Thursday, July 28, 2011

Wellness Update | Fletch's Health and Fitness Blog

Just wanted to give all of you an update. As you know I?ve been struggling with my health. I?ve been at a stand still for months now. Well not anymore. I have broke through my plateau and I?m down to 311.8 lbs. I checked three times to make sure. I?m very happy to finally be losing weight again. I will do proper update this Saturday with a video and some pictures.

Oh Yeah!

This entry was posted in Health, Personal. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://tbigman.com/wellness-update

amc annalynne mccord marc anthony kirsten dunst penn state shirley temple jane fonda

No end in sight for FAA shutdown (AP)

WASHINGTON ? In Traverse City, Mich., work on replacing a 30-year-old air traffic control tower at Cherry Capital Airport has been halted. The job was about 40 percent completed, and crews had planned to lift the "cab" section to the top of the tower this week, airport manager Kevin Klein said.

But that was before a legislative stalemate between Republicans and Democrats in Congress forced the partial shutdown of the Federal Aviation Administration, the furlough of nearly 4,000 federal workers and the issuance of stop-work orders for dozens of airport construction projects across the country.

"It's very frustrating," Klein said. "It puts about 50 construction workers out of a job. But about 200 people are involved in this some way ? designers, engineers, vendors, delivery folks. It's going to be a hardship on them."

The FAA has also told airports to stop work on the installation of runway status lights, a new safety system aimed at preventing planes from colliding on the ground or taking off or landing on closed runways. At McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, construction officials were told Monday that they have until the end of the week to wrap up their work and then stop. Construction on a new airport tower has also been delayed.

"It's depressing," said Sasha Milosavljevich of Archer-Western Contractors, whose company broke ground June 2 on a new 352-foot control tower at McCarran. "You got a site that was flourishing with activity and there's nothing going on right now."

Prospects for quickly ending the legislative dispute between the House and Senate appear grim, with neither side signaling willingness to compromise. The FAA's operating authority expired last week. Air traffic controllers have continued to work, as well as FAA employees who inspect the safety of planes and test pilots.

Transportation officials have said safety won't be compromised. But it was unclear how long the FAA can continue day-to-day operations before travelers begin to feel the effects of the shutdown.

Rep. John Mica, R-Fla., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said there have been no negotiations between the House and Senate to resolve the dispute.

Republican leaders said they are determined to hold to their position that the Senate must accept a House-passed bill to extend FAA operations through mid-September even though it contains a provision eliminating $16.5 million in air service subsidies for 13 rural airports. Democrats say that provision is unacceptable.

"This is sort of sad, you know," Mica told reporters. "On the eve of the country's finances near collapse, it's sort of symbolic of the whole problem here ? no one is willing to eliminate any wasteful programs."

The subsidy program was created after airlines were deregulated in 1978 to ensure continued service on less profitable routes to remote communities. Not all those communities are remote anymore. The GOP provision would end subsidies to communities less than 90 miles from a hub airport or where subsidies average greater than $1,000 per passenger.

Democrats said the real issue is that Republicans are insisting Democrats accept a host of controversial provisions added to a long-term FAA spending bill approved by the House in April. Among their key differences is a GOP proposal sought by industry that would make it more difficult for airline workers to unionize.

The Senate passed its own long-term funding bill in February without the labor provision. Democrats insist the House must drop the provision. They've also accused Republicans of tying the elimination of rural air subsidies to their extension bill as a means to prod Democrats to make concessions on the labor issue.

"House Republicans are nowhere to be found, refusing to come back to the negotiating table after pulling yet another cheap political stunt at the expense of rural Americans," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said in a statement.

The shutdown is costing the FAA about $30 million a day in lost revenue because airlines no longer have authority to collect ticket taxes. That money goes into an aviation trust fund. The fund "has a healthy balance now, but that would be depleted in fairly rapid order" without congressional action, FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt said.

