Looks like the year's Sexiest Man Alive has found his match! Bradley Cooper is reportedly dating newly single Zoe Saldana. According to E! News, sources say the supremely sexy couple is so happy they've begun to tell their family and friends they're together.
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The new ban...
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Paul Christoforo
By Kyle Orland
"I want to clear my name. I want to get these people to stop bothering me."
That was the main message from Ocean Marketing's Paul Christoforo, a former representative for?N-Control's Avenger controller attachment.?He gained immediate infamy among the Internet gaming community after a hostile customer service email exchange?went viral?after landing on popular gaming webcomic Penny Arcade.
In a matter of hours, Christoforo went from being just another customer service agent to a focus of ire for thousands of gamers. Christoforo was featured in mocking images and videos, and the Avenger product he was representing was hit with widespread derision and negative Amazon reviews, forcing the company to publicly drop Christoforo as its marketing representative.
A chastened Christoforo is now looking for forgiveness from the Internet community he unwittingly antagonized, saying in an interview with msnbc.com's In-Game he was "caught on a bad day" and that he hopes they will "let sleeping dogs lie."
What he did
Christoforo's downfall came because he broke the biggest rule in sales: He went after the customer. Even if the customer isn't always right, the customer deserves to be treated with respect. Christoforo's exchanges with a gamer ??who expressed concern for a suspiciously delayed accessory shipment?? were far from respectful. He called the customer a "moron" and a "complete child" and?much worse. He even got the guy's name wrong.
Things escalated when the customer CC'd one of the Penny Arcade editors, and when the emails were published by Penny Arcade, the tale of Christoforo's poor behavior went nuclear.
Read our full story:?Jilted gamer teaches vendor price of rudeness
"They've pretty much ruined me in the past 24 hours," Christoforo said. "It was humbling a little bit, but life goes on. I'm not going to die."
That doesn't mean Christoforo isn't still feeling the effects from becoming a household name in certain corners of the Internet ? effects he says he was actively dealing with for?17 hours straight yesterday. While Christoforo said blocking his Google Voice number stopped an early flood of harassing phone calls, he's received over 7,000 e-mails in the past 24 hours, some containing threats against him and his wife and two-month-old son.
"It's caused me more annoyance than anything else, but there are some threats and a lot of disrespect," he said. "My son's two months old ... that's uncalled for, you don't bring him into this situation."
Christoforo said his wife's Facebook page has been hammered by friend requests from people trying to get at him, and the shared stress of the entire ordeal has led to at least one major argument between the couple.
Yet despite all the drama, Christoforo said he hasn't lost any of his other accounts, aside from Avenger. "It hasn't affected my business yet," he said. "Clients have brought it up, but they've mainly laughed about it. I haven't lost any clients."
"If I had known, I would?have treated the situation a little better."
Referring to the email thread that started the whole mess, Christoforo said that he didn't know who he was talking to in his initial, flippant response to Penny Arcade's Mike Krahulik.
"I didn't know who that guy at Penny Arcade was," he admitted. "If I had known, I would?have treated the situation a little better. PAX is a great show. What he does is what I've been idolizing since I was a kid. It's admirable he's put that together. He has a lot of connections, ones I want too."
Yet while admitting he handled things badly, Christoforo said he also felt the situation could have been different if Krahulik approached the situation differently.
"He called me a bully, but he was being a bully ...?especially when he emailed me out of the blue, saying 'That's f***ing s***ty, you're banned from PAX,' I was like 'Who the f*** are you? That's how you introduce yourself? ... I dont want to call him out, but he could have gone about that a totally different way, he could have said, 'Hey, I run the show, that email was a little unprofessional, if you don't do something to apologize I don't want you at my show.' But he just came at me and said, indirectly, 'Hey, f*** you, you're banned from PAX.' Is that what you'd call professional? I wouldn't."
Christoforo also said his response was driven in part by what he saw as the disrespectful tone of the messages that came before it. "Not that I don't have respect for anybody, but if someone's badmouthing me or being a little punk or being a jerk, they don't deserve respect," he said. "You can't expect to go up and say 'Hey you piece of s***,' and expect respect. Send an email, introduce yourself. ... I trust everybody until they give me a reason not to respect them.?I'm not a tough guy, not a bully, but at same time not going to take s*** if it's uncalled for.
Regarding the litany of names Christoforo's e-mail called up as potential supporters ? a list that included everyone from Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski to the mayor of Boston ? he said the tactic was meant to "impress, not to threaten" and didn't come through correctly because "you can't see tone of voice in email."
"I don't know the mayor of Boston," he admitted. "That was taken totally out of context, I was just joking around. I am from Boston, though, and I know a lot of people who own clubs. I know some influential people, like the guy who runs the door at the convention center.
"Maybe it was because it was email, maybe on the phone it would have been different story ... it would have nipped everything in the bud."
Looking back, Christoforo is still a little shocked that what he thought would remain a private email conversation got blown into an Internet event the way it did.
"If this didn't get escalated to Penny Arcade, it would have never gone viral like it did," he said. "Ultimately, if I was able to control the customer, it never would have happened. I've dealt with thousands and thousands of customers with similar complaints, they were all asking the same question. When is it big enough that it hits the news? When it hits Penny Arcade, when it hits a guy who has the biggest affiliations in the industry."
Moving on
Despite the harassment, Christoforo says he still respects the gaming community he says he's been a part of for decades.
"I still love the gaming community, and this is not going to change my mind," he said. "I do think these people were a little bit excessive with the spam, digging up personal information, calling me. Not to put anyone down, but I don't know what kind of lives these people have. ...?Ultimately it doesn't affect the way I think about anybody. I don't have any hate or bad will for them, but it's a little bit sad that they didn't have anything better to do than attack me."
Christoforo said he's also been able to laugh at some of the funnier parodies and jokes at his expense out there, particularly a well-made video?featuring an over-the-top actor playing an exaggerated version of him.
"I'm not depressed at people making fun of me," he said. "It's like a parody of Barack Obama. It's making me more popular. I'm not doing anything to stop it, and it is kind of funny. ... It's not the end of the world, and it'll be old news soon, but it's hot news now, and I do see the lighter side of it."
