Another exciting and entertaining season of “American Idol” is heading towards its end. The top 4 contestants Crystal Bowersox, Casey James, Lee Dewyze and Michael Lynche tried their ever best to impress judges on the show. However, one has to pack the bags and say goodbye as per the format of the show. Bowersox, Dewyze, [...]
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Michael Lynche performed song from movie “Free Willy”
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(Courtesy of LA Magazine)
Some neighborhoods feel as if they’re out in the country, others are minutes from downtown. Each has accomplished that rare feat in L.A.: stood the test of time. A guide to where to eat (cupcakes!), shop (leather bags!), and play (tiny trains!) in ten picture-perfect places. Read the full article here.
(text and captions via LA MAGAZINE)
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PHOTOS: 10 Local Smalltown Adventures
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PHOTOS: 10 Local Smalltown Adventures
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Kodak Gallery
Save 25% off Any Order of $25+ at Kodak Gallery. Create custom cards, invitations, or post cards with your photos or use your images for photo posters and enlargements or photo gift items like calendars, mugs, t-shirts, cards, bags, mousepads, and more. This discount can also be used when creating custom printed hard and soft cover photo books.
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Kodak Gallery : 25% off Any Order
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As it is appearing more and more likely that Brad Brownell is realistically in the running for the Wake Forest job, it’s time to look a little deeper at the Wright State head coach.
Star-divide
Brad Brownell certainly won’t bowl people over with his pedigree, but there is something to be said about his consistency as a head coach. Since becoming the head coach at UNC-Wilmington, he has won 20 games in six of his eight years, including all four years at Wright State. He has three tournament appearances under his belt, two with the Seahawks and one in his first year at the helm coaching the Raiders.
Pretty impressive stats for a guy who was let go from UNC-W. The background story on that is a bit muddled, but from all accounts, Brownell wanted a raise and the AD flatout said no. For a coach who had just been to the NCAA Tournament, Brownell felt that he deserved the bump in pay and he packed his bags for Fairborn to coach in the Horizon League.
The book on Brownell is pretty basic. He’s a decent recruiter (2010’s class includes four guys rated as an 80 or higher on ESPN), he is young (41), his teams play good defense (61st in the country in defensive efficiency) and they play smart. They will not wow you offensively, they were 316th in the nation in tempo.
Simply put, Brad Brownell is about as safe as they come. He won’t ruffle feathers, he’s won some coaching awards, he’d represent the university well and he’d likely be able to contend for NCAA Tournament appearances most years as long as his recruiting success at the mid-major level can translate to the ACC. And in all likelihood, he would retain one if not two of Dino’s assistant coaches. There is a fear though that due to Brownell’s plodding offense that he may lose one or two of the 2010 guys, who were brought in expecting a faster-paced offensive mindset.
But, that said, didn’t Boston College just fire a guy who sounds just like Brad Brownell? Didn’t Wake just fire a guy who won an NCAA Tournament game last season? Is Brownell really a guy that will excite a fanbase that is disillusioned after collapses the last two seasons?
I’m not saying that Brownell wouldn’t be a good fit and have the chance to be successful. What I am confused about is this: if Ron Wellman fired Dino Gaudio to make a statement and a commitment to winning in the post-season, did he really do that just so that he could hire Brad Brownell?
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Brad Brownell
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With the mass stampede of foreign investors, the store shelves show the real statistics of our finances. My mother called early to tell me there is toilet paper in a distant market; she said I should hurry because word was already out and it soon would be gone. I go out looking to the right and left like a fan, to see if there is any kind of juice to put in Teo’s cup for the morning. But the shortage of supplies is remarkable. Rio Zaza brand Tetra Paks have disappeared from the shops; the former joint venture that produced them is now mired in a corruption scandal. The black market has collapsed; it’s no secret to anyone that it is fed by the diversion of resources from the factories and the theft of goods while in transport to the shops.
Even the most patient foreign entrepreneurs, like the Spanish who ran the outstanding firm Vima*, have packed their bags and gone home. The consortium between the perfume maker Suchel and the Iberian capital provided by Camacho has come to an end and in the absence of dyes my friends are showing their grey hairs. The time when the country bought first and paid later is over, now we are carrying so much debt it is difficult to attract capital or to buy on credit. The effects of the crisis are felt strongly in everyday life, with the price of soap 30% more than it was a year ago. The housewives scratch their heads faced with the skillet, while shouting that the wages go like water once paid at the end of the month. Not even those blessed by a remittance received from abroad or the skilled traders in the informal market have it easy.
Few remember now that speech from three years ago in Camaguey, where Raul Castro suggested the possibility of a glass of milk for every Cuban. Quite the contrary, the words he delivered last Sunday have brought us trenches, parapets and apocalyptic images of an Island sinking into the sea. Chasing the elusive food, we have little time to reflect on what was said at the Palace of Conventions, but his Numantian* threats hang over us. Interpreted literally, they portend that we can expect a foxhole surrounded by sandbags, a rifle to shoot we do not know whom, with the final bullet in the chamber to be used on ourselves. Meanwhile, the General will stand firmly at his post and check, from a distance, that no one breaches the final order of immolation.
Translator’s notes:
Vima: Food importer which supplied hotels and state-run businesses.
Numantian: The Numantines chose to burn their city rather than surrender it to the Romans.
Yoani’s blog, Generation Y, can be read here in English translation.