___

Associated Press writers John Flesher in Traverse City, Mich., and Cristina Silva in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

___

Online:

FAA stop-work orders: http://www.faa.gov/news/media/workstop/

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110726/ap_on_go_ot/us_aviation_shutdown

pittsburgh steelers real housewives of new york david wu doug carson palmer columbia columbia

Fear over debt fight hits Wall St.; Dow loses 198 (AP)

Anxiety about a deadline to raise the nation's debt ceiling swept across Wall Street on Wednesday and drove the Dow Jones industrial average down almost 200 points. With Washington showing no sign it will find a solution, financial planners around the country said their clients were increasingly worried.

The Dow took a sharp drop during the last two hours of trading and closed down for the fourth session in a row. The declines have grown each day. The market turmoil was a sign that consequences of the debt fight were beginning to materialize in earnest.

With six days to go until the Treasury Department's Tuesday deadline ? raise the national borrowing limit or face an unprecedented federal default and unpredictable fallout in the economy ? analysts suggested the market would only grow more volatile.

"The longer we go without any type of hope or concrete plans for resolution, the more concerned investors are going to become," said Channing Smith, a managing director at the financial firm Capital Advisors Inc.

While no one was panicking, financial professionals who handle the investment accounts of everyday Americans ? college funds, retirement accounts and other nest-eggs ? said their customers were growing more worried by the day. One said he had not seen this level of anxiety since the 2008 financial crisis.

"We're getting a ton of calls," said Bob Glovsky, president of Mintz Levin Financial Advisors in Boston. "It's all `What happens if the U.S. defaults? What's going to happen to me?'"

The Dow finished the day down 198.75 points, at 12,302.55. About half of the decline came between 2 and 4 p.m., when the market closes for the day. It was the worst fall for the Dow since June 1, with 28 of the 30 component stocks losing value.

While the decline was not close to the stomach-churning days of the fall of 2008, when the Dow lurched lower and higher by 700 points some days, there were signs that fear on Wall Street was growing. The Dow fell 43 points Friday, 88 points Monday and 91 points Tuesday, then more than twice that on Wednesday.

"Right now the clouds are gathering," said Chris Long, a financial planner in Chicago.

Without a deal by Tuesday, the Obama administration has said the government will be unable to pay all its bills, and could miss checks to Social Security recipients, veterans and others who depend on public help. In addition, credit rating agencies could downgrade their assessment of the government's finances, further unnerving financial markets and perhaps causing interest rates to rise for everyone.

Already, some investors are taking precautions. Richard Shortt, 66, of Somerville, Mass., worries that a default, or even just a downgrade of U.S. debt, could cause bond and stock markets to tumble. Last week he sold about 10 percent of his stock holdings and put the proceeds into a money-market mutual fund.

"It might just be a short-term decline in the markets, but it could last a week or two while this gets resolved," said Shortt, a semi-retired small business consultant. "If we do get any sort of debt downgrade, even if we avoid a default, that will change the game a bit."

Financial advisers typically tell their clients not to tinker with their portfolios or try to play a short-term move in the market to their advantage. Of course, leaving investments alone could be a test of patience for the rest of this week.

On Friday afternoon, for example, it's plausible that Congress could reach a deal in mid-afternoon and send the Dow soaring 300 points in the final hour of trading. It's also plausible that there's still no deal and traders decide staying in the market over the weekend is too risky, and send the Dow plunging.

Investors who rode out the financial turbulence in 2008 without rejiggering their portfolios have made up most of their losses. The stock market has almost doubled since its post-meltdown low in March 2009. Many people who withdrew their money from the stock market during the worst haven't come close to breaking even.

"Trying to adjust to something on a day-to-day basis is how you get hurt," Glovsky said. "You've got to take a long-term approach."

The memory of October 2008 remains vivid. The Dow plunged 777 points in a single day when Congress surprised investors by rejecting an early version of $700 billion legislation to bail out the nation's biggest banks.

