HEALTH OFFICIALS URGE RESIDENTS TO STAY INDOORS

            (Salisbury, MD) In response to extreme temperatures, Wicomico County health officials are urging residents to remain indoors in air conditioned environments. A heat warning is in effect for the entire state of Maryland until Saturday at 8PM, until which time, the combined heat and humidity create a hazard that could lead to potential loss of life.

            “Until temperatures return to normal, we are asking residents to avoid all outside activities, drink lots of water, stay cool, and check on neighbors. If air conditioning is not available, residents should consider visiting the local mall or cooling center. It is important during times like these to look after one another, and help ensure each other’s safety.” said Brandy Wink, Deputy Health Officer for Wicomico County.

      Yesterday, government officials in Wicomico County announced the opening of a cooling center which will be opened today, Friday, July 22 and Saturday, July 23 from 10AM to 8PM. The cooling center is located at Wicomico County Youth and Civic Center, 500 Glen Avenue, Salisbury.  Anyone coming to the cooling center should bring all their own medications and snacks.  Bottled water will be provided.  No pets will be permitted.

            For local and updated cooling center information, facts on heat related illness, or additional tips on how to stay cool, visit the Wicomico County Health Department's website at www.wicomicohealth.org. 

BREAKING NEWS: Sky News Reports Shots Fired At Children's Summer Camp In Norway

Sky News reports a man dressed as a policeman and armed with a handgun has attacked a summer camp for children near Oslo.

From Fox News

BREAKING NEWS: Maryland’s Job Loss Rate Highest in Nation

Maryland continued to shed jobs in June, tying with Kansas for the fastest rate of job loss in the nation over the past year, the federal government estimated Friday.

The state's unemployment rate hit 7 percent, up from 6.8 percent in May, the U.S. Department of Labor said.

Maryland lost nearly 15,000 jobs in the 12 months ending in June, according to the agency's estimates, which are drawn from surveys and can be revised later as more information filters in. That loss was slightly more than half a percent of the employment base, worst in the country alongside Kansas, with Delaware and Georgia close behind.

But Maryland's month-over-month loss — 300 jobs — wasn't nearly as bad as it was in May, when the state shed nearly 10,000 positions. The state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation emphasized that change, calling May an "outlier."

READ MORE …

How’s that Obama thing working out for ya? How ‘bout that O’Malley thing? – Ed.

Siblings Sell 6-Year-Old Startup For $100 Million

Digital yearbook site, founded 6 years ago, acquired by social network

In 2005, Catherine Cook and her brother David had an idea for a startup. The high schoolers flipped through a yearbook and wanted to make a digital version.

The 15-and-16-year-olds got to work and created MyYearbook. In the six-year span, the duo raised $17 million in financing, grew the site to 20 million users and generated 1.2 billion monthly page views.

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Taxpayers Lost $1.3 Billion In Chrysler Bailout

Yesterday I ran this article on the announcement of us taxpayers losing $1.3 billion in the Chrysler deal.

To my absolute amazement the article only brought in ONE comment.

Are we, (as Americans) becoming so complacent from being boned by our President and the Democrat Party that it's simply business as usual any more?

Between Fiat getting a strong percentage of our stock in Chrysler and the major shareholders also losing out financially, how can we simply sit here and watch wanna be politicians throw away our money and continue to vote for them.

That being said, do the Democrats realize just what they've done here with outside investors. I'm personally sick and tired of watching the Obama administration piss on America. Chrysler and GM should have folded from the beginning, period. You know it and everyone else knows it.

So for the sake of humor, do tell me how that Post only got one comment. Tell me why you remain silent, if you'd be so kind. Have you given up. Have Americans all become wussies lead around like puppets on a string?

Are You A Wussy?

Outrageous Hotel Perks For Pets

Bathrobes, massages and treadmills are becoming practically de rigueur at five-star hotels

Gunny, a devoted Peninsula Beverly Hills guest, often visits the posh hotel, and the staff joyously greets him as he strides along the lobby’s marble floor. Retiring to his room, Gunny finds a specially monogrammed towel beside his bed and sits down to a grilled New York sirloin and scrambled eggs with aged Tillamook cheddar on bone china. And when he needs styling, the hotel’s Rolls Royce shuttles him to the salon.

All pretty normal for a 5-star hotel—except Gunny is a golden retriever. “Like their owners, pets should have a chance to get away from their normal routine,” said the hotel’s head concierge, James Little.

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MSNBC Distorts Reagan Position on Debt Ceiling

Cable network MSNBC has been distorting the late President Ronald Reagan’s position on raising the debt ceiling, in the midst of a current-day political debate over raising that ceiling between President Barack Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill, says an analysis by the Media Research Center (MRC).