While Christoforo didn't completely rule out legal action against Penny Arcade and the sources of some of the more vicious Internet slander and threats, he said he probably will not actually call an attorney. That's partly because he's not sure there's a legal case to be made, but also because he doesn't want his name dragged down any further, he said.?
"[Legal action] is something I'm not interested in doing because the community would be more pissed at me," he said. "Regardless of money [possibly won in a settlement], it would really ruin my name. Am I saying I care more about my reputation than money? Yes."
But Christoforo also sees some potential positives in all the negative attention he's been getting. His Twitter account, which has now changed names twice because he was "sick of the tweets and stuff coming in," has been getting a lot of new followers from the controversy, he noted, a situation that may be beneficial down the line.
"If these people stick with me and follow me, a couple months down the road anything I say is news," he said. "If it gets me somewhere else that I wouldn't have been where this happened ... it's negative now, but controversy and bad news is news and that's just the way it is. Look at all the bad press from people in entertainment industry that turned into something good. Whether I do charity work or something good, I don't know."
In the nearer term, Christoforo has entertained the idea of doing some Internet videos himself, and even considered going to PAX East, held in Boston this April, with a shirt tauntingly saying 'I'm Paul Christoforo' on it. "I'm not sure I'd actually do that, since I don't want to get in any fights," he clarified.
So what lessons has Christoforo taken from his brush with Internet infamy??"I'll definitely stay away from customer service emails," he said. "I could have nipped this all in the bud by being a little nicer. You never know who knows who, and lesson learned. We all have bad days and they caught me on one."
"At the end of the day, I'm a human being, and it feels like the entire world was bullying me," he said. "I?want people to like me, I don't want people to think I'm a bad person. ... I made a mistake.?... I hope I can make something positive out of it."
Related stories:
Kyle Orland has written hundreds of thousands of words about gaming since he got his start with a Mario fan site at the age of 14. You can follow him on?Twitter?or at his personal web site,?KyleOrland.com.
Dragons and lightsabers defined some of the best games this year. These are the nominees for the game of the year. In-Game's Todd Kenreck reports.
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Former Gov. Ted Strickland, D-Ohio joins the panel to discuss the latest in Iowa. Ron Paul sits at the top of the polls in Iowa, but is his lead big enough that Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney couldn?t shake him?
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Source: http://video.msnbc.msn.com/newsnation/45798252/
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MOSCOW ? A Russian court is to decide Wednesday whether a religious text central to the global Hare Krishna movement is "extremist' and should be banned, in a case that has angered Hindus around the world and highlights the continuing challenges for minority religions in Russia.
Prosecutors in the Siberian city of Tomsk have argued that the Russian translation of "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" promotes "social discord" and hatred toward nonbelievers. The text is a combination of the Bhagavad Gita, one of Hinduism's holiest scriptures, and commentary by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness that is often called the Hare Krishna movement.
The prosecutors are asking the court to include the book on the Federal List of Extremist Materials, which bans more than 1,000 texts including Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and books distributed by the Jehovah's Witness and Scientology movements.
Yuri Pleshkov, a spokesman for the group in Russia, said the book in question has existed in Russia for 25 years and has never inspired violence or extremist activity.
"On the contrary, this book teaches humane attitude towards all living beings," Pleshkov said.
The trial follows this year's ban on the construction of a Hare Krishna village in Tomsk and is based on an assessment by professors at Tomsk University, who concluded that "Bhagavad Gita As It Is" includes strong language against nonbelievers and promotes religious hatred and discrimination on the basis of gender, race, nationality and language.
The trial began in June and was scheduled to conclude on Dec. 19, just after Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's two-day visit to Russia. That day protesters gathered outside the Russian consulate in Kolkata, and the speaker of India's lower house of parliament adjourned the body for several hours after members began shouting in anger over the proposed ban.
Officials in Tomsk agreed to hear further testimony from experts and the Russian ombudsman for human rights and postponed the court decision until Wednesday.
Indian officials last week appealed to high-level Russian authorities to intervene.
The Bhagavad Gita "is not merely a religious text, but one of the defining treatises of Indian thought," said Indian Ambassador to Russia Ajai Malhotra in a statement. "The Bhagavad Gita has circulated freely across the world for centuries and there is not a single instance of it having encouraged extremism."
The Foreign Ministry insisted that the Tomsk court is not taking issue with core Hindu scripture itself, but rather with the author's commentary and poor translation in "Bhagavad Gita As It Is."
"I would like to emphasize that this is not about 'Bhagavad Gita,' a religious philosophical poem, which forms part of the great Indian epic Mahabharata and is one of the most famous pieces of the ancient Hindu literature," ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said at a briefing in Moscow on Thursday, adding that the book was first published in Russian in 1788.
Still, followers of the Hare Krishna movement in Russia see the proposed ban as a result of continued intolerance of minority religions by the Russian Orthodox Church. Pleshkov estimates there are at least 150,000 Hare Krishna devotees in Russia.
"The current problem is, above all, the misuse of the law on combating extremism," Pleshkov said. "It is used to search for enemies where they can not even be defined."
In 2005 a Russian Orthodox archbishop asked the mayor of Moscow to ban the construction of a proposed Hare Krishna temple, calling the Hindu deity Krishna "an evil demon, the personified power of hell opposing God," according to Interfax. The temple was later allowed in a Moscow suburb.
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Top 10 Church-State and Religious Liberty Developments For 2011: pewsitter.com/page_1.html#nw? #FB 
Pewsitter James Todd
Source: http://twitter.com/Pewsitter/statuses/151892108842778626
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Darlene Love,?the Lone Ranger, and meatball target practice have all become holiday traditions on?David Letterman's 'Late Show.'
Think holiday traditions and mistletoe, eggnog and caroling come to mind. David Letterman's Christmas includes target practice at a giant meatball, the Lone Ranger and singer?Darlene?Love.
Skip to next paragraphEach has become part of CBS "Late Show" lore through the years, their appearances anticipated by fans like wrapped presents under a tree. The traditions return Friday.