"We've been through this, or something like it," said Leisa Aiken, a financial planner in Chicago. "I think what we went through in 2008 has toughened clients up a little. They realize that they will get through it if they don't give in to a knee-jerk reaction."

This time around, analysts say, the chances of similar turmoil are small but growing. Standard & Poor's, one of the rating services, has said that "the reverberations of the showdown may be deep and wide ? particularly if Washington does not come to a timely agreement on the debt ceiling."

Bond traders were still betting on a last-minute deal on the debt. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, which should rise when investors believe there is a greater risk they won't get their money back, has stayed near 3 percent all month.

Even if Washington sails past the deadline without raising the debt limit, bond traders believe the Obama administration will keep up its interest payments and cut spending on everything else. The resulting shock to the economy and other financial markets would make Treasury bonds a safe place for investors to hide, which could result in lower yields.

For individual investors, experts are cautioning against overreaction.

Financial planner Jim Pearman, a principal in Partners in Financial Planning in Roanoke, Va., said he was telling clients his firm isn't changing its investments based on a "game of chicken" in Congress.

"You have to make two decisions right when you try to time this thing. One is when you get out, and the other is when you get back in," he said. "It's hard to make that. We don't try."

One measure of investor concern, the Vix, or volatility index, shot up 14 percent on Wednesday. The tone of the market changed this week, as nervous investors began moving money out of stocks, said Howard Ward, a chief investment officer at asset manager GAMCO.

He said the stock market will likely become more volatile as the weekend nears, and while he said he was not repositioning his portfolio, he admitted: "Right now I'm pretty worried."

___

AP Business Writers Chip Cutter, Matthew Craft and David K. Randall in New York and AP Personal Finance Writer Mark Jewell in Boston contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110727/ap_on_bi_ge/us_debt_showdown_investors

teeth princess diana sociopath diners drive ins and dives ewan mcgregor janet jackson traffic

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Home based Moms ? The Revolutionary Generation | My crazy blog

[unable to retrieve full-text content]When it comes to home business careers, there are lots of for housewives available. Quite likely the very initial factors you have got to settle on to when you are purchasing a home business employment is 'what are the ...

Source: http://sondaxxi.pl/home-based-moms-the-revolutionary-generation/

starship troopers gout symptoms gout symptoms erin andrews erin andrews swing map of usa

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Norway suspect wanted European anti-Muslim crusade (AP)

OSLO, Norway ? The man blamed for killing at least 93 people during terrorist attacks on Norway's government headquarters and an island retreat for young people wanted to trigger an anti-Muslim revolution in Norwegian society, his lawyer said Sunday.

A chief surgeon treating the wounded from Friday's mass shooting, meanwhile, said he believes the attacker used special "dum-dum" bullets that cause massive internal injuries. The doctor told The Associated Press that the killer's chosen ammo "exploded inside the body."

The manifesto that 32-year-old suspect Anders Behring Breivik published online ranted against Muslim immigration to Europe and vowed revenge on those "indigenous Europeans" whom he deemed had betrayed their heritage. The document said they would be punished for their "treasonous acts."

Police said they were analyzing the approximately 1,500-page document. They said it was published Friday shortly before the back-to-back bomb and gun attacks.

Breivik's lawyer, Geir Lippestad, said his client wrote the document alone. But parts of it were taken almost word for word from the writings of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence in federal prison in Colorado for mail bombs that killed three people and injured 23 others across the U.S. from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The passages copied by Breivik appear in the first few pages of Kaczynski's manifesto. Breivik changed a Kaczynski screed on leftism and what he considered to be leftists' "feelings of inferiority" ? mainly by substituting the words "multiculturalism" or "cultural Marxism" for "leftism." Breivik did not cite Kaczynski.

Police in Norway said they were investigating reports of a second assailant on the island, but the lawyer said Breivik claims no one helped him.

Breivik's treatise detailed plans to acquire firearms and explosives, and even appeared to describe a test explosion: "BOOM! The detonation was successful!!!" It ends with a note dated 12:51 p.m. on July 22: "I believe this will be my last entry."