“At least five MSNBC anchors since Tuesday have promoted a cherry-picked House Democratic Caucus video that distorts President Ronald Reagan’s position on the debt ceiling, inaccurately asserting that President Barack Obama is more in line with Reagan than the Republicans,” MRC News Analyst Alex Fitzsimmons reported in a BiasAlert on Wednesday.

The five MSNBC anchors are Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell and Thomas Roberts. They each played or cited an excerpt from a Reagan speech given on Sept. 26, 1987. In the excerpt,  Reagan expressed the need to raise the debt ceiling.

However, the cable network did not acknowledge that later in that same speech Reagan insisted on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

READ MORE …

Don't Forget The Farmer's Market This Weekend

Euphoria Fancy Food Inc. Issues An Alert On Uneviscerated Fish

Euphoria Fancy Food Inc. 149-151 2nd Ave. Brooklyn NY 11215 is recalling Herring Special Salting discovered by New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets Food Inspectors during a routine inspection and subsequent analysis of product by Food Laboratory personnel confirming that the fish was not properly eviscerated prior to processing. This product may be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum spores, which can cause Botulism, a serious and potentially fatal food-borne illness.

Class-Action Suit Filed After Katrina Hospital Deaths Settled For $25 Million

A New Orleans judge gave preliminary approval today to a settlement agreement that would end a class-action lawsuit against one of the nation's largest publicly owned health care companies. Under the terms of the deal, Tenet Healthcare Corporation and a subsidiary will pay $25 million to patients and visitors trapped at Memorial Medical Center after Hurricane Katrina.

The settlement would release the company from any future liability for claims by the class members. The $25 million, minus legal fees, will be divided by a court-appointed administrator according to criteria that have not yet been established. The number of class members is unknown, but there were 187 patients and about 800 visitors in the hospital when the emergency took hold. Tenet reported revenues of more than $9 billion in 2010.

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Watt Seeks to Slash Outside Ethics Office Budget

Former Ethics Target Looking for a Little Payback?

Rep. Mel Watt (D-N.C.) is poised to offer an amendment to the legislative branch appropriations bill that would cut the funding of the independent Office of Congressional Ethics by 40 percent.

The amendment, which could be offered as early as Friday, would gut $619,200 from the OCE’s $1.5 million budget.

In a letter to colleagues Thursday, Watt called the OCE “redundant and duplicative of the House Ethics Committee” and said its procedures are “unfair and abusive of the rights of Members of the House.”

“I believe that members of Congress deserve to be treated fairly as do the constituents we represent,” Watt wrote. “I, therefore, encourage you to support this amendment to return some measure of fairness to our institution.”

READ MORE …

Why Men And Women Should End The Chore Wars

Big news, ladies! Turns out your husbands haven't been slackers all along.

TIME's cover story this week (available here for subscribers) examines the "Chore Wars" that take place in most modern marriages, where women have long felt the burden of being overworked.

Ever since women entered the workforce en masse in the 1970s, they've felt the pressures of paid work on top of their pressures of unpaid work such as chores around the house and childcare.

Their husbands, by contrast, seemed to move at a glacial pace to increase their fair share. This pressure on working women has caused, NewsFeed imagines, many a marital spat.

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Baltimore Police Pay Man $100,000 After Beating

The city's spending board has approved a $100,000 settlement to a 65-year-old man who claimed in a civil suit that he was beaten by police officers who mistook his cigarette for a marijuana joint.

The Board of Estimates voted Wednesday to pay the money and end a $5 million lawsuit filed in Baltimore Circuit Court by Lornell Felder.

Felder contended that in April 2009, he was standing in front of his house on Elmley Avenue rolling a tobacco cigarette when two plainclothes police officers jumped out of an unmarked sport utility vehicle and ran toward him.

Felder said in the suit that he had no idea the men were officers, that he tried to run and yelled to his wife, "Call the police." His suit says that the officers tackled him and one said, " 'We are the police,' as they continued to beat Mr. Felder in his head, face and body."

READ MORE …

Whoops! $1 Million Worth Of Wine Spilled

A malfunctioning forklift dropped 462 cases of wine in Australia on Thursday, a spill with a price tag of more than $1 million.

The 5,544 bottles of 2010 Mollydooker Velvet Glove shiraz, with a price tag of $185 a bottle,  fell almost 20 feet to ground of a wharf in Port Adelaide as the forklift was loading it for shipment abroad, according to media reports.

"We just couldn't believe it," winemaker Sparky Marquis said in a report on Adelaide Now. "As you can imagine, this wine is our pride and joy. To see it accidentally destroyed, and not consumed, has left us all a bit numb.

