| Canadian Tanner rallies to win 1st moguls World Cup
Warren Tanner of West Vancouver was the surprise winner of Friday's World Cup freestyle race in Lake Placid, N.Y., storming back to capture his first career title after qualifying in 14th place. Tanner, 27, made the cut into the 16-skier final by just three-tenths of a point before taking off in the final. Canada's Warren Tanner barely made the cut in qualifying before taking off to win the final at Thursday's World Cup moguls event in Lake Placid, N.Y.(Todd Bissonette/Associated Press) "It's not a regular thing to come out of 14th with the win," Tanner said. "But that may have helped because there wasn't a ton of pressure, and I went for it." Alex Bilodeau of Rosemere, Que., went in the opposite direction. After winning the qualification round, which doesn't count toward the final standings, Bilodeau had trouble in the middle of the course during the final and fell to 15th.
Riding the ups and downs
IF YOU recently invested in the market, or heaven forbid leveraged into the market, chances are you'll be licking a few wounds.Could this be the end of the share market as we know it? Will this be the start of an ongoing bearish trend? Or will everything soon bounce back to normal? To put this fall into perspective, we only need to go back to early 2003, when this bull market started. Without including dividends, the Australian share market has rallied 108 per cent. So as unpleasant as the recent fall may be, long-term investors are still sitting on very healthy gains. Over the long term our share market has an impressive track record for building wealth. In fact, if you are a long-term investor, falls like the one we are currently experiencing bring rare buying opportunities, which often occur no more than once or twice a year.
All kids deserve reward for grades
I listened to a conversation the other day about Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso's controversial plan to pay some 5,000 city students to work harder to improve their grades on the Maryland High School Assessments. They have to pass that test in order to graduate. Too many Baltimore kids have been failing. Alonso wants to give those who failed once a little incentive to do better. He wants to slip them a few bucks. Boys and girls who are supposed to graduate in 2009 and 2010 will get $25 for improving test performance by 5 percent, $35 for a 15 percent improvement, and $110 for a 20 percent improvement. There's been a lot of comment on this since Alonso announced it - most of it condemnation. The people in the conversation I heard -their knees were jerking so much they were in danger of tearing their ACLs.
Ask Bearders #161 (179)
Mind you Rikki Clarke is no loss and Derbyshire's loss is undoubtedly Surrey's gain. Chris a Surrey man banished to a cricket free zone called "Kent" but who can remember Geoff Arnold's debut vs Australia in 1972, was he the best swing bowler England ever had, silly question really. .
Women create animal calendar to benefit struggling zoo (Watch VIDEO)
GULF BREEZE — Roree Lange has made several trips to The Zoo Northwest Florida since moving to Milton more than three years ago to see her favorite animal, the female orangutan Sarah. When she first heard The Zoo could close if $1 million is not raised by the end of the year, her first thoughts were of doing something to save the facility and Sarah. Lange and her daughter, April Ball, have designed and printed a 2008 calendar to raise money for The Zoo. The calendar is currently available at nearly 40 businesses in Santa Rosa, Okaloosa and Escambia counties, including all 12 branches of the Bank of America. "We jumped on the calendar idea. We knew it was something that could be done very easily," Lange said.
Production notes
Never before have so many done so little and been so raucously funny doing it. In "Clerks II: The Second Coming," New Jersey mini-mart clerks and best friends Dante Hicks (BRIAN O'HALLORAN) and Randal Graves (JEFF ANDERSON) are forced to find new jobs in the fast-food universe -- and they're bringing their in-your-face attitudes, outrageous vulgarities and unbridled love of screwing with the customers with them. Director Kevin Smith ("Clerks," "Chasing Amy," "Dogma," "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back") pushes his nothing-is-sacred humor right to the edge and then takes a leap as Dante and Randal invade the world of Mooby's fast food restaurant, where the slogan is "I'm Eating It." Behind the counter, where the only other employees are an uber-nerd (TREVOR FERHMAN) and an entirely too sexy manager (ROSARIO DAWSON), Dante and Randal are free to offend anybody and everybody who so much as orders fries in their inimitably irreverent way.
Streamlined for success? CUNA Mutual's profits up, but union asks at ...
Nobody wants to be a target. " Two major goals Post, 48, who came to CUNA Mutual from Fireman 's Fund in Novato, Calif., said he had two major goals when he started the transformation: improve financial performance and change the culture. "We 've grown the organization while the number of credit unions is shrinking at a rate of about 500 a year, " Post said. "We 're selling into a smaller marketplace, but we 've grown the organization. " CUNA Mutual has about a 95 percent share of the credit union bond market, an 88 percent share for property and casualty insurance coverage, 65 percent of the credit insurance market and 55 percent of the retirement fund market, according to company officials. As for changing the culture, Post said his plan has broken down barriers between divisions and streamlined bureaucracy, although he said more needs to be done in both areas.
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