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TheNewStandard
Made you look.
the STATES the NEIGHBORS the SPECTATORS the PROSPECTS the HEALTHY

Obama makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan and your mail wont be coming on Saturday.

Ticket sales are under review at the University of Kansas and a local doctor gives a personal review of health care reform. SIX

Butler basketball enjoys a unique home court and March Madness upsets continue to mess up your bracket betting. TEN

Obama alters student loan landscape and cities compete for Google Broadband.

Perils of plastic and calorie content to be posted at most chain restaurants.

TWO

FOURTEEN

EIGHTEEN

Postal Service edges toward cutting Saturday delivery

Calling On Karzai
Obama makes surprise visit to Afghanistan
courtesy of CNN

WASHINGTON -- Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night may stay the nations letter carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but e-mail and the recession may stop their Saturday deliveries. Under a plan to be delivered Tuesday to its regulator, the U.S. Postal Service announced Monday it would cut Saturday delivery beginning in the first half of next year. If the Postal Service takes no action, it could face a cumulative $238 billion shortfall by the year 2020, the service said in plans given to reporters. The Postal Service said the cutback would save about $3.1 billion in the first year and as much as $5.2 billion per year by 2020; the Postal Regulatory Commission estimated annual savings of $1.9 billion. Saturday delivery was selected for elimination because that is the lightest-volume delivery day of the week and a day when more than a third of U.S. businesses are closed. Still, Express Mail deliveries would continue and post offices that are open Saturdays would remain so, the Postal Service said. Mail volume has dropped from a peak of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion last year, and volume is predicted to continue to fall, the Postal Service said. Quite simply, there is much less mail to be delivered, yet costs to deliver the mail continue to rise, it said.

STATWORTHY Mail volume has dropped from a peak of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion last year

177
billion
QUOTEWORTHY Quite simply, there is much less mail to be delivered, yet costs to deliver the mail continue to rise.

the STAT ES

3 Tennessee, Delaware schools to get Race to the Top funds

WASHINGTON -- President Obama returned to the United States

NEWSWORTHY Obamas first visit to Afghanistan as President. Reiterates US progress and commitment to fighting terror. QUOTEWORTHY If I thought for a minute that Americas vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, I would order all of you home right away. NEWSWORTHY Experts predict that mail volume will continue to decline, eventually leading to more cutbacks similar to stopping Saturday delivery.

on Monday morning after an unannounced visit to Afghanistan, where he met with his Afghan counterpart and reiterated the need to wipe out terror networks. Obama slipped into Bagram Air Base near Kabul under the cover of darkness Sunday. He met with about 2,000 troops at the U.S. base and told them their work is significant to security at home. Earlier, Obama met with President Hamid Karzai to discuss progress by the Afghan government in strengthening its ability to run the country and provide security for its people. After the 30-minute meeting, Obama said he wanted to send a strong message that the partnership between the nations would continue.

WASHINGTON -- Tennessee and Delaware were the only two states designated Monday to receive funds in the first round of the education funding competition Race to the Top, federal officials announced. Delaware will receive $100 million under the program, while Tennessee will receive $500 million. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in the announcement that one determining factor was that both states have statewide buy-in for comprehensive plans to reform their schools. They have written new laws to support their policies. And they have demonstrated the courage, capacity, and commitment to turn their ideas into practices that can improve outcomes for students. The states are the only two left after 40 states and the District of Columbia initially applied for the program. To receive the funds, the states had to prove that they were progressing in specific areas including turning around low-performing schools, adopting college- and career-ready standards, and using data systems to support student achievement.

NEWSWORTHY Race to the Top is an Obama administration program that is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to reward states for aggressively reforming their education systems.

QUOTEWORTHY The sale of Volvo will allow us to further sharpen our focus on building the Ford brand around the world

Names Added To Supreme Court Short List

WASHINGTON -- A federal judge from Montana and the dean of Harvards law school are among several names being added to the short list of potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, a government source said. Sidney Thomas, a 14-year veteran on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is being vetted by the White House, said the source, who has been regularly consulted in the selection process. Harvard Law school dean Martha Minow has been on the schools faculty since 1981. And Elizabeth Warren heads the Congressional Oversight Panel, which reviews government efforts to boost the shaky financial and private investment sector. Neither woman has judicial experience. Sources close to the selection process said the new names represent an effort to expand what had been a short list of candidates, many of them left over after last years court vacancy was filled by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Minow is the daughter of former Federal Communications Commission head Newt Minow. She clerked for former Justice Thurgood Marshall. In her mid-50s, Minow replaced as dean the woman considered near the top of potential high court nominees, Elena Kagan, now solicitor general. Warren is also a Harvard law professor. She has been a regular on the talk-show circuit, including CNN, to discuss the economys effect on families. The Oklahoma native has also co-authored two books with her daughter. Supporters of Hillary Clinton have long touted her credentials, but White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday that the president thinks Secretary Clinton is doing an excellent job as secretary of state and wants her to remain in that position. The White House has given no indication when Obama will name a successor to Stevens, who announced Friday that he will retire this year. Stevens has been on the high court nearly 35 years and leads the four-justice liberal bloc.

Report: Airline Industry Performance Up

WASHINGTON -- The performance of the airline industry improved in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to an annual report released Monday. The 2010 Airline Quality Rating report compiles information on 18 U.S. airlines based on factors such as on-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints. Overall, the airline industry recorded the thirdhighest score in the 19 years researchers have tracked their performance, the report said. Fourteen airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2009, though only six airlines had an on-time percentage greater than 80 percent. Customer complaints fell industrywide to 0.97 per 100,000 passengers, from 1.15 per 100,000 passengers. The Airline Quality Rating report is a joint research project by Purdue and Wichita State universities. The study is based on figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Compared with 2008, the airline industry scored higher in every category except for denied boardings, which shouldnt come as a surprise, said Dean Headley, a Wichita State professor and one of the reports authors. You would expect denied boardings to increase as you tighten up on the number of seats that are available, Headley said in a statement. When you look at the past 10 years, you find that the airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isnt stressed by high passenger volume.

NEWSWORHTY
Who might replace Stevens? Merrick Garland Jennifer Granholm Eric Holder Elena Kagan Martha Minow Janet Napolitano Deval Patrick Sidney Thomas Elizabeth Warren

2010 report
STATWORTHY
1. Hawaiian (1) 2. AirTran (2) 3. JetBlue (3) 4. Northwest (4) 5. Southwest (6) 6. Continental (8) 7. Frontier (7) 8. US Airways (10) 9. American (9) 10. ExpressJet (not ranked in 2009 report) 11. Alaska (5) 12. Mesa (14) 13. United (11) 14. SkyWest (13) 15. Delta (12) 16. Comair (15) 17. Atlantic Southeast (17) 18. American Eagle (16)

35 years
STATWORTHY
Stevens has been on the high court nearly 35 years and leads the four-justice liberal bloc.

NEWSWORTHY
Stevens was formerly the only judge of the current court not graduated from an Ivy League school. QUOTEWORTHY The airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isnt stressed by high passenger volume.

parenthesis indicate 2009 ranking

Federal And KU Inquiries Look Into Sales Of Jayhawks Basketball Tickets

Doctor Gives View Of Health Care Reform Bill
LEAVENWORTH Pediatrician Dr. Vernon Mills shared his view of what the health care reform bill will mean for people. Mills said there will be better health-care access for the uninsured. Instead of a costly trip to an emergency room when someone gets sick, people will start showing up for well-care visits that may prevent costly complications down the road. Mills treats around 3,000 patients. He believes the measure will allow families to have more stable coverage: If they change jobs, or one person loses a job, theyll be able to keep their insurance. Its now going to be portable, so to speak. Mills said that the expansion of coverage for young adults will benefit his own family. My daughter, who just graduated from KU, doesnt have a job yet, he said. Shell be able to stay on my insurance. Right now, a patient with insurance can visit a doctor for $75. A patient without coverage who walks into an ER will pay around $500. But Mills also has concerns about the health care bill, including funding. He isnt certain the funding formulas for this additional coverage will necessarily work the way the politicians hope.

KC Folgers Plant To Close

KANSAS CITY Folgers Coffee Co. will close its longtime downtown plant by 2012, eliminating about 180 jobs. The company announced its plans to the workforce this morning, indicating that a layoff of about 50 employees will occur in the first half of next year. The plant will idle for good in the summer of 2012. Folgers, owned by J.M. Smucker Co., is consoli dating its coffee operations in Kansas City and Sherman, Texas, to its New Orleans plant, said Maribeth Badertscher, a Smucker spokeswoman. This was a difficult decision that had to be made to meet the long-term needs of our consumers and customers, she said. It is no reflection on the dedication and commitment shown by the Kansas City workforce. Folgers has about 150 hourly employees at the plant. A union official confirmed the companys announcement and said a meeting to provide more details to the workforce will be held Thursday evening. The Folgers plant has been staple of downtown Kansas City since 1908. The city blocks near the plant often are filled with the aroma of coffee production. The plant celebrated its 100th anniversary in June 2008. At the time, company and city officials were lauding the revival of the plant, whose employment had more than doubled from the early 2000s.

the N EIG HBOR S

LAWRENCE Federal authorities are investigating possibly illegal sales of University of Kansas mens basketball tickets. The probe appears to be focused on whether NCAA Tournament tickets, and perhaps season ticket packages, have been taken illegally from the university, possibly for years, and sold through outside channels. Proceeds could be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, sources said. Lawyers with ties to the case said the investigation was in its preliminary stages. The university has launched an internal investigation, sources said. Its unclear how many individuals are under investigation, how many tickets are involved and how many years are involved. Earlier this month, Kansas administrators put a top athletic department fundraiser on an administrative leave of absence. Rodney Jones, 41, was director of KUs athletic ticket office before becoming in 2004 the assistant athletic director in charge of the Williams Educational Fund, the primary vehicle that Jayhawk boosters use to contribute to the athletic department and acquire game tickets. Thus far, athletic department spokesmen have declined to discuss the reason for Jones suspension. They offered no comment to The Kansas City Star when asked about the investigation. Officially we cannot comment at all, because it is a personnel matter, Athletic Director Lew Perkins said. Reggie Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the Kansas Board of Regents, said an internal investigation was common practice when a staff member had been placed on leave. Spokespeople for the FBI, the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. attorneys office in Kansas declined to discuss any investigation. No one answered the door at Jones apartment in Lawrence when a reporter recently knocked. He has not responded to a letter from The Star. A telephone number listed for Jones last year in state corporation paperwork was temporarily out of service.

Federal agents appear to be casting a wide net in search of witnesses. Two metropolitan area ticket brokers confirmed this week that they had spoken with federal agents investigating the KU ticket program. Hal Wagner of Ace Sports & Nationwide Tickets said agents had asked him not to discuss it. It didnt have anything to do with me, Wagner said. I really dont have any comment. Another ticket broker, who asked for anonymity because of a similar request from agents, acknowledged that he recently had received a federal subpoena. He said he was not concerned. Lawyers with clients in the case demanded anonymity, even declining to identify their clients during interviews with The Star, saying that the investigation was too sensitive to discuss publicly. The exact theory investigators are working under is unclear. One source close to the probe said it pertained to the departments handling of NCAA Tournament tickets, and another said the probe dealt both with season tickets and tournament tickets. A third source, whose firm is representing a potential subject of the inquiry, confirmed the federal ticket investigation but declined to be more specific. A critical question, one lawyer noted, is whether the staffers were legally selling tickets that they had acquired properly. According to KU policy, athletic department staffers can receive two complimentary season tickets to football and mens basketball games. The transfer or resale of complimentary tickets is prohibited, the policy states.

Henry Declares For NBA Draft, Will Discuss Decision

LAWRENCE Kansas freshman guard Xavier Henry declared for the NBA Draft on Wednesday afternoon and will discuss his decision at 3 p.m. in a press conference at Allen Fieldhouse. Henry, who averaged 13.4 points and 4.4 rebounds per game, is currently projected to be the No. 14 overall pick in the June draft by draftexpress.com. As expected, Henry became the first one-and-done player in KU history.

QUOTEWORTHY If they change jobs, or one person loses a job, theyll be able to keep their insurance. Its now going to be portable, so to speak.

Search In Kara Kopetsky Case Unsuccessful In Southern KC

KANSAS CITY A search of a wooded area in southern Kansas City today didnt turn up any new information on the disappearance of Kara Kopetsky nearly three years ago. More than 220 officers with law enforcement agencies started an exhaustive examination of a 400-acre area just east of the former Richards-Gebaur airport, near East 155th Street and U.S. 71., about 9 a.m. today. It was over about 1:30 p.m. The area has been searched before, but never a shoulderto-shoulder grid search, said FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton. This particular land, dense brush and woods on slopes, comes up consistently in the investigation, she said. Officers from Belton police, FBI, Missouri Highway Patrol, Kansas City police, Cass County Sheriff, Blue River Police Academy and United States Marine Corps assisted.

Rec Center Plans Begin To Take Shape

LAWRENCE By early April, Lawrence Parks and Recreation leaders hope to start a new push to win support for a west-side recreation center, and perhaps a larger wellness center and fieldhouse. Ernie Shaw, the citys interim Parks and Recreation director, said they have begun working with the Lawrence-based architectural firm Gould Evans to develop concept plans for a new community recreation center. The city currently does not have a recreation center west of Kasold Drive. City commissioners, however, have not committed to build any new center. A pricetag for the facility hasnt been determined, but City Manager David Corliss recommendation has been to use funds that currently are devoted to paying off the citys Indoor Aquatic Center. That facility will be paid off within the next year. A wellness center could house a variety of programs, including nutrition classes and special exercise rooms designed for children. A new fieldhouse could be used for local sports league programs, and also could become a regular site for weekend tournaments that would attract teams from throughout the region.

Snow Piles Up Into Record

KANSAS CITY Snowfall in the Kansas City area Saturday shattered the previous record for the date, with 6.7 inches recorded at Kansas City International Airport by 7 p.m. According to the National Weather Service, the previous record was 2.8 inches in 1892. Total snow on the ground from Friday and Saturday hit 8 inches at KCI. Sundays forecast called for a 20 percent chance of additional snow before 1 p.m. Then it is expected to become mostly sunny, with a high near 39 degrees.
STATWORTHY Last year the Kansas City area saw almost 35 inches of snow, which was almost a record amount.

Police Find Hungry Children Home Alone

KANSAS CITY Police arrested a woman Sunday night for allegedly leaving her six children, ages 1 to 11, home alone for nearly two days. Officers saw two of the children playing in their back yard about 11 p.m. Sunday in the 3400 block of Montgall Avenue. They were playing catch with a pool-table ball and had lost it in the snow. They said they were home alone with their younger siblings. The children, ages, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8 and 11, said they hadnt seen their mother since Saturday. The youngest childrens clothes were stained with urine and all the children were hungry and thirsty, according to police reports. Officers reported the home was filthy, with broken tables, holes in the walls and animal feces. The childrens mother then showed up, and said she had been snowed in at a relatives house and didnt have gas money. Police released the children to another relatives care.

Rhonda Beckford, Karas mother, said Belton police told them last week of investigators intentions today. Its just an area that they wanted to search, she said. Her husband, Jim Beckford, said they did not know what led police to that area, or why theyre doing it now. He said its possible authorities are going over the area to rule it out. Just the emotional strain of not knowing pulls on you, Beckford said, adding that he and his wife just try to count their blessings. As a mother, its painful, she said. Its been three years. Kara was 17 years old when last seen at Belton High School on May 4, 2007, on security cameras heading for an exit. Family and friends are planning a walk in her memory at 2 p.m. May 2 at the Cedar Tree Shopping Center in Belton. The annual event is a way to honor her and keep the case in the public eye.

Woman Expected To Survive After Being Shot

KANSAS CITY A woman was shot by her boyfriend Sunday afternoon but she is expected to live, a Kansas City dispatcher reported. The shooting occurred about 2 p.m. in the 3800 block of Ease 93rd Street, according to police reports. The boyfriend fled the scene and has not been apprehended. He is described as black and 5-foot, 4-inches tall with dreadlocks. No other information was immediately available.

thousand

800

Man Shot In Restuarant

LEES SUMMIT An unidentified man was arrested this afternoon after he allegedly stabbed a customer inside the Culvers restaurant in Lees Summit. According to initial reports, a man and a woman were sitting inside a booth when they were approached by another man who was armed with a knife, said Sgt. Mike Childs. The man with the knife immediately stabbed the other man several times in the midsection. Police think the victim knew his attacker.

STATWORTHY The number of children that go missing in the United States each year.

Saint Marys Shocks Villanova

10-Seed Advances To Sweet 16 PROVIDENCE, R.I. Omar Samhan was an unstoppable Gael force. The only time the Saint Marys star slowed down was to enjoy the moment. Did it really happen? he shouted outside the locker room. We won? For real? For real, Omar. Samhans ascension into national prominence is blasting off and so is Saint Marys run in the NCAA tournament as the Gaels are improbably headed to the round of 16. Samhan played the game of his career on basketballs biggest stage, finishing with 32 points and seven rebounds to lead 10th-seeded Saint Marys past Villanova 75-68 on Saturday and on to Houston for the South Regionals Sweet 16. Fitting for a team stocked with Australians, Saint Marys (28-5) went way, way long for its winning shot. Mickey McConnell stopped and fired a 25-footer that followed the path of the Gateway Arch and banked high off the glass and in to give Saint Marys a 68-65 lead with 1:15 left.

Its The Bricks

Hinkle Fieldhouse makes for special Butler Basketball
courtesy of ESPN

NEWSWORTHY The only time the Gaels advanced past the first round in the NCAA tournament was 1959 when there were only 23 teams in the field.

the SP EC TATOR S

10

INDIANAPOLIS Hinkle Fieldhouse looks like a red-brick airplane hangar, rising above the neighboring houses at one corner of the Butler University campus. And when a basketball game is played there, the cheers spill through its cracks and its leaky roof and its high windows. There is no video board. There are no luxury suites. The locker rooms are tight and the narrow concourse congested. Butlers athletic department offices are squeezed here and there in the recesses under the bleachers. Without even the desire for a new arena, without nationally renowned recruits or well-recognized coaches, without a large fan base or much attention from even the local news media, Butler has become a sustained midmajor power, a Gonzaga of the Midwest. In a state that cherishes small-town basketball, Butler feels more Indiana than Indiana or Purdue, or Notre Dame, or any other college that garners more attention, even for basketball programs that may not be as good. BY JOHN BRANCH

NEWSWORTHY Hinkle Fieldhouse served as inspiration for the film Hoosiers, where the climactic final game (recast as a 1952 story about fictitious Hickory High) was filmed at Hinkle.

NCAA Tournament Upsets

14 upsets in the first two rounds.
round

11

1
east Region
66 69 8 TEXAS 9 Wake foRest 5 TEMPLE 12 coRnell 6 MARQUETTE 11 Washington 65 66 7 CLEMSON 10 MissouRi 80 81 65 78 78 80 78 86

round

2
east Region
67 69 4 WISCONSIN 12 coRnell 11 Washington 3 NEW MEXICO 69 87 82 64

Midwest Region
8 UNLV 9 uni

Midwest Region
1 KANSAS 9 uni

3 GEORGETOWN 83 14 ohio 97
QUOTEWORTHY Where else, the last three years, can you win 28 games a year, go to three N.C.A.A. tournaments and coach four academic all-Americans? Coach Brad Stevens

5 Michigan st. 85 4 MARYLAND 83

West Region
4 VANDERBILT 13 MuRRay st.

West Region
6 xavieR 3 PITTSBURGH 71 68

south Region
10 st. MaRys (ca) 2 VILLANOVA 75 68

south Region
6 NOTRE DAME 11 old doMinion 7 RICHMOND 10 st. MaRys (ca) 50 51 71 80

QUOTEWORTHY Its for somebody that appreciates tradition, somebody that appreciates history. And oftentimes, those are people that appreciate team.

Tiger Woods Will Return For Masters

An outpouring of support from peers, sponsors and officials greeted the announcement by Tiger Woods that his self-imposed exile from golf would end at the Masters in April a first step in a return to normalcy on the competitive side of his life. The Masters is where I won my first major, and I view this tournament with great respect, Woods said in a statement. After a long and necessary time away from the game, I feel like Im ready to start my season at Augusta. I have undergone almost two months of inpatient therapy, and I am continuing my treatment. Although Im returning to competition, I still have a lot of work to do in my personal life. So Woods, whose primary career goal has been to break Jack Nicklauss record of 18 major championship victories, will return at a major championship, a stage that he has dominated more than any other in collecting 14 major titles. The Augusta National Golf Club, a secluded 365-acre haven, is an ideal place for his return for a number of reasons, security foremost among them.