"The container manager said that when his team came and told him what had happened, he was looking around for cameras to see if it was a 'gotcha' hoax. He realised it was serious when nobody was laughing," Adelaide Now quotes Marquis as saying.

Source

Saved Money On Electronics By Haggling?

Surveys done by our corporate cohorts at Consumer Reports have found that around 50% of people who make an attempt at haggling end up getting some kind of a deal, even when shopping online. Now the editors at CR want to hear tales of successful haggling from consumers who've been able to bargain down the price at electronics retailers.

from The Consumerist

Beijing Develops Pulse Weapons

China's military  is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Center study on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.

EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.

The declassified intelligence report, obtained by the private National Security Archive, provides details on China’s EMP weapons and plans for their use. Annual Pentagon reports on China's military in the past made only passing references to the arms.

“For use against Taiwan, China could detonate at a much lower altitude (30 to 40 kilometers) … to confine the EMP effects to Taiwan and its immediate vicinity and minimize damage to electronics on the mainland,” the report said.

The report, produced in 2005 and once labeled “secret,” stated that Chinese military writings have discussed building low-yield EMP warheads, but “it is not known whether [the Chinese] have actually done so.”

The report said that in addition to EMP weapons, “any low-yield strategic nuclear warhead (or tactical nuclear warheads) could be used with similar effects.”

“The DF-21 medium-range ballistic missile has been mentioned as a platform for the EMP attack against Taiwan,” the report said.

According to the report, China’s electronic weapons are part of what are called “trump card” or “assassin’s mace” weapons that “are based on new technology that has been developed in high secrecy.”

“Trump card would be applicable if the Chinese have developed new low-yield, possibly enhanced, EMP warheads, while assassin’s mace would apply if older warheads are employed,” the report said.

According to the report, China conducted EMP tests on mice, rats, rabbits, dogs and monkeys that produced eye, brain, bone marrow and other organ injuries. It stated that “it is clear the real purpose of the Chinese medical experiments is to learn the potential human effects of exposure to powerful EMP and [high-powered microwave] radiation.”
More from The Washington Times

Virginia AG Probing Richmond Medicaid Fraud Sting Video

Virginia's attorney general and Richmond city authorities are investigating a video showing a government worker advising a man posing as a wealthy Russian drug dealer not to note his criminal activities on a Medicaid application.

The undercover video, shot July 1, appeared Thursday on conservative activist James O'Keefe's Project Veritas website. Earlier this week, the group posted similar undercover videos made at Medicaid offices in Ohio, New York and South Carolina.

The most recent covert video shows a social-services worker in Richmond's Medicaid office counseling a man speaking in a Russian accent to omit what he had told her about his fictional drug-trafficking and prostitution activities.

"No, you just leave that off your application," she says, laughing nervously. "Don't put that on there."

"And would I just put, like self-employed," the impostor asks.

"Yes," she responds.

The man, using a Russian-sounding alias, had told the worker he drives a car worth more than $800,000 with a gold-plated engine, owns a yacht and has a helipad. He tells the employee he is seeking Medicaid enrollment for his father and that his family's enterprises are "off the books."

Neither the video nor the Project Veritas website says whether the employee reported the incident to her supervisors or to law enforcement. There was no response to a telephone message left Thursday afternoon for Richmond Social Services Director Doris Moseley.

Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli watched the video, found it "troubling" and ordered his Medicaid fraud unit to investigate, said Brian Gottstein, Cuccinelli's press secretary.

Gov. Bob McDonnell asked the state police to review it, administration spokesman J. Tucker Martin said.

Michael Wallace, a spokesman for Richmond Mayor Dwight C. Jones, said the city is "investigating this matter to determine the validity of the tape and the information. We will handle this matter as needed through the established disciplinary channels."

from the Richmond Times-Dispatch

BREAKING NEWS: Senate Kills House-Approved Deficit Reduction Bill

Democratically controlled Senate tables -- effectively killing -- House Republicans' 'cut, cap and balance' deficit reduction bill.
From Fox News

Daily Times Reporter Greg Latshaw Moves On

Today is the final day for Greg Latshaw at the Daily Times. Greg will be moving back to his home town of Pittsburgh where he picked up a new job.

Erick Sahler will also be leaving the Daily Times at the end of this month. Word has it he wants to fulfill his dream of being a professional cartoon artist.

Needless to say, the Daily Times continues to lose veterans, including Brian Shane out of Ocean City. Their most recent layoffs continue to prove the decline of print newspapers.

We wish Eric and Greg the very best of luck in their future.

Today's Survey Question

Should Women Have Their Own Brand Of Beer?