That day, a bomb killed seven people in downtown Oslo and, about 90 minutes later, a gunman began opening fire on about 600 young people at a retreat on Utoya Island. Police said the death toll in the shooting rose by one Sunday to 86.

That brings total fatalities to 93, with more than 90 wounded. People remain missing at both scenes. Police have not released the names of any victims.

Authorities revealed Sunday that one of the attacker's first victims on the island was an off-duty police officer who had been hired by the camp directors to provide private security in his spare time. Oslo Police Union Chairman Sigve Bolstad declined to identify the victim.

That detail sheds new light on the confusion many survivors described during the 90-minute massacre. The attacker arrived dressed as a policeman, and some campers were killed when they approached the killer thinking he was there to save them.

Dr. Colin Poole, head of surgery at Ringriket Hospital in Honefoss northwest of Oslo, told The Associated Press the gunman used special bullets designed to disintegrate inside the body and cause maximum internal damage. Poole said surgeons treating 16 gunshot victims have recovered no full bullets.

"These bullets more or less exploded inside the body," Poole said. "It's caused us all kinds of extra problems in dealing with the wounds they cause, with very strange trajectories."

Ballistics experts say the so-called "dum-dum" bullets also are lighter in weight and can be fired with greater accuracy over varying distances. They commonly are used by air marshals and hunters of small animals. Such characteristics potentially would have allowed the gunman to carry more ammunition and fire his weapons at varying targets without adjusting his sights.

Officials at the lakeside scene of the island shooting spent Sunday continuing to account for the dead.

Six hearses pulled up at the shoreline as orange-jacketed Red Cross searchers on small boats slowly explored the extensive shoreline.

Body parts remain inside the Oslo building, which housed the prime minister's office. In a chilling allusion to the fact that the tragedy could have even been greater, police said Sunday that Breivik still had "a considerable amount" of ammunition for both his guns ? a pistol and an automatic rifle ? when he surrendered.

Police and his lawyer have said that Breivik confessed to the twin attacks, but denied criminal responsibility for a day that shook peaceful Norway to its core and was the deadliest ever in peacetime. Breivik has been charged with terrorism and will be arraigned Monday.

Lippestad said his client has asked for an open court hearing "because he wants to explain himself."

Police Chief Sveinung Sponheim said a forensics expert from Interpol was joining the investigation Sunday.

European security officials said they were aware of increased Internet chatter from individuals claiming they belonged to the Knights Templar group that Breivik describes, in fantastical terms, in the manifesto. They said they were still investigating claims that Breivik, and other far-right individuals, attended a London meeting of the group in 2002. The two officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation.

The officials would not confirm whether they had identified Breivik as a potential threat.

As authorities pursued the suspect's motives, Oslo mourned the victims. Norway's King Harald V and his wife Queen Sonja and Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg crowded into Oslo Cathedral, where the pews were packed, and people spilled into the plaza outside. The area was strewn with flowers and candles, and people who could not fit inside the grand church huddled under umbrellas amid drizzling rain.

The king and queen both wiped tears from their eyes during the service themed on "sorrow and hope."

Afterward, people sobbed and hugged one another in the streets. Many lingered over the flowers and candles. The royal couple and prime minister later visited the site of the bombing in Oslo. The royals then visited shooting survivors at Ringriket Hospital.

The attacker picked targets linked to Norway's left-wing Labor Party. Breivik's manifesto pilloried the political correctness of liberals and warned that their work would end in the colonization of Europe by Muslims.

Such fears may derive, at least in part, from the fact that Norway has grown increasingly multicultural in recent years as the prosperous Nordic nation has opened its arms to thousands of conflict refugees from Pakistan, Iraq and Somalia. The annual Labor Party retreat ? which the prime minister, Stoltenberg, fondly remembers attending in his own youth ? reflected the country's changing demographics as the children of immigrants have grown increasingly involved in Labor politics.

