directly to your home with all necessary supplies. I've used their products on my 1999 BMW, 1994 Trans Am, 1980 AMC Concord and 1959 Edsel with great results as the colors match perfectly. Pricing starts at $9.95 for a small touch-up bottle for those little rock chips or small fixes. You can also order a bevy of quality paint products in all sizes for smooth application and long-lasting results. Automotive Touchup also offers body and bumper repair products, sanding supplies and spray can triggers. Check them out at automotivetouchup.com and get started. (Disclaimer: I've never received anything free from Automotive Touchup or even a discount on their products.)
In all fairness, remember there are many places you can acquire touch-up paints, like Touch Up Direct, Auto Zone, Advance Auto, NAPA and the many other auto centers that cater to car enthusiasts.
Thanks for your question Carl and for bringing back those Earl Scheib and Woody Hatten memories!
— Greg Zyla writes weekly for More Content Now and other Gatehouse Media publications. He welcomes reader questions on old cars, auto racing and auto nostalgia at 303 Roosevelt St., Sayre, Pa. 18840 or email at email@example.com.


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Although GTI sales are on an upward trend, the American hot hatch is a rare breed as there are just three options. We have the aging Ford Focus ST, and a new pair of hatches from Germany: the Volkswagen GTI and the MINI Cooper S. (Yes MINI fans, I'm calling the MINI German.) The last time I reviewed the GTI and Focus ST, the Focus came out on top despite the greater refinement Volkswagen offered. This time we have an all new GTI while Subaru has kicked the 5-door WRX to the curb, BMW has redesigned the MINI Cooper JCW and Ford has "gone Euro" by jamming a 2.3L turbo in the Mustang. Where does that leave the GTI?
2015 Volkswagen GTI Review 2-Door – In 4K
Youtube Video by AlexOnAutos


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Original Herrnhut plastic star, red, ~ 70 cm / 27 inch ø
The original Herrnhut Star consists of 25 points: 17 square and 8 triangular points, plastic clips, cover plate for outdoor use and cord for hanging up. If it comes with the lighting the electrical lighting cable is placed on the top instead of the 26th point. The plastic stars (40 cm - 130 cm), as well as the star chains, could be used indoor or outdoor because of weather resistance.
Product size: 70 cm / 27 inch
Color: Red
Main material: Plastic
Plug in: CA/USA
Assembly options: Self made construction
Use: Indoor or outdoor
Available colours:


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In the above video, CNN's "New Day" co-anchor Chris Cuomo tells Brian Stelter about what he witnessed on the ground in Ukraine while covering the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.
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Focus Moment
Focus Moments are short video segments highlighting Gwinnett County Public Schools news and events, reflecting GCPS' ongoing commitment to academic excellence. Watch informative feature stories and learn why GCPS continues to be the school system of choice.
Super Kids - Super Sharing Selected Episode
GCPS Students joined in the fun when the NFL and the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee brought Super Kids - Super Sharing to the Infinite Energy Center. This event collects sports equipment, school supplies, toys, and other goods from area students and helps them get to other schools and organizations in need.
Produced January 2019
- Science Engineering + Innovation Fair 2019
- Georgia Principal of the Year 2019
- County Dance Day 2019
- Media Specialist of the Year 2019
- Counselor Recognition 2019
- Teacher Job Shadowing Week 2019
- Meadowcreek High Student Wins Horatio Alger Scholarship
- Atlanta Opera DLI Performance
- Super Kids - Super Sharing
- Retirement Celebration for Dr. McClure and Mr. Seckinger
- Media Clerk and School Library Advocate of the Year 2018
- Think Before You Post
- Girls Flag Football Championship Summit 2018
- JROTC - More Than Meets the Eye
- REACH Scholarship 2018
- Meadowcreek HS Students Visit Bethesda ES's DLI Program
- Teacher of the Year 2019
- Girls Flag Football
- Mill Creek Service Appreciation Night 2018
- Maxwell Manufacturing
- Student Entrepreneurship
- Jump Rope for Heart
- Feeding Minds and Bodies
- School Nutrition Program Back to School 2018
- Billy Jones - The 30-Time STAR Teacher
- Gwinnett County Sports Hall of Fame 2018
- Middle School Art at the High
- Caring Awards 2018
- Atlanta Families' Award 2018
- MLK III Visits Corley Elementary School
- Science Fair 2018
- CTE Student of the Year 2018


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The winner of the Day 4 boots is…Carol D.O.
Congratulations, Carol! Contact firstname.lastname@example.com to claim your cute boots!
Next giveaway will be up shortly!
Yaaaaaaay! It's the fourth day of the Twelve Days of Boots giveaways here on The Pioneer Woman. Every morning for the next nine days, I'll post a brand new boot giveaway…and just a warning: they're gonna be fab! I've had this every year for the past few years, and it's always lots of fun.
For Day 4, I'm giving away a pair of these Corral Harness Boots in the size of the winner's choice. LOVE this pair. So neutral but so fabulous.
1. Login to Rafflecopter below by using the Facebook OR Email links. (Note: If you have entered my giveaways recently, you are likely already logged in.)
2. Click on the question "Who will get these boots if you win?"
3. Select your answer, then click "Enter" in the lower right hand corner.
4. You should see a checkmark at the top of the giveaway box (many of you will see a message reading "You're finished!") That means you're entered!
5. If you are having trouble with the giveaway tool, just leave your answer in a comment below.
6. The winner will be selected at random and announced tomorrow morning, just before a new boot giveaway is posted.
Good luck!


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Maxthon Cloud Browser for Windows uses a unique, innovative dual-core design that uses both Webkit and Trident. Fast and efficient, our dual-core design displays all web pages quickly and reliably. With its first-place HTML 5 support and 'out of the box' features you can't get anywhere else, Maxthon Cloud Browser for Windows frees people to share and send files among different devices and platforms, easily.
Download: Maxthon 126.96.36.19900 | 33.9 MB (Freeware)
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View: Maxthon Website | Release Notes