According to ESG's 2013 IT Spending Intentions Survey, improving data backup and recovery was the number two-most important IT priority selected by respondents. Find out more in this ESG white paper. more
Momma Perez turns 60 this Sunday!!!!! We will be celebrating her all weekend long!!!
Her first birthday as a grandma!
Gonna be extra sweet!
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Kim Kardashian revealed her hot, post-baby swimsuit body, and Kendra Wilkinson is expecting her second child with husband Hank Baskett: See Us Weekly's top 5 stories from Oct. 17 in the roundup!
1. Kim Kardashian Reveals Hot, Curvy Post-Baby Swimsuit Body in Instagram Photo
Reality TV's most famous booty is back on full display! Kim Kardashian shared her most revealing, sexiest post-baby body selfie so far on Instagram late Wednesday, Oct. 16. Four months after the birth of daughter North West, the 32-year-old gave fans what they want: A bathing suit self-portrait! Clutching her iPhone, the currently blonde E! star gives a sultry sideways glance in a skimpy one-piece which shows off her world-famous booty and a startling amount of sideboob.
2. Exclusive: Kendra Wilkinson Pregnant, Expecting Second Baby With Husband Hank Baskett!
Baby No. 2 is on the way! Kendra Wilkinson is expecting her second child with husband Hank Baskett, a source exclusively confirms to Us Weekly. The reality star and former Playboy model, 28, is around eight weeks pregnant.
3. Exclusive: James Franco Helps Fan Get Back at Ex-Boyfriend With PDA Photo
Is there anything James Franco can't do? During an Oct. 7 photo shoot at a private Beverly Hills home, the actor-writer-director-professor became a heartbreak hero.
4. Kanye West Reacts to Kim Kardashian's Sexy, Post-Baby Bathing Suit Selfie
Honey, he's home! Kim Kardashian's sexy, super-revealing bathing suit selfie -- in which she showed off her post-baby booty in a skimpy white one-piece -- sent fans into a tizzy on Wednesday, Oct. 16. But no one was more excited by the photo than the reality star's boyfriend, Kanye West.
5. Melissa McCarthy's Elle Cover Controversy: Magazine Releases Statement
The heat is on! Not everyone loves Melissa McCarthy's Elle cover for its November Women in Hollywood issue. In fact, a significant number of fans are irate over the fashion glossy's decision to photograph her swathed in an overcoat, her face partially concealed by her hair -- especially in comparison to the magazine's other cover girls that month, all of whom are much more exposed in their photos.
LONDON (AP) — A British scientist says he may have solved the mystery of the Abominable Snowman — the elusive ape-like creature of the Himalayas. He thinks it's a bear.
DNA analysis conducted by Oxford University genetics professor Bryan Sykes suggests the creature, also known as the Yeti, is the descendant of an ancient polar bear.
Sykes compared DNA from hair samples taken from two Himalayan animals — identified by local people as Yetis — to a database of animal genomes. He found they shared a genetic fingerprint with a polar bear jawbone found in the Norwegian Arctic that is at least 40,000 years old.
Sykes said Thursday that the tests showed the creatures were not related to modern Himalayan bears but were direct descendants of the prehistoric animal.
He said, "it may be a new species, it may be a hybrid" between polar bears and brown bears.
"The next thing is go there and find one."
Sykes put out a call last year for museums, scientists and Yeti aficionados to share hair samples thought to be from the creature.
One of the samples he analyzed came from an alleged Yeti mummy in the Indian region of Ladakh, at the Western edge of the Himalayas, and was taken by a French mountaineer who was shown the corpse 40 years ago.
The other was a single hair found a decade ago in Bhutan, 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) to the east.
Sykes said the fact the hair samples were found so far apart, and so recently, suggests the members of the species are still alive.
"I can't imagine we managed to get samples from the only two 'snow bears' in the Himalayas," he said.
Finding a living creature could explain whether differences in appearance and behavior to other bears account for descriptions of the Yeti as a hairy hominid.
"The polar bear ingredient in their genomes may have changed their behavior so they act different, look different, maybe walk on two feet more often," he said.