Comic Jay Thomas will be back to try to knock a meatball off the top of a Christmas tree with a football and recount his Lone Ranger anecdote again.?Love?will sing "Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" as fake snow flutters to the stage.
"The best traditions are the ones you can't plan," said Rob Burnett, executive producer of "Late Show."
"These happened very organically on our show and it is very silly and very goofy. It makes sense with the sensibility of the 'Late Show' to be part of our tradition."
Letterman's on-set Christmas tree is frequently decorated with oddities, such as the meatball on top instead of a star, angel or bow.
It all started one night back in 1998 when New York Jets quarterback Vinny Testaverde was a guest. He and Letterman picked up footballs and began tossing them at the tree, aiming for the meatball. Watching their failures impatiently from the wings was Thomas, former quarterback at tiny Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, N.C.
Thomas had discussed trying the target practice with Letterman before the show, but no one told that to stage manager Biff Henderson. He blocked Thomas from going out onstage.
"I fake to the right and Biff goes to catch me and I run around him like a scramble," said Thomas, who picked up a football and threw with laserlike accuracy at the meatball, accomplishing in one throw what the NFL quarterback couldn't in several.
Testaverde has been forgotten, but Thomas is invited back each year to see if he can repeat his feat.
Around the same time ? Thomas isn't sure exactly when ? Letterman heard about a story Thomas told of his time as a radio DJ in the South when he and a friend had to give a ride to Clayton Moore, star of television's "Lone Ranger." We won't be spoilers; Letterman has called it the "best story I've ever heard."
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What's less known is that most of those rolling creations are produced by a trio of local firms that labor in obscurity most of the year to prepare for a single day in January.
Phoenix Decorating Co. in Pasadena, Fiesta Parade Floats in Irwindale and Artistic Entertainment Services in Azusa are the Rose Parade's Big Three.
With the Jan. 2 showtime fast approaching, the companies are putting the finishing touches on floats that took months to design and build. On average, each craft costs more than a typical U.S. home.
Their handiwork must deliver the "wow" factor for sponsors and spectators ? a bar that gets higher every year ? while navigating the 5.5-mile route without a mechanical failure that could cost them prestige and future contracts.
"For me as a small-business owner, it's a pressure cooker," said Chris Lofthouse, president of Phoenix Decorating.
Like other U.S. businesses, the float-building trade has been squeezed by a slow economy. Some sponsors have trimmed their float budgets or pulled out of the Rose Parade altogether.
The Big Three are keeping a lid on costs by reusing materials as much as possible and continuing to rely heavily on volunteers to decorate their floats.
The companies have also carved out niches to stand apart from one another.
For Phoenix Decorating, size is the sell. The firm is under contract to build 22 of the 44 floats in next week's parade, and it employs a full-time staff of about 300 workers in two Pasadena facilities.
Fiesta Parade Floats touts its track record with the judges. The company says 67% of the floats it has entered over the last 20 years have won awards, which it says is the highest rate among the existing builders in the parade. The company employs 30 workers and is building 11 of the floats for this parade.
Technology is the key for Artistic Entertainment Services, which employs about 60 workers and is building five floats for this parade. Artistic said it excels in the use of state-of-the-art technology, including robotics and lasers for sculpting and casting floats.
Artistic also uses its equipment to build floats for Disneyland as well as signage and props for Universal Studios Hollywood, among other clients.
Combined, the three companies are building 38 floats for next week's parade. The other six floats are being built independently for float sponsors including the cities of La Ca?ada-Flintridge, Downey and Burbank.
Their strategies may differ, but their goals are the same: Find and keep clients with big-budget float orders and create parade entries that make a statement.
"You always try to push the envelope," said Tim Estes, president of Fiesta Parade Floats, which is building what is being billed as the world's longest and heaviest float. The Natural Balance Pet Foods float will be 116 feet long, weigh 65 tons and feature real dogs surfing in a 6,600-gallon pool.
"You have to put out a superior product," he said.
Serious business
Launched in 1890, the Rose Parade has blossomed into a major economic force. The event generates about $181 million in direct spending, plus $58.6 million from the Rose Bowl game that follows, according to a 2008 USC study.
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LOS ANGELES ? The moon has come a long way since Galileo first peered at it through a telescope. Unmanned probes have circled around it and landed on its surface. Twelve American astronauts have walked on it. And lunar rocks and soil have been hauled back from it.
Despite being well studied, Earth's closest neighbor remains an enigma.
Over the New Year's weekend, a pair of spacecraft the size of washing machines are set to enter orbit around it in the latest lunar mission. Their job is to measure the uneven gravity field and determine what lies beneath ? straight down to the core.
Since rocketing from the Florida coast in September, the near-identical Grail spacecraft have been independently traveling to their destination and will arrive 24 hours apart. Their paths are right on target that engineers recently decided not to tweak their positions.
"Both spacecraft have performed essentially flawlessly since launch, but one can never take anything for granted in this business," said mission chief scientist Maria Zuber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The nail-biting part is yet to come. On New Year's Eve, one of the Grail probes ? short for Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory ? will fire its engine to slow down so that it could be captured into orbit. This move will be repeated by the other the following day.
Engineers said the chances of the probes overshooting are slim since their trajectories have been precise. Getting struck by a cosmic ray may prevent the completion of the engine burn and they won't get boosted into the right orbit.
"I know I'm going to be nervous. I'm definitely a worrywart," said project manager David Lehman of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which manages the $496 million, three-month mission.
Once in orbit, the spacecraft will spend the next two months flying in formation and chasing one another around the moon until they are about 35 miles above the surface with an average separation of 124 miles. Data collection won't begin until March.
Previous missions have attempted to measure lunar gravity with mixed success. Grail is the first mission dedicated to this goal.
As the probes circle the moon, regional changes in the lunar gravity field will cause them to speed up or slow down. This in turn will change the distance between them. Radio signals transmitted by the spacecraft will measure the slight distance gaps, allowing researchers to map the underlying gravity field.
Using the gravity information, scientists can deduce what's below or at the lunar surface such as mountains and craters and may help explain why the far side of the moon is more rugged than the side that faces Earth.
