disney discounts

A New Yorker`s first few days in Florida included the robbery and murder of a senior citizen, according to the Pinellas County Sheriff`s Office.

In January, a Leon County grand jury determined that Tallahassee police officers performed their jobs appropriately when they shot and killed a 17-year-old boy from Thomasville, Ga. They thought John Hayes was reaching for a gun, and 15 bullets were fired at him to stop the action they felt necessary to defend themselves.

A Pakistani citizen has been arrested and charged with extortion after allegedly persuading a teen to send him a nude photograph by threatening to ruin her parents’ credit rating.

A 112-year-old woman living in Cannes has become France`s oldest citizen, the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) has said. The woman, Marie-Simone Capony, took over the title after the death Saturday of Camille Loiseau, aged 114 and six months.

After a national search for a new top editor, The Citizen has decided to look no further than its own backyard. To that end, the paper has named current managing editor Jeremy Boyer as its executive editor.

A 112-year-old woman living in Cannes has become France`s oldest citizen, the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) has said.

MICHAEL WOLFF, VANITY FAIR - Arthur [Sulzberger], on his own say-so, has accomplished a radical management restructuring of the company. He`s consolidated, under his control, executive, shareholder, and editorial power -subverting the traditional autonomy of the Times newsroom. Indeed, executive editor Bill Keller is probably the weakest editor in the history of the paper. A company with a historically diffident management structure, where lines of power were always purposefully obtuse, now has a by-the-book, top-down org chart. With such a figure-attention-seeking, immature, verbally feckless -at the center of the stage, it`s hard to maintain a suspension of disbelief, let alone a straight face, about the rights of the firstborn. (This situation must have some resonance in the Bush White House.) The Times, with the scion insisting on his protean leadership, becomes, like any other corporation, judged by its top executive-it`s not stronger than he is. Except, profoundly complicating matters, if he turns out to be weak, you can`t easily replace this one. It`s Arthur himself who has most consistently articulated the fragility of the Times-its being-and-nothingness struggle in the changing media world. He seems so willing to embrace the sudden-death possibilities of the Information Age, so willing to disregard the conservative, wait-and-see approach favored by executives in Rust Belt–like businesses, that you wonder if there isn`t, just a bit, a Munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy aspect to all of this. He gets to make the crisis; he gets to rescue the paper. . . Seeing the Times as an acquisitive, multi-platform media company puts it, of course, in the same, ever compromised world of marketing and politicking as all other media companies. On the eve of the Iraq war-which it covered with a guilelessness that it has since apologized for-the Times, along with every other media giant, was petitioning the Bush F.C.C. to relax media-ownership rules to allow it to greatly add to its portfolio of television stations. (The Times`s last annual report points to the television duopoly it owns in Oklahoma as one of its core achievements.). . . Before scandal and a falling share price crimped their style, Sulzberger and Raines would talk openly about what they`d like to take over. They wanted the Financial Times or The Wall Street Journal and were looking for cable opportunities. (In 1993, the Times, in some misbegotten futurist idea that the Northeast was going to unite in a gigantic megalopolis, anchored by New York and Boston, bought The Boston Globe, which has performed poorly ever since.) When the chance arose, they snatched-for almost no logical reason, other than that they could-control of the International Herald Tribune (an enterprise with virtually no prospects of being anything more than a sentimental artifact) from The Washington Post, the Times`s longtime partner in the paper. They did a convoluted deal with the Discovery network. They bought a piece of the Boston Red Sox. . . The Times as we know it, as a pastiche of its paper self, can`t succeed online (the whole idea that an old-time business can morph seamlessly into a huge, speculative entrepreneurial enterprise is a kind of quackery). At best, it might become a specialized Internet player, having to drastically cut its current, $300 million news budget. What it might providentially become, however, is About.com, a low-end, high-volume information producer, warehousing vast amounts of advertiser-targeted data, harnessing the amateurs and hobbyists and fetishists willing to produce for a pittance any amount of schlock to feed the page-view numbers-and already supplying 30 million of the Times`s 40 million unique users.. . . The fear in the newsroom is that the first thing to be given up will be bodies-fire enough people and earnings improve and stock creeps up and that takes immediate pressure off management. (It`s already begun: "There`s no money here," hissed a reporter to me recently in what had been a little gossip about expense accounts.)

RETCHEN RUETHLING - In a small storefront church in a Puerto Rican neighborhood on the city`s West Side, Elvira Arellano, a fugitive from the government, waits with her 7-year-old son and prays. Ms. Arellano, 31, an illegal immigrant from Mexico, defied an order to report to the Department of Homeland Security on Tuesday to be deported and is instead seeking sanctuary in her church. Ms. Arellano is hoping Congress will act on a private relief bill that would allow her and her son, Saul, a United States citizen who has attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, to stay in the country, where she says he can get better medical treatment. . . Ms. Arellano, president of an advocacy group called La Familia Latina Unida, said she hoped her action would help to bring about legislation to protect families that could be torn apart by deportation. Immigrants` rights groups and critics of illegal immigration are closely watching her case. Some supporters have likened her to Rosa Parks, while detractors say Ms. Arellano broke the law and should face the consequences.