Sykes' research has not been published, but he says he has submitted it for peer review. His findings will be broadcast Sunday in a television program on Britain's Channel 4.
Tom Gilbert, professor of paleogenomics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, said Sykes' research provided a "reasonable explanation" for Yeti sightings.
"It's a lot easier to believe that than if he had found something else," said Gilbert, who was not involved in the study. "If he had said it's some kind of new primate, I'd want to see all the data."
Sykes' findings are unlikely to lay the myth of the Yeti to rest.
The Yeti or Abominmable Snowman is one of a number of legendary ape-like beasts — along with Sasquatch and Bigfoot — reputed to live in heavily forested or snowy mountains. Scientists are skeptical, but decades of eyewitness reports, blurry photos and stories have kept the legend alive.
"I do not think the study gives any comfort to Yeti-believers," David Frayer, a professor of biological anthropology at the University of Kansas, said in an email. But "no amount of scientific data will ever shake their belief."
"If (Sykes') motivation for doing the analyses is to refute the Yeti nonsense, then good luck," he said.
Sykes said he was simply trying "to inject some science into a rather murky field."
"The Yeti, the Bigfoot, is surrounded in myth and hoaxes," he said. "But you can't invent a DNA sequence from a hair."
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Jill Lawless can be reached at http://Twitter.com/JillLawless
October 17, 2013 The New York City synth-rock duo of singer Madeline Follin and keyboardist Brian Oblivion expanded to a raucous five-piece band for NPR Music's Oct. 16 showcase at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York. Watch a nine-song set including cuts from the new album, Static, just one day after its release.
Producers: Mito Habe-Evans, Robin Hilton, Frannie Kelley, Amy Schriefer; Event Coordinator: Saidah Blount; Audio Engineer: Kevin Wait; Videographers: Alex di Suvero, Becky Harlan, A.J. Wilhelm; Special Thanks: (Le) Poisson Rouge; Executive Producer: Anya Grundmann
NEW YORK (AP) — Weak earnings from IBM and other major U.S. companies are dragging the stock market lower in early trading.
Interest rates on short-term U.S. government debt declined as investors were relieved that Washington averted a potential default.
IBM, UnitedHealth and Goldman Sachs dragged the Dow Jones industrial average lower after reporting results that disappointed investors.
The Dow was down 100 points, or 0.7 percent, to 15,272 points early Thursday.
The broader Standard & Poor's 500 fell but not as much as the Dow. The S&P 500 lost three points, or 0.2 percent, to 1,717 points.
The Nasdaq fell seven points, also 0.2 percent, to 3,832.
The yield on the three-month Treasury bill fell back to 0.1 percent, about where it was in late September, down sharply from 0.13 percent late Wednesday.
A snorkeler off the coast of California found more than she bargained for on the ocean floor Sunday, when she saw the large eyes of an 18-foot fish staring back at her. It turned out to be a dead oarfish, a mysterious creature known to live in waters thousands of feet deep.
Copyright © 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.
RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:
Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne. Believers in sea monsters have some fresh evidence. A rarely seen fish has been pulled from the ocean off California's Catalina Island. A marine science instructor was snorkeling when she spotted it lying dead beneath the water, 18 feet long, a wide pug faced oarfish that can grow much, much bigger. It looks a lot like a mythical sea serpent and it took 15 people to pull the fish from the sea. It's MORNING EDITION.
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Onsite work, including landscaping and some exterior work, will continue through the end of the year depending on weather conditions, according to city spokeswoman Peggy Flynn.
A ribbon cutting will be scheduled in early 2014.
The new administrative offices will house about 65 city employees. There will also be an underground parking lot, accessible to residents nights and weekends.
From the Archives: Read City Manager Michael Frank's 2011 Op-ed about why the new City Hall makes sense for Novato.
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AMC/Associated Press
"The Walking Dead"
Telus Communications is not very happy that AMC might deprive hundreds of thousands of its Canadian subscribers of seeing the end of the fourth season of The Walking Dead.