N.F.L. Votes To Change Playoff Rules For Overtime Ljubicic Tops Roddick In Final
INDIAN WELLS, Calif. Ivan Ljubicic of Croatia outlasted Andy Roddick, 7-6 (3), 7-6 (5), to win the BNP Paribas Open on Sunday. Ljubicic, seeded 20th, set up his fourth match point with the last of his 20 aces, then won with a serve that the seventhseeded Roddick could not return. At 31, Ljubicic is the second-oldest winner at Indian Wells. Jimmy Connors was five months older when he won in 1984. Ljubicic won his first ATP Masters 1000 title after three runner-up finishes, the last in 2006. Its a really fantastic feeling to finally have it, Ljubicic said. Roddick was trying to become the first American man to win since 2001, but he trailed in both tie breakers. He had beaten Ljubicic 7 times in 10 meetings, winning their last meeting at Indian Wells in two tie breakers in 2007. I felt like I was winning my fair share of the rallies once we got into them, Roddick said. I just ran into a guy who served great on the big points. Ljubicic won the first three points of the first-set tie breaker. Roddicks forehand error left him trailing, 6-3. Ljubicic set up his winning forehand with a drop shot a tactic that repeatedly worked against Roddick. ORLANDO, Fla. The N.F.L. approved a new overtime rule for the playoffs Tuesday that will give each team at least one possession in the extra period unless the team that wins the overtime coin toss scores a touchdown on its first possession. After years of debate, the sentiment in favor of overtime reform was so strong it passed by a surprisingly large margin, 28-4 that it is possible owners will approve the rule for regular-season games in the 2010 season. The only teams to vote against the rule change were Buffalo, Baltimore, Cincinnati and Minnesota, which lost the N.F.C. championship game last season after New Orleans won the overtime coin toss and kicked a winning field goal on its opening drive. That outcome could not happen with the new rule. The crux of the rule is to make overtime outcomes less dependent on the coin flip. If the team that has possession of the ball first scores a touchdown, the game is over. But if it kicks a field goal, the other team would get a possession and would win with a touchdown. If nobody scores on the first drives, or if both teams kick field goals, the game will revert to sudden death. The change is expected to alter traditional overtime strategy. Bengals Coach Marvin Lewis said that the team with the first possession would have to consider going for a first down on fourth-and-short rather than attempting a lengthy field goal. And the team with the second possession knowing what it needs to win, or at least to keep the game going would be aware of when a field goal would be enough. That, McKay said, would offset the disadvantage of losing the coin toss. When N.F.L. owners arrived here, there did not seem to be enough sentiment to garner the 24 votes necessary to change the rule. Coaches and players generally preferred no change, with coaches not wanting to have to grapple with a new set of decisions that were sure to be second-guessed. Now, they will face those decisions in the playoffs, with no regular season to rehearse the outcomes.
STATWORTHY At 31, Ljubicic is the secondoldest winner at Indian Wells. Jimmy Connors was five months older when he won in 1984.

4 to 1
favorite
STATWORTHY Tiger Woods was picked to be the 4-1 favorite to win the Masters by British bookmaker William Hill.

12

13

Xavier Women Add Midmajor Magic

Add another college to the double Round of 16 club: Xavier. The No. 3-seeded Musketeers advanced in the womens tournament in dramatic style, beating No. 6 Vanderbilt, 63-62, Tuesday in Cincinnati. Its the first time in seven years that Xaviers women have reached the final 16. Their next opponent is No. 7 Gonzaga, in Sacramento Saturday. (The men will play Kansas State on Thursday night.) The Musketeers (29-3) have shown resilience and a steady temperament the past few weeks. They squeaked through the Atlantic 10 tournament, beating Temple, 57-55, in overtime to reach the N.C.A.A. tournament field. Xavier did the quick-escape trick again, overcoming a 10-point deficit to the Commodores late in the second half. The junior forward Amber Harris, the Atlantic 10 player of the year, scored the game-winning basket with 12 seconds left.

28 to 4
vote
STATWORTHY The sentiment in favor of overtime reform passed by a surprisingly large margin, 28-4.

QUOTEWORTHY The Masters is where I won my first major, and I view this tournament with great respect,

The N.F.L. has had 14 overtime playoff games in the last 16 years, with the team that won the toss going 7-7. In the regular season, from 1974 to 1993, teams that won the toss won the game 46.8 percent of the time and teams that lost it won the same 46.8 percent of the time.

QUOTEWORTHY Just a million things; everything you could possibly think of while youre waiting to see if youd win or lose. Xaviers Amber Harris

Obama Alters Student Loan Landscape

BY MARK SAFFER

New Tools for Financial Planning Advice

AP -- Personal finance tools have traditionally acted as money manager and financial product advocate. Now, a couple of new tools claim another role: financial planner. Last week, a former Brookings Institution consumer finance scholar introduced one such new service called HelloWallet. For a monthly subscription of $4, HelloWallet performs the traditional budgeting and money tracking functions found at free sites like Mint.com. But HelloWallet will also recommend customized financial plans for everything from saving for college to saving for retirement. Based on tuition cost trends for the particular college you expect your child to go to and your saving history, it will give you recommendations, for instance, for how much to save monthly and where.

Cities Get Creative to Court Google Broadband

NEW YORK -- The race to win a new, ultra-fast broadband network from Google is heating up - or cooling off if you're the mayor of Duluth, Minnesota. He recently took a dip in the chilly waters of Lake Superior to get the search giant's attention. The mayor of Sarasota, Florida tried to make a splash too by jumping into a shark tank to gin up some press. Other cities are trying more strategic attempts to gain attention. For instance, Topeka, Kansas has temporarily renamed itself Google, Kansas. And Pittsburgh's Mayor has issued a press release outlining an aggressive web marketing campaign urging community members to petition on a grassroots website to get Google to come to Steel City. "Sarasota businesses such as the Mote Marine Laboratory, which builds communications using high tech gear out on the water, could really use the connectivity to communicate with other research institutes around the world," said Mayor Dick Clapp. The Florida community, along with other cities nationwide, have all been galvanized by the search giant's proposed plan to build a handful of high-speed broadband networks that offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, which is about 100 times faster than the average Internet connection. Applications to participate in the program are due this Friday, March 26th. The response has been overwhelming. "We didn't anticipate this kind of grass roots enthusiasm," said Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) spokesman Dan Martin. The message that's being sent is that there's a hunger and appetite for better and faster Internet service." Google says it hopes to have its first network up and running within a year. Of course, it's not just consumers who stand to gain from access to lightening-speed broadband. Boosting speeds for Internet users is good for Google too.

the P R OSP EC TS

When President Obama put pen to paper on the final version of his health care overhaul bill Tuesday, he simultaneously changed the course of our nations student loan program.
QUOTEWORTHY

14

Along with the adjustments that Congress made to the health care aspects of the new law was a revamping of the way student loans are administered; specifically, the US government will now be the issuing the loans through the Education Department. For almost two decades, weve been trying to fix a sweetheart deal in federal law that essentially gave billions of dollars to banks to act as unnecessary middlemen in administering student loans, the President told a crowd at Northern Virginia Community Colleges Alexandria campus Tuesday. So those are billions of dollars that could have been spent helping more of our students attend and complete college; that could have been spent advancing the dreams of our children; that could have been spent easing the burden of tuition on middle-class families. Instead, that money was spent padding student lenders profits. Starting July 1st, the government will issue student loans which will bypass the banks that have traditionally provided them, thus eliminating bank subsidies. The loans, however, will be delivered and collected by private companies under performance-based contracts with the government

President Obama says Tuesdays legislation is the most significant change to finacial aid since the GI Bill of 1944

In addition, it will help estimate how much you should save to buy a house using local home prices; will forecast your homes likely worth in the future; and will identity and provide recommendations about gaps in your finances, like having no rainy day fund or emergency savings plan. It will also identify ineffective savings vehicles you may be using, among other functions. Besides the detailed financial planning advice, Matt Fellowes, HelloWallets founder and chief executive officer, said what sets HelloWallet apart from a site like Mint.com is that it is independent from banks and doesnt take any advertising dollars. Instead, it makes money through subscriptions. We are totally agnostic of where people go to bank, he said. The site is particularly aimed at lower- to middle-income consumers who may not otherwise have financial advice resources. For this reason, HelloWallet is providing the service free to at least 300,000 low-income families over the next five years, and the Rockefeller Foundation is providing funds to nonprofits to provide 10,000 subscriptions to HelloWallet for low-income Americans.

15

1st
STATWORTHY Starting July 1st the government will issue student loans which will bypass traditional banks

July

STATWORTHY

50%
of Americans

50% of Americans have less than one month of savings put aside for personal emergencies.

NEWSWORTHY -- The Rockefeller Foundation is providing funds to nonprofits for10,000 subscriptions to HelloWallet to aid 10,000 low-income Americans.

A New Source for Student Loans

AP -- People Capital offers a new online peer-to-peer service where lenders can bid on loan requests from students. President Obamas plan to have the government provide loans directly to students instead of using commercial lenders was resurrected on Thursday, when Democratic leaders agreed to bundle it into an expedited budget package along with the health care overhaul. Now, the student loan measure, which had been unlikely to pass on its own, could be passed in the Senate along with the health care measure by a simple majority vote. Earlier this month, the online student loan Web site People Capital began a peer-to-peer student loan service that matches students looking for loans directly with potential lenders, including individual lenders, and takes financial institution brokers out of the loan-finding equation. Heres how it works: Students sign up on the site and put in their loan requests. Lenders, meanwhile, sign up on the site and put up at least $1,000 for loans in a People Capital account. They then can bid on the various loan requests from students and assess various students risk and ability to repay with the help of People Capitals proprietary Human Capital score, which combines variables like SAT scores and grade point averages to determine a students future income potential and ability to repay. A spokesman said People Capital also follows the student loan industry standard verification processes that includes confirmation of SAT and G.P.A. data by a students college or university. Why would someone sign up to be a lender? Alan Samuels, People Capitals chief product officer, said two main motivations emerged in the discussions with lenders during the development of the platform: a desire to increase profits through diversification and philanthropic reasons. There is definitely a profit maximizing objective people looking at a student loan as a slightly different asset, he said. And there is another group of investors that say, I want to make a return, but I want to be doing good at the same time. Unlike more general consumer loans available on other peer-to-peer lending sites, qualified education loans available through People Capital are private student loans that are legally compliant, offer tax-deductible interest payments for borrowers and cant be discharged in bankruptcy. But unlike some government-backed student loans, repayments arent deferred until after graduation. Instead, the loans, which come in various short-term and longer-term forms, have more immediate repayment mechanisms, like interest-only or minimum payments. Al Alper, president of People Capital, said such requirements arent too much of a burden to students. He said, for instance, that a minimum monthly interest-only payment of $50 would be about the equivalent of having a pizza a week in a dorm room. People Capital takes an origination fee of a few hundred dollars from the student and servicing fees of about 1 percent from the lender. Why would a student sign up for such loans? The People Capital spokesmen said the service gives students more access to capital at a time when tuition is increasing and many other sources of financing are harder to get, especially for students with a limited credit history. To receive one of the qualified student loans, a student must be enrolled in an eligible university program, must be a United States citizen and be at least 17 or 18 years old depending on the state, among other requirements. As of this week, the five investors have lent a total of about $100,000, split among five to six students. Meanwhile, about 45 students have put in loan requests for a combined total of about $500,000 and another 100 or so students are going through the sign-up process.
STATWORTHY People Capitol offers interest only payments as low as $50/month. The average debt for a four-year student is between $13,000 and $28,000

Starbucks, Ford, Google Named Worlds Most Ethical Companies

NEW YORK -- The Ethisphere Institute, a New York City think tank, on Monday released its fourth annual list of the Worlds Most Ethical Companies. The listing, of companies with at least 100 employees and more than $50 million in annual revenue, gives its winners an opportunity to trumpet their do-gooding ways. It is not a ranking, so they are all equally winners. To compile the data on which it bases the list, Ethisphere relies mostly on the honor system. Three thousand companies were nominated--or nominated themselves--to be considered. They each filled out a survey with items like, Please describe your organizations projects and initiatives aimed at workforce sustainability and well-being.

Nonprofit Groups Forsee Tough Year

LOS ANGELES -- A new survey of nonprofit groups suggests that this year will be as challenging for them as 2009, when many organizations suffered from declines in giving, delays in government payments and increased demand for their services. Some 80 percent of the 1,315 nonprofit groups responding to the survey said they expected the demand for service to be even greater this year, and only 49 percent of the respondents expected to be able to meet that demand, according to the survey by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a charity that provides loans and other financial services to nonprofit groups. Only 18 percent expect to end the year above break-even financially, compared with the 35 percent that ended 2009 with a surplus.

16

QUOTEWORTHY President Obama says Tuesdays legislation is the most significant change to finacial aid since the GI Bill of 1944

Depending on their responses are, we might give them more points in that category, says Stefan Linssen, editor of Ethis- One of the clearest messages coming out of this survey is that phere Magazine. He adds that most companies tend to be any kind of green shoots of recovery are very slow to get to overwhelmingly honest. the nonprofit sector, said Clara Miller, chief executive of the fund. Any recovery is not actually reaching people in Ethisphere evaluated the surveys and assigned the compa- dire need and the frontline organizations that serve them. nies scores in seven different categories, including Innovation that contributes to the public well-being and Execu- More than 40 percent of the respondents predicted that govtive leadership and tone from the top. It culled the list down ernment, corporate, foundation and United Way and other to 200 or so and then cross-checked it against governance federated giving would fall this year. Only 21 percent prelists from GovernanceMetricsInternational, FTSE for Good dicted a decrease in giving by individuals and their board and other organizations. Ethisphere nixed any company members, while 39 percent said giving would stay the same thats had significant legal trouble over the past five years. and 32 percent expected it to increase. Companies that focus on alcohol, tobacco or firearms also got the boot. At the same time, it increased the number of students enrolled in the remaining programs to as many as 250 from 100. The 100 companies that made the final cut include first-time recipients Ford Motor Company, Adobe Systems and Camp- We are serving more students in the places that are showing the bell Soup. Google, Starbucks, General Electric and 33 other best results, said Eric Schwarz, chief executive and co-founder companies have appeared on the list for all four of its years. of Citizen Schools. We prioritized and were able to keep growing and adding staff in the places we were doing best.
NEWSWORTHY Of nearly 200 companies named to the list, 100 made the cut for the first time including Ford, Adobe, Campbell Soup and Google

17

$50
per month

Mr. Schwarz said that the fiscal year that ended in June 2009 had been very strong but that fund-raising in the second half of last year had been tough. Were hoping to maintain revenues at a level about flat to last year, he said. Thats a change for us because weve had a history of pretty significant growth every year.

NEWSWORTHY -- People Capitol is offering sudents the chance to post their individual financing needs, revolutionizing the business of student loans and financial aid.

STATWORTHY -- Any recovery is not actually reaching people in dire need or the frontline organizations that serve them.

The Perils of Plastic

You Can Be Your Own Fountain Of Youth

Since the days of Ponce de Leon, people have been looking for the fountain of youth and ways to live longer. Now more and more doctors are saying each individual has the power to prolong his or her life. It just takes good health decisions and some discipline. That means eating right, getting up off the couch and giving up cigarettes, if you smoke. To back up these theories, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington looked at four preventable health factors: Smoking, high blood pressure, elevated blood glucose, and obesity and how those behaviors affect our longevity. The scientists picked these four factors because according to statistics theyre responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. each year from chronic diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers and diabetes. The study investigators felt that by looking at how these risk factors affect mortality and life expectancy public health officials could better address how to improve the nations health and to reduce chronic public health conditions.

Daily Chocolate May Keep The Heart Doctor Away

Eating as little as a quarter of an ounce of chocolate each day an amount equal to about one small Easter egg may lower your risk of experiencing a heart attack or stroke, a new study has found. For best results, the chocolate should be dark, experts say. Dark chocolate exhibits the greatest effects, milk chocolate fewer, and white chocolate no effects, says the lead author of the study, Brian Buijsse, a nutritional epidemiologist at the German Institute of Human Nutrition, in Nuthetal, Germany. In the study, Buijsse and his colleagues followed nearly 20,000 people for an average of eight years. The researchers surveyed the study participants about their chocolate consumption (as well as the rest of their diet), and also tracked the heart attacks and strokes that occurred in the group. Compared with people who rarely ate chocolate (about one bar per month), the people who ate the most chocolate (slightly more than one bar per week) had a 27 percent and 48 percent reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, respectively, the researchers found.

the HEA LT HY

18

On the first Earth Day, celebrated 40 years ago this month, the U.S. was a poisoned nation. Dense air pollution blanketed cities like Los Angeles, where smog alerts were a fact of life. Dangerous pesticides like DDT were still in use, and water pollution was rampant symbolized by raging fires on Clevelands Cuyahoga River, captured in a famous 1969 story for TIME. But the green movement that was energized by Earth Day and the landmark federal actions that followed it changed much of that. Today air pollution is down significantly in most urban areas, the water is cleaner, and even the Cuyahoga is home to fish again. Though climate change looms as a long-term threat, the 40th anniversary of Earth Day will see a much cleaner country. But if the land is healing, Americans may be sickening. Since World War II, production of industrial chemicals has risen rapidly, and the U.S. generates or imports some 42 billion lb. (19 billion kg) of them per day, leaving Americans awash in a sea of synthetics. These arent the sorts of chemicals that come to mind when we picture pollution huge plants spilling contaminated wastewater into rivers. Rather, theyre the molecules that make good on the old better living through chemistry promise, appearing in items like unbreakable baby bottles and big-screen TVs. Those chemicals have a habit of finding their way out of everyday products and into the environment and ultimately into living organisms. A recent biomonitoring survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found traces of 212 environmental chemicals in Americans including toxic metals like arsenic and cadmium, pesticides, flame retardants and even perchlorate, an ingredient in rocket fuel. Its not the environment thats contaminated so much, says Dr. Bruce Lanphear, director of the Cincinnati Childrens Environmental Health Center. Its us.

As scientists get better at detecting the chemicals in our bodies, theyre discovering that even tiny quantities of toxins can have a potentially serious impact on our health and our childrens future. Chemicals like bisphenol A (BPA) and phthalates key ingredients in modern plastics may disrupt the delicate endocrine system, leading to developmental problems. A host of modern ills that have been rising unchecked for a generation obesity, diabetes, autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder could have chemical connections. We dont give environmental exposure the attention it deserves, says Dr. Philip Landrigan, director of the Childrens Environmental Health Center at New York Citys Mount Sinai Medical Center. But theres an emerging understanding that kids are uniquely susceptible to environmental hazards. If scientists were slow to arrive at that conclusion, Washington has been even slower. The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the 34-year-old vehicle for federal chemical regulation, has generally been a failure. The burden of proving chemicals dangerous falls almost entirely on the government, while industry confidentiality privileges built into the TSCA deny citizens and federal regulators critical information about how substances are made and what their effects are. In the years since the TSCA became law, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been able to issue restrictions on only a handful of chemicals and has lacked the power to ban even a dangerous carcinogen like asbestos.

They found statistics showed that when the four factors were present, the life expectancy of Americans was cut by 4.9 years in men and 4.1 years in women. When breaking it down by each factor, doctors found smoking cut life expectancy the most. Men who smoked took two and half years off their lives, while female smokers took off a little less than two years. High blood pressure was also a big factor, cutting out a year and half of life from a man with hypertension and 1.3 years from women who suffered from high blood pressure. Those who had high body mass indexes, an indicator of obesity, cut out 1.3 years from their lifespans, while those with high blood glucose, or high blood sugar, cut their lives by half a year in men and about three months in women. This study demonstrates the potential of disease prevention to not only improve health outcomes in the entire nation but also to reduce the enormous disparities in life expectancy that we see in the U.S., said Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health at the Harvard School of Public Health and senior author of the study.

19

STATWORTHY The average American eats 10-12 pounds (4.5 kg) of chocolate a year. The average Swiss eats 21 pounds a year.

QUOTEWORTHY Dark chocolate exhibits the greatest effects, milk chocolate fewer, and white chocolate no effects

A TV Show And Congress Tackle School Lunches

Its been an unusually tough month for the people who make school lunches. Friday night, more than seven million viewers watched the premiere of Jamie Olivers Food Revolution, an ABC reality series in which the British chef storms the kitchens of Huntington, W.Va., to improve the towns collective diet. That only the N.C.A.A. Division I mens basketball tournament pulled in more viewers signals that the nation has an appetite for the kind of wholesale food reform Mr. Oliver is pushing. That wasnt the only recent public thrashing for the people who make school food. Students in Chicago showed up at a Board of Education meeting to protest the quality of their midday meals. And members of the national news media discovered the Fed Up with Lunch blog, written by an anonymous school employee in the Midwest who is spending a year eating and publishing photos of awful-looking food at her school cafeteria. Although school food directors and the growing ranks of those seeking to improve what is served in the lunchroom are disappointed with the numbers coming out of Washington, people who have been working with the Agriculture Department and Congress to improve school food say the bills $4.5-billion increase is an historic improvement. The Child Nutrition Act comes up for financing every five years. It pays for school food and other nutrition programs for lower-income children. Its also the mechanism legislators can use to change the rules that govern those programs. The bill headed to the Senate floor would increase by about 6 cents the $2.68 that schools can get for each lunch far less than the $1-a-lunch increase that a coalition of groups seeking to change school food programs have been campaigning for. Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, said the bill was still worth supporting. This is the strongest child nutrition reauthorization bill I have ever seen, said Ms. Wootan, who has worked to improve school nutrition standards for 17 years. We cant go from candy bars to apples in one fell swoop. In addition to the increase in financing, Agriculture Department staff members said a number of less obvious changes in nutritional rules and financing for special programs will improve what is served in schools as soon as next year.