The probes are officially known as Grail-A and Grail-B. Several months ago, NASA hosted a contest inviting schools and students to submit new names. The probes will be christened with the winning names after the second orbit insertion, Zuber said.
Besides the one instrument on board, each spacecraft also carries a camera for educational purposes. Run by a company founded by Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, middle school students from participating schools can choose their own lunar targets to image during the mission.
A trip to the moon is typically relatively quick. It took Apollo astronauts three days to get there. Since Grail was launched from a relatively small rocket to save on costs, the journey took 3 1/2 months.
Scientists expect the mission to yield a bounty of new information about the moon, but don't count on the U.S. sending astronauts back anytime soon. The Constellation program was canceled last year by President Barack Obama, who favors landing on an asteroid as a stepping stone to Mars.
___
Online:
Mission details: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/grail/news/index.html
___
Follow Alicia Chang's coverage at http://www.twitter.com/SciWriAlicia
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The California Air Resources Board (ARB) is soliciting research suggestions for the Fiscal Year 2012-2013 Annual Research Plan in the form of brief conceptual descriptions that address specified research gaps and support the Board?s ongoing regulatory and policy priorities. The deadline to submit research concepts is 31 January 2012.
Proposed research should address policy-relevant knowledge gaps important to ARB?s mission and must clearly delineate potential benefits to the State of California. The FY 2011-2012 plan focused primarily on five areas of interest: sustainable communities; behavior and technology adoption; health and air pollution exposures; air pollution science; and greenhouse gas targets. ARB will also consider projects outside of these areas, to the extent that they provide clear and direct support to its mission.
Sustainable Communities: The Sustainable Communities and Climate Protection Act of 2008 (SB 375) directs California?s metropolitan planning organizations to develop sustainable communities strategies that meet regional greenhouse gas reduction targets through integrated land use, housing and transportation planning.
Development of sustainable communities strategies can also provide an opportunity for associated criteria pollutant emission reductions that will be needed to attain air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter as well as reduce near-roadway exposures. Four research projects were funded in this area as part of the FY 2011-2012 Plan and focused on analyzing the economics of smart growth strategies; quantifying the greenhouse gas co-benefits of green buildings; determining benefits of complete streets conversions; and piloting a program to assess improvements to financing programs for building retrofits.
Future research undertaken by ARB will probe: co-benefits of smart growth policies; and integration of freight transport and smart growth.
Behavior and Technology adoption: Strategies to improve air quality depend not only on sound technologies, but on adoption and appropriate use of clean technologies. Given the magnitude of technological change required to support California?s transition to a low-carbon economy while improving air quality, ARB says that it is imperative that its policies understand and effectively contend with barriers to implementation of clean technology.
ARB says that research is needed to explore behavioral and institutional factors that affect technology adoption and use patterns. The FY 2011-2012 Plan proposed three research projects in this area, including modeling household vehicle and transportation choices; understanding potential benefits of interactive transportation technologies; and consumer attitudes to low-emission vehicles.
ARB is interested in future research that will shed light on: behaviors that impede or promote success of regulatory programs; evaluation of strategies that involve behavior and/or technology adoption, such as adoption of advanced clean vehicles or performance of zero net energy buildings; and potentially replicable strategies to further encourage voluntary emissions reductions.
Health and Air Pollution Exposures: ARB has reduced exposure to a wide variety of air pollutants through regulations that reduce emissions from motor vehicles and consumer products. These regulations have led to considerable improvements in air quality throughout California. However, on a regional and local level exposure reduction has not been uniform statewide, and the remaining risk needs to be characterized.
The FY 2011-2012 Plan supported three research projects in this area: reducing indoor exposure to air pollution; investigating benefits of high efficiency filtration to children with asthma; and reducing air pollution exposure in passenger vehicles.
Of particular concern to the Board are the following future research areas: exposure to traffic emissions and identification of potential mitigation measures to reduce near-roadway exposures; exposure to ultrafine particles and the effectiveness of ARB regulations (other than tailpipe emission limits) in reducing those exposures; disproportionate exposures of socially and economically vulnerable groups and measures to reduce those exposures; biological pathways and mechanisms through which exposure to air pollutants, including ultrafines, leads to adverse health effects; and indoor air sources of air pollutant emissions and chemistry.
Air Pollution Science: Research supported by ARB provides the scientific basis for the Board?s strategies to reduce criteria pollutant emissions and improve mobile source inventories, as well as illuminating the role of biogenic and natural emissions, which constitute an increasing fraction of total emissions as man-made emissions decrease. However, continued improvements in California?s air quality will require ARB to develop State Implementation Plans to meet increasingly stringent ambient air pollution standards for criteria air pollutants while also achieving needed reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.
The FY 2011-2012 Plan included four projects to support the goal of attaining air quality standards. Those projects focused on long range transport of air pollutants into California; dairy feed management practices to reduce emissions; contribution of organic aerosols as a component of fine particulate pollution; and durability of diesel engine emission controls.
ARB looks for future research to address a number of basic scientific challenges, including improved understanding of: long-range transport of air pollution; emissions inventory improvement; atmospheric processes, in particular those associated with intermediate volatility and semi-volatile organic compounds, and formation of secondary organic aerosol; validation of rule benefits through regional and local monitoring; and integration of criteria and greenhouse gas pollutant control strategies, including impacts of changing fuels and combustion technologies.
Greenhouse Gas Targets: ARB shares responsibility for California?s climate change goals, which include development and implementation of a plan to reduce California?s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020 as well as aligning the State with a 2050 goal of 80% emissions reductions relative to a 1990 baseline.
ARB?s research program has made several contributions to GHG emissions reductions measure to support implementation of the Scoping Plan, which delineates how California can meet its 2020 emissions reductions goals through various cost-effective rules, regulations, and voluntary strategies augmented by a cap and trade mechanism.
The FY 2011-2012 Plan put forth five projects to support meeting GHG targets: measuring emissions of potent greenhouse gases from appliance and building waste in landfills; mitigating of N2O emissions from agricultural soils; atmospheric measurement and inverse modeling to improve GHG estimates; using VOC measurements at tall towers to distinguish GHG sources; and analysis of solar radiation data to clarify the role of black carbon in climate change mitigation.