The telecom filed a lawsuit late last week that alleges that AMC has not provided proper notice to cancel its existing contract. The complaint says the two companies have discussed terms for a new agreement, but that negotiations broke down after Telus refused to bow to "increasingly harsh terms" proposed by AMC.
PHOTOS: Gale Anne Hurd: Inside 'The Walking Dead' Producer's Nerdy Offices
The plaintiff proposes the theory that because Breaking Bad had concluded its run and Mad Men will soon finish as well, AMC has been rushing to gain higher fees from its distribution partners, and along the way, has become embroiled in fights with companies like AT&T and Dish. The lawsuit says, "Seeking to capitalize on what it realizes may be fleeting success, AMC has publicly expressed dissatisfaction with carriage rates AMC receives from its licenses with television distributors, claiming that those rates do not reflect the popularity of the programming."
Telus says it honored its contractual obligations with AMC and that a termination letter sent on Sept. 27 isn't justified. The plaintiff says it was "shocked" to see the termination and that it wasn't given 30 days to cure defaults. "These alleged defaults are a transparent attempt to terminate the Agreement and extract from Telus the high carriage rates AMC could not achieve at the negotiating table."
Now, the telecom company asserts that AMC has been using the highly successful The Walking Dead to tarnish its reputation by telling viewers they will essentially be left out in the cold.
PHOTOS: Power Showrunners: Inside the Minds Behind 'Walking Dead,' 'Bates Motel,' 'Arrow' and More
"When Telus did not immediately capitulate to AMC's strong-arm tactics, AMC went a step further, threatening to unilaterally communicate to Telus' subscribers that the service would soon be terminated," says the lawsuit. "If Telus does not agree to new contract terms by today, Friday, Oct. 11, 2013, AMC claims that beginning this Sunday, Oct. 13, 2013 during the season premiere of its most popular show, 'The Walking Dead,' AMC will broadcast a scrolling message, or 'crawl,' at the bottom of the television content feed seen by Telus' subscribers, announcing an imminent service cancellation. This is not an empty threat: AMC has deployed similar damaging public relations efforts in past disputes with other distributors."
Telus, represented by Michael Elkin at Winston & Strawn, seeks an injunction and damages for breach of contract and the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
AMC declined comment on pending litigation. The basis for AMC's termination is unclear thanks to redactions in Telus' complaint.
E-mail: Eriq.Gardner@THR.com
Twitter: @eriqgardner
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Thanks to the musings of his former owner, Peyton Manning's return to Indianapolis this week has turned into something less than the warm-and-fuzzy homecoming it could have been.
If any of that bothers No. 18, it's not showing.
Dictating the terms of his Wednesday news conference as effectively as he orchestrates his offense from the line of scrimmage, Manning paid virtually no heed to this week's comments from Colts owner Jim Irsay.
Manning said he had no comment when asked for his reaction to Irsay's interview earlier this week when he said he had to give up the old Indy offense's "Star Wars" numbers in a quest for more Super Bowl rings.
On Sunday, Manning returns to Indianapolis for his first game as a visitor.
___
AP NFL website: www.pro32.ap.org
By Jason Lange
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States has been careening toward what could be a calamitous default on its debt because of a political stalemate over raising the nation's $16.7 trillion debt cap.
The U.S. Treasury has said it will hit the ceiling by Thursday unless Congress increases it by then.
Following are some questions and answers about how and when a default could happen.
- How could the United States default?
The U.S. government takes in about 70 cents in taxes for every dollar it spends, so it must borrow to pay its bills. This would be easy as there are plenty of investors who want to lend America money. The problem is that Congress put a ceiling on government debt and lawmakers have not raised it.
- So will Washington go broke on October 17?
No, but the U.S. government will be dangerously low on cash. When it hits the debt ceiling, the Treasury estimates it would have about $30 billion in the bank. Because it would not be able to add to the national debt, bills would have to be paid with incoming revenues and cash on hand.
- How long will the money last?
Not long at all. The Congressional Budget Office thinks the United States would start missing payments on at least some of its obligations between October 22 and the end of the month. No one knows the exact date because you cannot predict with certainty what future tax revenues will look like.
- The United States defaults when the money runs out, right?
