As if I didn't know already.

The political group that
agrees with you most is...

.

CENTRIST

CENTRISTS espouse a "middle ground" regarding government

control of the economy and personal behavior. Depending on

the issue, they sometimes favor government intervention

and sometimes support individual freedom of choice.

Centrists pride themselves on keeping an open mind,

tend to oppose "political extremes," and emphasize what

they describe as "practical" solutions to problems.

The RED DOT on the Chart shows where you fit on the political map.

I just took one of those tests to find out where I stood on the political spectrum and lo and behold I fell just to the left of true center - and here ... all those haters on a old tired forum I used to participate in howled and swore to jesus I was a 'flaming liberal'.

Want to take the test? Then click here.

The Shangri-La's from 1965

Coffee may prevent heart disease

They say the same thing about Tea.


New research suggests that heavy coffee drinkers are less likely to die of heart disease, such as heart attacks, strokes, and arrhythmia. Epidemiologists from the Autonomous University of Madrid analyzed data from more than 120,000 men and women. According to their study, women who drank four or five cups of brew a day were 34 percent less likely to die form heart disease. Men who drank more than five cups a day were 44 percent less likely to succumb to heart disease. Still, there are too many variables and unknowns in the research for anyone to sensibly boost their coffee intake as a prophylactic. From New Scientist:

(Researcher Esther Lopez-Garcia) speculates that anti-inflammatory compounds found in coffee may be responsible for its apparent health benefits.

This is in spite of high levels of caffeine, which might increase the chances of suffering a heart attack by raising blood pressure. "Our hypothesis is that caffeine has a short term effect, but in the longer term, [other aspects of coffee are] more important," she says.

Other studies have, however, shown just the opposite. In 2007, (University of Florence epidemiologist Francesco) Sofi analyzed more than 20 studies of health and coffee drinking and found little consensus.

One explanation for these conflicting results could be genetic. In 2006, a team of Canadian researchers discovered that people with a mutation in a gene involved in metabolizing caffeine had higher rates of heart attack than people without the mutation.

Link

Dispute plagues EpiCentre tower

Work on 50-story tower has stopped; $70 million lawsuit

A rendering of 210 Trade in uptown Charlotte

A dispute between the developers of the EpiCentre and a luxury condo tower on the site has brought the tower's construction to a standstill, its developer alleges in a $70 million lawsuit filed this month.

Work on the 50-story 210 Trade building stopped in February, with two floors built, because of a disagreement over technical building-code issues. Until the problem is resolved, lenders will not finance the rest of the project, and county officials will not issue certificates of occupancy, the lawsuit says.

The suit was filed in federal court June 6 by a subsidiary of the tower's developer, Indianapolis-based Flaherty & Collins Properties. It alleges that the Charlotte-based Ghazi Co., which is developing the EpiCentre uptown, has failed to live up to contractual agreements and refused to cooperate with local and state requirements that would allow the condo construction to move forward.

At stake is the future of the EpiCentre, a high-profile mixed-use complex on the corner of Trade and College streets uptown. The project was conceived with a luxury residential building – as well as offices, retail, entertainment and a hotel. But the condo tower won't move forward until the suit is resolved, developers say.

The rest of the EpiCentre development is progressing. Its first tenants, including the Suite nightclub and Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Whisky River bar, opened in recent months.

If the tangle is resolved in coming months and work on the tower resumes, its first residents could move in by summer 2010 – more than a year later than originally planned, Flaherty & Collins' attorney, Lee Spinks, said Monday.

“If we do not get the issues resolved, we are intent on getting every dollar back that we've spent or paid them, and lost profit,” he said.

The condo developer is seeking $70 million if the issues are not resolved and the project scrapped. If construction can continue, the company is asking for $28 million in damages, it said in the suit.

Ghazi Co. officials did not return phone calls Monday.

Construction on 210 Trade, which is being built atop part of the EpiCentre, started in October 2007 – and tension between the project's developer and The Ghazi Co. arose even before that.

In the lawsuit, Flaherty & Collins investors allege various physical and structural problems, including getting fewer parking spaces than they paid for. The company also says it's owed more than $2 million because of a provision in the contract that said the company would be paid if The Ghazi Co. erected a second tower on the site that would obstruct some condos' skyline views.