City Endorses New Policy For Treatment Of H.I.V. Recipes For Health: Pantry Clean-Out
Broccoli and Wheat Berries 1 cup wheat berries 6 cups water, vegetable stock or chicken stock Salt to taste 2 broccoli crowns, broken into florets 2 tablespoons olive oil 1/2 cup minced onion 2 garlic cloves, minced 2 teaspoons chopped fresh rosemary and ground pepper 1 to 2 ounces Parmesan cheese, grated 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley 1. Place the wheat berries in a bowl, and pour on enough hot water to cover by an inch. Soak for at least one hour, preferably overnight. 2. Drain the wheat berries, retaining the soaking water. Add the soaking water to the stock. Add salt to taste. Place in a large saucepan, and bring to a boil. Add the broccoli, blanch for three minutes and transfer to a bowl of ice water. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then drain and set aside. 3. Bring the liquid in the pan back to a boil, and add the wheat berries. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer one hour, until the wheat berries are tender. Remove from the heat, allow the grains to swell in the cooking water for 10 minutes and then drain over a bowl. You will need some of the liquid later. 4. Heat the oil over medium heat in a large, heavy nonstick skillet, and add the onion. Cook, stirring, until tender, about five minutes, and add the garlic and rosemary. Cook, stirring, until fragrant, about one minute, then stir in the wheat berries and the broccoli and heat through. Add freshly ground pepper, taste and adjust seasoning. 5. Scoop 1/4 of the cooking liquid you set aside from the bottom of the bowl, where the starch has settled. Stir into the wheat berries, along with the Parmesan and parsley. Heat through, stirring until the cheese melts, and serve. Yield: Serves four. The new, controversial city guidelines, to be announced next week by the Department of Public Health, may be the most forceful anywhere in their endorsement of early treatment against H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. In a major shift of H.I.V. treatment policy, San Francisco public health doctors have begun to advise patients to start taking antiviral medicines as soon as they are found to be infected, rather than waiting sometimes years for signs that their immune systems have started to fail.

When The Gym Isnt Enough

Over the course of a year, Alex Feintuch, a 20-year-old sophomore at the University of South Carolina, spent more than $1,000 on fitness supplements. Mr. Feintuch wanted to add size and definition to his muscles, and to see results as quickly as possible. He did research and tried dozens of products, with mixed results. Of the products that I have bought, Ive found many that work well, he said. But some dont and were a waste of money. The fitness supplements industry is primarily aimed at young men like Mr. Feintuch. Bodybuilding-related products powders and pills with names like Muscle Milk, Amplified Mass XXX and N.O.-Xplode represented a $2.7 billion industry in 2008, but one whose benefits are in serious dispute. The products are a subset of the more-familiar category of nutritional supplements, which includes mainstream items like vitamin-infused waters and energy bars. That market represented $25 billion in revenue in 2008, according to Nutrition Business Journal, a trade publication. Athletes seeking peak performance are often concerned about eating right, choosing foods that allow their bodies to function at their best everything from bananas to Peak bars. But going the next step to taking a pill or powder elicits more skepticism. Young female athletes, for example, are more apt to stick with multivitamins, energy drinks and bars, doctors and trainers say.

Ever since combinations of antiviral drugs were found to slow progression of the disease in the mid-1990s, doctors and patients have wrestled with the question of when to begin a lifetime regimen of costly and sometimes toxic medicines. The answer remains in dispute, but public health leaders here are now making a case for a change. Behind the policy switch is mounting evidence that patients who start early are more likely to live longer, and less likely to suffer a variety of ailments including heart disease, kidney failure and cancer that plague long-term survivors. Studies suggest that in the early years of infection, when a patient may show few signs of immune system failure, the virus is in fact causing permanent damage that becomes evident later.

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Insurers To Comply With Rules On Children

Under pressure from the White House, health insurance companies said Tuesday that they would comply with rules to be issued soon by the Obama administration requiring them to cover children with pre-existing medical problems. Under pressure from the White House, health insurance companies said Tuesday that they would comply with rules to be issued soon by the Obama administration requiring them to cover children with pre-existing medical problems. Major provisions of the law take effect in 2014. Some, including a ban on pre-existing condition exclusions for children under 19, take effect in September. The law does not explicitly say that insurers must sell insurance to families with such children this year, but Democratic Congressional leaders and White House officials said that was their intent.

percent

14

STATWORTHY
American children are obese with the number growing each year.

QUOTEWORTHY Of the products that I have bought, Ive found many that work well

Why so blue?

TheNewStandard.com
to find out.

Please visit

TheNewStandard
Made you look. the feature Top skiing locations in California, Colorado, Vermont, and Montana. the neighbors RAIN is here. The Beatles Cover band makes an appearance at Starlight and local art exhibitions at the Nelson Art Museum. the viewers New exhibits and movies are highlighted. Including a new exhibition at the Guggenheim opening in April 2010. the readers Theres a fine line between theif and gambler. Josh Axelrad grossed over $ 700,000 as a member ofan MIT card-counting group called Mossad. Now hes telling all about it. fouRTeeN the healthy Learn what to do to make this a greener month, as well as learn ten healthy foods for your heart.

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TheNewStandard special feature

skiAmerica
2010 GUIDE

Savvy skiers, listen up: This could just be your year to find great deals at some of Americas best ski resorts. Low on cash? No wories. well show you where to find downhill ski bargains in an economic downturn.

skiAmerica

2010 GUIDE

Heavenly, California
WHY SKI THERE Its a massive mountain with 4,800 skiable

Okemo, Vermont
WHY SKI THERE okemo has long epitomized the classic,

acres, offering plenty of bang for your lift-ticket buck. And the views across the deep blue Lake Tahoe are arguably the best of any ski resort in North America.
WHY ITS a BaRgaIn A large lodging base means youll

family-friendly Vermont resort, a low-key alternative to some of its frenetic neighbors.

WHY ITS a BaRgaIn on-slope lodging is condo-based,

have a variety of lesser-priced options. harrahs, one of the half-dozen casinos in adjacent Stateline, Nevada, has affordable eateries. And Tahoes venerable Red hut Cafe is where to stoke up on a breakfast that wont run you more than $10 a head.
WHERE To STaY forest Suites Resort (doubles from $145) is

so eating in is de rigueur. Midweek and late season deals can dramatically lower costs.
WHERE To STaY with a Midwinter Value weekend package,

located under heavenly Gondola, so you can be the first on the mountain.
MoRE Info www.skiheavenly.com

stay at okemo Mountain Lodge (doubles from $275) and get two weekend nights in a one-bedroom slopeside condo along with daily lift tickets. The package also includes free admission to the 18,000-square-foot Spring house pool complex.
MoRE Info www.okemo.com

Big Sky, Montana Copper, Colorado

WHY SKI THERE often overlooked by those rushing up I-70 WHY SKI THERE In a word, terrain. Big Sky and the adjacent

to somewhere else, Copper offers a compact ski village and a range of challenging terrain.
WHY ITS a BaRgaIn At the base is a village of kitchen-

resort of Moonlight Basin share Lone Peak mountain, and with a combined total of 5,512 acres of terrain, its the most acreage in the united States. The only line youll find here is the one you carve down one of the Dictator Chutes on a powder morning.
WHY ITS a BaRgaIn Children age 10 and under ski free,

equipped, condo-style units that encourage eating in. You can walk to the lifts (no car or shuttle needed), and youre only two hours west of Denver International Airport, which is served by dozens of flights daily.
WHERE To STaY A silver level condo like Creekside (dou-

and dining at local favorites like Allgoods for barbecue or Bucks Pub at Bucks T-4 Lodge wont break the bank.
WHERE To STaY huntley Lodge (doubles from $168) is on

bles from $138) is a five-minute walk to American eagle Lift.

MoRE Info www.coppercolorado.com

the slopes in the heart of the village. And check out the 320 Guest Ranchs Great Value Ski & Stay Package, where $77 gets you cabin accommodations, lift ticket, transportation to the shuttle, and continental breakfast.
MoRE Info www.bigsky.com

Rain: A Tribute To The Beatles

6
about the band: The history of RAIN actually predates the Broadway hit "Beatlemania", from which RAIN's all-star cast was recruited. when Dick Clark searched for the musicians to record the sound track for "Birth of the Beatles", he didn't have to look much further than to this talented group. No other group can claim the level of talent and true musicianship contained within this band. There are other acts who respectfully attempt to replicate a subset of the Beatles music, but only RAIN can perform the full range of the Beatles discography live onstage, including the most complex and challenging songs that the Beatles themselves recorded in the studios but never performed for an audience. No other rendition of the fab fours music comes close to this level of performance, which has taken years of mastery and attention to detail that is unmatched. from the early days of their appearance on the ed Sullivan show in 1964, through the Sgt. Pepper era and on to the Abbey Road years, RAINs performance captures it all flawlessly. Coming together: RAINs intention was not just to cover Beatle songs, but to take it to a new level. To do songs that The Beatles had never performed live, and do them note-fornote, just like the records. At this time, tribute bands were non-existent. Since the 1980s, for the five longtime band members Joey Curatolo (vocals, bass, guitar, piano), Joe Bithorn (vocals, lead guitar, guitar synthesizer), Ralph Castelli (vocals, drums, percussion), the addition of Steve Landes (vocals, guitar, piano, harmonica) in 1998all of whom performed in the hit Broadway and touring productions of Beatlemaniaand Mark Lewis, RAINs founding member (keyboards, percussion), the music is first and foremost. for more than two decades, RAIN has distinguished itself by focusing on details, always being faithful to The Beatles with the ultimate goal of delivering a perfect note-for-note performance. All the music is performed live, with no pre-recorded tapes or sequences. They approach The Beatles music with the same respect a classical musician treats classical music. They worked hard for many years, studying each song, each note, movement and nuanceboth vocally and musically. Today, they have a repertoire of over 200 Beatle songs.

WHERE: Kansas City starlight theatre DaTE: september 7-12th TIME: 8:00PM RunnIng TIME of SHoW: 2 hours 20 minutes

Art Exhibitions
The Poetics Of Space
Inspired by french philosopher Gaston Bachelards book La potique de lespace (The Poetics of Space) (1958), focus on the spatial dynamics of our architectural and natural surroundings. Through photographs by william Christenberry, Lynn Davis, walker evans, Todd hido, and Aaron Siskind, among others, the exhibition reveals the mysterious and poetic worlds dwelling within domestic, urban, and natural spaces.
WHERE: Kemper Museum

Music
Jack Johnson
The 2008 world tour had a ton of special moments, and this CD represents some of the finest. from sharing the stage at Bonnaroo with eddie Vedder, to leading a massive singalong at Bercy in Paris, to wowing a festival crowd at outside Lands, to stepping onto the stage alone to close the show at Red Rocks. Longtime crowd favorites from Jacks catalog are inter- woven with passages from some of Jacks own favorite songs (Do You Remember segues into a verse from Jimi hendrixs Remember; Jacks The horizon has Been Defeated blends into Paul Simons Mother and Child Reunion in front of a mainstage headlining crowd at Bonnaroo, and Bubble Toes dips into the Charles wright classic express Yourself).
WHERE: Capitol federal Park at sandstone,

Kansas City, Kansas

WHEn: april 10, 2009april 11, 2010

bonner springs, Kansas

WHEn: august 16, 2010 TIME: 3:30PM

the n ei g hbor s

Venice. 3 Visions In Glass

explore recent pieces of the leading artists, Cristiano Bianchin, Yoichi ohira and Laura de Santillana, working in glass today. Collaborating with workshops on the island of Murano, a historic glass-making center in Venice, these artists have broken with tradition to produce unexpected forms, effects and moods.
WHERE: nelson atkins Museum

DooRS opEn: 6:30 PM

tickets onsale april 10, 2010

Special Events
5th Annual Putt Putt Pub Crawl
This years event will be held on April 17, 2010, in the KC Live block in the Power and Light District. Teams of four will battle it out on for putt putt supremacy on nine mini-golf holes. In addition, teams will compete for best team name, and best dressed team. Team check-in begins noon, and golfing commences at 1 p.m. The putt putt holes will be located throughout the Live Block courtyard in front of venues including fuego, Tengo Sed Cantina, Pizza Bar, The Living Room and more! A portion of the event Proceeds will go to Team TKo. Teams, which will participate in teams of four, will receive an event t-shirt, a mini-golf round and great beer & vodka specials during the event. Prizes will be awarded for first, second and third place as well as a prize for the best-dressed team. There will also be special giveaways at select holes for a holein-one!! The cost is $20 per person
WHERE: Power & light district, KC live block WHEn: april 17, 2010 TIME: 1:00PM WHERE: tba - Kansas City WHEn: april 17, 2010 TIME: 8:00 aM - 12:00 PM

4 9

Kansas City, Kansas

WHEn: March 6, 2010august 15, 2010

Walk MS Kansas City Metro

walk MS participants in various stages of life - students, professionals, homemakers, retired individuals - join together to create a world free of MS. A key to each walks success is the phenomenal number of dedicated volunteers. By walking or volunteering and raising money to fight multiple sclerosis, you join more than 200,000 Americans who will contribute more than $37 million to walk MS 2010. while there is no registration fee or minimum pledge amount, the reason we walk is to end MS. we request and challenge each participant to raise at least $25. By raising $100 by the day of walk, you qualify for a t-shirt ($125 after the walk). walk MS Kansas City Metro will take place on April 17 2010 and the location will be announced. Check-in begins at 8:00 a.m. and the walk begins at 9:00 a.m. Join us for the walk, fun, food and to create a world free of MS.

Exploring Egypt: 19th Century Expeditionary Photography

exploring egypt will present recent acquisitions to the permanent collection of the 19th century photographic rediscovery of egypt (1845-1860s). It is through these early photographs that people in the western world obtained their first view of the region that would become a tourist destination in future centuries. This exhibition will guide the viewer on a visual tour of the Nile, highlighting popular sites including the pyramids at Giza, the palace at Karnak, and the Island of Philae.
WHERE: nelson atkins Museum

Kansas City, Kansas

WHEn: March 6, 2010July 18, 2010

Call 816-979-1721 or e-mailevents@eventkc.com with any questions on registration.

Check-in begins at 8:00 a.m. walk begins at 9:00 a.m. Contact: rachel.ammerman@nmss.org 913.432.3927

New York

Guggenheim Museum March 26September 6, 2010 HAUNTED

San Francisco
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art February 06 - May 02, 2010 LUC TUYMANS
influenced by the northern european painting tradition as well as by photography, television, and cinema, luc tuymans blends filmic techniques with a mastery of painting to explore issues of history, memory, and the mass media. Making ingenious use of cropping, close-ups, framing, and sequencing, tuymanss paintings initially suggest relatively innocuous depictions of everyday life but other meanings almost always lurk beneath their surfaces. this is the first u.s. retrospective for the belgian artist and the most comprehensive presentation of his work to date, with approximately 75 key paintings from 1985 to the present.

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if you want to subject your eye and brain to a stimulating exercise in frustration, see haunted: Contemporary Photography/video/Performance at the solomon r. guggenheim Museum. next read the shows catalog. then try to fit them together in a cohesive way. you probably wont succeed. this show traces photography, photo appropriation and their offshoots, from stalwarts like andy warhol and robert rauschenberg to newbies like sara vanderbeek and nate lowman. the catalog, on the other hand, barely makes it past the Pictures artists of the 1980s who helped appropriation the use of existing images achieve its current prominence. the books four main essays take lots of wonderful detours into beckett, this show writes a few Pictures artists out of the picture. and among the 60 artists it represents, only one is black. wthis is horrifying considering that more than a dozen black artists neatly fit into this shows premise, starting with glenn ligon; and that others, notably adrian Piper, belong to the Post-Minimal generation that ushered both still photography and video not to mention an extremely haunted sensibility into contemporary art.

the actual exhibition is for the most part routine and innocuous. organized by Jennifer blessing and nat trotman, the museums curator and associate curator of photography, it swings rather listlessly between the arcane and the obvious, the overly familiar and the unknown, the important and the trifling. it backtracks unnecessarily to established figures like rauschenberg, warhol, bernd and hilla becher, robert smithson and robert Mapplethorpe, and there are other mixed signals. with only a few exceptions this show doesnt really come to life until it gets past the Pictures generation, into film pieces by douglas gordon and tacita dean and beyond, to the work of younger artists who have devised new ways to use appropriation, set-up and regular photography, together or separately. a starting point might be rachel harrisons blazing saddles from 2003, sculpture made from plastic foam and lumber painted green that serves as a pedestal for a cowboy-theme photograph of lucille ball in her i love lucy prime. Ms. vanderbeek, for example, combines set-up and appropriation techniques in her photographs of house-of-cards-like arrangements built from found images and small objects, which create delicate, poetic contrasts of different cultures and artifacts.

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St. Louis
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis January 22 - April 11, 2010 SEAN LANDERS
the Contemporary art Museum st. louis presents the first survey of the early work of new york-based sean landers. since the 1990s, landers work has been one of the most captivating enterprises in contemporary art, as a practice that has long gamed sincere attempt to map the boundaries of human-nature and the self. this exhibition proposes that landers formative body of work, produced from 19911994, was one that defined the artist, the persona, and the conceptual conceits that he has cultivated and enriched over the course of his twenty-year career. weaving stream-of-thought text or soliloquizing on lo-fi video, landers presents the artist as an object of study: from the earliest yellow legal pads featuring as autobiographer the fictional artist Chris hamson, to the reclaiming of the persona by landers own voice.

Date Night
opens friday, april 9, 2010 | Pg-13 sexual and crude content throughout, language, some violence and a drug reference dragged down by the daily grind, suburbanites Phil (steve Carell) and Claire (tina fey) try to put the spark back in their marriage by visiting a trendy Manhattan bistro. they get more than they bargained for when a case of mistaken identity hurtles them into an incredible adventure involving corrupt cops, a mob boss and a crazed cab driver.

Death At A Funeral
opens april 16, 2010 runtime:1 hr. 30 min. nr a day in the life of an american family who come together to put a beloved husband and father to rest. as mourners gather at the family home, shocking revelations, festering resentments, ugly threats, blackmail and a misdirected corpse unleash lethal mayhem.

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The Runaways
opens friday, april 9, 2010 rall involving teens, sexual content, language and drug use Joan Jett (Kristen stewart) and Cherie Currie (dakota fanning), two rebellious teenagers from southern California, become the frontwomen for the runaways -- the now-legendary group that paved the way for future generations of female rockers. under the svengalilike influence of impresario Kim fowley (Michael shannon), the band becomes a huge success, with Joan as the bands hard-rocking heart, and Cherie as the sex kitten. but the teens stormy relationship threatens the bands future.

Kick-Ass
opens april 16, 2010 r strong brutal violence throughout, pervasive language, sexual content, nudity and some drug use KiCK-ass tells the story of average teenager dave lizewski (aaron Johnson), a comic-book fanboy who decides to take his obsession as inspiration to become a real-life superhero. as any good superhero would, he chooses a new name -- Kick-ass -- assembles a suit and mask to wear, and gets to work fighting crime. theres only one problem standing in his way: Kick-ass has absolutely no superpowers. his life is forever changed as he inspires a subculture of copy cats, meets up with a pair of crazed vigilantes.