Further research is needed to: explore potential new emission reduction strategies; improve emissions estimates; and verify emissions reductions.ARB says that the nature and scope of the proposed research concepts will vary as will the size and duration of each project. Projects that provide co-funding to leverage state funding are evaluated more favorably. There is no minimum or maximum funding amount that may be requested for the proposed research, ARB?s annual research budget generally ranges from $5 million to $7 million, typically funding between 20 and 25 projects, including internally generated ideas, with individual budgets ranging from $50,000 to $500,000.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/greencarcongress/TrBK/~3/zVZTbLTe6-g/arb-20111225.html
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Where
Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO
888 16th St NW
Suite 520
Washington, DC??20006
202-974-8150
When
Dec 26 ?? 9:00 am - 5:00 pm
The offices of the Metro Council and Community Services Agency are closed for the annual holiday break beginning Friday, December 23 at 12 noon and re-opening at 9a on Tuesday, January 3.
Add To Google
Source: http://www.dclabor.org/ht/d/EventDetails/i/100018
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Curtis Selk of Redmond was among 55 fellow recent graduates that earned associate degrees in Golf Complex Operations and Management from the Golf Academy of America (GAA) in Phoenix, Ariz.
?These students put in a lot of hard work and all of them are now well prepared to step into golf career opportunities anywhere in the country,? said Tim Eberlein, campus director of the Myrtle Beach Golf Academy of America. ?Our students are some of the best trained and most knowledgeable golf career professionals in the industry."
The GAA is the largest and longest-running two-year golf career college in the world and prepares graduates for a wide array of golf career opportunities. For more information, go to www.golfacademy.edu.
Source: http://feeds.soundpublishing.com/~r/redmondbusiness/~3/rwNYDGZ_pXc/135937203.html
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updated 4:10 p.m. ET Dec. 24, 2011
LANDOVER, Md. - The Minnesota Vikings survived injuries to Adrian Peterson and Christian Ponder on back-to-back plays Saturday to end a six-game losing streak, beating the Washington Redskins 33-26.
Toby Gerhart filled in for Peterson and set up a touchdown with a 67-yard run, and Joe Webb threw for two touchdowns and ran for another while subbing for Ponder.
Webb's 8-yard pass to Percy Harvin broke a 23-all tie early in the fourth quarter, and rookie Mistral Raymond's first career interception set up Ryan Longwell's 23-yard field goal that gave the Vikings a 10-point lead with 4:05 to play.
The Vikings are 3-12. The Redskins lost their sixth straight home game to fall to 5-10.
Peterson's left knee was hurt on the first offensive play of the second half. Ponder suffered a concussion.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More news??Jairus Byrd and Spencer Johnson returned Tim Tebow interceptions for touchdowns on consecutive plays in the fourth quarter to help the Buffalo Bills snap a seven-game skid and seal a 40-14 win over the Denver Broncos on Saturday.
??Sebastian Janikowski kicked a 36-yard field goal 2:13 into overtime Saturday, giving the Oakland Raiders a 16-13 victory over Kansas City that eliminated the Chiefs from the playoff race and kept their own AFC West hopes alive.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/45784455/ns/sports-nfl/
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"I said, 'What are they saying?' I just pretend I understand," said the 9-year-old Los Angeles fifth grader. "My best friend knew how to speak English. He helped me."
Roberto's experience is typical for Spanish-speakers entering California schools. They usually get assigned to a program where the teacher must speak English almost exclusively even though kids don't understand.
Roberto has since moved on to a special bilingual program that teaches him in both Spanish and English, but the vast majority of pupils stay in an English-only program, often falling behind in academics as they learn the language then struggle to catch up. Many don't.
California has the largest Hispanic student population in the nation but ranks at the bottom for Hispanic reading and math achievement. Only 11 percent of the state's 1.6 million English learners ? the vast majority of them Spanish speakers ? reached proficiency levels in English in the last school year. About a third drop out of school.
Experts say the numbers point to the need for a statewide overhaul of how schools teach kids English.
"Miseducate this group and the whole state is in trouble," said Leo Gomez, professor of bilingual education at the University of Texas-Pan American.
Educators are now closely observing the Los Angeles Unified School District after the U.S. Department of Education recently criticized its 200,000-pupil English learning program, saying it violated students' civil rights by failing to provide an equal education to non-native speakers.
Under federal monitoring, LAUSD is overhauling its English learner program, the largest in the country. The revamped program, which is scheduled to be presented to the school board in March and begin next school year, could provide a model for other lagging districts.
Studies have long pointed out numerous deficiencies in the state system, which starts with a survey sent to parents asking what languages are spoken at home. Children from multilingual homes are then tested for English proficiency.
Low scorers are placed into English language classes until they're proficient and moved into regular classes.
California's teaching method, however, differs from that used in all but two other states. It uses "structured English immersion," where nearly all classroom instruction is in English, and learning English is prioritized over other academics.
The method, which holds that students master English faster, was adopted after 1998's Proposition 227 restricted the use of bilingual education. Immersion is also used in Arizona and Massachusetts.
All other states, however, use bilingual classroom models. Teachers give academic lessons in the students' native language while students receive separate English instruction until they reach fluency to switch into a regular classroom.
The idea is that continuing their academics in their native language allows them to be current when they're put into regular classes.
Opponents of immersion say children fall behind in their academic subjects while they learn English and never fully catch up.
"By the time, they're in middle school, they're English proficient but academically deprived," Gomez said.
Others say kids learn English either way. It's the quality of the program that matters most, said a 2009 study by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute, a Latino affairs think tank that is now part of the University of Southern California.
The study found that once children master English and move into regular classrooms they perform at or above the same level as native English speakers, but too many children simply languish in English learner limbo.
In the study of LAUSD middle schoolers, researchers found 30 percent of students learning English had not gained language proficiency by 8th grade, although most had been in the English learning program since kindergarten. Of those who remained in English classes in high school, almost half dropped out and only 6 percent passed the state high school exit exam.