Despite the issues, construction moved forward, and developers sold 265 of the tower's 420 units.

In February, the condo tower's lenders, U.S. Bancorp and Corus Bankshares, ordered construction stopped after being informed of the developer's building code issues. The problem arose with the county's code enforcement department after it discovered the project had been filed as a single-owner building on the EpiCentre site, when ownership is actually being shared by the owners of the condo tower, the office-entertainment complex and a hotel that's going up on the site.

According to the lawsuit, The Ghazi Co. has refused to enter into an agreement that would place the development under a condo form of ownership, satisfying the code requirements. That has stalled the project and turned off lenders, the suit said.

“We have 265 buyers who are counting on our company to deliver their homes, but we have been thwarted by the (Ghazi investors),” Flaherty & Collins spokesman Mark Conover said in a statement. “They have refused to cooperate in providing reasonable and necessary agreements that are routinely required by lenders. … It is their refusal of lender requests that have delayed construction.”

Yearning to learn, but rule says no

She's a Charlotte high school graduate. She wants to be an engineer. But she's also an illegal immigrant.

Friends Laura and Ed, both 18, are illegal immigrants who attended the same high school until Laura graduated last week. The decision by the state's two-year college system to ban undocumented students has thrown the pair's college plans in doubt. “They're blaming this on kids who just want to have a better future,” says Ed, who'll be a high school senior next year.

Laura could barely finish her pizza after a friend told her that Central Piedmont Community College would no longer accept students living illegally in the country.

The 18-year-old, a brand new Charlotte high school graduate, wants to be an engineer. It's a prospect that wouldn't have seemed out of the question considering her 4.0 grade point average, college coursework and honors awards. Until now.

“What am I supposed to do?” said Laura. “All my hard work in middle school and high school is going in the trash.”

She hoped to attend CPCC for two years before entering a four-year-school. But her plans collided with what academics are calling the toughest immigration-admissions policy ever by a statewide college system.

Weeks before an estimated 250 undocumented students in Charlotte and hundreds more across the state received high school diplomas, the N.C. Community College System announced that its 58 campuses would no longer accept undocumented students into degree programs.

In doing so, the system bucked a national trend to make it easier for immigrants to get on college campuses.. Legislators in almost half the country are considering in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. No statewide college system until now has barred illegal immigrants from seeking a degree, according to the American Association of State Colleges and Universities.

“The rug has been pulled out from underneath them,” said Ruben Campillo, advocacy coordinator at the Latin American Coalition in Charlotte. “This one little opening they had has been taken away.”

Supporters for stricter immigration enforcement say illegal immigrants have been taking up the college seats of U.S. citizens and legal residents. They praise the community college decision and hope it will set a national precedent.

South Carolina followed suit. Gov. Mark Sanford signed a bill that, among other restrictions, bans illegal immigrants from attending any public institution of higher learning.

Ron Woodard, head of the Cary-based NC Listen, says he's sympathetic to the academic goals of illegal immigrants. But he says they should return to home countries if they want higher educations. “We can't take everyone.” William Gheen, president of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said the government must eliminate incentives that draw illegal immigrants.

“We must de-magnify the state.”

The impact

N.C. community college officials say they know of 112 of 297,000 degree-seeking students who are undocumented. They will be allowed to finish their course work.

Officials at CPCC, the system's largest college, said they know of 19 students who enrolled last fall – too few to take seats from legal residents.

Gheen thinks there are many more undocumented students who the colleges have not accounted for.

It's unclear what impact the statewide ban on enrolling illegal immigrants will have. Schools are limited in the steps they can take to verify an applicant's immigration status.

Van Wilson, the community college system's associate vice president of academic and student services, said campuses are requesting the same information they used to determine if immigrant students were eligible for in-state tuition. But they are now asking more probing questions about backgrounds and places of birth.

Wilson said schools can't check for phony Social Security numbers, since the free federal verification programs are open only to businesses.

CPCC will rely in part on its application form, which Haigler says includes “certain flags” that would identify an illegal resident. Haigler would not give details on what those indicators are because she said it could help unqualified applicants get around them.

Laura does not plan to apply.