The assaults have rattled Norway, home to the Nobel Prize for Peace and where the average policeman patrolling in the streets doesn't carry a firearm. Norwegians pride themselves on the openness of their society and cherish the idea of free expression.

"He wanted a change in society and, from his perspective, he needed to force through a revolution," Lippestad, the lawyer, told public broadcaster NRK. "He wished to attack society and the structure of society."

Lippestad said Breivik spent years writing the manifesto titled "2083 - A European Declaration of Independence." It was signed "Andrew Berwick." The document later explained that 2083 was to be the year when European government would be overthrown en masse.

Sponheim, the police chief, said there was no indication whether Breivik had selected his targets or fired randomly on the island. The manifesto vowed revenge on those it accused of betraying Europe.

"We, the free indigenous peoples of Europe, hereby declare a pre-emptive war on all cultural Marxist/multiculturalist elites of Western Europe. ... We know who you are, where you live and we are coming for you," the document said. "We are in the process of flagging every single multculturalist traitor in Western Europe. You will be punished for your treasonous acts against Europe and Europeans."

The use of an anglicized pseudonym could be explained by a passage in the manifesto describing the founding, in April 2002 in London, of a group he calls a new Knights Templar. The Knights Templar was a medieval order created to protect Christian pilgrims in the Holy Land after the First Crusade in the 11th century.

A 12-minute video clip posted on YouTube with the same title as the manifesto featured symbolic imagery of the Knights Templar and crusader kings as well as slides suggesting Europe is being overrun by Muslims.

Police could not confirm whether Breivik posted the video, which also featured photographs of him dressed in a formal military uniform and in a wet suit pointing an assault rifle.

The video contained a series of slides that accused left-wing politicians in Europe of allowing Muslims to overrun the continent. One image showed the BBC's logo with the "C" changed into an Islamic crescent. Another referenced the former Soviet Union, declaring that the end result of the left's actions would be an "EUSSR."

In London, the leader of Ramadhan Foundation, one of Britain's largest Muslim groups, said mosques are being extra vigilant in the wake of the attacks. Mohammed Shafiq told The AP he was talking to European Muslim leaders and British police about the need to increase security.

The last 100 pages of the manifesto apparently lay out details of Breivik's social and personal life, including his steroid use and an intention to solicit prostitutes in the days before the attack.

Also Sunday, police carried out raids in an Oslo neighborhood seeking explosives. Police spokesman Henning Holtaas said no explosives were found and no one was arrested.

Police said the bomb used in the Oslo blast was a mixture of fertilizer and fuel similar to what home-grown U.S. terrorists used to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

A farm supply store said Saturday they had alerted police that Breivik bought six metric tons of fertilizer, a popular terrorist component for car bombs.

___

DiLorenzo reported from Stockholm. Associated Press writers Ian MacDougall and Derl McCrudden in Oslo; Louise Nordstrom and Karl Ritter in Stockholm; Shawn Pogatchnik in Honefoss, Norway; Paisley Dodds in London; and Kristen Wyatt in Denver, Colorado, contributed to this report.

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/religion/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110724/ap_on_re_eu/eu_norway_explosion

spanx apollo 11 leopard mac os x lion new macbook air amr apple store

Monday, July 25, 2011

Better Articles Directory ? Modern Technology Innovation Course ...

With the growth of the internet and the advancement of technology, each member of your team- irrespective of what department- must be well placed to roll with the punches. You should be in a position to stay abreast of all the changes that are going down around them each day.

Getting the right kind of workers to attend the right type of innovation courses is a way to ensure that your organisation will not get left in the dust.

One of the most vital innovation course conventions that you and your team can gain benefit from would be courses about the Web.

We use the internet daily and would it not be better if we know the way to use it in such a manner that it?ll work best for your company?s daily processes? The web is as vast as the Net. There is not any telling what info you will discover. And click after click can steer you to different worlds.