It depends on how you define default. Historically, default is when a country misses a payment to a creditor. The Obama administration says default would include any missed payment, such as payments for public health insurance. The first really big bill due after hitting the debt ceiling is a $12 billion payment in the Social Security retirement program on October 23.
- When would financial markets melt down?
Markets would be alarmed if it looks like bondholders would go unpaid for an extended period, and might even panic if any government checks are delayed. Many analysts think the administration would at least try to prioritize payments on the national debt, but Treasury officials say picking and choosing which bills to pay would be impossible. The first debt payments due after hitting the debt ceiling are on October 17, 24 and 31. The first of those should not be a problem, according the CBO analysis. But there might not be enough money for the payments due on the 24th or the 31st.
- How would a default affect the economy?
The Treasury has warned that a default could trigger the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Once a default begins, the government would have to slash its spending overnight by about a third. The fiscal drag, if it lasts a full year, would be the equivalent of up to 4.2 percent of national economic output, according to calculations by Goldman Sachs.
That does not take into account the potential for a financial crisis. If investors lose their cool, stock markets could tumble, hitting pension funds and leading consumers to spend less of their money. Credit markets could freeze up because investors around the world might reassess the value of U.S. debt, which serves as collateral for trillions of dollars in loans and other financial transactions.
- Is there an easy way out of this?
Washington's army of policy wonks have floated all sorts of ideas that in theory could resolve a debt ceiling crisis. Treasury could mint a $1 trillion dollar coin and deposit it at the Federal Reserve, magically topping up government coffers. The Obama administration could unilaterally raise the debt ceiling by invoking the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which some scholars read as prohibiting a default.
The White House has ruled out both approaches. That they are even being considered speaks to the manufactured nature of Washington's crisis. The United States is not at risk of default because its economy is failing. Its political system is just increasingly dysfunctional.
(Reporting by Jason Lange; Editing by Tim Ahmann and Will Dunham)
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — Two members of a notorious family that authorities say once tried to set up a whites-only nation in America were arrested this week in Arizona on federal firearms charges after a raid on a sprawling ranch netted dozens of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
Kirby Kehoe and his 37-year-old son, Cheyne, had an initial court appearance Tuesday in Flagstaff. Cheyne Kehoe's attorney declined to discuss the case, while a lawyer for Kirby Kehoe did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Authorities received a tip that Kirby Kehoe, 65, had weapons on his 40-acre property near Ash Fork, about 140 miles north of Phoenix, said Tom Mangan, a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Agents who raided the property seized dozens of guns, including shotguns and semi-automatic rifles and pistols, according to the ATF. Kirby Kehoe was arrested on site, while federal authorities picked up Cheyne Kehoe in Prescott, where he had a scheduled court appearance in another case.
Kirby and Cheyne Kehoe both have previous felony convictions and are banned from possessing firearms. Each faces one charge stemming from the raid, but Mangan said the list could grow to include more weapons and narcotics charges.
The Kehoe family has been well-known to law enforcement since the 1990s when authorities say they provided weapons to various white supremacists who committed robberies across the Midwest. Authorities also said the family was involved in a plot to overthrow the federal government and establish the Aryan Peoples Republic in the Pacific Northwest.
Another son, Chevie Kehoe, is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his role in the 1996 killings of an Arkansas gun dealer, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter as part of the plot.
Cheyne Kehoe was sentenced in 1998 to more than 24 years in prison for his role in a shootout with Ohio police during a traffic stop about 40 miles northeast of Cincinnati. His sentence later was reduced to 11 years. No officers were injured in the gun battle, but a passer-by was wounded by a bullet fragment.
The family patriarch, Kirby Kehoe, was sentenced in 1999 to nearly four years in prison for racketeering and possession of illegal weapons in a case related to the plot aimed at overthrowing the government. The elder Kehoe, however, has maintained he was never involved in his sons' efforts to establish a whites-only nation and that he isn't a racist.
Mangan said due to the violent nature of the family's past, authorities planned the Monday raid carefully, first setting up surveillance on the property before moving in with search warrants, heavily armed tactical teams and armored vehicles.