The state auditor found in a 2005 report that districts have a financial incentive not to move students out of English learning program? an average $448 annually per English learner in extra state and federal funding.
Deborah Sigman, state deputy superintendent of education, disputed that contention, saying districts are simply being cautious about not pushing through students prematurely.
Some experts note that although 80 percent of Spanish-speaking children are born in the United States, many are at a disadvantage because the majority comes from immigrant communities that are low income and provide limited exposure to English. Parents commonly have not graduated high school.
"These kids are really growing up in linguistically isolated areas," said Patricia Gandara, education professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. "They're having an enclave experience, not a mainstream experience."
She called for more training for teachers who have to cope with multiple levels of English proficiency in a classroom and little know-how to do that. "Teachers don't feel prepared," she said.
Other studies contend that too many kids are identified as English learners to begin with. A September study by Latino policy researchers at the University of California, Berkeley found that even though children might speak English, the language skills test is set up to fail them.
The study noted in 2009-10, 88 percent of kindergarteners were classified as English learners based on a two-hour test in which four and five-year-olds who have just entered school must read and write words like "apple," which would be difficult for native English speaking children who have not had preschool.
They cannot get out of English learner status until third grade at the earliest. By then, they are already behind.
State Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Los Angeles, who is leading legislative efforts to address English learning program deficiencies, said he'd like parents informed that the survey is used for English-learner classification, what that means to a child's education, and more guidelines about answering.
A grandparent living in the house who speaks only Spanish shouldn't necessarily trigger an English test for the grandchild, said Padilla, the author of a recent law that moves the proficiency test from the fall to the spring so students will have the benefit of a school year of instruction behind them.
Los Angeles elementary teacher Io McNaughton, who taught immersion English in an East Los Angeles school and now teaches in a special program that aims at proficiency in Spanish and English, said more emphasis needs to be placed on middle and high school English learners, where prospects of moving into regular classes dim considerably.
Kids in immersion classes do learn English quickly, she said, but she noted that their achievement plateaus. "You'd be teaching English and saying this is working, it's great, but as you progressed through the grades, the achievement in reading and writing really dropped off," she said.
LAUSD officials say they're examining all aspects of their English learning program, from extensive teacher training to how English learners are identified to better monitoring of English learners after they're placed in regular classes. Particular attention is being placed on secondary schools, which federal officials underscored as deficient.
Proficiency testing will also be scrutinized, said Ana Estevez-Andressian, LAUSD's English learner compliance coordinator.
State Sen. Padilla, who was an English learner himself, said he's hoping meaningful reforms that can be replicated will come out of the effort. More than 25 percent of California's students are English learners, and that number comprises a third of English learners nationwide.
"We're not going to make statewide improvement if we don't hone in on English learners," Padilla said. "When you're looking at almost a third of all students, it's a crisis."
Source: http://rn-t.com/bookmark/16893063
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We're creatures of habit. We go where we've already gone. That's why Facebook's new Suggested Events feature I just discovered is so powerful -- it knows where we've been thanks to our checkins. Replacing the old Friends' Events sub-tab of the home page's Events bookmark, Suggested Events helps you discover things to do that take place at venues you've checked in to, that friends are RSVP'd to, that are hosted by Pages you Like, or a combination. The feature could reduce the need third-party event discovery apps, and get more people out of their houses to attend concerts, club nights, and conferences.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/ZKPasjA5GIc/
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Struggling manufacturer Research In Motion is standing by its initial statement about the delayed release of BlackBerry 10, following a published report that the operating system is too flawed to release.
"RIM made a strategic decision to launch BlackBerry 10 devices with a new, LTE-based dual-core chip set architecture," the company said in an e-mail Thursday. "As explained on our earnings call, the broad engineering impact of this decision and certain other factors significantly influenced the anticipated timing for the BlackBerry 10 devices. The anonymous claim suggesting otherwise is inaccurate and uninformed."
RIM Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis said in an earnings call earlier this month that the release of BlackBerry 10 won't be ready in the first half of 2012 because dual-core, long-term evolution chipsets to give the devices 4G data speeds would not be available in time.
Trashed, Anonymously
However, Boy Genius Report, citing an unnamed source described as a high-level RIM employee, reported Thursday that the delay is because "RIM is simply pushing this out as long as they can for one reason, they don't have a working product yet."
BGR's source also said that looking at the current operating system used in RIM PlayBook tablets offers some insight into problems with e-mail and BlackBerry messaging that may affect phones using the upgrade, and that "there's no room for a fourth ecosystem" of independently developed apps after Apple's iOS, Google's Android and Microsoft's Windows Phone 7.
But RIM said it "will not launch BlackBerry 10 devices until we know they are ready, and we believe this new chip set architecture is required to deliver the world class user experience that our customers will expect. Any suggestion to the contrary is simply false. "
In other BlackBerry news, Comwave, which makes an application allowing free voice over Internet protocol long-distance calls to dozens of countries, announced a version for the platform.
The app had previously been available for Apple's iPhone, and a version for phones powered by Google's Android operating system was announced earlier in the week. After registering for the service at Comwave's Web site for an annual fee of $30, BlackBerry users can download the app for free from the BlackBerry App World and call people in 57 countries without long-distance charges.
'Cheaper Than Skype'
The service is not unlimited, though. It includes 250 minutes per month for one year. Both Comwave and RIM are based in Canada. The company also created the ePhone app for BlackBerry's PlayBook tablet. Comwave promises that its rates for overage are cheaper than video-calling service Skype.
"With consumers loving our iPhone and Android apps, a BlackBerry version was a natural progression," said Yuval Barzakay, president and CEO, in a press statement.
But while added VOIP capability may increase the appeal of BlackBerry devices at a time when they are losing ground to Android and iOS, analysts see a new operating system as Priority One.
"I don't think apps, no matter how popular, will help RIM in the short term," said J.D. Power and Associates wireless tech analyst Kirk Parsons. "They need an updated OS platform badly and the longer they wait the harder it will be to regain share."
In October, comScore said RIM dropped 5 percent in market share during the previous three months, to 19.7 percent of the market, as Android rose 5.6 points to lead with 43.7 percent.
Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/software/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20111222/tc_nf/81495
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Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio pauses at a news conference to announce an agreement for a 2-month extension to the payroll tax cut on Capitol Hill Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Speaker of the House John Boehner of Ohio pauses at a news conference to announce an agreement for a 2-month extension to the payroll tax cut on Capitol Hill Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference in the South Court Auditorium at the White House complex, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2011, in Washington. The president was flanked at the White House by several people who commented on Twitter about how they would be impacted if the tax cuts were not extended. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? Capping a full retreat by House GOP leaders, Congress will convene Friday in hopes of approving a stopgap measure renewing payroll tax cuts for every worker and unemployment benefits for millions ? despite serious opposition among some tea party Republicans.
Friday's unusual session, if all goes according to plan, will send a bill to President Barack Obama to become law for two months and put off until January a fight over how to pay for the 2 percentage point tax cut, extend jobless benefits averaging around $300 a week and prevent doctors from absorbing a big cut in Medicare payments.
Those goals had been embraced by virtually every lawmaker in the House and Senate, but had been derailed in a quarrel over demands by House Republicans for immediate negotiations on a long-term extension bill. Senate leaders of both parties had tried to barter such an agreement among themselves a week ago but failed, instead agreeing upon a 60-day measure to buy time for talks next year.
The decision by House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, to cave in to the Senate came after days of criticism from Obama and Democrats. But perhaps more tellingly, GOP stalwarts like strategist Karl Rove and the Wall St. Journal editorial board warned that if the tax cuts were allowed to expire, Republicans would take a political beating that would harm efforts to unseat Obama next year.
Friday's House and Senate sessions are remarkable. Both chambers have recessed for the holidays but leaders in both parties are trying to pass the short-term agreement under debate rules that would allow any individual member of Congress to derail the pact, at least for a time.
The developments were a clear win for Obama. The payroll tax cut was the centerpiece of his three-month, campaign-style drive for jobs legislation that seems to have contributed to an uptick in his poll numbers ? and taken a toll on those of congressional Republicans.
Obama, Republicans and congressional Democrats all said they preferred a one-year extension but the politics of achieving the goal, particularly the spending cuts and new fees required to pay for it, eluded them. All pledged to start working on that in January.
"There remain important differences between the parties on how to implement these policies, and it is critical that we protect middle-class families from a tax increase while we work them out," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said.
House GOP arguments about the legislative process and what the "uncertainty" of a two-month extension would mean for businesses were unpersuasive, and Obama was clearly on the offensive.
"Has this place become so dysfunctional that even when we agree to things, we can't do it?" Obama said. "Enough is enough."
The top Senate Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, was a driving force behind Thursday's agreement, imploring Boehner to accept the deal that McConnell and Reid had struck last week and passed with overwhelming support in both parties.
Meanwhile, tea party-backed House Republicans began to abandon their leadership.
"I don't think that my constituents should have a tax increase because of Washington's dysfunction," freshman Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., said.
If the cuts had expired as scheduled, 160 million workers would have seen a tax increase of $20 a week for an average worker earning about $50,000 a year. And up to 2 million people without jobs for six months would start losing unemployment benefits averaging $300 a week. Doctors would have seen a 27 percent cut in their Medicare payments, the product of an archaic 1997 cut that Congress has been unable to fix.
Even though GOP leaders like House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., promised that the two sides could quickly iron out their differences, the truth is that it'll take intense talks to figure out both the spending cuts and fee increases required to finance the measure.
Just hours before he announced the breakthrough, Boehner had made the case for a yearlong extension. But on a brief late afternoon conference call, he informed his colleagues it was time to yield.
"He said that as your leader, you've in effect asked me to make decisions easy and difficult, and I'm making my decision right now," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., paraphrasing Boehner's comments.
Kingston said the conference call lasted just minutes and Boehner did not give anyone time to respond.
There was still carping among tea party freshmen upset that GOP leaders had yielded.
"Even though there is plenty of evidence this is a bad deal for America ... the House has caved yet again to the president and Senate Democrats," Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., said. "We were sent here with a clear set of instructions from the American people to put an end to business as usual in Washington, yet here we are being asked to sign off on yet another gimmick."
Almost forgotten in the firestorm is that McConnell and Boehner had extracted a major victory last week, winning a provision that would require Obama to make a swift decision on whether to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, which would bring Canadian oil to the U.S. and create thousands of construction jobs. To block the pipeline, Obama would have to declare that is not in the nation's interest.
Obama wanted to put the decision off until after the 2012 election.
House Republicans did win one concession in addition to a promise that Senate Democrats would name negotiators on the one-year House measure: a provision to ease concerns that the 60-day extension would be hard for payroll processing companies to implement.
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The CAW is contributing $135,000 to food banks from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador, as part of an annual donation to ease hunger.
"The increasing use of food banks demonstrates the growing inequality in our society," said CAW President Ken Lewenza.
"In a nation that generates so much wealth for a privileged elite, there are so many more people and families who are not sharing in that prosperity. We must all ensure that no one is left behind and remember it's completely unacceptable that people go hungry in such a wealthy country during the holiday season or at any other time," Lewenza said.
A recent study shows that as of October 2011, 850,000 Canadians were relying on food banks, which is the second highest month on record. The reliance on food banks has steadily grown in recent years - especially since the first food bank in Canada opened its doors in 1981 in Edmonton, Alberta.
Here are some startling facts from a Food Banks Canada HungerCount survey in March 2011:
?- 93,085 people or 11 per cent of the total received help from a food bank for the first time during the survey period;
- food bank use in 2011 was 20 per cent higher than 2001;
- 38 per cent of those receiving food were children and youth under the age of 18.
Lewenza said a major reason for high levels of poverty is the loss of good paying, full time jobs. "We must all recognize that when you lose good paying jobs and bring in part-time precarious work, low paying jobs you're increasing the level of poverty," Lewenza said.
According to the Canadian Payroll Association, 57 per cent of Canadians state "they would be in financial difficulty if their pay cheque was delayed by a week."
In addition to the $135,000 donation, which comes from the CAW Social Justice Fund and CAW Council, many CAW local unions perform community work and provide additional financial help to local food banks.
