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Feds To Drop Charges Against Blackwater Guard

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 2:57pm

The Justice Department intends to drop manslaughter and weapons charges against one of the Blackwater Worldwide security guards involved in a deadly 2007 Baghdad shooting, prosecutors said in court documents Friday.

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Taylor Swift, BMI Sue Idaho Bar

Boise Weekly - November 20, 2009 - 2:55pm

Yesterday, TMZ.com reported that an agent for BMI—Broadcast Music Inc.—was doing a little desert recon and found Lewiston bar Boomers' Sports Cellar in violation of playing music without having paid licensing rights.

A case, filed in Idaho District Court in September against TTJ's Inc., d/b/a The Sport Cellar, a/k/a Boomers' Sports Cellar and Club 301 and The Garden, a/k/a Boomers' Garden, Jay B. Starnes, lists among the plaintiffs, Songs of Universal Inc., EMI Blackwood Music Inc., Warner-Tamerlane Publishing Corp., BMI and Taylor Allison Swift, an individual d/b/a Taylor Swift Music.

Boomers' Sports Cellar owner Jay Starnes couldn't be reached for comment, but a daytime employee at the bar said she'd only learned of the allegations after someone from Georgia kept calling repeatedly asking about the story, so she looked it up online.

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Leader Of Sears Tower Plot Sentenced To 13 Years

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 2:21pm

Narseal Batiste, who faced a maximum of 70 years in prison, was convicted in May of conspiracy to provide material support to al-Qaida, plotting to blow up buildings and conspiracy to wage war against the U.S. Officials acknowledged the plot never got past the discussion stage and the group never acquired the means to carry it out.

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Museum: Galileo's Fingers, Tooth Found

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 2:06pm

Two fingers and a tooth removed from Galileo Galilei's corpse in a Florentine basilica in the 18th century and given up for lost have been found again, a Florence museum said Friday.

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Socialite's School Brings Hope To Brazilian Slum

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 2:01pm

Brazil's ghettos are poverty stricken and violent. But there are people fighting against the odds to turn things around for the poor children of Rio de Janeiro. Among them is an unusual apostle: a Rio socialite who founded a school for slum-dwelling children and views education as an equalizer.

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Marines Reflect On Duty, Death In Afghanistan

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 1:16pm

When the Marines of "America's Battalion" first arrived in Afghanistan, they were eager to get into the fight against the Taliban. Now, as they wrap up their seven-month deployment — and after the loss of a dozen comrades — they see warfare in a different light.

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Fakin' It

Boise Weekly - November 20, 2009 - 1:14pm

Is it common for a Sex Worker to fake an orgasm or to fake an emotion with a "Trick"?

You mean my desk is a bed and I get paid to orgasm too?

Who ...

Fake it? Why fake when you can have one.

Focus ... focus ... here it comes ... here it comes and

WHAM

What!? You're done, I was almost there. There's no time. I'm gonna get my call.

Oh well, can't be selfish. I'll just play with the perfect man—the one with attachments.

Trick: Did you?

Kitty-Cat: Umm ... yeah

Trick: How many times?

Kitty-Cat: Umm ... two times

Trick (Scratching his head): Are you lying?

Kitty-Cat (Slipping on her heels): Couldn't you tell?

Was that apart of the negotiations you really want

to pay me to please me? I thought you were paying

me to please you. Oh, the confusion.

It's just sex.

You pay

we play

we both go our separate ways ...

It's just sex?

For some, there is always that one that can make

a pro—Working Girl fall in love ...

With Love, Sex Guidess

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Evidence-Based Medicine: Hard For Some To Swallow

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 1:07pm

Based on studies, two panels of medical experts this week recommended fewer screening tests for breast and cervical cancer. But people don't always want to do what the data say to do.

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Obscured By War, Water Crisis Looms In Yemen

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 12:56pm

News from Yemen has been dominated recently by an escalating rebellion along the border with Saudi Arabia. But the country has been making news for decades because of its severe overuse of a rapidly disappearing water supply, the result of natural and political causes.

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'Botax' In Senate Health Bill Upsets Plastic Surgeons

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 12:38pm

Levies on liposuction, breast augmentation and other cosmetic procedures would generate billions of dollars to help cover the uninsured.

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Record Rainfall Wreaks Havoc In Britain, Ireland

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 12:35pm

Raging floods engulfed northern England's Lake District on Friday, killing a police officer and trapping dozens in their swamped homes. In Ireland, more than 3 feet of water shut down the center of the country's second-largest city, Cork, and more than a dozen other towns and villages.

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Peruvian Police Say Gang Killed People For Their Fat

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 12:08pm

Police arrested three members of a gang in the Peruvian jungle that allegedly has been killing people and draining fat from the corpses to sell on the black market for use in cosmetics. Medical experts expressed doubt about an international black market for human fat, though it does have cosmetic applications.

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In Massillon, High School Football Is 'Who We Are'

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 11:16am

The Ohio school has a 20,000-seat stadium, a $3 million indoor practice facility and a live tiger for a mascot. Massillon teams have won 22 state championships and they're in the running for another one. It's football "sunup to sundown," the head coach says.

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Senate Ethics Committee: No Punishment For Burris

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 9:26am

The Senate Ethics Committee on Friday admonished Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., for making "inconsistent, misleading or incomplete" statements about the circumstances surrounding his appointment to the seat once held by Barack Obama. The committee didn't recommend any punishment.

