unflappability fantastical

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Along with Miss America, parade returns to AC

GEOFF MULVIHILL
Associated Press

The Miss America parade is getting a television-friendly makeover as the tradition returns to Atlantic City in September for the first time in nine years.

The Sept. 14 parade will be televised live for the first time, Miss America Organization CEO Sam Haskell told The Associated Press on Monday. It's scheduled to air live on WPVI-TV, the ABC affiliate in Philadelphia, and again the next day as part of the lead-in for the Sept. 15 pageant finals, which will be shown on ABC nationally.

"We're supersizing the parade," Haskell said. "We're supersizing the telecast."

Some local groups have complained about the cost of getting a float in the parade this year -- at least $2,000 compared with $200 in 2004, the last time it was held.

Haskell said higher fees will help pay for a more spectacular event designed to show off Atlantic City.

The parade on the boardwalk harks back to the roots of Miss America, when the pageant launched in 1921 as a way to drum up business for the shore resort after Labor Day.

The pageant is getting reacquainted with fans shouting "Show us your shoes!" to the contestants in convertibles, among other traditions, when it comes back to Atlantic City.

It's not clear exactly how long parade-goers have been shouting to the women. But Haskell said that since at least the early 1990s, the women have elaborately decorated their shoes -- Miss Maine's have often had lobsters on theirs, and you can count on Miss Texas wearing cowboy boots -- and obliging by displaying them proudly.

Miss America left its hometown for Las Vegas after 2004 and except for one year when there was a walking parade there, the show-us-your-shoes tradition disappeared.

Producer John Best, who puts on eight parades annually, including the National Independence Day Parade in Washington, was hired to run this year's edition.

Best said the route will run along the familiar boardwalk, but now starting at Revel Casino-Hotel, a shimmering glass structure that wasn't yet built the last time Miss America was in town.

He said the 4,000 participants will include two youth choirs; convertibles carrying the contestants; 15 elaborate floats, including one featuring veterans back from Iraq and Afghanistan; dancers and a performance area for TV purposes. Local Girl Scout troops and Red Cross chapters will be represented.

The first of the 22 marching bands will be -- as it has long been -- the one from Atlantic City High School.

But Best said another one will be an all-star marching band from high schools around Atlantic County. That's an element he said he hopes to become a tradition.

Beetlejuice

This 4-month-old sweetheart needs a new home. Yours, maybe?

Source: http://www.wtop.com/541/3404390/Along-with-Miss-America-parade-returns-to-AC

jeff foxworthy heather morris the bachelor finale south by southwest i want to know what love is courtney mercury retrograde

Monday, July 29, 2013

Former supermarket worker in Britain tops UK album chart

LONDON (Reuters) - Jahmene Douglas, a former supermarket worker and talent show contestant, topped the UK album charts for the first time on Sunday with "Love Never Fails", the Official Charts Company said.

Meanwhile, Swedish artist Avicii kept the top spot in the British singles chart for a second week with "Wake Me Up", which became the fastest selling single of the year a week earlier.

Douglas, 22, was a contestant on a TV talent show "The X Factor". His debut album features 10 tracks including Gospel interpretations of other artists' songs and a duet.

Douglas pushed Robin Thicke's album "Blurred Lines" into second place, while "Magna Carta Holy Grail" from U.S. rapper Jay-Z fell to third place.

In the singles chart, Avicii's continued success denied One Direction's "Best Song Ever" the top slot, depriving the boy band of what would have been their fourth number one single. The new track had to settle for number two instead.

Separately, the Official Charts Company said "Now That's What I Call Music! 85" had become the fastest selling album of 2013.

(Reporting By Andrew Osborn; editing by Mike Collett-White)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/former-supermarket-worker-britain-tops-uk-album-chart-180623270.html

Olympics Opening Ceremony Katherine Jackson Olympics Opening Ceremony Time US weekly Sally Ride Ichiro minka kelly

Marriage is union between man, woman

With all the coverage of ?gay marriage? lately, it is time someone set the record straight (no pun intended). Call this relationship whatever you want, but please don?t call it ?marriage.? That term describes the union created by God between a man and a woman so that human beings can cooperate with Him in procreation. The last time I checked it was impossible for two members of the same sex to procreate.

