High school football coach shot dead at school gym in Iowa

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

An American football coach has been shot at his school gym in Iowa, United States. Ed Thomas was shot in front of his students at around 8.00 am local time. Thomas was in the weight room at the time of the shooting. An adult male has been arrested suspected of his murder.

Thomas was the head football coach at Aplington-Parkersburg High School. He had coached 37 seasons of High School football in his career and has a career record of 292-84 of which 156-31 is with Aplington-Parkersburg. He led Parkersburg to 19 state playoffs and won state titles in 1993 and 2001. He was named NFL High School Coach of the Year in 2003 and previously coached four active NFL players including Brad Meester, Jared DeVries, Casey Wiegmann and Aaron Kampman.

Thomas was well known in the local community for his work. When Parkersburg was hit by a tornado in the summer of 2008 Thomas worked endlessly to restore the damaged football field. County Sheriff Jason Johnson said that “Coach Thomas is the pillar of the community. Anything that affects him affects Parkersburg.”

No students were injured during the shooting.

US economy adds 215,000 jobs in July; unemployment rate remains steady at 5.3%

Monday, August 10, 2015

Continuing a trend of steady employment growth, the United States economy added 215,000 jobs in July, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Friday. The unemployment rate remained unchanged at 5.3%.

“Job growth is quite strong,” stated Jim O’Sullivan, chief economist at High Frequency Economics, a data analysis firm in New York. “This pace of employment growth is clearly strong enough to keep the unemployment rate trending down.”

Average hourly earnings rose 0.2%, marking a rebound after growth stalled in June. Wages have grown by 2.1% over the past year, below the Federal Reserve’s target of 3.5% annual wage growth, and not much more than the underlying rate of inflation.

While sluggish wage growth remains a pocket of weakness in the economic recovery, steady payroll gains averaging 242,000 per month over the past twelve months have led observers to consider a Federal Reserve interest rate hike as increasingly likely, according to The New York Times.

“We view this report as easily clearing the hurdle needed to keep the Fed on track for a September rate hike,” said Rob Martin, an economist at Barclays in New York. “The bar for not moving now is much higher.”

Although the Federal Reserve has not explicitly stated that they plan to raise interest rates in the near future, the US central bank has stated that it would raise rates when it has seen “some further improvement” in the jobs market. The Fed has not increased interest rates since 2006, and during the 2007-2009 recession, it lowered rates to historically low levels.

Raipur A Land Of Historical Sites

Submitted by: David H. Urmann

Raipur is one of the most impressive and marvelous cities of India.It is the capital of newly formed twenty sixth state of India known as Chhattisgarh.Chhattisgarh was established after separating from Madhya Pradesh.The city of Raipur was established by the Kalchuri King Ram by the end of the fourteenth century.The city is ideally situated right in the middle of the state and hence it may be one of the reasons for selecting it as the capital of the State.

Raipur is a great city exhibiting some historically and archeologically important sites.The town of Raipur had been established during ninth century.One can find the ruins of old buildings and architecture can be seen in the northern part of the city.

Raipur is one of the most rapidly developing cities of the state of Chhattisgarh not only in context of industry but also tourism as it is attracting tourists from every part of the nation.The entire city is full packed with a range of prominent attractions that are historically and culturally significant.Some of the must visit sites of the city are Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum, Mahakoshal Art Gallery, Doodhadhari Temple and several other attractions to add to the list.

The city also exhibits some religiously important sites such as Champaran, Rajivalochana Temple, Shadani Darbar are few of the religiously important spots of Raipur district.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zU9lv_WqK6k[/youtube]

Mahant Ghasidas Memorial Museum is one of the most sought after tourist destinations of Raipur.This museum is home to historically significant objects of archaeology, anthropology and natural history.It also houses some art, paintings and artifacts of some renowned artists.The museum is considered as one of the top ten oldest museums of India.