Repeat Until Rich

Modeled after the legendary M.I.T. Blackjack Team of
the late 1970s, Mossad would hit the road for a couple of weeks at a time, invading casinos with squads of players, who had carefully defined roles. There were spotters, who would sit patiently at a blackjack table, keeping track of the cards until the odds tilted in favor of the bettor; controllers, who had mastered odds and strategy; and B.P.s (big players), who would move in and start placing large bets. Mr. Axelrad estimates in the book that in a five-year career he won $700,000 for his team. he then went broke playing online poker, to which he became helplessly addicted, and while struggling to write his book he gave up gambling for years. until this trip he hadnt been in Atlantic City since 2004. his book is dark, funny, at times painfully honest, and strips much of the mythology from counting, which turns out to be less difficult than most people imagine and also a lot less glamorous. Its very odd, he said, laughing nervously, as he tried to explain why his bankrollers had entrusted their money to someone who was a self-confessed gambling addict. But I think my teammates understand it. Its sort of heartwarming. They know my entire story, and they understand how its possible for the same person to be in a degenerate, addicted pathology, and also be entrusted with their money. Card counting is not illegal, he says in his book, and to a certain extent casinos tacitly encourage it if it makes bettors flock to the blackjack tables thinking they can beat the system. what the casinos dont like is counters who are good enough to win, and in many states such players, if they can be identified, are evicted. Pit bosses keep files and photographs of repeat offenders. Counters, for their part, resort to ruses and disguises and misdirection. Mr. Axelrad, who is small and intense, used to pretend to be drunk or on drugs. he wore a wig on occasion. The key is to insert some new problem into the mind of the pit, he said, so theyre worried about something else than why is this person betting this way.

Burning Bright: Grim Stories From Ron Rash

by annie MurPhy Paul with last years marvelously sinister Serena, set in the early 20th-century logging camps of North Carolina and containing probably the most villainous female character since Lady Macbeth, the enormously talented Ron Rash broke free of the regional writer label that had followed him for most of his career.
REaDWoRTHY

he ensures his stature as a truly national treasure with Burning Bright, a collection of short stories that combine the

like last years serena, rashs newest novel

the r ea d er s

Josh axelrad is rich; good at math.

lush but rough-edged atmosphere of Appalachia with ice- burning bright is a suspick-sharp dialogue, the kind that plunges right to the heart pensfull thriller sure to keep of a character in one vicious, glorious stroke. you on edge until the end. In the first story, hard Times, Rash evokes deprivation so profound that the main character, Jacob, imagined towns where hungry men hung on boxcars looking for work that couldnt be found, shacks where families lived who didnt even have one swaybacked milk cow. he imagined cities where blood stained the sidewalks beneath buildings tall as ridges. he tried to imagine a place worse than where he was. It seems to be set during the Great Depression, but this tale could just as easily have taken place, oh, last week. In Back of Beyond and The Ascent, the author ventures into the grim lives of modern-day meth addicts and their beleaguered families. In Into the Gorge, he juxtaposes the rights of individuals against the rights of government in the unassuming guise of a man whose forebears planted ginseng on land thats now under federal domain. when Jesse tries to harvest some of that ancestral ginseng to make a little money, he gets arrested. Nastiness ensues. If this all sounds relentlessly grim well, yes, its dark. Its sober. But its so beautifully rendered, its the reading equivalent of hiking into a cavern encrusted with stalactites and stalagmites and all manner of unidentifiable, possibly poisonous outcroppings. Its scary, and its deep, and its completely, breathtakingly gorgeous.

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atlantiC City -- Sitting

one afternoon recently in the lobby of Caesars casino here, where the floor is paved with stone to resemble the streets of ancient Rome, Josh Axelrad was trying to resemble someone idle, unemployed and not too bright. he was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a ford racing cap at an off-kilter angle. he was not advertising that, stuffed in wads in his pockets and stacked in a money belt around his waist, he was packing $20,000 that friends had staked him to play cards with.

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QuoTEWoRTHY im a little frantic right now -- being here, the book coming out. i actually aspire to live more calmly.

Mr. Axelrad, who is 35 and has a philosophy degree from Columbia, is or used to be a professional card counter and blackjack player. In his memoir, Repeat until Rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack wars, which came out last week from the Penguin Press, he describes how for five years he was part of a gambling team he calls Mossad. Card counting recognizes that in blackjack, face cards and 10s are more valuable to the player, while lower cards are better for the dealer. In Mr. Axelrads system cards are assigned a value of -1, 0, or +1, and the counter keeps a running tally of every hand he sees, waiting for a time when the deck (or, in most casinos, a shoe containing several decks) is literally stacked in his favor.

$8.7
Million
STaTWoRTHY the annual revenue for the Clark County, new Jersey gaming Commision was $8,710,976,000, in 2009

QuoTEWoRTHY The key is to insert some new problem into the mind of the pit, so theyre worried about something else than why is this person betting this way.

best sellers
How to Be Brilliant
by annie MurPhy Paul top 5 in 4 Categories

Creepy-Crawly, Letter by Letter

by Janet Maslin hugh Raffles was taking a shower in his Manhattan apartment when a three-inch-long water bug dropped from the ceiling and landed at his feet. his first reaction was one that might be expected. I admit it: I screamed, he writes in Insectopedia, his new compendium of thoughts about the creepy-crawly. wouldnt you? Then Mr. Raffles did something more unusual. he took this anecdote about the shower, labeled it The unseen and made it the u chapter in his fluky, perversely appealing encyclopedia-style volume. There is one entry per letter of the alphabet, but why does this scream/shower/big-horrible-bug story become the u entry? As with all of Insectopedia, theres no particular reason for what goes where. Arbitrariness is part of this books extremely peculiar charm. So what if this oddball foray into insecto-tourism coughs up occasionally empty passages? (what is a cricket in these circumstances without its existence in culture? what is this culture without the existence of crickets?) Mr. Raffless adventure succeeded in landing him in The Shanghai evening Post as a visiting Anthropologist Studying human-Insect Relations, u.S. Professor wants to Publish a Book on Crickets. And he has learned that a male cricket will fight much better if pregame sex is part of his training regimen.

Hardcover Fiction

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Mr. Raffles refers to sex-related insect lore as often as he can. of course he does: he has to. Less attention would be paid to Insectopedia if its S chapter were not literal-minded enough to be called Sex, and if the brand of sex to which it refers were not so extra-special. here is an opportunity to learn about the fetish that has prompted films like Squish, At N (for Nepal), Mr. Raffles describes taking a trip with Smush, Toad Trampler and Clogs and frogs: pornohis friend Dan and smoking drugs with Dan all day long. we graphic films in which small creatures (not all of them insects, lived in a state of sensuous, if not analytic, clarity, he recalls. but whos counting?) are stepped on, films made for men who Thats more or less the mind-set of Insectopedia, which is are excited by the thought of being messily crushed. not to say that Mr. Raffles isnt lucid and full of interesting information. Its just that a creature like the cricket can pop up anywhere in this book without warning. Many crickets are here, even Jiminy Cricket. But not even he is anywhere near the C chapter. Jiminy shows up in Il Parco delle Cascine on Ascension Sunday. (whats that? Its the P chapter, for Parco.) Mr. Raffles tells the reader that he wishes he could quote the lyrics sung by Jiminy in when You wish upon a Star, from Disneys Pinocchio, because this is one of hollywoods most enduringly democratic lyrics, a lyric that brilliantly captures the emptiness, navet and consolations of the American dream. But the copyright holder wanted way too much money. Most of Insectopedia is even buggier than that. Its G chapter, Generosity (The happy Times), delves deeply into the weird world of Shanghais illicit cricket fights. This involves high-stakes gambling, issues of biosecurity, criteria for cricket excellence, special equipment like the cricket couples marriage box and Jia Sidaos Book of Crickets. This last is a 13th-century book identified as the unquestioned urtext of the cricket community.

Its ambitious indeed to try to overthrow in one go the conventional ideas and images that have accumulated since 1874, when francis Galton first set the words nature and nurture against each other. Yet David Shenk convinces his readers of The Genius in All of us that such a coup is necessary, and he gets it well under way. he tells engaging stories, lucidly explains complex research and offers fresh insights into the nature of exceptional performance: noting, for example, that profound achievements are often driven by petty jealousies and resentments, or pointing out the surprising fact that great talent seems to cluster geographically and temporally, undermining the assumption that its all due to individual genetic endowments. Just how tall a task Shenk took on is evident in his voluminous endnotes, which go on as long as the main text and are just as interesting. here the author allows us to watch him working his way through the literature, inquiring, arguing, marveling, as he wrestles a new understanding into being.

in brief
Quick hits on new releases

1. house rules, by Jodi Picoult 2. the helP, by Kathryn stockett 3. the silent sea, by Clive Cussler and Jack du brul 4. baCKlash, by aaron allston 5. abrahaM linColn: vaMPire hunter, by seth grahame-smith

Josh axelrad is a 35yr old graduate of New York Citys Columbia university. As a former professional card-counter and blackjack player, Axelrad has a few stories to tell. his memoir, Repeat until Rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack wars tells all about his struggles with gambling addiciton and the ins and outs of a dangerous system. 210 pages - Bantam - $15.95

Hardcover Nonfiction 1. Chelsea Chelsea bang bang, by Chelsea handler 2. Courage and ConseQuenCe, by Karl rove 3. Change your brain, Change your body, by daniel g. amen 4. no aPology, by Mitt romney 5. the PaCifiC, by hugh ambrose

frederick neeson

wrote a book on

Mark Twain: The Ebb And Flow Of The Life Of Huckleberry Finns Creator
by riChard waKefield April marks 100 years since the death of Samuel L. Clemens, a writer whose literary stock rose fast, beginning in the mid1860s, when he re-christened himself Mark Twain, and has remained blue chip ever since. Yet if not for one indisputably great book, The Adventures of huckleberry finn, he would be just another of dozens of once-popular but now nearly forgotten writers of his time Brett harte, Ambrose Bierce, even the colossal william Dean howells. All wrote works that can still be engaging; none left anything approaching the social and literary touchstone of huck finn. while Roughing It has long, wonderful passages, and Puddnhead wilson, Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi are near-classics, many of Twains other books are almost unreadable today. The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc? A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court and The Prince and the Pauper, famous for their stories, will defeat any but the most dedicated Mark Twain fan. So the general reader who picks up a biography of Mark Twain is likely to be searching for insight into that one watershed novel.

pancakes. Seriously, an entire book on the breakfast food you love to hate. Its 300 pages total but half of them are stuck together. Its a really tough read, especially if youre a fan of waffles. whats up with turkey-bacon by the way? That shit is whack. 327 pages - LogCabin - $12.00

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Paperback Trade Fiction 1. little bee, by Chris Cleave 2. the last song, by nicholas sparks 3. a reliable wife, by robert goolrick 4. the girl with the dragon tattoo, by stieg larsson 5. the 8th Confession, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Comedian Chelsea handler beats out Karl Rove (say that without laughing) for the top spot on the hardcover nonfiction list with her new collection of writings entitled Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang. Its one part memoir, one part terrible lie; the fun is in figuring out where truth stops and farce begins. Play it with your friends! 185 pages - Penguin - $14.99

REaDWoRTHY

Raffles INSECTOPEDIA is a letter-by-letter account of one mans life and adventure with bugs.
illustrated. 465 pgs; Pantheon. $29.95

Paperback Nonfiction 1. a Patriots history of the us, by larry schweikart and Michael allen 2. are you there, vodKa? its Me, Chelsea, by Chelsea handler 3. My horiZontal life, by Chelsea handler 4. the blind side, by Michael lewis 5. three CuPs of tea, by greg Mortenson and david oliver relin

QuoTEWoRTHY Anthropologist Studying human-Insect Relations, u.S. Professor wants to Publish a Book on Crickets.

REaDWoRTHY wednesday April 21st Author Robert Goolrick hosts an online chat about his newest book A ReLIABLe wIfe. Details at www.random-house.com/Goolrick

10 Best Foods For Your Heart

oaTMEal A bowl of oats, is full of omega-3 fatty acids, fo-

late, and potassium. This fiber-rich superfood can lower levels of LDL (or bad) cholesterol and help keep arteries clear.
SalMon Super-rich in omega-3 fatty acids, salmon can

How Much Exercise Will Prevent Weight Gain?

Losing weight is difficult, and keeping it off may be even harder. So harvard researchers set out to determine exactly how much physical activity women need in midlife to avoid gaining weight as they age. The researchers found that an hour of moderate activity a day including such recreational activities as brisk walking, leisurely bicycling, ballroom dancing and playing with children prevented women of normal weight from gaining more than five pounds over any three-year period. half that amount of vigorous activity, like running, jogging or fast biking, will do the trick as well, they said. women who got the same amount of exercise but were heavier to start with were not able to avoid gaining weight, however. Neither were women of normal weight who got less than seven hours a week of moderate activity, according to the study, published in the March 24 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association. The average weight gain over the course of the 15-year study, which followed 34,079 healthy women with an average age of 54 at the beginning, was just over five pounds. The researchers did not take diet into account. Its so hard to lose weight and maintain the loss, so whatever weight you are, you should try to stay that weight that is a success, said the papers lead author, Dr. I-Min Lee, an associate professor of epidemiology at harvard School of Public health. But any amount of exercise is beneficial, she emphasized. People shouldnt just throw up their hands and say, Sixty minutes? I cant do that, and give up. health is more than weight.

effectively reduce blood pressure and keep clotting at bay. Aim for two servings per week, which may reduce your risk of dying of a heart attack by up to one-third.
avocaDo Packed with monounsaturated fat, avocados

can help lower LDL levels while raising the amount of hDL cholesterol in your body.
olIvE oIl full of monounsaturated fats, olive oil

the hea lt hy

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One Green Year: What You Can Do This Month

By following this plan, each small step adds up to changes that will benefit the health of the planetand, yes, even your own healthimmediately and in years to come.
fooD Switch one staple of your diet from conventional to EnERgY Set aside a weekend green-the-house day: enlist

lowers bad LDL cholesterol and reduces your risk of developing heart disease.
nuTS walnuts are full of omega-3 fatty acids and, along

with almonds and macadamia nuts, are loaded with monoand polyunsaturated fat. Plus, nuts increase fiber in the diet.
BERRIES Blueberries, raspberries, strawberrieswhatever

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berry you like bestare full of anti-inflammatories, which reduce your risk of heart disease and cancer.
lEguMES fill up on fiber with lentils, chickpeas, and black

and kidney beans. Theyre packed with omega-3 fatty acids, calcium, and soluble fiber.
SpInacH Spinach can help keep your ticker in top shape

organic: eggs this month, milk the next. for the greatest impact, choose something you buy all the time, not something that's an occasional purchase, and don't challenge your budget by going all organic at once. Also this month, find a farmer's market near you where you can start buying food that's produced within a few hundred miles of your home, further reducing the carbon footprint of your diet by requiring less fuel for transport.
EvERYDaY puRcHaSES As you use up conventional

the help of your fellow household members to tackle the simplest suggestions from your energy audit, such as wrapping your hot water heater or installing a programmable thermostat.
TRanSpoRTaTIon Strategize and commit to a "green"

products, replace them with more environmentally friendly optionshousehold cleansers that use essential oils for fragrance, laundry detergents formulated for cold water, cloth napkins to replace disposable ones. Youll reduce your chemical exposure and trash a little less. In addition, youll send a message to manufacturers to produce more environmentally friendly products. when you vote with your dollars, corporations listen, says Trish Riley, author of The Complete Idiots Guide to Green Living.

commute one day a week: either clear it with your boss to work from home, or carpool, take public transportation, walk or ride your bike to the office. Buy an air pressure gauge and make a monthly habit of checking the air pressure in your tires. Properly inflated tires increase gas mileage by about 3 percent, and according to Bridgestone europe, improperly inflated tires cause an additional 12.3 million tons of Co2 to be released every yearjust in europe! Because tires can lose pressure as temperatures drop, check the pressure when your tires are cold, ideally before you start your car in the morning.

thanks to its stores of lutein, folate, potassium, and fiber. Those who ate at least two-and-a-half servings of vegetables each day cut their risk of heart disease by about 25%, compared with those who didnt eat the veggies. each additional serving reduced risk by another 17%.
flaxSEED full of fiber and omega-3 and omega-6 fatty

acids, a little sprinkling of flaxseed can go a long way for your heart.
SoY Soy may lower cholesterol, and since it is low in

saturated fat, its still a great source of lean protein in a heart-healthy diet.

QuoTEWoRTHY People shouldnt just throw up their hands and say, Sixty minutes? I cant do that, and give up. Health is more than weight.

Multivitamins Linked To Breast Cancer Risk

The message is hammered home every time we turn on the TV: Taking a daily multivitamin can help improve our overall health and well-being and may even protect against diseases like cancer. But now a new study suggests that this seemingly healthy habit may actually increase the risk of breast cancer. The new findings appear online in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. In the study of more than 35,000 Swedish women aged 49 to 83, 25.5% said they took multivitamins. None of the women had cancer when the study began. During about 10 years of follow-up, 974 women were diagnosed with breast cancer, and 293 of these diagnoses occurred among the 9,017 women who reported using multivitamins. overall, women who reported taking multivitamins were 19% more likely to develop breast cancer than their counterparts who said they did not take daily multivitamins. These findings held after the researchers adjusted for other risk factors including family history, advancing age, body mass index, smoking status, and alcohol use. Possible Reasons for Breast Cancer Risk The study could not establish cause and effect, but it did show an association of multivitamin use and increased risk of breast cancer. There may be some biologically plausible reasons that multivitamins can increase breast cancer risk, the researchers say. for one, folic acid, an ingredient in many multivitamins, may increase breast density, which could potentially stimulate the development of cancer. In the new study, women did not provide information on what brands of vitamins they took; they simply reported whether or not they took them. There is a chance that recall bias may have affected their ability to accurately remember whether, or how often, they took multivitamins. The new research did show that vitamin e, C, and B-6 did not appear to be responsible for the increased breast cancer risk. Calcium also appeared to provide protection from breast cancer, the new study shows. "If you have a normal healthy diet, you probably don't need to take a multivitamin," says Lee. "have a discussion with your physician about your diet and what food or food groups you avoid, and maybe consider adding supplements that address these deficiencies over a multivitamin," she suggests. "I hope women don't toss all their multivitamins yet," she says. "we have to get at the heart of the matter."

Sports Injuries: When To Tough It Out

You have been playing a lot of tennis recently, and now you think you have tennis elbow. or youre a swimmer with an aching shoulder. A cyclist with sore knees. A runner with pain in your heel. Now, before you read on and decide Im a therapeutic nihilist, I have to tell you that the idea for this column was suggested by a doctor-athlete, Paul D. Thompson, a marathon runner and a cardiologist at hartford hospital in hartford. And his answer to his own question? I think most folks should not go, because most general doctors dont know a lot about running injuries, he said, adding, Most docs, often even the good sports docs, then will just tell you to stop running anyway, so the first thing is to stop running yourself.

percent

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STaTWoRTHY women who reported taking multivitamins were 19% more likely to develop breast cancer than their counterparts who said they did not take daily multivitamins.

Nutrition: Rise In Soda Price Linked To Better Health

New research provides evidence that proposed taxes on soft drinks may make young people healthier. The study, which collected food intake data from 12,123 young adults for 20 years, found that with every 10 percent increase in the price of a two-liter bottle, people consumed 7 percent fewer calories from soda. They also took in fewer calories over all. when people faced an even larger increase $1 for a twoliter bottle of soda, comparable to a proposed tax in Philadelphia they consumed 124 fewer calories a day, the study found. The lower soda intake was associated with a drop in weight of more than two pounds and a lower risk for prediabetes. The studyappears in the March 8 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine. But the studys lead author, Barry M. Popkin, an obesity specialist at the Gillings School of Global Public health at the university of North Carolina, said the study would help answer an important question. You always know that if you reduce the cost or increase the cost of something, consumption of that item will change, Dr. Popkin said. what we dont know is whether you will buy something equally bad or worse. In this case, we found that people would get healthier.

In fact, he said, because you probably will have to make a copayment if you see a doctor, you will be adding insult the fee to your injury. But Dr. Musahl added a caveat. when he recommends staying away from doctors, he is talking about staying away if you have the usual sort of aches and pains that plague almost everyone who exercises regularly. There are red flags that should prompt you to get medical attention, Dr. Musahl said: pain that gets progressively worse, pain at rest or at night, joint swelling or bruises that do not heal, and knees or elbows or other joints that lock or seem unstable. Know how you typically recover, he said. when you are not recovering as you typically do, thats the first warning that something more is going on. Rigorous studies have shown that eccentric contractions, in which a muscle lengthens as it works, seem to speed the healing of tennis elbow and of injuries to the Achilles tendon, which attaches the calf muscles to the heel. They involve, for example, doing heel drops for an Achilles tendon injury standing on a step and dropping your heel, then raising it to the level of the step again. Sometimes going to a doctor for a diagnostic workup can be precarious, with scans that can show all sorts of apparent abnormalities and injuries that are not causing any problems.
QuoTEWoRTHY the fact that experts think the taping evidence is weak means they are not seeing enough runners and is the best argument for not seeing them.

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QuoTEWoRTHY You always know that if you reduce the cost or increase the cost of something, consumption of that item will change.

why so orange?

TheNewStandard.com
to find out.