He said the raid was conducted in cooperation with law enforcement from around the country and was planned to avoid the potential for a violent confrontation.
"The reason and rationale for having executed the warrant on the property in that manner was driven by public safety, just based on the past history of this individual and the sons," Mangan said Tuesday. "When a traffic stop was being conducted in Ohio, it turned into a nationwide manhunt, and we obviously didn't want to revisit that issue."
Kirby Kehoe is due back in court Thursday for a preliminary and detention hearing. Cheyne Kehoe's next court appearance is set for Oct. 22.
___
Skoloff reported from Phoenix
Your liver could be "eating" your brain, new research suggests.
People with extra abdominal fat are three times more likely than lean individuals to develop memory loss and dementia later in life, and now scientists say they may know why.
It seems that the liver and the hippocampus (the memory center in the brain), share a craving for a certain protein called PPARalpha. The liver uses PPARalpha to burn belly fat; the hippocampus uses PPARalpha to process memory.
In people with a large amount of belly fat, the liver needs to work overtime to metabolize the fat, and uses up all the PPARalpha — first depleting local stores and then raiding the rest of the body, including the brain, according to the new study. [10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain]
The process essentially starves the hippocampus of PPARalpha, thus hindering memory and learning, researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago wrote in the study, published in the current edition of the journal Cell Reports.
Other news reports were incorrect in stating that the researchers established that obese individuals were 3.6 times more likely than lean individuals to develop dementia. That finding dates back to a 2008 study by researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Division of Research in Oakland, Calif.
In another study, described in a 2010 article in the Annals of Neurology, researchers at Boston University School of Medicine found that the greater the amount of belly fat, the greater the brain shrinkage in old age.
The surprising discovery in the new study is that the hippocampus uses PPARalpha to process memory and learning, and that this is a possible reason for the connection between belly fat and dementia and/or memory loss.
Rush University researchers, led by neurological sciences professor Kalipada Pahan, raised mice that were deficient in PPARalpha. Some mice had normal PPARalpha in the liver but depleted PPARalpha in the brain, and had poor memory and learning abilities. Others had normal PPARalpha in the brain but not the liver, and showed normal memory, as expected.
When the researchers injected PPARalpha into the hippocampus of PPARalpha-deficient mice, their learning and memory improved, Pahan said.
"Further research must be conducted to see how we could potentially maintain normal PPARalpha in the [human] brain in order to be resistant to memory loss," Pahan told LiveScience.
PPARalpha thus provides a new avenue to explore in searching for a treatment or cure for Alzheimer's disease, dementia, and related memory-loss and cognition problems, Pahan said.
Losing your belly fat won't hurt, either.
Follow Christopher Wanjek @wanjek for daily tweets on health and science with a humorous edge. Wanjek is the author of "Food at Work" and "Bad Medicine." His column, Bad Medicine, appears regularly on LiveScience.
October 15, 2013
It's no secret: IT pros absolutely love to hate tape. I've remarked on that fact in this column several times over the past few years, and it's no less true now than it was any of the other times I've mentioned it. But that's all changing! What local disk backup couldn't solve on its own, cloud storage providers with their hyperredundant and constantly maintained fleets of disk can certainly fix! Finally, we can put a stake in the heart of tape and it will simply become a ghost story that the old timers tell IT newbs. Right?
Maybe, but not so fast. Although the cloud absolutely can replace some of the use cases for tape, it can't satisfy them for everyone all the time. The very same reasons why tape was still alive and kicking when I wrote about it nearly four years ago are still largely true today.
However, you need not fret if you're itching to get rid of tape and make backup someone else's problem by moving it to the cloud. Things are definitely looking up -- especially if you're working with relatively small amounts of data, can deal with long restoration times, or have ridiculous amounts of bandwidth to spare.
By Clare Kane
MADRID (Reuters) - The number of mobile phone connections in Spain increased for a fourth straight month in August, data published on Tuesday showed, marking a tentative recovery after two years of client losses.
Cash-strapped consumers in Spain, where one in four of the workforce is jobless, have been cutting mobile usage and switching to cheaper deals to save money as recession dragged on. Yet the economy is expected to have returned to growth in the second half of the year, prompting a gentle pick-up in consumer confidence.