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Yoani Sanchez: Three Years Ago Raul Castro Promised Us a Glass of Milk; Now He Speaks of The Apocalyse
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Lily Allen is to appear topless on the front cover of Australia’’s Harpers Bazaar.
The 24-year-old is planning to launch her collection of designer clothes hire station after wrapping up her singing career.
The front-page photo of Allen is expected to be out in the May edition of the magazine, The Daily Express reported.
In the pic, Lily will be seen naked above her waist, with one arm covering the right side of her chest but her left breast clearly visible.
To avoid any allegations and controversies over the nudity, the image is a painting based on a photo from Allen’’s topless shoot for Harper’’s Bazaar Russia in January (10).
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Lily Allen ”to go nude for mag”
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Pop singer Leona Lewis celebrated her birthday with a group of girlfriends at the Caesar’s palace in Vegas.
Lewis made her eight friends stay in 500 pound-a-night suites. The girls headed for a club after some time, reports The Mirror.
“Leona wanted to thank all her friends with a big blow out for her birthday. As soon as she arrived, her and her mates were treated mates were treated like princesses,” a friend of Lewis said.
“They dumped their bags, glammed up and headed for Pure nightclub where there was an entire VIP section just set up for Leona on the balcony.
“The champagne and vodka kept coming. Leona started singing and dancing with her blonde pal, while her fans were waving at her. They were there to the end and I over heard them saying they wanted to take the party back to the hotel,” the friend added.
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Leona Lewis pampers herself with lavish Vegas birthday
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MEXICO CITY – The pre-dawn discovery of two bodies cut into pieces and shoved into two black bags brought a tragic end Monday to a search for two missing police officers in the southern state of Guerrero.
Law enforcement officials say the bagged body parts were found at 3:15 a.m. (5:15 a.m. EDT; 0915 GMT) outside police headquarters in Guerrero’s capital city, Chilpancingo.
One of the victims was a regional commander, the other a state police officer. Notes written on yellow cards were attached to the bags, but police refused to disclose what they said. Drug cartel killers frequently attach messages to bodies.
Police officers have been targets, and are sometimes complicit, in drug-related killings, which have claimed 17,900 lives since President Felipe Calderon stepped up the drug war in December 2006.
On Sunday, Rodrigo Medina, governor of the northern state of Nuevo Leon, announced that he was firing 81 state police officers suspected of corruption.
Also in Nuevo Leon on Sunday, the police chief of the city of Santa Catarina narrowly avoided being killed by gunmen believed to be connected to drug traffickers.
The assailants attacked a convoy of vehicles carrying Police Chief Rene Castillo Sanchez and other authorities shortly after the authorities had arrested several drug dealers. One of Sanchez’s bodyguards was killed and three people in the convoy were wounded, said a police spokeswoman who, under department rules, was not authorized to give her name.
The Mexican military set up a makeshift checkpoint between the resort city of Acapulco in Guerrero state and the Acapulco airport Sunday evening after a man was killed in a shootout between gunmen riding in separate vehicles.
The gunbattle followed the deaths of five men who pulled guns on each other during an early- morning fight that began as an argument at a wedding Saturday night.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Grisly find in Mexico: Dismembered police officers
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PORT-AU-PRINCE — Haitian government officials say they are still looking for earthquake survivors, despite earlier reports that they had called off search and rescue efforts.
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PHILADELPHIA � A college student returning to school after the winter break fell victim to a prank at Philadelphia’s airport by a Transportation Security Administration worker who pretended to plant a plastic bag of white powder in her carryon luggage.
The worker is no longer employed by the TSA after the incident this month, a spokeswoman said.
Rebecca Solomon, 22, a University of Michigan student, wrote in a column for her campus newspaper that she was having her bags screened on Jan. 5 before her flight to Detroit when the employee stopped her, reached into her laptop computer bag and pulled out the plastic bag, demanding to know where she had gotten the powder.
In the Jan. 10 column for The Michigan Daily, she recounted how she struggled to come up with an explanation, wondering if it was bomb-detonating material slipped in by a terrorist or drugs put there by a smuggler.
“He let me stutter through an explanation for the longest minute of my life,” Solomon wrote. “Tears streamed down my face as I pleaded with him to understand that I’d never seen this baggie before.”
A short time later, she said, the worker smiled and said it was his.
The worker “waved the baggie at me and told me he was kidding, that I should’ve seen the look on my face,” she said.
Solomon said she asked to speak to a supervisor and filled out a complaint, and during that process was told that the man was training TSA workers to detect contraband. Two days later, she said, she was told he had been disciplined.
“I had been terrified and disrespected by an airport employee,” she said. “He’d joked about the least funny thing in air travel.”
There was no answer Saturday at a telephone listing for Solomon at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. An e-mail message seeking comment from her was sent Saturday by The Associated Press, and a telephone message was left at her parents’ home in suburban Philadelphia.
TSA spokeswoman Ann Davis told The Philadelphia Inquirer she did not dispute the student’s account and said the employee was no longer with the agency, though she declined to say whether he had been fired or quit. She also declined to identify the worker or his job title, citing privacy laws.
“TSA viewed this behavior to be completely inappropriate and unprofessional,” Davis said in a statement. “The employee was immediately disciplined by TSA management at the Philadelphia airport.”
TSA representatives did not return calls Saturday seeking comment.
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TSA Student Prank: Airport Worker Pretended To Plant Bag Of White Powder In Rebecca Solomon’s Luggage