She is a typical high school grad who totes around designer looking handbags and blushes when she admits her favorite movie is “Finding Nemo.” But with her grades, test scores and extra-curricular activities, she could compete for spots at the top N.C. colleges.

Her father, Mario, sitting on a park bench with his daughter near her old school, said he immigrated 10 years ago so his family could have more opportunities and financial stability.

He realized Laura's potential, he said, when she learned English in less than a year and started bringing home report cards filled with As.

Her teachers are saddened.

“I've been trying to encourage her to go to college,” said her ROTC instructor, “and she just told me that she can't go to college. It bothers me. The more education we can get for these kids, the better our society and our country will be.”

On campus

On the subject of immigration, feelings on the CPCC campus are as mixed as they are across the country.

Freshman Latoya Chapman, 18, and Scott Clarkson, 20, question why the state would allow illegal immigrants to attend public colleges if they're not supposed to be in the country in the first place.

Humza Ismail, 22, and Adrianne Treible, 25, say anyone wanting an education should have a chance to get one.

Treible said illegal immigrants “should not be allowed to get financial aid if I can't get it,” but if they're willing to pay the higher out-of-state tuition “what's the problem?”

Even before the policy change, Laura's options were limited. Because of her immigration status, she is ineligible for financial aid or government grants that could have helped offset the costs of college.

Any school had to be close to home so she could save on room and board. UNC Charlotte, though close, would charge her $7,000 a semester – too much for her father, an air-conditioning mechanic, to pay. CPCC is about half that.

“CPCC was the only option,” her father said. “Now there is nothing.”

Laura moves to a swing in the park. She says she'll probably use some of her college money to buy a cheap car for work. Maybe she can work through the fall, save, and see if she can afford UNCC.

“It's way more expensive,” she said. “It's like they're putting up a wall and stopping us from achieving our dreams.”

Daily Five (News Items off the Wire)

Protesters attack MTV office in Mumbai, India

MUMBAI, India --

Police arrested 70 Sikh protesters after the MTV music channel's office in western India was vandalized over posters showing a Sikh girl massaging a man, officials said Tuesday.

On Monday, protesters smashed windows with rocks, tore banners and damaged furniture in the MTV office in Mumbai, India's financial and entertainment capital, police inspector Raju More said.

The protesters said the posters, which promoted the reality show "On the Job2," offended Sikhs, More said. Sikhs comprise more than 2 percent of India's 1.1 billion people.

Police later released the protesters on bail, he said.

Satish Maneshinde, MTV's attorney in Mumbai, called it an unfortunate incident. He said no one was injured in the attack.

Maneshinde said MTV would consider the protesters' demands to remove the posters.

Item TWO:

3 charged with Molotov cocktails at cars

York County, S.C. Clover

Police say three juveniles have been charged with assault and battery for throwing Molotov cocktails at two cars on the same road.

The (Rock Hill) Herald reported that a woman said a flaming bottle was thrown out of woods near her house Friday and exploded near her car.

Just over an hour later, another firebomb was thrown out of woods near the home of the first woman's sister.

The York County Sheriff's Office said a canine unit searched the woods and tracked the boys to a nearby home. The police report said the boys – ages 12, 14 and 15 – admitted their parts in the attack.

Item THREE:

New chief's first day moves fast

Hustling from meeting to meeting, Monroe takes time to hint at putting more officers on the street.

Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department Chief Rodney Monroe held a Command Staff meeting today to address the media about some of his plans for the department and to meet his staff and discuss his plans further behind closed doors.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Chief Rodney Monroe spent his first day on the job in motion, hustling from meetings with the mayor to the city manager to his command staff – some of whose jobs might change.

Monroe, 51, has shaken up staff in cities where he previously took over as chief. He said he hasn't decided what changes he'll make, but hinted he might put more officers on patrol.

“Patrol is our backbone,” he said in a news conference Monday at CMPD headquarters.

Monroe reassigned veterans and dismantled specialty squads in Macon, Ga., and Richmond, Va., to put more officers on the street.

He takes over a department of 2,092 staff – including 1,627 sworn officers – and a budget of $174 million. He spoke to about 100 commanders and staff for the first time Monday, asking them to introduce themselves, then joking: “Now that you have told me all your names, trust me, I've forgotten them all.”