Please visit

TheNewStandard
Were detail oriented. the STATES Obama makes a surprise visit to Afghanistan and your mail wont be coming on Saturday. the nEighborS Ticket sales are under review at the University of Kansas and a local doctor gives a personal review of health care reform. the SpEcTATorS Butler basketball enjoys a unique home court and March Madness upsets continue to mess up your bracket betting. the proSpEcTS Obama alters student loan landscape and cities compete for Google Broadband. the hEALThY Perils of plastic and calorie content to be posted at most chain restaurants.

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Six

TeN

fOUrTeeN

eiGhTeeN

Postal Service edges toward cutting Saturday delivery

Calling On Karzai
obama makes surprise visit to Afghanistan
courtesy of cnn

WAShingTon -- Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night may stay the nations letter carriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds, but e-mail and the recession may stop their Saturday deliveries. Under a plan to be delivered Tuesday to its regulator, the U.S. Postal Service announced Monday it would cut Saturday delivery beginning in the first half of next year. if the Postal Service takes no action, it could face a cumulative $238 billion shortfall by the year 2020, the service said in plans given to reporters. The Postal Service said the cutback would save about $3.1 billion in the first year and as much as $5.2 billion per year by 2020; the Postal regulatory Commission estimated annual savings of $1.9 billion. Saturday delivery was selected for elimination because that is the lightest-volume delivery day of the week and a day when more than a third of U.S. businesses are closed. Still, express Mail deliveries would continue and post offices that are open Saturdays would remain so, the Postal Service said. Mail volume has dropped from a peak of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion last year, and volume is predicted to continue to fall, the Postal Service said. Quite simply, there is much less mail to be delivered, yet costs to deliver the mail continue to rise, it said.

STATWORTHY Mail volume has dropped from a peak of 213 billion pieces in 2006 to 177 billion last year

177
billion
QUOTEWORTHY Quite simply, there is much less mail to be delivered, yet costs to deliver the mail continue to rise.

the STAT ES

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Tennessee, Delaware schools to get Race to the Top funds

WAShingTon -- President Obama returned to the United States

NEWSWORTHY obamas first visit to Afghanistan as president. reiterates US progress and commitment to fighting terror. QUOTEWORTHY if i thought for a minute that Americas vital interests were not served, were not at stake here in Afghanistan, i would order all of you home right away. NEWSWORTHY Experts predict that mail volume will continue to decline, eventually leading to more cutbacks similar to stopping Saturday delivery.

on Monday morning after an unannounced visit to Afghanistan, where he met with his Afghan counterpart and reiterated the need to wipe out terror networks. Obama slipped into Bagram Air Base near Kabul under the cover of darkness Sunday. he met with about 2,000 troops at the U.S. base and told them their work is significant to security at home. earlier, Obama met with President hamid Karzai to discuss progress by the Afghan government in strengthening its ability to run the country and provide security for its people. After the 30-minute meeting, Obama said he wanted to send a strong message that the partnership between the nations would continue.

WAShingTon -- Tennessee and Delaware were the only two states designated Monday to receive funds in the first round of the education funding competition race to the Top, federal officials announced. Delaware will receive $100 million under the program, while Tennessee will receive $500 million. Secretary of education Arne Duncan said in the announcement that one determining factor was that both states have statewide buy-in for comprehensive plans to reform their schools. They have written new laws to support their policies. And they have demonstrated the courage, capacity, and commitment to turn their ideas into practices that can improve outcomes for students. The states are the only two left after 40 states and the District of Columbia initially applied for the program. To receive the funds, the states had to prove that they were progressing in specific areas including turning around low-performing schools, adopting college- and career-ready standards, and using data systems to support student achievement.

NEWSWORTHY race to the Top is an obama administration program that is funded under the American recovery and reinvestment Act to reward states for aggressively reforming their education systems.

QUOTEWORTHY The sale of Volvo will allow us to further sharpen our focus on building the Ford brand around the world

Names Added To Supreme Court Short List

WAShingTon -- A federal judge from Montana and the dean of harvards law school are among several names being added to the short list of potential nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court, a government source said. Sidney Thomas, a 14-year veteran on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, is being vetted by the white house, said the source, who has been regularly consulted in the selection process. harvard Law school dean Martha Minow has been on the schools faculty since 1981. And elizabeth warren heads the Congressional Oversight Panel, which reviews government efforts to boost the shaky financial and private investment sector. Neither woman has judicial experience. Sources close to the selection process said the new names represent an effort to expand what had been a short list of candidates, many of them left over after last years court vacancy was filled by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Minow is the daughter of former federal Communications Commission head Newt Minow. She clerked for former Justice Thurgood Marshall. in her mid-50s, Minow replaced as dean the woman considered near the top of potential high court nominees, elena Kagan, now solicitor general. warren is also a harvard law professor. She has been a regular on the talk-show circuit, including CNN, to discuss the economys effect on families. The Oklahoma native has also co-authored two books with her daughter. Supporters of hillary Clinton have long touted her credentials, but white house spokesman Tommy Vietor said Monday that the president thinks Secretary Clinton is doing an excellent job as secretary of state and wants her to remain in that position. The white house has given no indication when Obama will name a successor to Stevens, who announced friday that he will retire this year. Stevens has been on the high court nearly 35 years and leads the four-justice liberal bloc.

Report: Airline Industry Performance Up

WAShingTon -- The performance of the airline industry improved in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to an annual report released Monday. The 2010 Airline Quality rating report compiles information on 18 U.S. airlines based on factors such as on-time arrivals, denied boardings, mishandled baggage and customer complaints. Overall, the airline industry recorded the thirdhighest score in the 19 years researchers have tracked their performance, the report said. fourteen airlines improved their on-time arrival performance in 2009, though only six airlines had an on-time percentage greater than 80 percent. Customer complaints fell industrywide to 0.97 per 100,000 passengers, from 1.15 per 100,000 passengers. The Airline Quality rating report is a joint research project by Purdue and wichita State universities. The study is based on figures compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Compared with 2008, the airline industry scored higher in every category except for denied boardings, which shouldnt come as a surprise, said Dean headley, a wichita State professor and one of the reports authors. You would expect denied boardings to increase as you tighten up on the number of seats that are available, headley said in a statement. when you look at the past 10 years, you find that the airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isnt stressed by high passenger volume.

NEWSWORHTY
Who might replace Stevens? Merrick garland Jennifer granholm Eric holder Elena Kagan Martha Minow Janet napolitano Deval patrick Sidney Thomas Elizabeth Warren

2010 report
STATWorThY
1. hawaiian (1) 2. AirTran (2) 3. Jetblue (3) 4. northwest (4) 5. Southwest (6) 6. continental (8) 7. Frontier (7) 8. US Airways (10) 9. American (9) 10. ExpressJet (not ranked in 2009 report) 11. Alaska (5) 12. Mesa (14) 13. United (11) 14. SkyWest (13) 15. Delta (12) 16. comair (15) 17. Atlantic Southeast (17) 18. American Eagle (16)

4 10

4 5
11

35 years
STATWORTHY
Stevens has been on the high court nearly 35 years and leads the four-justice liberal bloc.

NEWSWORTHY
Stevens was formerly the only judge of the current court not graduated from an ivy League school. QUOTEWORTHY The airline industry performs most efficiently when the system isnt stressed by high passenger volume.

parenthesis indicate 2009 ranking

Councilmember Tim Burgess Crafts A Deliberate Style

bY EMiLY hEFFTEr

Microsoft Has Political Concerns

it would be naive to say Microsoft hasnt had plenty of influence on washington politics through lobbyists in Olympia. But the states second-largest private employer plans to be more publicly vocal about issues its leadership thinks are important, an executive said. Take Microsofts unusual move in february to call a press conference on the state route 520 floating bridge replacement plan. when Microsoft threw its massive weight into the debate Lets get moving! local and state politicians were almost blindsided.

Dont walk through life alone: About 200 Attend Fund-raiser For Tot Who Needs New Heart
it was a great party. A good ol fashioned island spaghetti feed. Lots of great items to bid on. Camaraderie was high. humor and laughter were abundant. And the house was full, with about 200 people.

the n Eig hbor S

SEATTLE -- when Councilmember Tim Burgess floated his idea for a new panhandling ordinance last fall, Seattle candidates on the campaign trail picked it apart. it was clear he was treading into divisive territory. But instead of giving up on the idea, Burgess spent six months working on his presentation. he started calling the problem aggressive solicitation instead of panhandling. he couched his proposed law in promises for more housing, social services and police officers. he gathered a list of supporters from the police chief and the city attorney to advocates for the homeless. Then, in february, he proposed it again. The legislation which would make it easier for police to fine people for intimidating behavior when theyre soliciting is still controversial. But now, it seems to have enough support to become law. Burgess work on the ordinance is the latest example of his measured, deliberate political style. After deciding against a run for mayor last year, Burgess is emerging as a council leader and, in many ways, Mayor Mike McGinns political opposite. hes considered a likely opponent for McGinn in 2013. McGinn has raised concerns about Burgess panhandling ordinance. The mayor supports putting more police on the street, but says he isnt sure solicitors are to blame for crime downtown.

QUOTEWORTHY if this issue means i wont be elected, it was still the right thing to do.

160
thousand
STATWORTHY An estimated 160,000 people live on the strets of Downtown, West Seattle and ballard according to the recent census. NEWSWORTHY Experts predict downtowns growing homeless population will be a key issue in the 2013 mayoral elections. read more and weigh in on our forums at ThenewStandard.org

State Sen. ed Murray said it was like a punch in the face. The guest of honor could not be there. But she will know about this party; its as much a part of her history as the health issue that prevented her from attending. And some- i think theyre very strategic, and theyre very thoughtful when they speak on an issue, Phil Bussey, CeO of the day, she will thank each and every person who attended this Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce, told seattlepi.com event -- not with words, but with her life. Seeing her as an in february. i think that they stepped out and did it in such adult, perhaps with children of her own, pursuing her lifes a prominent way is very powerful. dreams as a happy, healthy young woman; that will be the reward. Transportation was one of two major issues Brad Smith, Microsofts general counsel and senior vice president for legal The guest of honor, Sophia Grace Krieg, is seven months and corporate affairs, brought up during a roundtable with old. She couldnt attend the fund-raiser held on her behalf local media friday at the University of washington. educaApril 9 at roche harbor Pavilion because she is waiting at tion both basic and higher was another. Childrens hospital for a new heart. Sophias parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives and friends attended the fund-raiser, wearing i Believe in Miracles T-shirts. her mom, Lacen Krieg, wore a hospital pager; the family was on call with Kenmore Air in the event a heart became available. its really amazing how this community comes together for people, Sophias dad, Ben Krieg, said.
NEWSWORTHY The April 9th dinner raised nearly $18,000 for the 17-month-old; you can help by making a donation at Sophiagrace.com

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Transportation and education factor greatly into Microsofts analysis of washingtons quality of life for employees, Smith said. And quality of life is one of the three major factors Microsoft takes into account when planning its growth in the United States. The others? Taxes, of course, and the need for work visas, Smith said. A sizable percentage of Microsofts employees 88,200 total worldwide, 53,300 nationwide and 39,600 in the Puget Sound region are immigrants who are able to work in the U.S. with h-1B visas. State lawmakers should focus on making washington a toptier state in education and transportation, while keeping it out of the top-10 for B&O taxes, Smith said. Such a fine balance would make a sustainable competitive advantage, he said. Microsoft has no plans to move its headquarters. it absolutely remains the case that washington is Microsofts home, Smith said.

QUOTEWORTHY it absolutely remains the case that washington is Microsofts home.

Lusty Lady Closing After Three Decades High-rise Unsafe; Hundreds Uprooted Investigators Search Home In Cockfighting Case
SoUTh -- Boxes of cockfighting paraphernalia and at least one dead chicken were seized form a South Seattle home in the investigation of an alleged cockfighting ring, according to police documents released late friday. A case against the alleged owner of the birds was referred to prosecutors last week, roughly four months after Seattle police and Seattle Animal Shelter staff were tipped to the property and conducted a search. Those involved in the case are not being named because they have not been charged. On Dec. 11, Animal Shelter enforcement Supervisor Ann Graves contacted Detective Danial Conine about the residence in the 4200 block of South Kenyon Street. The day before, the shelter received a complaint about an injured bird, possibly a turkey, in a wooden cage with its head and wing at an unusual angle, according to police documents. The complainant stated it looked like the birds feathers and skin was missing on one side. Graves was told there was no food or water for the bird, and there were many in the yard. DoWnToWn -- A nine-year-old high-rise near downtown Seattle with hundreds of residents and dozens of retailers will soon be nothing but a hole in the citys skyline. The 25-floor McGuire Apartment building at Second Avenue and wall Street -- built in 2001 -- has to come down because it soon will be declared unsafe for occupancy by the city. The buildings occupants were told in last-minute meetings on Saturday that the building will have to be torn down -and the residents need to be out as soon as possible. KOMO News has learned that the issue involves cables, concrete and corrosion that have become so costly to repair that it would be cheaper for the owner to tear down the building than to fix it. engineers have told the owners the building must be vacated by the end of the year -- but residents are being asked to get out as soon as possible. And thats not sitting well with residents of the apartment building. it is very frustrating. This is the first ive heard about it, said resident Kris Melby. Matthew eckstein, who just moved in three weeks ago, now is being told to move out. he said he was told the building is not structurally sound. i felt pretty betrayed, actually, because i just moved in and i wouldve liked some warning, he said. Another resident, Steve wiley, expressed the sentiments of many of the buildings occupants after Saturdays surprise meeting. how could something like this happen to such a big structure in downtown Seattle? he said. residents were given a form at Saturdays meeting, showing the incentives they will be given to get out by the end of the year -- including three times their monthly rent if they move out by May 15.

The Lusty Lady is easily recognized for its witty and timely marquees

DoWnToWn -- if you hang out in downtown Seattle long enough, its tough not to notice the Lusty Lady. Some people even call it a landmark. But now its a landmark going the way of the Kingdome and the Seattle Supersonics. On June 27, the exotic dancers will take one final bow. And then the Lusty Lady will close forever. News of the exotic venues closing is bringing out nostalgic residents -- including some who have never been inside -- arousing mixed feelings among Seattleites. whether they love it or hate it -- or just laugh at the oftenphotographed marquee -- no one can deny that the Lusty Lady has been a Seattle symbol of sorts. Located just south of the Pike Place Market, its been around for almost three decades.

But managers say they had no choice but to close -- even the adult entertainment industry couldnt weather the economy. They let us know that were not recession-proof. And just like all companies hurting, were no different, says eugenio Cano, the Lusty Ladys night manager. wed like to think that we are, but we arent. when the venue closes, nearly 100 employees will be without a job -- leaving Seattle a little less sassy and lacking a little bit of luster. employees were told about the impending closure at a meeting. Andrea roldan, an employee, was there.

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NEWSWORTHY June 27th will mark the final show for the Markets best known exotic dancers

Deborah (a manager at the club) continued to say at the meeting, heads up, chin up and butt out. So walk with pride, no matter what, we made it this far, and its not the end. she its an eye-catcher, ya know, says Josh washburn of Bremer- says. Of course, the Lusty Lady hasnt been without its haters. ton. No matter whom you ask, everybody knows what the in fact, some of the neighbors have been fighting to get rid Lusty Lady is. of it for years. i walk by it every day to go to my bus stop. im going to miss it if its not there anymore. its always timely and creative. i feel like whoever just puts up these marquees is just brilliant, says Olin Gutierrez of Seattle. its not hard to figure out what goes on behind the marquee and the flashing lights. what will turn up in its place remains to be seen.

NEWSWORTHY Fridays arrest marks the ninth for South Seattle residents in cockfighting arrests in the past 3 years

31
years

STATWORTHY The Lusty Lady has been a staple of pike Street and the market area since 1971

NEWSWORTHY -- Deborah continued to say at the meeting, heads up, chin up and butt out. So walk with pride, no matter what, we made it this far and its not the end.

STATWORTHY -- i felt pretty betrayed, actually, because i just moved in and i wouldve liked some warning,

Butler Edges Michigan State To Reach Final

n.c.A.A. FinAL FoUr | bUTLEr 52, MichigAnSTATE 50
courtesy of ESpn

16-Year-Old Italian Is Set To Make History At The Masters

ALphArETTA, gA. Matteo Manassero found himself in a hazardous place among the pine needles behind the second green at the Golf Club of Georgia. his predicament raised a couple of questions: Are there pine trees in italy? Could he play under pressure, as well as under pine trees? Matteo Manassero hit out of the rough in Dubai. he was the leading amateur there and will be the youngest player in Masters history when he tees off on Thursday. his coach, Alberto Binaghi, smiled and said: he has done this before, yes, from pine needles. he likes to play under this pressure. Sure enough, Manassero, a 16-year-old from italy who is set to become the youngest player to compete in the Masters, looked the part of the seasoned player with his next swipe of the iron. he flipped the ball to the green, and it stuck there. he then rolled in a 35-foot putt on a razor-cut surface that was smoking fast, stimping a Masters-like 13 feet, and had himself a nifty par. Manassero walked to the third tee, acting as if he had been to the edge of a disastrous hole before and recovered. Absolutely, this is unusual, he does not act like he is 16, said edoardo Molinari, an italian professional who was in the gallery last week when Manassero played the United States Amateur champion Byeong-hun An, 18, in the Georgia Cup. This is why he is good at 16the mental part, Molinari said. Manassero has chipped out of pine needles, but he has also played in the swelter of Dubai, the wind of Scotland and the humidity of florida. he has smacked golf balls across france and Spain. The top-ranked amateur in the world, he has skipped from time zone to time zone and custom to custom. he knows what it is like to get off a jet and play golf. Compared with Manassero, who is from Verona, in northern italy, junior golfers in the United States take modest trips. This may explain how Manassero can play with such aplomb and does not seem unnerved by playing in the Masters, which begins Thursday.

Red Sox Lead Yankees In Season Opener

Nearly five months since the Yankees Mark Teixeira closed his glove on the 2009 world Series, the 2010 Major League Baseball season opened Sunday night with a game that always has Series-level passion: Yankees-red Sox. Both teams had been typically busy in the offseason, although the Yankees in less typical fashion. A summer after they shelled out $423.5 million on contracts for Teixeria, Sabathia and A. J. Burnett, General Manager Brian Cashman and the Yankees closed their checkbooks and picked up the phone. rather than pay the clubhouse and fan favorite Johnny Damon, the Yankees made a deal for Detroit outfielder and good-guy Curtis Granderson. To fill a hole in their pitching rotation, the Yankees sent outfielder Melky Cabrera and some prospects to the Atlanta Braves for former Yankee Javier Vasquez. The Yankees did make a few smaller free-agent signings, inking designated hitter Nick Johnson to a $5.5 million contract to bat in the two spot.

years old

16

STATWORTHY At 16 years old, Matteo Manassero from italy will become the youngest player to compete in the masters.

the Sp Ec TATor S

10

4 11

inDiAnApoLiS All week, the final four has been a homecoming celebration of Butler basketball. Butlers Gordon hayward (20) grabs the ball to seal Butlers win over Michigan State in their semifinal game on Saturday. Playing about six miles from its campus, the Bulldogs first appearance at the event has drawn comparisons with the movie hoosiers, part of which was filmed in their famed hinkle fieldhouse. After all, fifth-seeded Butlers magical run here has been the ultimate fairy tale for the tiny private liberal arts university of 4,438 students that is part of the horizon League. And with the Bulldogs 52-50 victory against fifth-seeded Michigan State on Saturday in the N.C.A.A. tournaments national semifinals at Lucas Oil Stadium, their celebration in this circular basketball-crazed city will continue for at least two more days. were just excited, said hayward, who had a bloody lip after the game. weve talked about the next game all year.
QUOTEWORTHY i felt like if i was not playing, i would be a butler fan. Michigan State coach Tom izzo NEWSWORTHY butler (33-4) has won 25 consecutive games and will play in Mondays national championship game against number one seed Duke.

Despite the signings and the departure of a few familiar faces (namely Damon and world Series M.V.P. hideki Matsui), the 2010 Yankees look very similar to the 2009 world Championship roster. Granderson will be the only new face in the field, and the core of Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettite and Mariano rivera will be together again for a run at their sixth championship.

QUOTEWORTHY i will go play the best i can but will not be nervous, he said. i have nothing to lose. And i will gain experience. i will have no expectations.

i will go play the best i can but will not be nervous, Manassero said. i have nothing to lose. And i will gain experience. i will have no expectations.

QUOTEWORTHY

This is why he is good at 16 the mental part.

