A Washington, DC councilman is drafting legislation that would ban the late-night sale of single slices of pizza as a way to combat crime.
Democrat Party councilman Jim Graham says the late-night “Jumbo Slice” pizza shacks operating on the popular Adams Morgan club and bar strip in Ward 1 attract the element that is likely to commit crime.
“Even though it’s a legal business and everything, they have become a nuisance,” Graham said. “Behaving the way they do in terms of music, in terms of letting people hang out and also in terms of tolerating a certain level of violence.”
*-* Really? Is this really what we expect from our elected officials. Get a life, pal. Whats next, banning sidewalks? After all, that is where people walk after the bars close and that is where most of the fights happen. Go buy a clue, pal. This guy needs to be voted out ASAP. Story from WTOP News
Politico is reporting that NBC crews arrived at the White House at 5 a.m. to film their day behind the scenes at the White House. The footage is set to air in a pair of hour-long specials next week.
Allegedly, Brian Williams took the Acela Amtrak into DC and will be interviewing President Obama and the first lady. Reportedly, NBC cameras also rode to work with Robert Gibbs this morning and will capture footage of the First Lady walking Bo around the White House grounds.
According to reports, Bo will be sporting a new leash that reads: “I [HEART] OBAMA.”
Next Bus technology uses global positioning satellites and advanced computer modeling to track buses on their routes every 120 seconds. Taking into account the actual position of the transit vehicles, their intended stops, and the typical traffic patterns, the system estimates the bus arrivals. These estimates are updated constantly as the vehicles are tracked. In general, the prediction information will be accurate to within several minutes as buses are subject to field conditions such as traffic and weather.
A round, red, white and blue Next Bus sign posted at a Metrobus stop includes a unique, identifying bus stop number and the phone number to call to get real-time bus arrival information for that bus stop. Signs currently are being posted at more than 12,008 Metrobus stops in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.
Next Bus signWhen the Next Bus system becomes available in July, Metrobus customers will be able to get real-time bus arrival information on Metro’s Web site, by telephone or from electronic signs installed at select Metrobus stops. WMATA on the Web
Tourists lined up to visit the Eiffel Tower in Paris Friday. The tower celebrated its 120th birthday this week, and has been visited by more than 200 million people. (Michel Euler/Associated Press)
Ah, this was one of the highlights when I visited Krakow - however the thought of a fine seems ludicrous.
The hejnal or Crakovian Hymn is played four times every hour in all directions from the tallest tower of St. Mary’s Church in Krakow. According to a popular 20th century legend, during one of the Mongol invasion of Poland (usually the invasion of 1241), Tatar warriors approached the city. A guard on the Mariacki church tower sounded the alarm by playing the Heynal, and the city gates were closed before the Tatars could take the city by surprise. The bugler, however, was shot in the throat and did not complete the tune. According to the legend, that is why it now ends abruptly before completion.
A little history that I found interesting: Originally the tune was played by the town guard, however since the 19th century the tune has been performed by active members of the fire brigade, who use the church tower as a lookout post. Currently there are at least four different buglers serving in rotation at the tower.
Krakow City Guards will start giving out fines in one month’s time for talking during the historic hejnal anthem, also known as the Cracovian Hymn played hourly from the highest tower of St. Mary’s Church on the city square.
The city government wants tourists and other passers-by to stop talking and for restaurants to turn off their music for a five-minute period of silence to pay respect to the hymn, which is played every hour, on the hour, every day of the year.
“We have in mind a very small fine, up to 20 zloty (about 5 euro). That should be enough,” claims Pawel Bystrowski, member of Civic Platform and the city official who conceived the idea, adding that first offenders will receive a warning with a second offence garnering a fine.
CHICAGO -- At this rate, the Gatorade dispenser in the Cubs dugout will not last the entire season.
Carlos Zambrano attacked it with a bat on Wednesday after he was ejected in the seventh inning for arguing a close play at the plate with home-plate umpire Mark Carlson in the Cubs' 5-2 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
"That was pretty impressive," Chicago's Milton Bradley said of Zambrano's animated antics. "That was on a Bradley level."
Trailing, 2-1, in the Pittsburgh seventh, the Pirates' Nyjer Morgan reached third base after he singled and advanced on an error by left fielder Alfonso Soriano. One out later, during Nate McLouth's at-bat, Zambrano threw a wild pitch on an 0-1 count, and Morgan scampered home.
Cubs catcher Geovany Soto flipped the ball to Zambrano, covering at the plate, but Morgan appeared to sneak his left hand in. Carlson called Morgan safe, but Zambrano disagreed. The pitcher and umpire went nose to nose, and they briefly bumped. Carlson tossed Zambrano, and Zambrano did the same, signaling that the umpire was ejected. Watch the video HERE on MLB
As Vice President Biden delivered a commencement address to about 1,000 graduates of the Air Force Academy, a gust of wind knocked over his teleprompter.
Biden took that opportunity to crack a joke at the expense of his boss, President Obama, who famously uses a teleprompter for all of his speeches.