Monroe promised to continue his longstanding practice of showing up at crime scenes. “Oh, yeah,” he told reporters. “And so should the men and women in uniform expect to see me out on the street.”

Item FOUR:

Amy Winehouse still in London hospital for tests

Jazz Soul diva Amy Winehouse, from England, has a drink while performing to 90,000 spectators on the main stage of the Rock in Rio Lisboa music festival at the Bela Vista Park, Lisboa Portugal in this May 30, 2008 file photo. A spokesman for Winehouse says she was taken to the hospital after fainting spell Monday June 16 2008. Winehouse spokesman Chris Goodman said Winehouse fainted at her north London home on Monday afternoon. Her manager's assistant was there and caught her as she fell. Goodman says her father Mitch took her to hospital as a precaution. Winehouse's career is flourishing despite wild nights, missed concerts and stints in drug rehab.

• LONDON --

A spokesman says soul diva Amy Winehouse is having more tests in a London hospital after fainting at home.

Spokesman Chris Goodman says initial tests were inconclusive and Winehouse will have more Tuesday while being kept under observation.

Goodman says the 24-year-old singer "seems to be fine in herself, but they are taking their time to be sure."

The spokesman said Winehouse collapsed at her north London home Monday after signing autographs for a group of fans. An assistant caught her before she hit the ground.

Winehouse's career has prospered despite wild nights, missed concerts and stints in drug rehab. The Sunday Times newspaper's annual Rich List has estimated her wealth at $20 million.

Item FIVE:

Gay couples rush to get married in California

Phyllis Lyon, right, kisses her partner Del Martin after being married by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom in a special ceremony at City Hall in San Francisco, Monday, June 16, 2008. Lyon and Martin became the first officially married same sex couple after California's Supreme Court declared gay marriage legal.

• SAN FRANCISCO --

Hundreds of gay and lesbian couples had appointments to secure marriage licenses and exchange vows Tuesday, the first full day same-sex nuptials will be legal throughout California.

From San Diego to San Francisco, couples readied their formal wear, local licensing clerks expanded their staffs and conservative groups warned of a backlash as the nation's most populous state prepared to join Massachusetts in sanctioning gay unions.

Unlike Massachusetts, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2004, California has no residency requirement for marriage licenses, which is expected to encourage a large number of couples to head west to wed.

"We might wait a long time in Tennessee, so this is our chance," said Robert Blaudow, of Memphis. He and his partner, Derek Norman, 23, decided to get married at the Alameda County clerk's office late Monday while they were in the San Francisco Bay Area for a conference.

The May 15 California Supreme Court ruling that overturned the state's bans on same-sex marriage became final at 5:01 p.m. Monday, and clerks in at least five counties extended their hours to mark the historic occasion.

Already, dozens of same-sex couples have seized the opportunity to make their relationships official in the eyes of the law.

"We're glad that we're living in this time when history is being made," said Sandy Mills, an Oakland physician who was getting married to her partner of nine years, Mar Stevens, an employee of the county district attorney's office.

"I'm tired of checking the single box," said Danielle Lemay, 34, who picked up a marriage license in Woodland with her partner, Angie Hinrichs. "I feared I'd be checking that my whole life."

The big rush to the altar was expected Tuesday, when every county was required to start issuing new gender-neutral marriage licenses with spaces for "Party A" and "Party B" where "bride" and "groom" used to be.

On Monday, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who helped launch the series of lawsuits that led the court to strike down California's one-man-one-woman marriage laws, presided at the wedding of Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83.

Newsom picked the couple for the only ceremony Monday in City Hall to recognize their 55-year relationship and their status as pioneers of the gay rights movement. More than 650 same-sex couples have made appointments to get marriage licenses in San Francisco before the end of the month.

Newsom called officiating the wedding "this extraordinary and humbling gift." After the mayor pronounced Martin and Lyon "spouses for life," the couple kissed, then emerged to a crowd of well-wishers who showered them with rose petals.

The celebrations are tempered by the reality that in a few months, Californians will go to the ballot box to vote on an initiative that would overturn the high court ruling and again ban gay marriage.

On Monday, three lawmakers and a small group of other same-sex opponents gathered outside the Capitol to criticize the Supreme Court decision. They urged voters to approve the ballot measure.