Coaches Finding No Tolerance For Losing

inDiAnApoLiS Three years ago, when royce waltman was fired as the coach at indiana State, he gave a memorable and prophetic news conference at the Missouri Valley Conference tournament. if you get fired for cheating, you can get hired right back again, he said. if you get fired for losing, its like youve got leprosy, so young coaches need to bear that in mind. Cheating and not graduating players will not get you in trouble, but that damn losing. ... holy Cross hired Kearney in June after ralph willard left to become rick Pitinos top assistant at Louisville. Kearney inherited a team picked to finish first in the Patriot. it finished 9-22, 5-9 in the league, and advanced to the semifinals of the conference tournament. holy Cross Athletic Director Dick regan did not return multiple calls seeking comment. But in statements reported by The Telegram & Gazette of worcester, Mass., he made it clear that the reason for Kearneys dismissal was his record. what this really says is basketball is very important to us, he told the newspaper. i see the ability to win the league championship next year, and i felt i had to do whatever it took to get to that point. Theres a gap in life between what you would like to do and what you think you have to do, and this was one of those latter situations. Someones career was just destroyed in a lot of ways, he said. Short of a felony, i cant imagine what could have prompted something like this. im just upset with the whole thing. im upset. its not my school. im not running holy Cross, but i certainly dont like the way this whole thing was handled. i was nervous about him going there, Brey said of Kearney, but obviously it was a great opportunity for Sean. John feinstein is the author of the book, The Last Amateurs, which follows a year in the Patriot League. On wednesday, he credited regan for being honest about the impetus behind the decision to fire Kearney not winning enough. it says nothing good about the school or the league or the state of college basketball, feinstein said.

Andy Roddicks New Plan Results In A Title

KEY biScAYnE, FLA. Now that he is 27, which is middle age in mens tennis, and plays with increased savvy and finesse, Andy roddick is considered more sophisticated. he grudgingly accepts the compliment. i went from the most immature person on the planet to maturity, he said. i like it. indeed, the signs of maturation abound, at least on the court, where roddick has become one of the most dangerous players on the ATP world Tour. On Sunday, he reverted to a different style, playing more from the baseline and slicing and top-spinning his way to a steady 7-5, 6-4 victory over Tomas Berdych to win his first title here since 2004, and his first ATP Masters 1000 series tournament since Cincinnati in 2006. As usual, roddick rode his serve to victory, winning 78 percent of the points on his first serve and never facing a break point. he was broken only twice during the tournament. Berdych, who stunned roger federer in the fourth round after saving a match point, held his serve, too, until 5-5 in the first set. At that point roddick waited out Berdych, who finally hit a forehand long to give roddick the 6-5 advantage, and he served out the set at love. roddick has not won a major title since the 2003 United States Open at age 21, although he has made it to four other finals. Stefanki says that with roddicks commitment to tennis and his willingness to expand his game, those exciting moments roddick alluded to will materialize. Stefanki said that roddick could emulate the career path of Andre Agassi, who went on to great success well into his late 20s and early 30s. he could sit back and say hes older and it is what it is and just float through the tour, Stefanki said. he wants to win Slams, and i have a feeling his best years are ahead of him.

Duke Returns To Final, But With A Different Style

n.c.A.A. FinAL FoUr | DUKE 78, WEST VirginiA 57 inDiAnApoLiS Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski acknowledged that the criticism had bugged him. he resented a reporters question last month about his teams melting down in recent N.C.A.A. tournaments. Duke had lost to lower seeds in six consecutive seasons. Duke players celebrated late in the second half. More Photos he disliked that his program was cast as a failure for not reaching the final four since 2004, and he chafed at the notion that his USA Basketball coaching job impeded his ability to recruit at Duke. But with a dominant victory against No. 2 west Virginia on Saturday night in the national semifinals, any recent questions about Duke dissolved. The Blue Devils handed the Mountaineers their worst loss of the season, 78-57, using precise 3-point shooting, concise offense and, perhaps most important, playing more physical than a west Virginia team that prides itself on its toughness. Jon Scheyer scored 23 points and Kyle Singler added 21 as the Blue Devils (34-5) advanced to the national championship game for the first time since 2001. Top-seeded Duke will play No. 5 Butler on Monday, giving the Blue Devils a chance to win the programs fourth national title. This Duke team does not have superstars like Bobby hurley, Grant hill and Christian Laettner from the early 1990s or Shane Battier, Jay williams and Carlos Boozer from its 2001 title team. instead, this seasons Blue Devils thrive on balance, grit and a defense that hounded west Virginia all game. Duke made 13 of 25 3-point shots and held west Virginia to 19-of-46 shooting from the field. its a really good team, and it can do something great on Monday night, Krzyzewski said. Thats what were going to try and do.

QUOTEWORTHY cheating and not graduating players will not get you in trouble, but that damn losing. ... coach walter on how coaches get fired for having a losing record.

12

13

NEWSWORTHY With a win over West Virginia the Duke bluedevils reach their first national championship game since 2001.

QUOTEWORTHY He wants to win Slams, and I have a feeling his best years are ahead of him. Larry Stefanki, Coach of Andy Roddick

Obama Alters Student Loan Landscape

bY MArK SAFFEr

New Tools for Financial Planning Advice

Ap -- Personal finance tools have traditionally acted as money manager and financial product advocate. Now, a couple of new tools claim another role: financial planner. Last week, a former Brookings institution consumer finance scholar introduced one such new service called hellowallet. for a monthly subscription of $4, hellowallet performs the traditional budgeting and money tracking functions found at free sites like Mint.com. But hellowallet will also recommend customized financial plans for everything from saving for college to saving for retirement. Based on tuition cost trends for the particular college you expect your child to go to and your saving history, it will give you recommendations, for instance, for how much to save monthly and where.

Cities Get Creative to Court Google Broadband

nEW YorK -- The race to win a new, ultra-fast broadband network from Google is heating up - or cooling off if you're the mayor of Duluth, Minnesota. he recently took a dip in the chilly waters of Lake Superior to get the search giant's attention. The mayor of Sarasota, florida tried to make a splash too by jumping into a shark tank to gin up some press. Other cities are trying more strategic attempts to gain attention. for instance, Topeka, Kansas has temporarily renamed itself Google, Kansas. And Pittsburgh's Mayor has issued a press release outlining an aggressive web marketing campaign urging community members to petition on a grassroots website to get Google to come to Steel City. "Sarasota businesses such as the Mote Marine Laboratory, which builds communications using high tech gear out on the water, could really use the connectivity to communicate with other research institutes around the world," said Mayor Dick Clapp. The florida community, along with other cities nationwide, have all been galvanized by the search giant's proposed plan to build a handful of high-speed broadband networks that offer speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second, which is about 100 times faster than the average internet connection. Applications to participate in the program are due this friday, March 26th. The response has been overwhelming. "we didn't anticipate this kind of grass roots enthusiasm," said Google (GOOG, fortune 500) spokesman Dan Martin. The message that's being sent is that there's a hunger and appetite for better and faster internet service." Google says it hopes to have its first network up and running within a year.

the p r oSp Ec TS

when President Obama put pen to paper on the final version of his health care overhaul bill Tuesday, he simultaneously changed the course of our nations student loan program.
QUOTEWORTHY

14

Along with the adjustments that Congress made to the health care aspects of the new law was a revamping of the way student loans are administered; specifically, the US government will now be the issuing the loans through the education Department. for almost two decades, weve been trying to fix a sweetheart deal in federal law that essentially gave billions of dollars to banks to act as unnecessary middlemen in administering student loans, the President told a crowd at Northern Virginia Community Colleges Alexandria campus Tuesday. So those are billions of dollars that could have been spent helping more of our students attend and complete college; that could have been spent advancing the dreams of our children; that could have been spent easing the burden of tuition on middle-class families. instead, that money was spent padding student lenders profits. Starting July 1st, the government will issue student loans which will bypass the banks that have traditionally provided them, thus eliminating bank subsidies. The loans, however, will be delivered and collected by private companies under performance-based contracts with the government

president obama says Tuesdays legislation is the most significant change to finacial aid since the gi bill of 1944

in addition, it will help estimate how much you should save to buy a house using local home prices; will forecast your homes likely worth in the future; and will identity and provide recommendations about gaps in your finances, like having no rainy day fund or emergency savings plan. it will also identify ineffective savings vehicles you may be using, among other functions. Besides the detailed financial planning advice, Matt fellowes, hellowallets founder and chief executive officer, said what sets hellowallet apart from a site like Mint.com is that it is independent from banks and doesnt take any advertising dollars. instead, it makes money through subscriptions. we are totally agnostic of where people go to bank, he said. The site is particularly aimed at lower- to middle-income consumers who may not otherwise have financial advice resources. for this reason, hellowallet is providing the service free to at least 300,000 low-income families over the next five years, and the rockefeller foundation is providing funds to nonprofits to provide 10,000 subscriptions to hellowallet for low-income Americans.

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1st
STATWORTHY Starting July 1st the government will issue student loans which will bypass traditional banks

July

STATWORTHY

50%
of Americans

50% of Americans have less than one month of savings put aside for personal emergencies.

Of course, it's not just consumers who stand to gain from access to lightening-speed broadband. Boosting speeds for internet users is good for Google too.

NEWSWORTHY -- The rockefeller foundation is providing funds to nonprofits for10,000 subscriptions to hellowallet to aid 10,000 low-income Americans.

A New Source for Student Loans

Ap -- People Capital offers a new online peer-to-peer service where lenders can bid on loan requests from students. President Obamas plan to have the government provide loans directly to students instead of using commercial lenders was resurrected on Thursday, when Democratic leaders agreed to bundle it into an expedited budget package along with the health care overhaul. Now, the student loan measure, which had been unlikely to pass on its own, could be passed in the Senate along with the health care measure by a simple majority vote. earlier this month, the online student loan web site People Capital began a peer-to-peer student loan service that matches students looking for loans directly with potential lenders, including individual lenders, and takes financial institution brokers out of the loan-finding equation. heres how it works: Students sign up on the site and put in their loan requests. Lenders, meanwhile, sign up on the site and put up at least $1,000 for loans in a People Capital account. They then can bid on the various loan requests from students and assess various students risk and ability to repay with the help of People Capitals proprietary human Capital score, which combines variables like SAT scores and grade point averages to determine a students future income potential and ability to repay. A spokesman said People Capital also follows the student loan industry standard verification processes that includes confirmation of SAT and G.P.A. data by a students college or university. why would someone sign up to be a lender? Alan Samuels, People Capitals chief product officer, said two main motivations emerged in the discussions with lenders during the development of the platform: a desire to increase profits through diversification and philanthropic reasons. There is definitely a profit maximizing objective people looking at a student loan as a slightly different asset, he said. And there is another group of investors that say, i want to make a return, but i want to be doing good at the same time. Unlike more general consumer loans available on other peer-to-peer lending sites, qualified education loans available through People Capital are private student loans that are legally compliant, offer tax-deductible interest payments for borrowers and cant be discharged in bankruptcy. But unlike some government-backed student loans, repayments arent deferred until after graduation. instead, the loans, which come in various short-term and longer-term forms, have more immediate repayment mechanisms, like interest-only or minimum payments. Al Alper, president of People Capital, said such requirements arent too much of a burden to students. he said, for instance, that a minimum monthly interest-only payment of $50 would be about the equivalent of having a pizza a week in a dorm room. People Capital takes an origination fee of a few hundred dollars from the student and servicing fees of about 1 percent from the lender. why would a student sign up for such loans? The People Capital spokesmen said the service gives students more access to capital at a time when tuition is increasing and many other sources of financing are harder to get, especially for students with a limited credit history. To receive one of the qualified student loans, a student must be enrolled in an eligible university program, must be a United States citizen and be at least 17 or 18 years old depending on the state, among other requirements. As of this week, the five investors have lent a total of about $100,000, split among five to six students. Meanwhile, about 45 students have put in loan requests for a combined total of about $500,000 and another 100 or so students are going through the sign-up process.
STATWORTHY people capitol offers interest only payments as low as $50/month. The average debt for a four-year student is between $13,000 and $28,000

Starbucks, Ford, Google Named Worlds Most Ethical Companies

nEW YorK -- The ethisphere institute, a New York City think tank, on Monday released its fourth annual list of the worlds Most ethical Companies. The listing, of companies with at least 100 employees and more than $50 million in annual revenue, gives its winners an opportunity to trumpet their do-gooding ways. it is not a ranking, so they are all equally winners. To compile the data on which it bases the list, ethisphere relies mostly on the honor system. Three thousand companies were nominated--or nominated themselves--to be considered. They each filled out a survey with items like, Please describe your organizations projects and initiatives aimed at workforce sustainability and well-being.

Nonprofit Groups Forsee Tough Year

LoS AngELES -- A new survey of nonprofit groups suggests that this year will be as challenging for them as 2009, when many organizations suffered from declines in giving, delays in government payments and increased demand for their services. Some 80 percent of the 1,315 nonprofit groups responding to the survey said they expected the demand for service to be even greater this year, and only 49 percent of the respondents expected to be able to meet that demand, according to the survey by the Nonprofit finance fund, a charity that provides loans and other financial services to nonprofit groups. Only 18 percent expect to end the year above break-even financially, compared with the 35 percent that ended 2009 with a surplus.

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QUOTEWORTHY president obama says Tuesdays legislation is the most significant change to finacial aid since the gi bill of 1944

$50
per month

Depending on their responses are, we might give them more points in that category, says Stefan Linssen, editor of ethis- One of the clearest messages coming out of this survey is that phere Magazine. he adds that most companies tend to be any kind of green shoots of recovery are very slow to get to overwhelmingly honest. the nonprofit sector, said Clara Miller, chief executive of the fund. Any recovery is not actually reaching people in ethisphere evaluated the surveys and assigned the compa- dire need and the frontline organizations that serve them. nies scores in seven different categories, including innovation that contributes to the public well-being and execu- More than 40 percent of the respondents predicted that govtive leadership and tone from the top. it culled the list down ernment, corporate, foundation and United way and other to 200 or so and then cross-checked it against governance federated giving would fall this year. Only 21 percent prelists from GovernanceMetricsinternational, fTSe for Good dicted a decrease in giving by individuals and their board and other organizations. ethisphere nixed any company members, while 39 percent said giving would stay the same thats had significant legal trouble over the past five years. and 32 percent expected it to increase. Companies that focus on alcohol, tobacco or firearms also got the boot. At the same time, it increased the number of students enrolled in the remaining programs to as many as 250 from 100. The 100 companies that made the final cut include first-time recipients ford Motor Company, Adobe Systems and Camp- we are serving more students in the places that are showbell Soup. Google, Starbucks, General electric and 33 other ing the best results, said eric Schwarz, chief executive and companies have appeared on the list for all four of its years. co-founder of Citizen Schools. we prioritized and were able to keep growing and adding staff in the places we were doing best. NEWSWORTHY
of nearly 200 companies named to the list, 100 made the cut for the first time including Ford, Adobe, campbell Soup and google

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Mr. Schwarz said that the fiscal year that ended in June 2009 had been very strong but that fund-raising in the second half of last year had been tough. were hoping to maintain revenues at a level about flat to last year, he said. change for us because weve had a history of pretty significant growth every year.

NEWSWORTHY -- People Capitol is offering sudents the chance to post their individual financing needs, revolutionizing the business of student loans and financial aid.

STATWORTHY -- Any recovery is not actually reaching people in dire need or the frontline organizations that serve them.

Insurance Pool To Offer Reduced-Rate Coverage

WAShingTon in one of its first steps to carry out the new health care law, the Obama administration announced friday that it was establishing a temporary insurance pool where uninsured people with medical problems could buy coverage at reduced rates. Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, said the program would help provide affordable insurance for Americans who have been locked out of the insurance market. federal health officials said the program would be available from late June of this year to Jan. 1, 2014, when private insurers will be required to accept all applicants without varying premiums on account of a persons medical condition. Under the new law, Ms. Sebelius can sign contracts with states to operate insurance pools meeting federal standards. The federal government can operate the pool directly or hire a nonprofit organization to run it in any state that does not want to do so. To qualify for the high-risk pool, a consumer must have a pre-existing condition and must have been uninsured for the six months before filing an application. Premiums in the new program will be set at standard rates, based on the average premiums charged by private insurers for similar coverage in the individual market. A recent study published by the Kaiser family foundation says that 35 states have high-risk pools with enrollment that totaled 200,000 at the end of 2008. States with the largest enrollment include illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas and wisconsin. State insurance pools often have waiting periods of three months to a year, during which they will not cover preexisting conditions like cancer or diabetes.

Reeling In The Benefits Of Fish

in this weeks recipes for health, Martha rose Shulman cooks up new ways to enjoy the health benefits of fish. fish typically is a good source of healthful omega-3 fatty acids, and studies show that eating fish regularly is associated with better heart health. She writes: experts are also researching a possible role for omega-3s in boosting the immune system and protecting against hypertension, depression and other ailments. As the findings continue to roll in, many nutritionists now recommend that we eat fish twice a week. She offers tips on finding safe and sustainable seafood, along with five delicious and easy ways to prepare omega-3-rich fish like sardines, salmon, mackerel and tuna. Sardine and Chard Gratin: A simplified version of a traditional Provenal dish that is delicious unbelievably easy to make. Tuna and Pepper Stew: A fishermans dish with simple origins, loosely based on a Basque tuna soup. Potato and Tuna Pure: Comfort food at its finest, similar to a tuna noodle casserole but dressed up and simpler. Baked Trout with Tomatoes and Olives: A Provenal staple thats a great way to serve farmed trout. Salmon Fillets With Tomatillo Salsa: Tomatillos have an acidic flavor and color that goes beautifully with salmon.

the hEA LT hY

with some changes, many of the state insurance pools could probably meet the federal criteria. The Kaiser study, by Professor Karen L. Pollitz of Georgetown University, said: Currently, state high-risk pools set premiums at a multiple of standard rates, ranging from 125 percent to 200 percent. As a result, pool coverage is often unaffordable for individuals. Ms. Sebelius sent letters to governors and state insurance commissioners on friday asking if they wanted to participate in the new program. The law provides $5 billion to help pay claims for people in the risk pool. That may not be enough to provide coverage for all the people who want to enroll in the next three years. Ms. Sebelius said the high-risk pool could provide immediate relief to potentially millions of people. State high-risk pools, all of which operate at a loss, paid a total of $1.9 billion in claims in 2008, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress. The average claims per person totaled $9,437 in that year. Premiums paid by beneficiaries accounted for 54 percent of the money used to operate the existing high-risk pools. Assessments collected from insurance companies accounted for 23 percent of the total, while state general revenues and other taxes accounted for most of the remainder.

Drop In Tuberculosis Rates Is Largest In Single Year

Tuberculosis rates in the United States dropped more than 10 percent last year compared with 2008, the sharpest decrease ever recorded in a single year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are reporting. The 2009 rate was 3.8 cases per 100,000 people, down from 4.2 the year before, according to results from the National TB Surveillance System reported in the March 19 issue of the centers Morbidity and Mortality weekly report. Declines were reported among people born both in the United States and abroad. The reasons for the decline were not entirely clear. federal health officials did not rule out the possibility that some cases went uncounted or perhaps even undiagnosed because patients did not have access to medical care. Carla winston, a senior epidemiologist with the C.D.C. and the reports lead author, said public health efforts to identify TB outbreaks earlier and interrupt transmission in hard-hit communities might have contributed to the decline, along with demographic shifts and more aggressive screening of would-be immigrants. But the case counts still need to be verified, she said, adding, Many factors can affect TB case counts by the states, including possible underreporting.

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How Much Exercise Will Prevent Weight Gain?

LEAVEnWorTh Pediatrician Dr. Vernon Mills shared his view of what the health care reform bill will mean for people. Mills said there will be better health-care access for the uninsured. instead of a costly trip to an emergency room when someone gets sick, people will start showing up for well-care visits that may prevent costly complications down the road. Mills treats around 3,000 patients. he believes the measure will allow families to have more stable coverage: if they change jobs, or one person loses a job, theyll be able to keep their insurance. its now going to be portable, so to speak. right now, a patient with insurance can visit a doctor for $75. A patient without coverage who walks into an er will pay around $500. But Mills also has concerns about the health care bill, including funding. he isnt certain the funding formulas for this additional coverage will necessarily work the way the politicians hope.

QUOTEWORTHY If they change jobs, or one person loses a job, theyll be able to keep their insurance.

Only 1 In 4 Americans Got H1N1 Vaccine

fewer Americans have been vaccinated against the h1N1 swine flu than health officials had hoped for, despite continued widespread availability of the shot, according to federal reports released Thursday. Slightly less than 25 percent of the overall population had been vaccinated by the end of January about 37 percent of children and 20 percent of adults, according to a survey from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC also noted that just one-third of people considered at high risk from h1N1 flu such as pregnant women, children and young adults, and people with certain medical conditions got the vaccine. Overall, an estimated 72 million to 81 million Americans had been vaccinated against the h1N1 flu as of mid-february, and an estimated 81 million to 91 million doses of the vaccine had been administered.