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Senate Health Bill Faces Saturday Showdown

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 8:42am

Democrats will need to vote in lockstep to overcome GOP opposition in a key procedural vote to move the $848 billion measure to full debate. But it's not yet clear whether Majority Leader Harry Reid can round up enough support.

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Thanksgiving Redux

Boise Weekly - November 20, 2009 - 7:09am

As I prepare to make not one, but two turkeys this upcoming week, I think back to a column I wrote in 2003 about Thanksgiving in Lingo Yarns, once upon a time when I was editor of this fine rag.
As I read through it now, I reminisce about my girl spawn who was so innocent and young six years ago. My how time flies. Perhaps I'll have an update on Squanto from her next week.

Here is the 2003 column for your pleasure...
—————————————————
When you sit down at the dinner table over this next week, first eating the big turkey, then the myriad of secondary dishes made from the leftovers, it might be food for thought to contemplate these Thanksgiving facts and myths.

Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November as established by the United States Congress in 1941. This was a compromise between tradition and a non-binding presidential declaration. Two years before, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared that turkey day should be celebrated on the next to last Thursday of November rather than the last Thursday of the month—to lengthen the period of time for the Christmas shopping season. In those years, you see, it was uncool to shop for Christmas until after Thanksgiving but coming out of the depression the middle-class merchants needed all the help they could get. Today, big corporate stores start setting up after Halloween and holiday catalogs begin arriving just after we’ve thrown out all the back-to-school catalogs. “Oh come, all ye faithful…”
Before Roosevelt’s declaration in support of America’s merchants, Thanksgiving had been recognized for only 76 years as an annual event. In 1863 president Abraham Lincoln declared a national day of Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November in an effort to help forge a national identity during the tumultuous divisions between Americans resulting from the Civil War. It was also a way to welcome the huge influx of immigrants coming to America by involving them in a common, American holiday.
Several other presidents had proclaimed days of thanksgiving. James Madison declared the holiday twice in 1815. John Adams proclaimed it in 1798 and 1799 and George Washington in 1789 and 1795. The only thing was, none of these days of Thanksgiving were in the fall. George Washington, while leading the revolutionary forces declared a day of Thanksgiving in December, 1777, but it was a victory celebration for beating the British at Saratoga.
Prior to that, communities would hold Thanksgivings which were primarily glorified harvest festivals. There was no particular day, differing from colony to colony and in unfavorable harvest years some celebrated with a fast. Algonkian tribes in the area held six thanksgiving festivals during the year. The first pilgrim’s Thanksgiving was actually the local tribe’s fifth celebration of the year.
We can thank the American Public School system for teaching us that in 1621, the Wampanoag Indians and the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth celebrated their friendship through a fall feast, which actually was a three-day event. We are taught that the Wampanoags tutored the Pilgrims how to grow foods, how to harvest the native flora and fauna and various survival tactics. It took the Pilgrims two years to get it right because it wasn’t until 1623 that they had enough food to hold another feast.
Today, the USDA estimates that 269 million turkeys were raised in 2003, with a good portion allocated to the annual gorge fest. Most families enjoy turkey, corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, yams or sweet potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce, and for desert, pumpkin pie. These, most Americans believe (like they believe that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11), were the dishes served to the Pilgrims by the Indians. Historians believe that turkey was probably not served at the first Thanksgiving. Nor was corn on the cob, mashed potatoes or pumpkins in any form. What they agree on is that cranberries were most likely served in some fashion, as well as venison, other fowl like geese and ducks and probably some kind of squash and breads made from ground corn, but not on the cob.
I asked my daughter, age seven, what she knew about Thanksgiving.
“I know about when they first celebrated it, they celebrated it with Indians. They were celebrating thanks to people for helping them,” she said.
“What did they eat?” I asked her.
“They ate turkey, mashed potatoes with gravy, cranberries, cider, fruit, cider sauce…” she said.
Her eyes lit up when I asked about Squanto. She told me this tale.
“Squanto, um, he was hunting for food and then he saw this place with the pilgrims and they were talking and then they became friends. And then, um, Squanto came back and brought another friend and that other friend was very nice and he taught them other stuff too. And then Squanto came back with a bunch of Indians and then his second friend, um, he came and told them stuff that he needs to know. He needed to know how the Indians were doing.”

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Price Fight: Coke Isn't It At Costco

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 5:01am

If you're a member of Costco, the nation's largest wholesale club, you may be surprised to learn that Coca-Cola's products are no longer on the shelves. The two companies are locked in a rare public dispute over the price consumers pay for beverages.

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Students Rail Against University Of California Fees

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 4:47am

UC regents, meeting at UCLA, approved fees that will bring the average annual cost to about $10,300 — a threefold increase in a decade. In protest, University of California Berkeley students barricaded themselves in part of a campus building on Friday.

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Suicide Motorcycle Bomber Kills 16 In Afghanistan

NPR Top Stories - November 20, 2009 - 4:33am

Two children and a policeman were among those killed in the blast, which wounded at least 23 others when the motorcyclist detonated the explosives in a busy city square in western Afghanistan, officials said.

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Streetcar Task Force Report Back Approaches

Boise Weekly - November 20, 2009 - 3:00am
Feasibility study due early next year; group getting more detailed by Nathaniel Hoffman Boise's downtown Streetcar Task Force, a group of some three dozen stakeholders including property owners, downtown bankers, planners and a grab-bag of prominent Boiseans, wants to know what the City Council plans to do with their feasibility study once it's complete. The task force has been looking into funding, design and operations of the streetcar line for almost a year now, and is getting into very specific recommendations, including car design, hours of operation and options for governance and operations…

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