"This is an opportunity to take back a little bit of dignity ... for kids, for all of us in California," Republican Assemblyman Doug LaMalfa said. "It really disturbs me that the will of the people was overridden by four members of the Supreme Court."

In both San Francisco and Beverly Hills, where two women became the first same-sex couple in Los Angeles County to marry legally, small groups of protesters waved signs with sayings like "Repent or Perish," but they were outnumbered by supporters waving rainbow-striped flags.

Groups that oppose same-sex marriage have pursued several legal avenues to stop the weddings. On Monday, just hours before the ruling went into effect, a conservative legal group asked a Sacramento court to order the California agency that oversees marriages to stop issuing gender-neutral marriage licenses.

A hearing was set for Tuesday.

A UCLA study issued last week estimated that half of California's more than 100,000 same-sex couples will get married over the next three years, and 68,000 out-of-state couples will travel here to exchange vows.

Arrest Made

Arrest made in 2001 strangling

The Connecticut woman's body was found in Iredell County

Authorities have charged a Louisiana man in the 2001 killing of a Connecticut woman whose body was found in western Iredell County, Sheriff Phil Redmond said this morning.

Thilbert Wayne Hager, 37, was charged Saturday with murder in the death of Celeste Fowler, 29, of Clinton, Conn. Investigators arrested him without incident at a home in Pearl River, La.

Hager was being held without bond in the St. Tammany (La.) Parish Detention Center pending an extradition hearing sometime this week, Redmond said in a news release.

Fowler's younger brother, Matt Sexton, said he last spoke to his sister two days before she disappeared.

“I've been waiting years for this,” Sexton, 35, said. “This really was a relief, I'll tell you. It's good to know people haven't forgotten her.”

A man discovered Fowler's body while picking flowers in some woods on March 16, 2001. Police said at the time that Fowler had been visiting friends in North Carolina for about three weeks. Authorities said she had been strangled.

She remained unidentified until local media showed a tattoo on her wrist. Acquaintances then came forward, police said. Her identification was confirmed through fingerprints. Authorities conducted interviews but never had the evidence to charge anyone, Redmond said. Investigators exhausted all leads, and the case went cold, the sheriff said.

After reopening the case and gathering more information, sheriff' Capt. Darren Campbell and Lt. Andy Poteat learned in March that Hager knew Fowler at the time of her death, Redmond said.

Hager and Fowler lived in the same Iredell County home at the time, Campbell told the Observer. But he would not give any more details, including a motive, for the murder.

It ain't only California folks

Don't overlook Southern fires

Tens of thousands of acres get burned yearly, even though they don't get the national news of the West.

The size of the wildfire burning in Eastern North Carolina may be rare, but statistics show that its occurrence is anything but.

There were 7,000 wildfires in North Carolina in 2007, according to the National Interagency Fire Center, and they burned more than 54,000 acres.

As of Monday, the wildfire in and around the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge had burned more than 41,000 acres, with costs to fight it soaring past $2.6 million. Also known as the Evans Road wildfire, it is about 60 percent contained, but thick smoke is still causing visibility problems near the blaze, causing the National Weather Service to post an advisory cautioning people with respiratory ailments to stay indoors.

Because of the media attention focused on the giant wildfires of the West each summer, Southern wildfires can be overlooked. Here's an e-mail interview on the fire with Toddi Steelman, an assistant professor in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at N.C. State University.

Q. Is the Pocosin Lakes wildfire typical for wildfires in the South?

No. It is much larger than a typical fire, and it is occurring on organic soils. This means that the soil actually catches on fire and has the potential to smolder or burn for a long time. From 1998 to 2007, North Carolina burned, on average, 26,548 acres per year.

Q. The South isn't thought of as a wildfire region, but aren't there more wildfires here than in the West?

The South is very much a wildfire region. North Carolina has already had nearly 3,000 fires around the state this year. The West will usually have much larger acreage fires than the South. The Evans fire in the Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge is an exception.

Q. What percentage of wildfires are caused by humans and what percentage by natural events such as a lightning strike?

It really depends on the region of the country. Out West, lightning typically causes more fires. Here in North Carolina, humans are much more likely to be the cause of fires. Debris burning is a main culprit. Lightning causes a very small percentage of fires in North Carolina.