Truth to tell, the union of two members of the same sex is already described by a word derived from the name of the biblical city of Sodom, destroyed by God for the same unnatural behavior. Look it up.

Tom Simpson, Blue Ash

Posted in: government, Greater Cincinnati, lifestyle, National, Northern Kentucky, Ohio, religion

Tags: Bible, Blue Ash, God, same sex marriages

Source: http://cincinnati.com/blogs/letters/2013/07/28/marriage-is-union-between-man-woman/

autoimmune disease news channel 9 insanity workout mass effect 3 launch trailer yelp huntsville al channel 2 news

Hot flashes? Thank evolution

[unable to retrieve full-text content]A study of mortality and fertility patterns among seven species of wild apes and monkeys and their relatives, compared with similar data from hunter-gatherer humans, shows that menopause sets humans apart from other primates.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/9xyAcIotMVg/130729161948.htm

nba trade thomas robinson nba trades Xbox 720 HTC One NICOLAUS COPERNICUS Las Vegas shooting

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Lindy Boggs, congresswoman and civil rights crusader, dies at 97

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Lindy Boggs, who took over her husband's congressional seat to become a crusader for women's equality and civil rights, died Saturday at 97. Her death was confirmed by ABC News, where Boggs' daughter, Cokie Roberts, is a journalist.

The matriarch of a powerful Washington family, Boggs served in the U.S. House of Representatives as a Louisiana Democrat for 18 years, beginning in 1973, when she become the first woman elected to Congress from her state.

She was a permanent chairwoman of the 1976 Democratic National Convention and also served as U.S. ambassador to the Vatican from 1997 to 2001.

The Boggs children came to prominence in politics, law and the media. In addition to Roberts, an author and journalist at National Public Radio as well as ABC TV, Boggs' son Thomas Hale Boggs Jr. is an influential Washington lawyer. Another daughter, Barbara Boggs Sigmund, died of cancer in 1990 while she was mayor of Princeton, New Jersey.

Boggs won a special election to Congress six months after the death of her husband, House Majority Leader Thomas Hale Boggs. He was presumed to have died in a plane crash in a remote part of Alaska, although his body was never found.

In Congress, Mrs. Boggs was elected to her first full term in 1974 and re-elected seven times after that, always by wide margins, and four times unopposed in a district that after the 1980 census was redrawn to include an African American majority.

Born Marie Corinne Morrison Claiborne in Brunswick Plantation in Pointe Coupee Parish, Boggs attended Sophie Newcomb College at Tulane University, a premier institution of higher education for young Louisiana women.

With a political family pedigree that stretched back to George Washington's day and included governors of Louisiana and Mississippi, Boggs came to Washington at 24 with her newly elected husband to exert behind-the-scenes influence until she herself was elected to office.

In her 1994 memoir, "Washington Through a Purple Veil," Boggs described her attempt to enter the 1941 House of Representatives to hear her husband deliver a speech. She was so simply dressed that the guard kept her out until she returned, draped in a purple veil. She recalled that a friend had told her that "the most sophisticated and becoming thing a woman could wear was a purple veil."

She worked for the Civil Rights Acts of 1965 and 1968, Head Start and other programs to help minorities, the poor and women.

Boggs used her seat on the House Appropriations Committee to steer money to New Orleans and the rest of Louisiana, and on the House Banking and Currency Committee managed to include women in the Equal Credit and Opportunity Act of 1974.

A strong Southern "steel magnolia" before that term entered the vernacular, Boggs recalled how she managed to include women in the credit act by writing in that the law should help people regardless of "sex and marital status" on the bill and making a copy for all of the committee's members.

"Knowing the members composing this committee as well as I do, I'm sure it was just an oversight that we didn't have 'sex' or 'marital status' included," she said she told her congressional colleagues. "I've taken care of that, and I trust it meets with the committee's approval."