Mobile customers increased by 5,536 in August, Spain's mobile watchdog said in a statement, though growth remained focused on cheaper deals and the market overall was still 4 percent smaller than a year earlier at 52.19 million connections.
"Although the increase in mobile phone lines was not spectacular, we must bear in mind that August is not usually a favorable month for taking out phone contracts," the regulator said.
So-called virtual mobile operators, which rent network capacity from traditional operators, attracted 159,056 new sign-ups in August, continuing a shift in the market towards smaller operators who often offer discounted deals.
Their market share has risen to 11.4 percent from 8 percent a year ago.
Market leaders Telefonica and Vodafone have shed hundreds of thousands of clients in the last year and in August Telefonica recorded a loss of 147,687 connections, while 58,642 customers cancelled their lines with Vodafone.
Telefonica had 34.1 percent of the market, compared with 37.3 percent in August 2012, while Vodafone's market share shrank to 25 percent from 27.6 percent a year earlier.
The broadband market also grew in August, with 55,903 new customers, 15,752 of which took out superfast fiber optic connections. There are now 484,662 fiber lines in Spain, marking an 87 percent increase over the past year.
Spain last month revised up its economic growth forecast for 2014 to 0.7 percent from its previous projection of 0.5 percent, and the government has projected the economy will grow slightly in the third quarter, marking the beginning of an exit from a two-year recession.
(Editing by Julien Toyer and David Holmes)
The Carolinas offer up the best of everything, from lush forests and scenic mountains to rich and rewarding cultural experiences. There are warm beaches, charming historic neighborhoods, and bustling metropolises — all with excellent schools, lots of jobs, and plenty of parks. Here are some of the best places to lay down roots in the Carolinas.
Wilmington is a really interesting place to live, in part because it’s a film and television favorite. You won’t get completely inundated by actors and camera crews, but you may occasionally find one of your favorite stars next to you at the gas station.
Moreover, since the downtown area is a nationally listed historic place, you’ll experience a great deal of beauty and history. It’s a wonderful place for tourism, but even residents take advantage of the trolley tours and cobbled streets.
The estimated median price of a house or condo in Wilmington hovers around $216,600.
According to the school rating system employed by the online residential real estate site Trulia, the schools in the Wilmington area have a parent rating of five out of five stars.
Image via Flickr by Steve Sherron
If you want a real “down-home” vibe without feeling boxed in, head farther south to Greenville, S.C. This gorgeous town is still close to North Carolina, plus it’s strategically located between Charlotte and Atlanta. You’re surrounded by the stunning Blue Ridge Mountains, which allows for plenty of outdoor activities and fresh-air fun. Even the climate welcomes you, so you’ll always feel comfortable as you take in the local color.
The median listing price of homes in this area is around $174,000. The Greenville County School District’s 95 schools have received four parent review stars.
Image via Flickr by Jason Barnette
Charlotte is well-known as the official Gateway to the New South, and it lives up to that name. Shea Homes offers many new-home communities in Charlotte — a beautiful, bustling, and booming city.
Every neighborhood is very carefully planned around the best jobs, schools, parks, and the city is known for its environmentally friendly passions. You’re near everything, including lush green forests, yet you get a sizzling city lifestyle.
Charlotte homes have an average listing price of around $316,000. That is about $126 per square foot on average. The most popular neighborhoods include Myers Park, which is at the top of the price range with an average of $925,000, Ballantyne West, Steele Creek, and Dilworth – all priced around $500,000 on average – and Highland Creek at $214,000.
The schools have consistent, outstanding parent ratings with no ratings lower than 4.5 stars.
Image via Flickr by Pam Broviak
If you’ve always dreamed of living near the beach, you’re spoiled for choices in both the Carolinas. However, nothing beats Myrtle Beach for beauty and excitement. From the boardwalk to the open-air concerts, it feels like summer all the time, and you don’t have to visit during vacation to enjoy it.