Q. What kind of homeowner should worry about wildfires?

Any homeowner who lives in an area with trees, shrubs or grasses that can catch fire. Homeowners have an obligation to learn about the fire ecology in their area.

NFL PLayer found unconscious

A police spokesman says Oakland Raiders wide receiver Javon Walker was found unconscious on a Las Vegas street after apparently being the victim of a robbery.

Police spokesman Bill Cassell says in a statement that Walker was taken to a hospital with "significant injuries" after being found early Monday on a street off the Las Vegas Strip.

Cassell says Walker remains in fair condition at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

A Raiders spokesman said the team was "in the process of gathering information" and had no further comment.

Bridge closed between Iowa, Illinois

The flooding in the mid-west is bad folks:
The banks of the rising Mississippi were stacked with sandbags and a major bridge across the river was partially closed Tuesday as the rest of Iowa began the slow move from protection to cleanup.

The BNSF Railway Co. swing span bridge over the Mississippi was closed early Tuesday to car traffic at Fort Madison, near the Iowa-Illinois line, Lee County emergency management director Steve Cirinna said.

About 30 people were working to raise the railroad tracks above floodwaters, but BNSF Railway Co. spokesman Steve Forsberg said the bridge hadn't closed to trains.

Car traffic moves on the bridge and trains travel on tracks below.

The federal government predicts that 27 levees could potentially overflow along the river if the weather forecast is on the mark and a massive sandbagging effort fails to raise the level of the levees, according to a map obtained Monday by The Associated Press.

Officials are placing millions of sandbags on top of the levees in Illinois, Iowa and Missouri to prevent overflowing. There is no way to predict whether these levees will break, said Ron Fournier, a spokesman with the Army Corps of Engineers in Iowa.

In much of Iowa, there were small signs of a return to normalcy: Interstate 80 reopened near Iowa City for the first time in days, with Interstate 380 to the north scheduled to reopen early Tuesday. On the University of Iowa campus, officials began to take stock of the damage.

And in Des Moines, where a levee failure Saturday sent water pouring into the Birdland neighborhood, some residents returned for the first time to see the damage.

"It's really bad. I mean, I can't believe this," said Gloria Ruiz, whose home suffered flood damage.

Ruiz pointed to a dirty line about 5 feet up on her basement wall showing how high the water rose. Her washer, dryer and boiler, and most of her children's toys, including a stereo and an Xbox video game system, were ruined.

Floodwaters lingered about 50 feet from her driveway.

"We don't know how long it will stay like that," she said.

Where floodwaters remained, they were a noxious brew of sewage, farm chemicals and fuel. Bob Lanz used a 22-foot aluminum flatboat to navigate through downtown Oakville, where the water reeked of pig feces and diesel fuel.

"You can hardly stand it," Lanz said as he surveyed what remained of his family's hog farm. "It's strong."

LeRoy Lippert, chairman of emergency management and homeland security in nearby Des Moines County, warned people to avoid the floodwaters: "If you drink this water and live, tell me about it. You have no idea. It is very, very wise to stay out of it. It's as dangerous as anything."

Gov. Chet Culver and others pointed to the next looming trouble spot, in southeastern Iowa. Most requests for state aid were coming from Des Moines County, where the Mississippi River was expected to crest Tuesday evening at 26 feet in a mostly rural area near Burlington. Early Tuesday, the river was at 25.7 feet - more than 10 feet above flood stage - and still rising.

Crews were working to shore up a levee about 7 miles north of Burlington, where water covered about 2 blocks of the downtown area. Several businesses spent the night pumping water from basements, said Sgt. Chad Zahn of the Burlington Police Department.

Several thousand acres and about 250 homes would be flooded if the levee breaks, said Gina Hardin, the county's emergency management coordinator.

Brian Wiegand, 48, of Oakville, was sandbagging the levee Monday evening near a drainage pumping station. He was concerned about more flooding as water began lapping to within a foot of top of sandbag wall.

"The Bible says the prayer of one man, God hears," Wiegand said. "Here's my prayer: I ask for the strength of God to fight this flood, and I ask for the grace to accept whatever happens."

On the Illinois side of the river across from Burlington, a levee broke Tuesday morning south of Gulfport, Ill., forcing the closure of a bridge that connects the two cities.