After her political and ambassadorial service, Boggs returned to New Orleans, where her Bourbon Street home was damaged in Hurricane Katrina in 2005. She later moved to Chevy Chase, Maryland.

(Reporting by Deborah Zabarenko; editing by Gunna Dickson)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/lindy-boggs-congresswoman-civil-rights-crusader-dies-97-161251545.html

adam scott venezuela xbox live aurora borealis Psy Cat Zingano DMX

Manslaughter charge in Hudson River crash

PIERMONT, N.Y. (AP) ? The driver of a speedboat that slammed into a construction barge on the Hudson River ? hurling a bride-to-be and her fiance's best man into the water ? has been charged with vehicular manslaughter, authorities said Saturday.

Jojo John, 35, of Nyack was also charged with three counts of vehicular assault at his hospital bedside as he recovers from Friday night's crash, Rockland County Sheriff's Department Chief William Barbera said.

John's bail was set at $250,000 and he will be transported to the Rockland County Jail after he is released from the hospital, Barbera said. John is suspected of operating the boat while intoxicated, according to Barbera.

Earlier Saturday, authorities pulled a woman's body from the water that matches the description of 30-year-old Lindsey Stewart. The bride-to-be was hurled into the water after the accident near the Tappan Zee Bridge, about a half-hour's drive north of New York City.

Stewart, of Piermont, worked for an insurance company. She was set to be married Aug. 10. Her fiance, art teacher Brian Bond, was among four others injured in the crash.

Rescuers are still trying to locate one other passenger, her fiance's best man, 30-year-old Mark Lennon.

"The search has been suspended this evening and the tides have a lot to do with that," Barbera said. "We'll start again first thing in the morning."

Officials were working to confirm that it was the body found earlier Saturday was Stewart's.

The crash happened shortly after the boat, a 21-foot Stingray, left the village of Piermont for a short trip across the river to Tarrytown on Friday night, authorities said.

Authorities did not have further updates Saturday evening on the conditions of the four injured or the nature of their injuries.

Stewart's mother, Carol, said earlier Saturday that she was praying for a miracle.

Bond, 35, was knocked unconscious in the crash but later woke and was able to call 911, Carol Stewart said.

Lindsey Stewart's stepfather, Walter Kosik, said the couple have known each other since they were young children and used to go to church together.

"They have been friends the whole time, and they fell in love about 3 ? years ago," Kosik said.

They were to be married at the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Pearl River, with a reception at a vineyard in Hillburn, he said.

Barbera declined to identify the other people aboard the boat. He said the barge, one of several loaded with construction material for an upcoming replacement of the bridge, was equipped with lights, but it was still difficult to see on the water late at night.

The New York State Thruway Authority, which is overseeing the bridge project, said it was reviewing safety procedures.

"Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families during this difficult time," the authority said in a statement. It added that the lighting on the barges appeared to be functioning normally.

Stewart's former English teacher at Pearl River High School, who remained in contact with her through Facebook, called the accident "heartbreaking."

"She was one of my students and a bright, sweet girl loved by everyone," she said. "I knew that she was getting married, and to Brian. To happen to two such special kids ? it just shouldn't happen."

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/manslaughter-charge-filed-hudson-river-crash-220524776.html

kony 2012 jim irsay the new ipad apple announcement indianapolis colts joseph kony joseph kony

Jordan-Higgins takes lead in Credit Union Classic

'); if(infobox=='True' && ShowInfoBox_l675161_1==false){ jQuery("#player_infobarl675161_1").trigger('click'); ShowInfoBox_l675161_1==true; } }; if (false) { $.setup_player(Play_Conf); } //info bar setup jQuery('#player_infobarl675161_1').click(function() { var $info =jQuery('#player_info_contentl675161_1'); if($info.text()!=''){ var $content = jQuery('div',$info); //min heigth var min = $content.css('min-height'); var max = $content.css('max-height'); $info.slideToggle(600); ShowInfoBox_l675161_1=!ShowInfoBox_l675161_1; } }); });