Source: http://www.caw.ca/en/10809.htm
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Residents return to their homes to save some household items Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 at Iligan city in southern Philippines. Tropical storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed hundreds of people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Residents return to their homes to save some household items Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 at Iligan city in southern Philippines. Tropical storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed hundreds of people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Cristio Tingson, foreground, talks on his cell phone as workers use a backhoe to search for victims of his buried house Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 at Iligan city in southern Philippines. Tropical storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed hundreds of people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees. Rescuers dug up eleven bodies but not Tingson's wife and three children. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Remains of destroyed houses, toppled trucks and uprooted trees lie along a flood-hit area in Cagayan de Oro city, southern Philippines, Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011. Tropical Storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating a wide swath of the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed hundreds of people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees. (AP Photo/Froilan Gallardo)
Residents take a break outside their destroyed house Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 in Iligan city in southern Philippines. Tropical storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed hundreds of people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Philippine police prepare to search for victims during retrieval operation Sunday, Dec. 18, 2011 in Iligan city in southern Philippines. Tropical storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating the southern Philippines with flash floods that killed hundreds of people as they slept and turned two coastal cities into a muddy wasteland filled with overturned cars and uprooted trees. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
ILIGAN, Philippines (AP) ? As a storm that killed more than 650 in the southern Philippines raged outside the store where she works, Amor Limbago worriedly called home to check on her parents, but their cellphones just kept ringing and later went dead.
Limbago, 21, rushed home as soon as the flash floods receded and confirmed her worst fear: Her parents and seven other relatives were gone, swept away from their hut by the river. They had eagerly planned a small Christmas dinner in that hut just days earlier.
"I returned and saw that our house was completely gone," a weeping Limbago told The Associated Press from Cagayan de Oro city. "There was nothing but mud all over and knee-deep floodwaters."
Tropical Storm Washi blew away Sunday after devastating a wide swath of the mountainous region on Mindanao island, which is unaccustomed to major storms. It killed at least 652 people and left more than 900 others missing, the Philippine Red Cross said.
Most of the victims were asleep Friday night when flash floods cascaded down mountain slopes with logs and uprooted trees, swelling rivers. The late-season tropical storm turned the worst-hit coastal cities of Cagayan de Oro and nearby Iligan into muddy wastelands filled with overturned cars and broken trees.
Most of the dead were children and women, Red Cross Secretary General Gwendolyn Pang said.
Iligan Mayor Lawrence Cruz said Monday that he was suggesting a mass burial because of health concerns. Apart from the decomposing bodies, dead livestock lie scattered in the mud.
Leaders around the world, including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, offered help and Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday said he would pray "for the victims, largely children, for the homeless, and for the numerous ones gone missing".
The government's Office of Civil Defense placed the number of dead at 516 with 274 missing and 431 others rescued. Its head, Benito Ramos, said he expected the toll to rise and added that the government count was slower because authorities try to identify each casualty by verifying it with relatives.
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and top military officials flew to Cagayan de Oro and Iligan to help oversee search-and-rescue efforts and deal with about 45,000 displaced villagers. Among the items urgently needed are coffins and body bags, said Benito Ramos, who heads the government's disaster-response agency.
"It's overwhelming. We didn't expect these many dead," said Ramos, adding that authorities were continuing to find bodies floating at sea.
Although the disaster-prone Philippines is lashed by about 20 typhoons and storms annually, the devastation shocked many, coming close to Christmas ? the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's most-awaited time for family reunions. Army officials in the south said they canceled Christmas parties and would donate the food to homeless survivors.
Limbago said she and her mother, Jean, 50, and father Amancio, 63, planned to have a simple Christmas dinner of spaghetti. Those plans had evaporated Sunday as she and surviving relatives checked crowded morgues, hospitals and evacuation centers for any sign of her missing parents.
Others lost homes and belongings but were happy to have survived.
Edmund Rubio, a 44-year-old engineer, said he, his wife and two children scrambled to the second floor of their house in Iligan city as floodwaters engulfed the first floor, destroying his TV set and other appliances and washing away his car and motorcycle.
Amid the panic, he heard a loud pounding on his door as neighbors living in nearby one-story houses pleaded with him to allow them up to his second floor. He said he brought 30 neighbors to the safety of his house, which later shook when a huge floating log slammed into it.
"It's the most important thing, that all of us will still be together this Christmas," Rubio told the AP.
About a block away from Rubio's house, rescuers used a backhoe and shovels to search for 19 people in the muddy ruins of a two-story house that collapsed when it was hit by a massive log. They dug out 11 bodies from the site Saturday, witnesses said.
Army officers reported unidentified bodies piled up in morgues in Cagayan de Oro, where electricity was restored in some areas, although the city of more than 500,000 people remained without tap water.
At least 346 died in Cagayan de Oro and 206 in Iligan, the Red Cross said. The death toll was expected to rise because many isolated villages still had not been reached by overwhelmed disaster-response personnel.
"Our fear is there may have been whole families that perished so there's nobody to report what happened," Pang said.
Both Iligan, a bustling industrial center about 485 miles (780 kilometers) southeast of Manila, and Cagayan de Oro were filled with scenes of destruction and desperation.
A lone worker gingerly embalmed scores of bodies laid side by side in an Iligan city funeral parlor. Outside the embalming room, seven white coffins were placed in a corridor, surrounded by weeping relatives.
"Many mothers, fathers were walking from one funeral parlor to another, looking for their children," said army Maj. Eugenio Osias, who led a rescue effort in Cagayan de Oro.
Ramos attributed the high casualties "partly to the complacency of people because they are not in the usual path of storms" despite warnings by officials that one was approaching.
In just 12 hours, Washi dumped more than a month of average rain on Mindanao.
Thousands of soldiers and hundreds of local police, reservists, coast guard officers and civilian volunteers were mobilized for rescue efforts, but were hampered by flooded-out roads and lack of electricity. Rescuers in boats rushed offshore to save people swept out to sea.
___
Gomez reported from Manila. Associated Press writer Hrvoje Hranjski contributed to this report.
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