Telibandha Talab is one of the most religiously important sites of the city.It lies on the busiest GE road of the city and is the place where most of the Hindus perform their rituals.

Champaran is another religiously important site of Raipur district.This village is the birthplace of Saint Vallabhacharya who was a reformer and the founder of Vallabh sect.The town is just around sixty kilometers from Raipur and is very popular among the Gujarati population of the city.

One can also visit the Champakeshwara temple situated in the town itself and is worth visiting.It is also the venue for the annual fair that takes place between the months of January and February.Saint Vallabhacharya s birth anniversary is also celebrated with great zeal and passion.

One can also visit the wildlife sanctuaries of the district that are renowned for evergreen forests, terrain wooded hills along with several animals.These wildlife sanctuaries include The Barnawapra, Sitanadi and Bhoramdeo wildlife sanctuary.

Raipur offers a great range of accommodation in form of hotels that are categorized into luxury, standard and budget hotels.One can also find some well maintained lodges as their accommodation.Some of the hotels of the city have been transformed into heritage hotels and are available for accommodation.These hotels provide some excellent services and facilities to their guests.

About the Author: For more information on

Raipur Hotels

and

About Raipur

please visit our website.

Source:

isnare.com

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Over 10,000 attend Gallipoli dawn service for ANZAC Day centenary

Monday, April 27, 2015

A crowd of over 10,000 people attended the dawn service on Saturday at Gallipoli, Turkey for the 100th anniversary of the landing of Australian and New Zealand troops there in 1915. The solemn remembrance ceremony was held at the site of the original Gallipoli landings, now known as Anzac Cove.

The Gallipoli Campaign of the First World War is remembered as a failed attack in which thousands of lives were lost for little to no gain for either side. The campaign killed 45,000 Allied and 86,000 Turkish troops.

Attendees at the dawn service included Prince Charles, the Prime Minister of Australia, and the Prime Minister of New Zealand.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s speech later in the day emphasised the importance of the day to Australians. “Like every generation since, we are here on Gallipoli because we believe the Anzacs represented Australians at their best. Because they rose to their challenges, we believe it is a little easier for us to rise to ours. Their example helps us to be better than we would otherwise be”, he said.

New Zealand Prime Minister John Key at dawn described Gallipoli as a symbol of the highest ideals of Australians and New Zealanders “especially when they work side by side in the face of adversity”.

Prince Charles stirred emotions by reading extracts from a serviceman’s diary. The diary entry, by Company Quartermaster Sergeant Benjamin Leane, was addressed to his wife and was written hours before the first Gallipoli landing.

The centenary milestone of Anzac Day also drew a Turkish security force of 3700, both police and paramilitary. Attendees entered past six security checkpoints.

A record 120,000 people also attended services at the Australian War Memorial in Canberra to commemorate the centenary.

Former NSA employee alleges illegal spying

Wednesday, January 11, 2006Russell “Russ” Tice, a former employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) who specialized in “special access programs,” has admitted to ABC News that he was one of the sources the New York Times used in its December 2005 investigation into the NSA’s spy activity against Americans.

He alleges that some of NSA and the Department of Defense’s secret intelligence operations were run in violation of the law and has agreed to testify before Congress about their legality.

President Bush admitted ordering the NSA to monitor a small number of Americans without the use of warrants, but Tice believes it goes beyond that. If the full extent of NSA programs is being taken advantage of, he said, the number of Americans under surveillance could be in the millions. The ability exists, Tice stated, to track every domestic and international phone call as they are switched through centers and to monitor them for key words.

“If you picked the word ‘jihad’ out of a conversation, the technology exists that you focus in on that conversation, and you pull it out of the system for processing.”

Tice’s security clearance was revoked in May of 2005 based upon “psychological concerns” and the NSA later dismissed him.

The New York Times has not confirmed that Tice was one of their sources, nor have they revealed the identities of any unnamed sources cited in their article.