Plenty of year-round residents tout the benefits of living here, and many consider it the most enviable spot in all of Horry County. You should also know that it’s the third most popular spot for relocating, so why not jump on the bandwagon?
The average listing price in Myrtle Beach is $230,000 and the median sales price is $51,000. None of the school ratings drop below 3.5 stars with most of the ratings at five stars.
Image via Flickr by Curtis and Eric
Hickory is charming, scenic, and richly historic. Named after the well-known Hickory Tavern, this town still offers rest for the weary — namely, those weary of big cities and cold climates. There are plenty of jobs, considering that it’s the Furniture Capital of the World, and the tourist infrastructure is also pretty amazing. Although its population tops 40,000, it still has a sweet hometown feel, especially given its closeness to the mountains and the beach.
Hickory is affordable as well, with an average listing price of $216,000 and a median sales price at $130,000. That’s $86 per square foot on average. The Catawba County school district has 28 schools and the Hickory school district has nine schools. All of the schools have high parent ratings.
If you’re looking for a new hometown, pick one of the marvelous towns or cities in the Carolinas. They’re vast, green, exciting, and filled with Southern hospitality. Overall, the housing market in this area is bouncing back from the recession. The asking price for properties for sale is around $97,500 in North Carolina and $81,300 in South Carolina. Compare these figures to the national average of $89,600, and the Carolinas are keeping up.
Image via Flickr by Government & Heritage Library, State Library of NC
This guest post was written by Angela Lombardi, a freelance writer focusing on real estate and home improvement. She wrote this article on behalf of SheaHomes.com.
A British police officer guards the grounds of Buckingham Palace in central London, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. British police arrested a man with a knife after he tried to dart through a gate at Buckingham Palace in London on Monday. The palace said Queen Elizabeth II was not in residence. Breaches of royal security are rare, but just a month ago police arrested two men over a suspected break-in at the palace. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
A British police officer guards the grounds of Buckingham Palace in central London, Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. British police arrested a man with a knife after he tried to dart through a gate at Buckingham Palace in London on Monday. The palace said Queen Elizabeth II was not in residence. Breaches of royal security are rare, but just a month ago police arrested two men over a suspected break-in at the palace. (AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis)
LONDON (AP) — A man with a history of mental illness was hoping to see Queen Elizabeth II when he tried to rush through a Buckingham Palace gate carrying a six-inch (15-cm) knife, a prosecutor said Tuesday.
David Belmar, 44, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to trespassing and possession of a bladed article for the incident a day earlier, when he was tackled after jumping over a vehicle barrier outside Buckingham Palace.
The queen was not at Buckingham Palace at the time.
Prosecutor Edward Aydin told Westminster Magistrates' Court that Belmar told police that he wanted to see the queen and was "not happy" about his welfare benefits.
Aydin said that Belmar is taking medication for mental health issues and has a fixation on the queen. In 1989, he said, Bellmar received a police warning for lighting fireworks and throwing them onto the palace grounds.
"He is a danger to the public, carrying a knife in central London, and he is a danger to the queen," Aydin said.
Belmar's lawyer Robert Katz denied that Belmar has a fixation with the queen and said that Belmar did not brandish the knife. Officers found it wrapped in a plastic bag in Belmar's jacket.
Chief Magistrate Howard Riddle ordered Belmar kept in custody until he is sentenced.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/cae69a7523db45408eeb2b3a98c0c9c5/Article_2013-10-15-Britain-Palace%20Arrest/id-d0b9de81d33e43738d01debe4655711cLOS ANGELES (AP) — Fewer gay and bisexual characters are part of the new broadcast TV season following a record-setting year, while cable depictions continued to increase, according to a new study from a media advocacy group.
GLAAD's 18th annual "Where We Are on TV" report released Friday says 3.3 percent of 796 regularly appearing characters on prime-time broadcast dramas and comedies are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
Last season's study by GLAAD put LGBT depictions at 4.4 percent.
Numbers are one thing, content is another, said GLAAD spokesman Wilson Cruz.
"Last season was a stellar one when it comes to the sheer number of gay, lesbian and bisexual representations on television, though diversity within those storylines showed room for improvement," Cruz said in a release.