Two more deaths were reported Monday in Iowa, bringing the state's death toll to five.

Also Monday, the American Red Cross said its disaster relief fund has been completely spent, and the agency is borrowing money to help flood victims throughout the Midwest.

In the college town of Iowa City, damage appeared limited. Some 400 homes took on water Sunday, and 16 University of Iowa buildings sustained some flood damage over the weekend. But the town's levees were holding and the Iowa River was falling.

Officials in Illinois were building up the approach to the only major bridge over the Mississippi River linking Hamilton with Keokuk, Iowa, so the bridge could stay open despite rising water.

In Cedar Rapids, hazardous conditions forced officials on Monday to stop taking residents into homes where the water had receded. Broken gas lines, sink holes and structural problems with homes made conditions unsafe, said Dave Koch, a city spokesman. Officials hoped to allow residents in soon.

Frustrations spilled over at one checkpoint, where a man was arrested at gunpoint after he tried to drive past police in his pickup truck.

All manner of refuse could be seen floating down the Iowa River - 55-gallon drums labeled "corrosive," propane tanks, wooden fences and railroad ties. Dead birds and fish sat on the city's 1st Avenue Bridge.

A few blocks away, a paint store stood with its windows blown out. A line indicating the high-water mark could be seen about 8 feet above the floor. At the gas station next door, strong currents had knocked over two pumps.

Also mixed into the floodwaters are pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer from Iowa's vast stretches of farmland.

Ken Sharp, environmental health director for the Iowa Department of Public Health, acknowledged that the floodwaters had the potential to make people sick. But he said the sheer volume of water can dilute hazardous substances.

"We don't typically see mass cases of disease or illness coming from floodwater, but under any circumstance like this, we want people to avoid it because we don't know what's in there," he said.

The flooding also raised concerns of contamination in rural wells, said G. Richard Olds, professor and chairman of the Medical College of Wisconsin.

"For rural folks, it's going to be hard to know if their water's safe or not," he said.

In addition to the poison in the water, there are mosquitoes - millions of them spawning in acres of standing water. Greg Burg, assistant director of undergraduate biology at the University of Kansas, said the flooding "adds that much more water where they could potentially lay eggs and have the eggs survive."

Business was already heating up at Mosquito Control, a Rolfe, Iowa-based company that sprays insecticide from a crop-duster airplane.

Near Iowa City, Angela Betts and her three children were among those who fled last week when the Iowa River burst through a levee at Coralville. She stayed just long enough to fill two trash bags with clothes.

The family is now living in a shelter, and as far as Betts is concerned, everything she left behind can stay there.

"It bothers me, with everything that's in the water," she said. "I probably won't keep anything. It won't be worth it."

(From the AP)

Jerusalem hotel proprietor Valentine Vester dies

From the News Wire:

Valentine Vester, who witnessed history as the proprietor of one of the Middle East's most storied hotels, has died. She was 96.

Vester spent the last years of her life in an apartment on the manicured grounds of the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem. The hotel, which sits on the dividing line between the city's Arab and Jewish sections, has served for decades as a favorite hangout for diplomats and foreign correspondents and as a backdrop for political intrigue.

Vester was born in 1912 in the English town of Alverstoke into the wealthy family of a Royal Navy officer. She came to Jerusalem in the early 1960s with her husband Horatio, the grandson of the Colony's founders.

Nicholas Vester, her son, said the move was "a colossal wrench," but that she "adapted to everything that was thrown at her."

"She and Horatio made this place into a global landmark by their wit and by being interesting enough that people would travel a long way to see them, and were flattered by their attention," he said.

Her association with the Mideast began even before the marriage. A relative who worked in the British administration of the Holy Land between the world wars introduced her to King Abdullah of Transjordan, and another relative, Gertrude Bell, was a renowned British diplomat and archaeologist in the region a century ago.

Vester went on to live through much of the upheaval that shaped the modern Mideast. In 1967, she saw her hotel move from Jordanian to Israeli control.

Over the years, her son said, Vester "learned to really hate people who make wars."

"Very often her irritation with Palestinians and Israelis was summed up by the phrase, 'a plague on both their houses,'" he said. The hotel, which has always seen itself as neutral ground, managed to maintain that status largely because of Vester's "intemperate hostility to extremists on both sides."