Queen Elizabeth II to visit the United States

Thursday, November 16, 2006

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom and the Duke of Edinburgh are set to visit the United States in May 2007 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement.

This will be Her Majesty’s fourth State Visit to the United States.

Her Majesty and the Duke of Edinburgh welcomed President and Mrs. Bush on a State Visit to the United Kingdom at Buckingham Palace in November 2003 – during that visit, Her Majesty paid tribute to the ‘special relationship’ between the United Kingdom and the United States.

A statement released by the White House read:

“Laura and I welcome Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, for a State Visit in May 2007 to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement.

“The United States and the United Kingdom enjoy an extraordinary friendship that is sustained by deep historical and cultural ties and a commitment to defend freedom around the world. We look forward to Her Majesty’s State Visit as an occasion to celebrate these enduring bonds.”

The Queen herself mentioned the upcoming visit in this week’s Speech from the Throne during the British State Opening of Parliament.

“The Duke of Edinburgh and I look forward to our State Visit to the United States of America in May 2007 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement.”

Virginia officials coordinating the ongoing Jamestown commemoration have scheduled an America’s Anniversary Weekend event on and near Jamestown May 11, 12, and 13.

Jamestown, the first British settlement of North America, was established in the name of His Majesty, King James I of England.

Telstra becomes the first in the world to switch to HSPA+ wireless Internet technology

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

On Monday, Australian telecommunications company Telstra has introduced dual carrier HSPA+ standard for broadband Internet business customers in the Next G network. This is the first time this technology is being introduced on national scale. The bandwidths the users can deploy increased into two to three times, with Telstra becoming the world’s fastest national mobile broadband service. The switch started with enabling the service for premium users. After some feedback, Telstra may expand the plan.

Contents

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Technology
  • 3 Election campaign
  • 4 Distribution
  • 5 Sources
  • 6 External links

The higher speeds for wireless are intended to simplify and ease multitasking of users.

John Paitaridis, Telstra’s executive director, network products and services in Enterprise & Government, said “One of the reasons we decided to launch first to Enterprise And Government and Business customers is that clients are saying that their ability to access applications quicker makes a difference to their business and when they start to equate time savings and doing calculations around productivity it does become a return on investment.”

Telstra Business Group Managing Director Deena Shiff also stated that the efforts aren’t as sudden as it might seem, having feedback of many users as the base.

Australians are telling us they can’t afford to be tied to the desk all day and these new speeds mean they can now access mobile broadband at speeds typically reserved for the office. We have been deploying the high-speed capability in the network since December 2009 and now, with the launch of the new Ultimate USB Modem, these new speeds are available to customers across all capital city CBDs and associated airports, selected metropolitan areas and in more than 100 regional locations. These high-speed zones cover approximately 50 per cent of the Australian population and match the areas of highest customer demand and will make the frustration of waiting around for files to download a thing of the past. In other metropolitan and regional areas, the Telstra Ultimate USB Modem offers typical download speeds ranging from 550kbps up to 8Mbps… Our customers have told us that they want higher speed mobile broadband so they can work more flexibly outside of the office and we are delighted to be the first in the world to offer these new blistering speeds on a national network. The new Telstra Ultimate USB Modem provides customers with the speeds needed to handle large files, multi-task and update cloud-hosted applications effortlessly on the go when they are in a coverage area.

Previous modems were able to reach peak speed 21Mbps, with real life speeds ranging from 0.5Mbps to 8 Mbps. The theoretically expected maximum of the new technology is 42Mbps with user speeds varying between 1.1 and 20 Mbps. The new speed is twice as fast. This is caused by that the dual-carrier “Evolved High-Speed Packet Access” technology allows networks to send and receive wireless data using two channels simultaneously. This technology can be deployed on Next G networks. Telstra switched to them in February, thus making the switch to HSPA possible now.