Sleep Well, Sleep Better

if sleep has plunged to the bottom of your to-do list, youre not alone. Although the National Sleep foundation recommends getting seven to nine hours of sleep a night, the average American logs only six hours and 40 minutes. what gives? Blame crazy schedules and, of course, sleeping woes. Before you rush to the drugstore to buy an over-the-counter (OTC) sleep medication, try one of the following natural sleep remedies. These are safer and have fewer side effects than OTC medications, says Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, author of from fatigued to fantastic and medical director of the national fibromyalgia and fatigue Centers. Many of these can not only help you fall asleep and stay asleep, but they may also promote muscle relaxation.

in general, this survey describes great success with children and greater success with the ACiP [Advisory Committee on immunization Practices] target population than with the general population, Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the CDCs National Center for immunization and respiratory Diseases, said during a Thursday news conference. There was wide variation between states. rhode island had the highest vaccination rate at 39 percent, while Mississippi had the lowest at 13 percent. Overall the country did an extraordinary job of responding to this new influenza strain but there is room for improvement going forward, Schuchat said. if wed had more vaccine sooner it would have been better. Still, Dr. Len horovitz, a pulmonary specialist with Lenox hill hospital in New York City, said the rates are way under where they should be. its as important to get this vaccine as it is to get the seasonal vaccine because h1N1 is the dominant strain circulating this year. it has crowded out the seasonal flu, said horovitz, who has a poster in his exam room proclaiming the importance of getting the h1N1 vaccine. earlier this week, CDC officials noted a troubling uptick in the number of h1N1 cases in several southeastern states, particularly Georgia.

percent

29

STATWORTHY of the population got the h1n1 vaccination.

Calling A Food Healthy May Make You Hungrier

if youre hoping to slim down, try not to focus on the healthfulness of that low-fat, low-calorie salad you ate for lunch. People who were asked to taste food described as healthy reported being hungrier afterward than people who ate the same food when it was described as tasty. when people feel they are required to eat healthy food, eating that food makes them hungry, said senior study author Ayelet fishbach, a professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago. They are hungrier than if they didnt eat anything at all or if theyd eaten that food without thinking of its healthiness. The study was published online this month in the Journal of Consumer research. researchers conducted several experiments to explore the impact of perceptions about the health content of food and how full it made a person feel. in the first experiment, researchers asked 51 college students to sample a chocolate-raspberry protein bar. Students were either told they were sampling a new health bar, containing lots of protein, vitamins and fiber, or a chocolate bar that is very tasty and yummy with a chocolate-raspberry core. Later, when asked to rate their hunger, those who ate the health bar rated themselves as hungrier than those who ate the identical bar described as tasty, according to the study. for dieters, a similar decision-making process may be involved when they choose a salad instead of a burger and fries at a restaurant, only to go home and eat a big dessert. eating healthy foods may allow us to believe we have made progress toward health goals but trick us into thinking we are hungrier than we actually are, according to the study. One of the challenges in losing weight is that people tend to compensate themselves for partial success by overeating and will end up gaining that weight and more, fishbach said. The perception that healthy isnt going to meet enjoyment goals is a very strong message for all of us, Diekman said. healthy foods must taste good. Unfortunately, people assume they wont taste good. And even if it tastes good, their brain may be telling them otherwise. Campaigns to encourage weight loss need to take into account the potential for healthy-food messages to backfire. Just saying we need to eat healthy, lose weight and exercise more doesnt work unless individuals are committed to it, Diekman said. Can simply knowing that snacking on carrot sticks now will make us crave carrot cake later help people combat their urge to indulge? we dont have clear evidence, but i think that knowing the info should help, fishbach said. i think people can train themselves to fight food temptations.

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Calorie Data To Be Posted At Most Chains

Buried deep in the health care legislation that President Obama signed on Tuesday is a new requirement that will affect any American who walks into a McDonalds, Starbucks or Burger King. every big restaurant chain in the nation will now be required to put calorie information on their menus and drive-through signs. in other words, as soon as 2011 it will be impossible to chomp down on a Big Mac without knowing that it contains over 500 calories, more than a quarter of the Agriculture Departments 2,000-calorie daily guideline. The measure is intended to create a national policy modeled on a requirement that has already taken effect in New York City and was to go into effect in 2011 in places like California and Oregon. The new federal law requires restaurant chains with 20 or more outlets to disclose calorie counts on their food items and supply information on how many calories a healthy person should eat in a day.

Harriet Shetler, Who Helped To Found Mental Illness Group, Dies At 92

harriet Shetler, whose experience as the mother of a son with schizophrenia led her to help start a national organization to address mental health needs, died Tuesday in Madison, wis. She was 92. her death was confirmed by her daughter, Jane S. ross. Today the organization Mrs. Shetler helped start, the National Alliance on Mental illness, has affiliates in every state and more than 1,100 communities. it offers support to the mentally ill and people living with them; promotes research and education on mental illness; and lobbies governments on mental health concerns.

STATWORTHY A big Mac alone contains over 500 calories, or about 1/4 of what the average person is supposed to intake in calories in a day.

QUOTEWORTHY

When people feel they are required to eat healthy food, eating that food makes them hungry,

why so yellow?

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TheNewStandard
Made you look.
the FeaTUre

the neighbors
The release of Hot Chips new album, one Life Stand and a look at art exhibitions in the D.C. area.

the viewers New exhibits and movies are highlighted. Including a new exhibition at the Guggenheim opening in April 2010.

the readers Theres a fine line between theif and gambler. Josh Axelrad grossed over $ 700,000 as a member ofan MIT card-counting group called Mossad. Now hes telling all about it. fourTeeN

the healThy Learn what to do to make this a greener month, as well as learn ten healthy foods for your heart.

Perhaps the biggest and baddest of Americas music festivals is here again yes, folks, its time for Coachella 2010.

TWo

SIX

TeN

eIGHTeeN

Rock
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Clock
indio, CaliFornia -- The 2010 Coachella Valley Arts and Music Festival might have a mogul, rap patriarch Jay-Z, on the marquee, but the lineup is still a model for recessionary times.

Around

Nothing on the roster announced this morning feels like a coup or a matter of huge debate. Theres no baby boomer icon to fluster Generation X purists, and no surprise post-punk reunion (Pavement announced its reformation last fall) to fulfill the dreams of the same crowd. What Coachella 2010 does offer is a well-curated mid-range that will more than satisfy the iPod aesthetes who make up the festivals core audience. Scanning the list for each day is a bit like reading the menu at an artisanal slow food restaurant; its carefully constructed, full of small, impressive flourishes and satisfying without overloading the palate.

Highlights in smaller print on the festivals poster include indie blogger favorites such as Dirty Projectors, the xx, Girls, florence & the Machine and Little Dragon; singersongwriters reaching an early career peak including Sia, Corinne Bailey rae and the Avett Brothers; elder cult favorites Grace Jones and Public Image Limited, along with the less than reliable Sly Stone and the unflashy but always fun Les Claypool; and local breakout acts the Soft Pack and edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros. None of these names evinces a startled intake of breath, but each would be a highlight on anybodys Coachooser. The big-font names offer edifying variety -- and interesting cross-currents. faith No Mores arty take on frat-boy rap rock predated LCD Soundsystems arty take on hedonistic electro-dance. Muse and Them Crooked Vultures both stitch a seam connecting progressive metal and alternative rock. Thom Yorke is arguably the leading intellectual of millennial pop; many thought Stephen Malkmus of Pavement held that position in the 1990s. Damon Albarns cartoon Gorillaz connects all the dots, combining hip-hop, dance music and alternative rock styles and sounds.

Jay-Z
Aeroplane -- Alana Grace -- As Tall As Lions -- Baroness -- Benny Benassi -- Calle 13 Ceu -- deadmau5 -- Deer Tick -- DJ Lance rock -- echo & the Bunnymen -- erol Alkan -- fever ray Gil Scott-Heron -- Grizzly Bear -- Hockey -- Iglu & Hartly -- Imogen Heap -- Jets overhead Kate Miller-Heidke -- La roux -- LCD Soundsystem --Little Dragon -- Lucero -- Pablo Hassan Passion Pit -- Perry farrell vs. Steve Porter -- P.o.S. -- Proxy -- Public Image Limited -- ra ra riot She & Him -- Sleigh Bells --Street Sweeper Social Club -- The Avett Brothers -- The Cribs The Dillinger escape Plan -- The Specials -- The Whitest Boy Alive -- Them Crooked Vultures Vampire Weekend -- Wale -- Wolfgang Gartner --Yeasayer

FRIDAY, APRIL 16

Muse
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SATURDAY, APRIL 17

2 many DJs -- Aterciopelados -- Bad Lieutenant -- Band of Skulls -- Bassnectar Beach House -- Camera obscura -- Coheed and Cambria -- Corinne Bailey rae -- Craze David Guetta -- DeVo -- Dirty Projectors -- Dirty South -- edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros faith No More -- flying Lotus -- frank Turner -- frightened rabbit -- GIrLS -- Gossip Hot Chip -- John Waters -- Kaskade -- Klever -- Les Claypool -- Major Lazer -- Mew -- MGMT old Crow Medicine Show -- Porcupine Tree -- Portugal. The Man -- Pretty Lights rX Bandits -- Shooter Jennings & Hierophant -- Sia -- Steel Train -- The Almighty Defenders The Dead Weather --The raveonettes -- The Temper Trap -- The xx -- Tisto -- Tokyo Police Club White rabbits -- Z-Trip -- Zoe

Around

ACHELLA
Thats why Jay-Z at Coachella is neither unexpected nor unimportant. More than previous headliners radiohead or rage Against the Machine or wished-for 2010 possibilities like the Beastie Boys or the Smiths, he is the artist who probably can boast that every other musician named on that famous poster could spit one of his lyrics. Jay-Zs rhymes are part of 21st-century pops lingua franca; his late-career success puts the lie to any distinction between so-called alternative hip-hop and the mainstream stuff. If his Coachella date doesnt feel like a singular event, in part because hell play to a likely more urban (to use a problematic word) crowd at Staples Center just weeks before the fest, its still one worth celebrating. And then, as the rapper himself says, on to the next one.

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Gorillaz
Aeroplane -- Alana Grace -- As Tall As Lions -- Baroness -- Benny Benassi -- Calle 13 Ceu -- deadmau5 -- Deer Tick -- DJ Lance rock -- echo & the Bunnymen -- erol Alkan -- fever ray Gil Scott-Heron -- Grizzly Bear -- Hockey -- Iglu & Hartly -- Imogen Heap -- Jets overhead Kate Miller-Heidke -- La roux -- LCD Soundsystem --Little Dragon -- Lucero -- Pablo Hassan Passion Pit -- Perry farrell vs. Steve Porter -- P.o.S. -- Proxy -- Public Image Limited -- ra ra riot She & Him -- Sleigh Bells --Street Sweeper Social Club -- The Avett Brothers -- The Cribs The Dillinger escape Plan -- The Specials -- The Whitest Boy Alive -- Them Crooked Vultures Vampire Weekend -- Wale -- Wolfgang Gartner --Yeasayer

SUNDAY, APRIL 18

And then theres Jay-Z. Beyond the delicious punditry of having the man nicknamed Jay-Hova play Americas leading desert festival, this choice might have seemed slightly uninspired. Since returning from faux-retirement in 2006, Jay has been steadily expanding his reputation, taking strong steps to adjust his place in history from the great category to the legendary. He played the stalwartly rock-oriented Glastonbury festival in england last year, raising objections from oasis bandleader and notorious sourpuss Noel Gallagher. That tiny fire allowed Jay-Z to turn the appearance into a Crusadesstyle victory for rap itself. More recently, hes been promoting empire State of Mind, his powerhouse collaboration with Alicia Keys, as the new Gotham City anthem. Its a great song and, though the hubris involved is somewhat offputting, a worthy campaign.

HoT CHIP IS SMArTer _z! * THAN You.

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And they know it.
To herald the release of their new album One Life Stand, Hot Chip will be bringing their explosive live show back to North America in April. The band will be playing tracks from new album as well as old favorites.

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Hot Chip have become legendary for their unequivocally exuberant live performances, helping them to become one of the worlds most original and lovable artists.

Event Details

Hot Chip w/ special guest The xx

Saturday, April 24

9:30 Club

815 V Street

Washington, D.C.

7 p.m.

Art Exhibitions
In The Tower: Mark Rothko
The second in a series of Tower exhibitions focusing on contemporary art and its roots offers a rare look at the black-on-black paintings that rothko made in 1964 in connection with his work on a chapel for the Menil Collection in Houston. A recording of Morton feldmans rothko Chapel (1971), the haunting music originally composed for that space, accompanies the exhibition in the spacious east Building Tower Gallery. A new 10-minute film examines the career of rothko and his development of a style that fused abstract painting with emotional significance. Produced by the National Gallery of Art, the film will be shown continuously in the Tower Gallery. The film was made possible by the HrH foundation.
OrganizatiOn: The national gallery of art SpOnSOr: Made possible by the generous support of the

aaron i. Fleischman Foundation

Schedule: February 21, 2010January 2, 2011

Special Events
Maryland Day
Maryland Day is a legal state holiday in Maryland, the united States. Many people in Maryland commemorate the states history and heritage on or around March 25 each year. Many schools have special activities that enable students to focus on learning about their states history and developments on or around Maryland Day. Some community leaders and local politicians take the time to visit schools to talk about the importance of Maryland Day. A special festival is held during this time of the year to commemorate Maryland Day. It is a collaborative event that is held in the states capital, Annapolis, and other parts of Anne Arundel County. It features activities and tours offered by cultural and heritage sites, as well as re-enactments, art exhibitions and childrens activities.
OrganizatiOn: The University of Maryland Schedule: april 24, 2010, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

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2010 Senior Thesis Exhibitions

each year, the Corcoran celebrates their graduating undergraduate class with the Senior Thesis exhibitions, a series of weeklong, rotating shows in Gallery31 that feature photojournalism, photography, graphic design, digital media design, and fine art produced by members of this years graduating class. The Senior Thesis shows culminate in May with the All-Senior exhibition, which provides graduates of the class of 2010 a unique opportunity to exhibit their work in a major museum setting.
OrganizatiOn: Corcoran College of art + design Schedule: Through May 23, 2010

New York
Museum of Modern art november 22, 2009april 26, 2010 tiM BurtOn
Taking inspiration from popular culture, Tim burton (american, b. 1958) has reinvented hollywood genre filmmaking as an expression of personal vision, garnering for himself an international audience of fans and influencing a generation of young artists working in film, video, and graphics. This exhibition explores the full range of his creative work, tracing the current of his visual imagination from early childhood drawings through his mature work in film. it brings together over seven hundred examples of rarely or never-before-seen drawings, paintings, photographs, moving image works, concept art, storyboards, puppets, maquettes, costumes, and cinematic ephemera from such films as edward scissorhands, The nightmare before Christmas, batman, Mars attacks!, ed wood, and beetlejuice

Dallas
dallas Museum of art october 8, 2009March 21, 2010 perFOrMance/art
in celebration of the opening of dallass new aT&T Performing arts Center, the dallas Museum of art is proud to present the work of six international and american artists who have used the forms and ideas surrounding theater, opera, and performance as starting points for an exciting array of paintings, sculpture, films, and installations. Finnish artist eija-liisa ahtilas quietly intense and atmospheric evocation of an ill-at-ease mind, the three-screen film work Talo/The house; a new installation work by dallas-based artists Frances bagley and Tom orr based on the spectacular sets and costumes they designed for a 2006 dallas opera production of verdis nabucco.

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Chicago
The art institute of Chicago Museum March 20June 20, 2010 anSel adaMS
ansel adams: Celebration of genius presents work from the 1920s through the 1960s, including an early 1927 portfolio (one of only fifty produced) of Parmelian prints (gelatin silver emulsion on parchment paper). This is the first time george eastman house has included this portfolio from its collection in an exhibition. Featured are many of adamss most famous images of the american west - Mount williamson from Manzanar, California, ca. 1944, and Monolith, the Face of half dome, 1927. but prepare to discover equally stupendous, images such as Mud hills, arizona or water and Foam, or the wonderful abstract titled simply, stained wallpaper near alturas, Calif. Many will be surprised to see that adams did not confine himself to landscapes, but also made portraits and other subjects as humble as fence posts into images nearly as monumental as his beloved mountain ranges.

Seattle
seattle art Museum May 13september 6, 2010 andY WarhOl Media WOrKS
Through a selection of andy warhols media works, this exhibition will offer a focused and provocative experience of warhols photography and film portraits. Unfolding in five of the special exhibition galleries, the exhibition includes Polaroids, photobooth strips and sewn photographs, presented alongside warhols screen Tests, which will be projected in two of the galleries devoted to these moving images. love fear pleasure lust pain glamour death includes works that compel us to consider the artists fascination with all things ephemeral, from beauty and youth to celebrity status. including photographs and videos dating from the 1960s through the early 1980stwo decades in which the artists work had tremendous impact on contemporary art production and culture.

Hot Tub Time Machine

opened March 26, 2010 | runtime:1 hr. 40 min. r pervasive language and strong crude content, Four pals are stuck in a rut in adulthood: adam (John Cusack) has just been dumped, lou (rob Corddry) is a hopeless party animal, Craig (Craig robinson) is a henpecked husband, and Jacob (Clark duke) does nothing but play video games in his room. Cast: John Cusack, rob Corddry, Craig robinson, Clark duke, Crispin glover director: steve Pink genres: sci-Fi Comedy, reunion Films, Comedy

How to Train Your Dragon

opened March 26, 2010 | runtime:1 hr. 38 min. Pg some scary images, brief mild language and intense action set in the mythical world of burly vikings and wild dragons, and based on the book by Cressida Cowell, this action comedy tells the story of hiccup, a viking teenager who doesnt exactly fit in with his tribes longstanding tradition of heroic warriors, he sets off to make something of himself and prove to the others he is worthy of being a warrior. Cast: Jay baruchel, gerard butler, america Ferrera, Jonah hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse director: Chris sanders genres: Childrens Fantasy, Childrens/Family

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Shes Out of My League

opened March 12, 2010 | runtime:1 hr. 44 min. r language and sexual content Kirk (Jay baruchel), an average guy stuck in a dead-end job, cant believe his luck when a gorgeous, successful woman named Molly (alice eve) falls in love with him. with no help from his stunned friends, relatives and ex-girlfriend, Kirk must face his friends ans keep the girl. Cast: Jay baruchel, alice eve, T.J. Miller, Mike vogel, nate Torrence director: Jim Field smith genres: romantic Comedy, Comedy

Clash of the Titans

opens Friday, april 2, 2010 | runtime:1 hr. 58 min. get showtimes + Tickets Pg-13 some frightening images and fantasy action violence Caught amid a war between the gods, Perseus (sam worthington), the son of Zeus (liam neeson), is helpless to save his family from hades (ralph Fiennes), god of the underworld. with nothing left to lose, Perseus leads a band of warriors on an adventure to keep the world at peace. Cast: sam worthington, liam neeson, ralph Fiennes, Mads Mikkelsen, gemma arterton, danny huston director: louis leterrier genres: Mythological Fantasy, Fantasy adventure

Repeat Until Rich

Modeled after the legendary M.I.T. Blackjack Team of
the late 1970s, Mossad would hit the road for a couple of weeks at a time, invading casinos with squads of players, who had carefully defined roles. There were spotters, who would sit patiently at a blackjack table, keeping track of the cards until the odds tilted in favor of the bettor; controllers, who had mastered odds and strategy; and B.P.s (big players), who would move in and start placing large bets. Mr. Axelrad estimates in the book that in a five-year career he won $700,000 for his team. He then went broke playing online poker, to which he became helplessly addicted, and while struggling to write his book he gave up gambling for years. until this trip he hadnt been in Atlantic City since 2004. His book is dark, funny, at times painfully honest, and strips much of the mythology from counting, which turns out to be less difficult than most people imagine and also a lot less glamorous. Its very odd, he said, laughing nervously, as he tried to explain why his bankrollers had entrusted their money to someone who was a self-confessed gambling addict. But I think my teammates understand it. Its sort of heartwarming. They know my entire story, and they understand how its possible for the same person to be in a degenerate, addicted pathology, and also be entrusted with their money. Card counting is not illegal, he says in his book, and to a certain extent casinos tacitly encourage it if it makes bettors flock to the blackjack tables thinking they can beat the system. What the casinos dont like is counters who are good enough to win, and in many states such players, if they can be identified, are evicted. Pit bosses keep files and photographs of repeat offenders. Counters, for their part, resort to ruses and disguises and misdirection. Mr. Axelrad, who is small and intense, used to pretend to be drunk or on drugs. He wore a wig on occasion. The key is to insert some new problem into the mind of the pit, he said, so theyre worried about something else than why is this person betting this way.