Your company is composed of many folks from different backgrounds. There are some who are tech-savvy and some who know squat about computers.

There are many categories of folk when it comes to technology. For your company?s innovation course coaching, you should be looking three major divisions.

1. The Experts- these are the folks that know the ins and outs of the web and the PC. They practically know everything that they ought to know about it and they?ve been using it for many years already.
2. The Novice- this group includes your staff who are in their late thirties or early forties. They are acquainted with the basic usage of the Internet like e-mails but they don?t use the social media or other websites.
3. The Uninformed- these are the people who you?ll have plenty of difficulty with. They can be classified too as ?unwilling? users because they don?t want to exploit the numerous benefits that may get out of new and state-of-the-art technology.

And when it comes to innovation courses on advanced technology, you must separate the partakers according to their knowledge about technology. In doing therefore you will be able to find the right intensity of lessons for each group.

When you find innovation course training, you need to decide first what it is that you need to help your team improve on. Do you need to include social media marketing into your daily processes? Or do you just want to provide your team with the basics of advanced technology?

You could have defined objectives and measurable objectives for your innovation course programme.

Next, you need to also look for an innovation course that may teach your marketing team the way to use social media efficiently. It?s a potent force and you really need it to reach more folks.

If you have an interest in becoming more knowledgeable about Innovation Courses, visit my Executive Training site.

Source: http://www.betterarticlesdirectory.com/self-improvement/motivation/modern-technology-innovation-course-seminars/

noel gallagher annecy annecy moodys nas nas huffington post

Evening Dresses For Plus Sized

Each woman likes to feel stunning every once in a while. For larger ladies this can occasionally be a rather major challenge. Lots of people don?t realise how challenging it might be for a bigger lady to really feel like she looks excellent. It is possible to find beautiful evening dresses for plus size women when you just know what to watch out for and exactly what designers to take into account.

A lot of designers make their gowns for the smaller sized women and don?t think about the way the product might look on a large lady. They tend to use ruffles round the sides and chest which just make a larger woman look a great deal larger. It makes me wonder why these designers actually permitted their gowns to be manufactured in a size larger than say an eight or 10. They simply don?t look good on a woman that is already nicely endowed.

If you are looking for or even designing evening dresses for plus size women here are some things to consider.

The simpler lines are often the best. Do not go for something which has luxurious ribbons and ruffles. Ruffles tend to make something appear a lot larger than it actually is and bigger women do not want to be made to look larger than they already are. Lace has a tendency to stretch if it?s put onto a sizable body and simply appears dreadful as you lose all the elegance which lace may convey on a smaller lady. Rather go for a straight up and down dress design if you wish to design dresses for plus size women. It is a lot more flattering.

Likewise try to avoid cut away backs and slits. A bigger woman will normally not want to reveal her skin. On top of that, many of the larger women may have some fat deposits i the thigh and back region that don?t look appealing and they will wish to keep these covered. A low neckline is not always a bad thing so long as you do not go overboard. A sizable lady will tend to have big breasts and you don?t want it to look as if they?re trying to escape the confines of the gown.

For sleeves, thinner is not always much better. A great design style will be the thicker cut off sleeve. This will help to cover the bra strap that?s unavoidable with a bigger lady because the strapless bra usually doesn?t have the necessary support. Lengthier flowing sleeves can also be pretty as they can be used to concealed loose and flabby upper arms if required whilst lending the appearance of elegance to the arm movements, just avoid those dreadful ruffles.

Should you be looking for dresses for plus size women then look for something which is going to be sliming and cover those areas you do not want attention drawn to. steer clear of things such as slits and also spaghetti shoulder straps and the strapless variety of gown. Ruffles will also tend to make the ruffled region look bigger therefore try to avoid these too.

For more information about dresses for plus size visit the website http://www.captive8.co.za

Source: http://articletrust.com/evening-dresses-for-plus-sized/

jerry lee lewis michael caine whale wars pendulum carp queens of the stone age top gear season 17