Telstra delayed the implementation of the new technology until elections end. This decision was intended to avoid wrong interpretation of them by Coalition. Coalition’s claims include that wireless networks can be an alternative to the Labor party “fibre-to-the-home” proposal to introduce more expensive wired Internet. The announcement of the new technology, initially planned on August 25, was delayed, with Telstra spokesman Craig Middleton explaining, “We just didn’t want to feel like we were influencing the [telecommunications] debate.”

The political parties have different plans on development and funds on the Internet. The Labor party aims to spend AUD 43 billion to bring 1 Gbps wired Internet nationwide, and the Coalition plans to spend AUD 6 billion to introduce a variety of improvements including upgrade of existing copper Internet as well as expansion of wireless Internet to support 12Mbps. Opposition leader Tony Abbott has said in the past that Australians shouldn’t assume wireless technologies won’t ever be comparable to fixed-line technology. Telstra’s upgrade shows that wireless broadband is reaching the 100 Mbps minimum speeds promised by Labor’s national broadband network.

Telstra has only 2000 devices which support the new technology. This is why the opportunity to try it out is being given only to the Business plan customers, and they receive it for the same price as they were paying for the previous NextG plan. Since October 5, the device will be available for sale, with the Business customers able to buy it with 75% discount and a prepaid data allowance. The upgrade is expected to cover roughly 50% of the population. This is happening at the same time as one of Telstra’s competitors Vodafone is doubling data download quotas on mobile cap plans.

As some testing showed, real life download speeds reached only about the half of the maximum. Telstra executive director of wireless Mike Wright explained that the predicted figures were the estimates, with real life speeds lower due to interfering environmental conditions: “It’s possible to achieve better than the typical user speed claims, but those claims occur in the ideal network environment with good signal quality. When you’re out on the streets you get a lot of variation where the network is subject to signal quality, your location and the network load.”

Tips To Help Your Teenager Child Take Driving Lessons (Rushcliffe)

Tips To Help Your Teenager Child Take Driving Lessons (Rushcliffe)

by

Melville Jackson

Many parents feel uneasy about letting a teenager take the steering wheel of a car. But one often forgets that the only way of making sure that they grow up to be responsible individuals is by giving them responsibilities. Driving lessons can be pretty effective and instrumental in building a firm personality by giving them opportunity to take important decisions on their own.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cOolCrvkRTM[/youtube]

Teenager children taking driving lessons may seem pretty worrisome for both the parent and the teenager child himself. Parents may feel that the child is not matured enough to take on the wheel and the child may feel nervous at the mere thought of getting behind the wheel. Here are some tips to help your teenager child take driving lessons: 1.Driving is a matter of responsibility. Discuss the significance of this new freedom with him so that he is aware of the limitations and obligations to it. 2.Get your teenager child enrolled in a trustworthy and dependable driving. Always acquire an individual care and ability based driving lesson for your teenager child. It is always best to have tailored lessons so that your child learns to drive properly and passes the test without any hitch or hassle. 3.Take him out with you for drives so that you can demonstrate how a responsible driver should behave on the road. 4.It is always best to contact his driving instructor and get a feedback, so that you can monitor his progress as a parent. 5.Talk to him about the dangers of reckless driving so that he is well aware of them; but make sure that you do not end up scaring the kid too much that he is petrified of even turning the car engine on. 6.Another factor to keep in mind is that a young driver should spend at least 10-12 hours behind the wheel before taking the driving test. Otherwise chances of the test being successful are pretty thin. Do you live in Rushcliffe? Are you looking for a reliable and trustworthy driving school for your teen? Type ‘driving lessons Rushcliffe’ on your search browser and aleveldrivingschool.co.uk is one of the most dependable names driving schools you may find on your search results. They are well-known for their individual care and attention towards young student drivers so that they learn to drive well and pass the driving test in flying colours.

Looking for

driving lessons Rushcliffe

? A Level Driving School is well-known for their individual care and attention towards young student drivers so that they learn to drive well and pass the driving test in flying colours. Log onto www.aleveldrivingschool.co.uk for more details.