Burning Bright: Grim Stories From Ron Rash

by annie MUrPhy PaUl With last years marvelously sinister Serena, set in the early 20th-century logging camps of North Carolina and containing probably the most villainous female character since Lady Macbeth, the enormously talented ron rash broke free of the regional writer label that had followed him for most of his career.
readWOrthY

He ensures his stature as a truly national treasure with Burning Bright, a collection of short stories that combine the

like last years serena, rashs newest novel

the r ea d er s

Josh axelrad is rich; good at math.

lush but rough-edged atmosphere of Appalachia with ice- burning bright is a suspick-sharp dialogue, the kind that plunges right to the heart pensfull thriller sure to keep of a character in one vicious, glorious stroke. you on edge until the end. In the first story, Hard Times, rash evokes deprivation so profound that the main character, Jacob, imagined towns where hungry men hung on boxcars looking for work that couldnt be found, shacks where families lived who didnt even have one swaybacked milk cow. He imagined cities where blood stained the sidewalks beneath buildings tall as ridges. He tried to imagine a place worse than where he was. It seems to be set during the Great Depression, but this tale could just as easily have taken place, oh, last week. In Back of Beyond and The Ascent, the author ventures into the grim lives of modern-day meth addicts and their beleaguered families. In Into the Gorge, he juxtaposes the rights of individuals against the rights of government in the unassuming guise of a man whose forebears planted ginseng on land thats now under federal domain. When Jesse tries to harvest some of that ancestral ginseng to make a little money, he gets arrested. Nastiness ensues. If this all sounds relentlessly grim well, yes, its dark. Its sober. But its so beautifully rendered, its the reading equivalent of hiking into a cavern encrusted with stalactites and stalagmites and all manner of unidentifiable, possibly poisonous outcroppings. Its scary, and its deep, and its completely, breathtakingly gorgeous.

aTlanTiC CiTy -- Sitting

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one afternoon recently in the lobby of Caesars casino here, where the floor is paved with stone to resemble the streets of ancient rome, Josh Axelrad was trying to resemble someone idle, unemployed and not too bright. He was wearing jeans, a T-shirt and a ford racing cap at an off-kilter angle. He was not advertising that, stuffed in wads in his pockets and stacked in a money belt around his waist, he was packing $20,000 that friends had staked him to play cards with.

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QuOteWOrthY im a little frantic right now -- being here, the book coming out. i actually aspire to live more calmly.

Mr. Axelrad, who is 35 and has a philosophy degree from Columbia, is or used to be a professional card counter and blackjack player. In his memoir, repeat until rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars, which came out last week from the Penguin Press, he describes how for five years he was part of a gambling team he calls Mossad. Card counting recognizes that in blackjack, face cards and 10s are more valuable to the player, while lower cards are better for the dealer. In Mr. Axelrads system cards are assigned a value of -1, 0, or +1, and the counter keeps a running tally of every hand he sees, waiting for a time when the deck (or, in most casinos, a shoe containing several decks) is literally stacked in his favor.

$8.7
Million
StatWOrthY The annual revenue for the Clark County, new Jersey gaming Commision was $8,710,976,000, in 2009

QuOteWOrthY The key is to insert some new problem into the mind of the pit, so theyre worried about something else than why is this person betting this way.

besT sellers
How to Be Brilliant
by annie MUrPhy PaUl Top 5 in 4 Categories

Creepy-Crawly, Letter by Letter

by JaneT Maslin Hugh raffles was taking a shower in his Manhattan apartment when a three-inch-long water bug dropped from the ceiling and landed at his feet. His first reaction was one that might be expected. I admit it: I screamed, he writes in Insectopedia, his new compendium of thoughts about the creepy-crawly. Wouldnt you? Then Mr. raffles did something more unusual. He took this anecdote about the shower, labeled it The unseen and made it the u chapter in his fluky, perversely appealing encyclopedia-style volume. There is one entry per letter of the alphabet, but why does this scream/shower/big-horrible-bug story become the u entry? As with all of Insectopedia, theres no particular reason for what goes where. Arbitrariness is part of this books extremely peculiar charm. So what if this oddball foray into insecto-tourism coughs up occasionally empty passages? (What is a cricket in these circumstances without its existence in culture? What is this culture without the existence of crickets?) Mr. raffless adventure succeeded in landing him in The Shanghai evening Post as a visiting Anthropologist Studying Human-Insect relations, u.S. Professor Wants to Publish a Book on Crickets. And he has learned that a male cricket will fight much better if pregame sex is part of his training regimen.

Hardcover Fiction

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Mr. raffles refers to sex-related insect lore as often as he can. of course he does: he has to. Less attention would be paid to Insectopedia if its S chapter were not literal-minded enough to be called Sex, and if the brand of sex to which it refers were not so extra-special. Here is an opportunity to learn about the fetish that has prompted films like Squish, At N (for Nepal), Mr. raffles describes taking a trip with Smush, Toad Trampler and Clogs and frogs: pornohis friend Dan and smoking drugs with Dan all day long. We graphic films in which small creatures (not all of them insects, lived in a state of sensuous, if not analytic, clarity, he recalls. but whos counting?) are stepped on, films made for men who Thats more or less the mind-set of Insectopedia, which is are excited by the thought of being messily crushed. not to say that Mr. raffles isnt lucid and full of interesting information. Its just that a creature like the cricket can pop up anywhere in this book without warning. Many crickets are here, even Jiminy Cricket. But not even he is anywhere near the C chapter. Jiminy shows up in Il Parco delle Cascine on Ascension Sunday. (Whats that? Its the P chapter, for Parco.) Mr. raffles tells the reader that he wishes he could quote the lyrics sung by Jiminy in When You Wish upon a Star, from Disneys Pinocchio, because this is one of Hollywoods most enduringly democratic lyrics, a lyric that brilliantly captures the emptiness, navet and consolations of the American dream. But the copyright holder wanted way too much money. Most of Insectopedia is even buggier than that. Its G chapter, Generosity (The Happy Times), delves deeply into the weird world of Shanghais illicit cricket fights. This involves high-stakes gambling, issues of biosecurity, criteria for cricket excellence, special equipment like the cricket couples marriage box and Jia Sidaos Book of Crickets. This last is a 13th-century book identified as the unquestioned urtext of the cricket community.

Its ambitious indeed to try to overthrow in one go the conventional ideas and images that have accumulated since 1874, when francis Galton first set the words nature and nurture against each other. Yet David Shenk convinces his readers of The Genius in All of us that such a coup is necessary, and he gets it well under way. He tells engaging stories, lucidly explains complex research and offers fresh insights into the nature of exceptional performance: noting, for example, that profound achievements are often driven by petty jealousies and resentments, or pointing out the surprising fact that great talent seems to cluster geographically and temporally, undermining the assumption that its all due to individual genetic endowments. Just how tall a task Shenk took on is evident in his voluminous endnotes, which go on as long as the main text and are just as interesting. Here the author allows us to watch him working his way through the literature, inquiring, arguing, marveling, as he wrestles a new understanding into being.

in brieF
Quick hits on new releases

1. hoUse rUles, by Jodi Picoult 2. The helP, by Kathryn stockett 3. The silenT sea, by Clive Cussler and Jack du brul 4. baCKlash, by aaron allston 5. abrahaM linColn: vaMPire hUnTer, by seth grahame-smith

Josh axelrad is a 35yr old graduate of New York Citys Columbia university. As a former professional card-counter and blackjack player, Axelrad has a few stories to tell. His memoir, repeat until rich: A Professional Card Counters Chronicle of the Blackjack Wars tells all about his struggles with gambling addiciton and the ins and outs of a dangerous system. 210 pages - Bantam - $15.95

Hardcover Nonfiction 1. Chelsea Chelsea bang bang, by Chelsea handler 2. CoUrage and ConseQUenCe, by Karl rove 3. Change yoUr brain, Change yoUr body, by daniel g. amen 4. no aPology, by Mitt romney 5. The PaCiFiC, by hugh ambrose

Frederick neeson

wrote a book on

Mark Twain: The Ebb And Flow Of The Life Of Huckleberry Finns Creator
by riChard waKeField April marks 100 years since the death of Samuel L. Clemens, a writer whose literary stock rose fast, beginning in the mid1860s, when he re-christened himself Mark Twain, and has remained blue chip ever since. Yet if not for one indisputably great book, The Adventures of Huckleberry finn, he would be just another of dozens of once-popular but now nearly forgotten writers of his time Brett Harte, Ambrose Bierce, even the colossal William Dean Howells. All wrote works that can still be engaging; none left anything approaching the social and literary touchstone of Huck finn. While roughing It has long, wonderful passages, and Puddnhead Wilson, Tom Sawyer and Life on the Mississippi are near-classics, many of Twains other books are almost unreadable today. The Personal recollections of Joan of Arc? A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthurs Court and The Prince and the Pauper, famous for their stories, will defeat any but the most dedicated Mark Twain fan. So the general reader who picks up a biography of Mark Twain is likely to be searching for insight into that one watershed

pancakes. Seriously, an entire book on the breakfast food you love to hate. Its 300 pages total but half of them are stuck together. Its a really tough read, especially if youre a fan of waffles. Whats up with turkey-bacon by the way? That shit is whack. 327 pages - LogCabin - $12.00

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Paperback Trade Fiction 1. liTTle bee, by Chris Cleave 2. The lasT song, by nicholas sparks 3. a reliable wiFe, by robert goolrick 4. The girl wiTh The dragon TaTToo, by stieg larsson 5. The 8Th ConFession, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro

Comedian Chelsea handler beats out Karl rove (say that without laughing) for the top spot on the hardcover nonfiction list with her new collection of writings entitled Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang. Its one part memoir, one part terrible lie; the fun is in figuring out where truth stops and farce begins. Play it with your friends! 185 pages - Penguin - $14.99

readWOrthY

Raffles INSECTOPEDIA is a letter-by-letter account of one mans life and adventure with bugs.
illustrated. 465 pgs; Pantheon. $29.95

Paperback Nonfiction 1. a PaTrioTs hisTory oF The Us, by larry schweikart and Michael allen 2. are yoU There, vodKa? iTs Me, Chelsea, by Chelsea handler 3. My horiZonTal liFe, by Chelsea handler 4. The blind side, by Michael lewis 5. Three CUPs oF Tea, by greg Mortenson and david oliver relin

QuOteWOrthY Anthropologist Studying Human-Insect relations, u.S. Professor Wants to Publish a Book on Crickets.

readWOrthY Wednesday April 21st Author robert Goolrick hosts an online chat about his newest book A reLIABLe WIfe. Details at www.random-house.com/Goolrick

Movie Food From Low-Class Nibbles To Luxury Dining

Movie audiences have always known the joys of in-seat snacking, but it took the theaters a while to come around. owners of nickelodeons and movie palaces refused to sell food until the 1920s, according to "Shared Pleasures," a history of movie presentation by Douglas Gomery. Munching on peanuts and popcorn during a show was low-class, they believed, associated with the circus and the burlesque house. The wonderful new art of the cinema needed a refined atmosphere, more like the concert hall than the carnival. In most of the country, though, the drive-in ruled. With more space available, the menu expanded: hot dogs, burgers, even barbecue and fried fish sandwiches were offered to carbound audiences. The late '70s saw the death of the drive-in and the neighborhood theater as more multiplexes opened. on the food front, the bold invention of the era was snack counter nachos. Introduced by frank Liberto at a Texas rangers game in 1977, chips with gooey "cheese" soon moved from stadium to multiplex lobby. Health was on people's mind in the '90s however: A1994 report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest broke the news that a large movie popcorn had as much saturated fat as six Big Macs. Sales dipped -- just a bit -- and many snack counters started using slightly more healthy canola oil rather than coconut. The latest trend is theaters offering "luxury" options: premium screening rooms with cocktails, wine lists and upscale menus. At the Gold Class Cinema in redmond, Washington, you can get $17 crab cakes to nibble while watching the film.

the hea lT hy

10 Last-Minute FUNctional Gifts At $20

Still looking for that perfect gift? one that emphasizes giving and helps to tone down holiday hype? Check out these green ideas:
green iphOne appS Help your iPhone-obsessed friends by recYcled glaSS dinnerWare Natural Spaces fire &

of course, people ate anyway. As each new theater opened, candy stores and street vendors set up shop nearby, selling bags of treats to be smuggled past the ushers. Looking for extra revenue streams, the theaters began leasing space to vendors: prime locations right next to the box office, or even "lobby privileges" for a dollar a day. When they saw the kind of profits the popcorn sellers were turning, they took over the stands themselves. The movies turned popcorn into a snack phenomenon: 5 million pounds were grown in the united States in 1934, 100 million pounds in 1940. Soft drinks showed up via the Coca-Cola company. After World War II, salesmen traveled the land, setting up soda stands at movie houses throughout the country. With more and more independent theaters opening, owners looked to the refreshment stands as a way to cover the cost of renting films. Trying to sell more snacks, they instituted intermissions in the middle of films and commissioned cartoons of singing, dancing treats to push the goods. Art houses, showing foreign films to an urbane crowd, began to pop up in big cities and university towns in the late '40s. As historian Barbara Wilinsky points out in her 2001 study "Sure Seaters: the emergence of Art House Cinema," the new highbrow theaters tried to distinguish themselves from mainstream joints by serving coffee and pastries: more intellectual fare, apparently. The arty Trans-Lux chain even set up faux-Parisian "street" cafes in some of its branches.

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showering them with green apps. Apps such as GreenYou helps calculate carbon footprints and develop plans for reducing them. Kill-o-Watts will tally how much energy appliances consume, and iLocavore helps foodies find locally grown produce, meat, and cheese. free$3
energY MeterS P3 Internationals electricity monitor allows

Light dinnerware is made of recycled glass bottles and comes in nine different colorsfrom twilight to cobalt. Nearly 13 million jars and bottles make their way into blue bins around the u.S. annually. $17-$29 per piece
reuSaBle cOFFee SleeveS No more cardboard sleeves

you to plug in appliances and electronics and gauge how much energy they are gobbling up. By seeing how different settings affect kilowatt-hour use, you can learn how to save energy and money in a matter of minutes. $22
pOrtaBle SOlar charger A wallet-sized solar battery char-

take your coffee on the go with reusable cloth cozies. With more than 15,000 Starbucks stores worldwide, serving millions of customers, a simple cloth coffee cup cozy could make a big difference. $10
charitY giFt cardS Let your friends and family pick their

ger from Solar Style will keep cell phones, cameras, and PDAs running on 100 percent renewable sunrays. The device can store energy as well, for when someone needs a recharge at night. $21
BiOdegradaBle pOtS Made from grain fibers, biodegradable

favorite nonprofit organization to give to with a gift card from Charity Choice. $5 and up
recYcled uMBrellaS Made with 70 percent recycled ma-

pots from the Green Garden Store are an ideal alternative to plastic. $24
elephant pOOp nOte cardS Don't waste your time with

terials, "eco brellas" from Totes will make those cloudy days a little brighter for the planet. The canopy is made of recycled plastic bottles, while the rest is crafted with 70 percent recycled aluminum, bamboo, and waxed hemp. $21
deSigner reuSaBle BagS Lightweight but surprisingly

regular note cardsbuy cards made from waste! elephant waste, that is, repurposed by Lanka Gift Packs. $15

sturdy polyester bags from environsax come in a range of designs, from Japanese prints to botanical spreads. If you order a Graphic Series bag, the company will throw in a free shower timer to help you conserve water. Perfect for toting groceries, gym clothes, and presents. $9

QuOteWOrthY They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.

Plan Your Ideal Walking Workout

iF YOu WalK OccaSiOnallY...

Big Benefits Are Seen From Eating Less Salt

In a report that may bolster public policy efforts to get Americans to reduce the amount of salt in their diets, scientists writing in The New england Journal of Medicine conclude that lowering the amount of salt people eat by even a small amount could reduce cases of heart disease, stroke and heart attacks as much as reductions in smoking, obesity and cholesterol levels. If everyone consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year and between 44,000 and 92,000 fewer deaths, according to the study, which was conducted by scientists at university of California San francisco, Stanford university Medical Center and Columbia university Medical Center. The report comes as health authorities at federal, state and municipal levels are considering policies that would have the effect of pressuring food companies to reduce salt in processed foods, which are considered to be the source of much of the salt Americans eat. Dr. Norman K. Hollenberg, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, questioned the assertion that the benefit of salt-reduction policies would be as great as antismoking policies. If were going to change something, smoking would be No. 1, Dr. Hollenberg said. Salt intake would come somewhere well below it. Dr. Bibbins-Domingo said that for many people the decrease in blood pressure would be modest, which is why, she said, many physicians have thrown up their hands and said, Im not going to advise my patients to reduce salt because its too hard for patients and the benefits for any individual are small. But small incremental changes in salt, such as lowering salt in tomato sauce or breads and cereals by a small amount, would achieve small changes in blood pressure that would have a measurable effect across the whole population, she said. Thats the reason why this intervention works better than just targeting smokers.

Routine: Begin by walking 10 to 15 minutes on flat ground or on a treadmill at a purposeful pace, or complete 2,000 steps (use a pedometer to monitor your walking progress). "You want to cover a mile in about 20 minutes. That's not a window-shopping pace," says Mark fenton, a former competitive racewalker and the host of the PBS series America's Walking. Walking tips: Maintain an upright but comfortable posture, with your neck, upper back, and shoulders relaxed, suggests fitness-walking expert Sara Donovan, author of Mall Walking Madness: everything You Need to Know to Lose Weight and Have fun at the Same Time. Minimize the sway in your lower back; don't jut your rear out. Instead, maintain a slight, natural arch in your back. Gently pull in your abdominal muscles. This helps strengthen your abs while reducing lower-back pain. Goal: Aim to walk at least five days a week. every second or third week, add 5 minutes. After about two or three months of regular walking, you should be up to 30 minutes. once you've hit half an hour, add variety to your terrain rather than increasing time or speed. This will boost your enjoyment, encouraging you to keep up the habit.
iF YOure an everYdaY WalKer...

Recipe of the Week

Japanese-Style Sesame Green Beans
Prep Time: 5 Min | Cook Time: 15 Min | ready In: 20 Min Servings: 4 Ingredients 1 tablespoon canola oil 1 1/2 teaspoons sesame oil 1 pound fresh green beans, washed 1 tablespoon soy sauce 1 tablespoon toasted sesame seeds Directions Warm a large skillet or wok over medium heat. When the skillet is hot, pour in canola and sesame oils, then place whole green beans into the skillet. Stir the beans to coat with oil. Cook until the beans are bright green and slightly browned in spots, about 10 minutes. remove from heat, and stir in soy sauce; cover, and let sit about 5 minutes. Transfer to a serving platter, and sprinkle with toasted sesame seeds. Nutritional Information Amount Per Serving Calories: 97 Total fat: 6.6g | Cholesterol: 0mg

iF YOure an athletic WalKer...

Routine: Speed-walking means setting about a 12-minutemile pace. racewalking, an olympic sport, is even more challenging. Both take concentration. unless you continually remind your feet to move unnaturally fast, youll slow down. Walking tips: To visualize racewalking, think of children running around a pool and being told by the lifeguard to walk, not run, says fenton: Imagine their upright posture, quick steps, fairly straight legs, and bent arms. Take fast steps: World-class female racewalkers maintain a blistering 200-steps-per-minute pace (or a 7- to 7.5-minute mile) for 12 miles. Goal: You could walk two miles in 25 minutes at this pace. or you could keep your workout interesting by following these two strategies: Intersperse 10 one-minute bursts of speed-walking or racewalking throughout a moderately fast 45-minute walk. Become a hiker. Going up hills is the best intensifier, says author Mark fenton. even though you may not walk as fast as you could on flat ground, youll boost your workout substantially. According to experts, you expend significantly more energy hiking up a 10 percent incline than walking at the same pace on level ground. And because youre moving up and down in addition to forward, your calf and thigh muscles will develop more tone.

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Routine: If youre already walking for at least 30 minutes a day, you may be ready to make your routine less routine. Concentrate on increasing distance and speed, gradually working up to 45 minutes. Pick up the pace until youre walking a mile in 15 to 18 minutes. (Wear a pedometer, or use your car to measure your route.) To speed up, take faster steps, not longer strides. Theres a physical limit to stride length, but as your fitness improves you can always take quicker steps, says fenton, who is also the author of The Complete Guide to Walking for Health, Weight Loss, and fitness. Walking tip: Bend your arms to about 90 degrees. That turns them into shorter, more compact pendulums. Youll be able to swing them faster and thus help your legs and feet move faster. (Just try running with straight arms.) Goal: Set your sights on taking 10,000 steps every day, which adds up to about five miles. Youll take half of those steps just by going about your daily lifegrocery shopping, climbing stairs. The rest, about 2 miles, youll need to add by fitness walking.

QuOteWOrthY If everyone consumed half a teaspoon less salt per day, there would be between 54,000 and 99,000 fewer heart attacks each year.

Why so green?

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