Israeli and Palestinian negotiators secretly drafted parts of the Oslo peace accords at the hotel, in Room 16. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, now an international Mideast envoy, has a suite of rooms on the top floor.

Vester's husband's grandparents, Anna and Horatio Spafford, were millennialist Protestants from Chicago. They arrived in the holy city - then a neglected backwater of the Ottoman Empire - in 1881, after losing their four daughters in an Atlantic shipwreck and then a son to scarlet fever. They wanted to do charitable works and await the Second Coming.

They gathered around them a community of Americans and Swedes, forming a kind of Christian proto-kibbutz. For a time, they observed strict rules of celibacy and even banned marriage because Anna deemed it little more than a "license to sin."

The Colony's residents made a point of providing help to Jews, Muslims and Christians, and treated both Turkish and British wounded during the battles of World War I. When the Turks surrendered in 1917, their white flag was a sheet from the Colony's hospital, ripped in two and tied to a stick.

Around that time, T.E. Lawrence, better known as Lawrence of Arabia, was a regular dinner guest, as was Sir Edmund Allenby, who commanded the British forces.

The commune eventually fell apart and became a family-owned inn. When the British left in 1948, it was damaged in the fighting that surrounded Israel's establishment and came under Jordanian rule. In the 1967 Mideast War, the Colony was damaged again when a Jordanian tank positioned itself in the driveway and Israeli troops threw a grenade into the bar to flush out a sniper.

Vester will be buried on June 22 in the historic American Colony cemetery on Jerusalem's Mt. Scopus, alongside her husband, who died in 1985. She is survived by two sons: Nicholas, who lives in Britain, and Paul, who lives in the U.S., and five grandchildren.

Thought for the Day

What is the answer? More importantly, what is the question?

And I Quote

Bashfulness is an ornament to youth, but a reproach to old age

~ Aristotle

Now, where is the fun in this?

Ladies be careful if you're planning on visiting Royal Ascot this year commando style.
Organizers of the annual horse racing event are cracking down on women who wear no undies saying it is formal dress that is required.
There is to be no flashy jewelery or fake tans either.
Stewards will be keeping a closer eye on ladies who reveal their backsides if and when their skirts are lifted by wind gusts.
Also, off the shoulder dresses, halter necks. mini skirts and dresses with spaghetti straps are forbidden to be worn and reminders are issued with the invitations.
Royal Ascot is deemed to be the most important social and sporting event of the year in Britain. One would be well aware of the dress code required at such an event so if they go flaunting their wares to all and sundry, they can expect to be asked to leave by the fashion police who will be watching valiantly for any indiscretions.

Daily Funny

Oh, I've considered the possibility on more than one occasion!

Questioning Health - Fats

Deadly fats: why are we still eating them?

They are the cosy, friendly foods that present us with a rosy image of our childhoods: Quality Street chocolates and Angel Delight dessert; Horlicks instant night-time drink and Knorr stock cubes.

As brands, they endure. Not quite as cutting edge as their more sophisticated and modern supermarket-shelf counterparts, perhaps. And certainly not as healthy. Because the truth is that some of the leading comfort foods we remember from our youth are doing their very best to kill us.

The culprit is one item, usually tucked away in tiny lettering on the ingredients label. It’s called hydrogenated vegetable oil. It sounds harmless enough, but it is one of the most dangerous products ever to be mashed into the food we eat.

Read more from Deadly fats: why are we still eating them?

Teach the Controversy tees illustrate other important "scientific controversies"

And now, something for the 'creationists' out there:

Wear Science's line of "Teach the Controversy" tees invite 'creationists' to consider other "scientific controversies" that might be taught in school.

Which they won't, but at least the offer is there! You can find out about getting your "Teach the Controversy" tee here

(Thanks to the folks over at BoingBoing)

A Friend's Passing

I just found out that a friend of my mother's for at least the last 45 years passed yesterday evening at 6:10pm.
She had been told last Monday, June 9th that she only had a few weeks left due to cancer they just found that morning - she lived until June 16th.

It is no earth shattering news - her passing - to the world at large, but anytime someone passes we are lessened ... more so on a personal level when it is a friend.
Having a friend for decades is something that is actually rare so cherish the ones you have.