Article Source:

ArticleRich.com

G20 protester dies after collapsing

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

According to reports, a man protesting the G20 Summit in London, England has died after collapsing at a protester camp.

Sky News says the man collapsed on the street inside a camp close to the Bank of England and when found he was still breathing, but efforts by paramedics to rescue him failed and he was pronounced dead at an area hospital. The name of the person and cause of death are not yet known, but several people were injured earlier in the day. The police claim that protestors threw bottles at them while trying to rescue the protestor.

The London Ambulance Service reported that “we received a 999 call at 7:24 pm from a member of the public reporting that a man had fallen over and was unconscious, but was breathing. [They] made extensive efforts to resuscitate him both there and on the way to hospital.”

Earlier in the day a minimum of 20 protesters broke into the bank and according to reports vandalized furniture, broke windows and cut the telephone lines to the building.

PBS show asserts greenhouse gases, atmospheric pollutants dimming future

Saturday, April 22, 2006

This week, the Public Broadcasting Service aired a NOVA program titled “Dimming the Earth”, which presented research by leading scientists on the complex systems of our global climate and human activity’s effect on it. One of the largest interactions (or “inputs”) humans have with the atmosphere is the ever-increasing use of fossil fuels. Consumption has risen 2% per year for this decade.

Fossil fuels burnt in factories and automobiles send their waste into our atmosphere in two forms. The first is CO2 and other greenhouse gases, which have received substantial attention in the last few years because of the way they trap heat in the atmosphere. The second is the tiny particles of sulfur dioxide, soot and ash, which scientists call aerosols (basically smog). Research into understanding the negative health effects of air pollution has resulted in the development of catalytic converters for cars as well as devices to remove particulate solids from industrial waste before it reaches the air.

More recently, atmospheric scientists have come upon the phenomenon of the reduction of direct sunlight reaching Earth’s surface— observing a nearly a 5% decline between 1960 and 1990, with evidence of a recovery since then. This has been dubbed the “global dimming” effect, and is probably due to the way these aerosols act upon clouds. It is important to realise that this does not represent a net loss of this much sunshine to the climate system – if so, large temperature declines would have been observed. Instead, the sunshine is absorbed elsewhere in the system, with a much smaller net loss.

Clouds form when moisture gathers around airborne particles, such as pollen or dust. Clouds formed by the aerosol particles emitted by fossil fuel consumption are made of many more tiny droplets than “natural” clouds. These smog-created clouds have two notable effects: they shield sunlight from reaching Earth’s surface and, due to water’s reflective nature, the millions of tiny droplets suspended in them reflect light back into space, allowing even less light to reach Earth.

Many scientists now believe that global dimming caused by these pollutants has mitigated the temperature rises brought about by global warming. Over the last thirty years, Earth’s temperature has increased by about 0.5 oC.

In the absence of global dimming, however, the Earth might be 0.3 oC warmer than it currently is, suggesting that a “tug-of-war” exists between greenhouse gases and particulates released by burning fossil fuels. Efforts to mitigate the human health dangers of smog have allowed more heat into our atmosphere and brought about a sharper increase in global warming.

Dr. James E. Hansen, professor at Columbia University and the head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies [1], believes that if we continue on our current pattern, this warming could be as much as five degrees in the next thirty years and ten to fourteen degrees over the course of the century. Such a temperature rise would devastate life on Earth, likely bringing on a cascade of self-reinforcing warming effects. Earth’s forests drying and burning, a steady thawing of the Greenland and arctic ice sheets, and, most dangerous of all, a release of the methane hydrates that are now frozen at the bottom of the oceans, could remake the planet into something inhospitable to human life. Dr. Hansen warns that, according to his research, man has just 10 years to reduce greenhouse gases before global warming and other responses to human activity by Earth’s climate reach a “tipping point”, becoming unstoppable.