"What am I going to tell the president when I tell him his teleprompter is broken? What will he do then?" Biden joked at the ceremony in Colorado Springs, Col.
A worker hung a giant poster in Warsaw Monday ahead of the 20th anniversary in June of when Poland held semi-free elections that led to the fall of communism. The poster shows a cowboy resembling the sheriff from the film “High Noon” walking over the Communist Party headquarters. (Alik Keplicz/Associated Press)
The San Francisco-based web phenom has partnered with Reveille and Brillstein
(Reveille bring us The Office" (NBC), "Ugly Betty" (ABC) and "The Tudors" (Showtime), plus reality programming that includes "The Biggest Loser" and "American Gladiators" (both NBC). While Brillstein is responsible for "Real Time with Bill Maher" (HBO), "The Sopranos" (HBO), "According to Jim" (ABC) and "NewsRadio" (NBC).)
Entertainment to develop an unscripted TV skein described as "putting ordinary people on the trail of celebrities in a revolutionary competitive format."
Project was announced with few details Monday by Reveille and Brillstein Entertainment. Series concept was created by novelist/screenwriter Amy Ephron, who will exec produce with Reveille's Mark Koops and Howard T. Owens, Brillstein's Jon Liebman and Lee Kernis and producers Kevin Foxe and Steve Lathan.
"We've found a compelling way to bring the immediacy of Twitter to life on TV," Liebman said.
Worldwide rights to the show will be repped by ShineReveille Intl.
By Adam Thomson in Cancún, Mexico Hotels in Mexico’s coastal resort of Cancún, one of the world’s most popular getaways, are adopting extreme measures as holidaymakers scramble to cancel bookings in the wake of the swine flu scare.
Visitors to one hotel, The Royal, are being offered a “flu-free guarantee”: anyone who contracts the flu virus within 14 days of checking out gets three free annual holidays.
Discounts abound elsewhere in Cancún, where Bestday, a Mexican-based internet broker, says four in five of the 31,000 hotel rooms it monitors in the city – and in the Riviera Maya coast to the south – are empty. The figure was one in five before the outbreak.
It looks like Joe Biden -- like so many vice presidents before him -- is destined to be a punching bag.
The Las Vegas tourism folks -- who gave you the phrase "what happens here, stays here" -- have a new newspaper ad playing off Biden's now-retracted statement that people should stay off airplanes and subways in the midst of the swine flu scare.
The ad features a less-than-flattering mug shot of Biden with the caption: "Mr. Vice President, if you had said it here, no one would have known."
Lots of buzz around Wolfram Alpha today - here is the 'sneak peak' video from Berkamn
Wolfram Alpha, a new "Computational Knowledge Engine" developed by British physicist Stephen Wolfram, is all set to revolutionize search with its amazing/innovative ability to give answers to your questions directly - instead of directing you to sources where you "might" get the required information.
The software is still in its initial days of existence and will be available for use later this month. It was showcased earlier this week at Harvard University. Many experts consider this to become the "Internet's Holy Grail" once fully operational.
It will be able to understand and respond to ordinary queries and give answers to queries in ordinary language, similar to how a person would respond when queries. To give you an idea of what this is capable of, let us take a few examples.
Suppose you want to compare the height of the Empire State Building with the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, all you need to do is to type in your query and wait for the software to calculate your results derived from various sources. Once the search is over, you will not only get a detailed answer to your query but also a lot of other related information that might be of interest to you.
Despite the rain, around 9,000 people turned out today at 8:30am for the Race for Hope to fight brain tumors. The 5k walk began at 14th and Pennsylvania continued down Pennsylvania to the Capitol and back.
At the end of the walk a rally was held and American Idol winner David Cook was the keynote speaker (seen above). David told the crowd that he was a strong supporter of the cause, and then revealed that his brother died from a brain tumor. "Like everybody here, I am affected by this disease, I actually lost my brother yesterday to a brain tumor. I couldn't imagine being anywhere else right now." David concluded his remarks by saying "I will be here every year that they will have me."
The 12th annual walk raised over 2 million dollars this year, way up from their initial walk which raised 175,000.
About 850,000 were expected to attend the festival at Flushing Meadows Park. It's not far from St. Francis Prep, the local epicenter of the swine flu outbreak, and also PS 177 in Flushing, where there are several suspected cases.
While all the entertainment is coming from within the U.S., organizer Carmelo Maceda said: "We cannot control the crowd. We don't know how many people fly in from Mexico or they just went to Mexico. That's why we don't want to take that risk."
City officials said they did not recommend the festival cancel their festivities, but Maceda said they couldn't afford to take a chance.
"We start thinking if something happened in the park as a Mexican community we don't have the power or the money to control a contamination of thousands of thousands of people," Maceda said.
The Cinco de Mayo Festival will be rescheduled in the coming weeks.
A mysterious mural has turned up on a half-dozen concrete walls around the city in recent weeks. The black graffiti stencil shows former Gov. Rod Blagojevich wearing his familiar tracksuit, running through the street and glancing over his shoulder, as if he is being pursued. The image leaves it to the viewer to speculate about who is trailing Blago -- U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, perhaps?