Despite the decline this season, characters such as an interracial lesbian couple raising their children on ABC Family's "The Fosters" have "not only moved the conversation about LGBT people forward" but are popular with viewers, he said.
There are 46 LGBT regular and recurring characters on broadcast, with half of them women and 28 percent ethnic minorities, GLAAD said. One transgender character, Unique, is on Fox's "Glee."
Two networks, ABC and Fox, showed increases this year and had the highest proportions of LGBT characters with 5.4 percent each, the study found. The CW's 3 percent put it in third place, followed by CBS with 1.9 percent and NBC with 1 percent.
On cable, scripted programs include 42 regularly seen LGBT characters, up from last season's 35.
HBO has the most LGBT characters with 11, followed by Showtime with eight.
Looking more broadly at broadcast TV diversity, the GLAAD study found a small decline in the percentage of female characters to 43 percent from 45 percent. Minority characters remained at 23 percent, with 1 percent of regular characters having a disability.
In a post-season assessment for the 2012-13 lineup, Fox was found to be the most inclusive broadcaster with LBGT images in 42 percent of its prime-time programming hours, while ABC Family was the front-runner on cable with LBGT images in 50 percent of its original programming.
The cable channel History lacked any LGBT images last season, GLAAD said.
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Source: http://www.wwe.com/shows/raw/live-chat"Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy" (Alfred A. Knopf), by Helen Fielding
Time has dulled Bridget Jones.
It has also left her neither wiser, more relaxed nor comfortable with the person she's become and the people she counts as her friends.
That's both good and bad because in Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy," the British heroine — whose sense of self was so strong and so entertaining in the first two novels that it created an archetype of self-determination belaboring amusing bouts of self-confidence — is lost amid social media, parental responsibility and trying to impress the moms at school.
So how, now, is Bridget Jones at 51? Content in marriage to Mark Darcy? Happily ensconced in having quit smoking, raising two children and avoiding the trap of being a smug married woman?
In a word, no. Darcy is dead and Bridget is a single mother to their two children, dating a man whose age is around half her own while her best mates find themselves vacillating between adult responsibility and living their lives as the unfettered and unbound twenty- and thirty-somethings they used to be.
It's been nearly 20 years since "Bridget Jones's Diary" was published in 1996, vaulting Fielding from freelance reporter to one of Britain's best-known and most popular writers. The 1999 sequel, "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason," continued Bridget's bold, if not brassy, tales.
But it seems that fear of being a 51-year-old single parent raising two young children in the age of social media is too much for her.
Fielding strives throughout the book to add relevance to her character's life and all of its foibles, mishaps and happy accidents. It's just not enough, though not for lack of trying. Perhaps that's an echo of the time that Bridget and her readers live in, with the short bursts of information, a focus on the quick and a general intolerance for taking time to do things.
7 hours ago
Jason Kempin / Getty Images
Craig Robinson
Craig Robinson has built his career on making people laugh -- but on Wednesday, he found himself in a not-so-funny situation in the Bahamas. According to the Associated Press, the comedian was detained in the Bahamian capital Nassau for drug possession.
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Best known for playing Darryl Philbin on NBC's "The Office," Robinson, 41, was attempting to board a plane back to the U.S. when customs agents discovered he was carrying a small amount of marijuana and "suspicious" pills (later revealed to be ecstasy), Superintendent Stephen Dean of the Royal Bahamas Police Force told the AP. "It was nothing major," Dean said.
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Even so, Robinson was taken into custody and ordered to appear before a magistrate. He reportedly told the court he did not know that the drugs (which he brought from the U.S.) were illegal in the Bahamas.
After pleading guilty to two counts of drug possession, the "Hot Tub Time Machine" actor was fined $1,000 and ordered to leave the country. He could have faced up to four years in prison, the AP reports.
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Incidentally, this is not Robinson's first drug-related run-in with the law. Back in June 2008, he was arrested by Culver City, Calif., police on suspicion of possessing MDMA. Prosecutors charged him with two felony counts of drug possession and one count of being under the influence of illegal drugs; he later agreed to take drug education classes in exchange for the charges being dropped.