STEVE VOGEL WASHINGTON POST - Touch-screen polling machines, which will be used statewide in Maryland when voters go to the polls for the Sept. 12 primary, were intended to calm fears of election flimflam raised in the wake of the infamous 2000 presidential balloting in Florida. But the new machines themselves have become a politically charged topic in Maryland. Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who agreed to purchase them three years ago, now questions whether they can provide fair and accurate elections, given their vulnerability to computer hackers and their lack of a paper trail to document votes. "There`s a lot to be concerned about here," Ehrlich said recently. Democrats, in turn, accuse the governor and the Republican Party of trying to dampen voter turnout through scare tactics. "It`s highly unfortunate that Bob Ehrlich has chosen to alarm people about the integrity of the voting process," said Del. Peter Franchot (D-Montgomery), a candidate for state comptroller. Yet Franchot and other Democrats acknowledge their own unease about the equipment. Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), who was a co-sponsor of the 2002 federal legislation that required states and counties to upgrade equipment, said he is concerned by reports from computer security experts that the voting machines could be manipulated to skew results.

MATTHEW ROTHSCHILD, PROGRESSIVE - There was a big clue planted at the bottom of the very long lead article in The New York Times of August 17. That story noted the alarming rise in insurgent attacks against American and Iraqi forces. . . The last three paragraphs of this story revealed that "senior administration officials . . . are considering alternatives other than democracy," according to a military expert who was just briefed at the White House. In that same edition, The New York Times ran a headline about the death of the brutal Paraguayan strongman Alfredo Stroessner, proclaiming him to be a "colorful dictator." That`s an obscenity. According to Amnesty International, "During Stroessner`s military dictatorship, gross and systematic violations of human rights occurred. Amnesty International repeatedly expressed concern to the Paraguayan Government about long-term prisoners of conscience and allegations of torture, `disappearance` and death in custody of political prisoners, as well as reports of prolonged detentions of political opponents." The Bush Administration may be looking for an Iraqi Stroessner, or another, more reliable Saddam. That may have been what Cheney and Rumsfeld had in mind all along. From the very beginning, they wanted to install in power Ahmad Chalabi and his groups of exiles roosting in the Iraqi National Congress, writes George Packer in his book The Assassin`s Gate. When the situation in Iraq began to deteriorate, Cheney blamed those in the Administration who refused to go along with this plan. "In the fall of 2003, Dick Cheney approached his colleague Colin Powell, stuck a finger in his chest, and said, `If you hadn`t opposed the INC and Chalabi, we wouldn`t be in this mess,` " Packer reports. Maybe Chalabi is waiting in the wings still--or some other Saddam wannabe. Bush appears to be taking applications.

GREG BLOOM, IN THESE TIMES - There’s a word that gets tossed around in canvassing offices to describe people like Christian Miller: "scrappy." That’s not because of his skinny frame and sparse, wiry chin-scrabble. Rather, in an industry where the average career lasts two weeks, Miller, 28, canvassed door-to-door throughout Los Angeles for four years. In the last 30 years, canvassers like Miller have become the most common-if unsung-figures in political activism, going door-to-door or standing on busy street corners to talk to people about various public interest issues. It took Miller a minute to tick through the long list of campaigns for which he`d raised money: solar energy bills, forest protection, Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign. All were operated by the same company: the Fund for Public Interest Research (commonly known as "the Fund"), a national nonprofit founded by the Public Interest Research Groups in 1982. Since then, canvassers for the now-ubiquitous state PIRGs have raised over $350 million and gathered more than 20 million signatures for causes ranging from environmental protection to gay rights. The Fund holds a near-monopoly on the canvass industry, running 30 to 60 offices each summer, with thousands of canvassers working on dozens of campaigns. . . Dana Fisher, a sociology professor at Columbia University, . . . interviewed hundreds of canvassers over a period of several years, with the permission of an organization that in her work goes under the pseudonym, "the People`s Project." This organization is acknowledged to be one of the largest canvassing organizations in the United States. Fisher found that canvassing experience severely limits the entry points for young people looking for a career in social justice. According to Fisher, the canvass industry yields a remarkably "small percentage [of canvassers who find] other work in politics after canvassing." Far more often these young people go to the private sector. (This summer, Miller took a job with a solar panel installation company.) Activism, Inc. suggests that rather than a breeding ground for new generations of grassroots activism, the industry is eating the left`s young.

FOX NEWS - Civil rights leader Andrew Young, who was hired to help Wal-Mart Stores Inc. (improve its public image, said early Friday he stepped down from his position as head of an outside support group. The move comes on the heels of comments Young made to a newspaper that many felt were racially offensive. "I think I was on the verge of becoming part of the controversy and I didn`t want to become a distraction from the main issues, so I thought I ought to step down," Young, a former Atlanta mayor and U.N. ambassador, told The Associated Press. . . In an interview, Young was asked whether he was concerned that Wal-Mart causes smaller, mom-and-pop stores to close."Well, I think they should; they ran the `mom and pop` stores out of my neighborhood," the paper quoted Young as saying. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they`ve ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it`s Arabs; very few black people own these stores." Young said he decided to end his involvement with Working Families for Wal-Mart after he started getting calls about the story.

Our Cliche Challenge is in estivation mode but we couldn`t help passing along a nomination from Ellen Szalinski who works for a hospital in Chicago: "guardrails" as a term for parameters. This is a tough one since the normal meaning is so ubiquitous but we`d be interested in hearing whether others are hearing the term guardrails used at your local staff meeting or elsewhere.

DC EXAMINER - A microchip company with powerful political connections is lobbying the Pentagon for the right to implant chips under the skins of the nearly 1.4 million U.S. military personnel. Verichip Corp., which is based in Florida and planning to offer its stock to the public soon, has been one of the most aggressive marketers of radio frequency identification chips. Company officials have touted the chips as versatile, able to be used in a variety of situations such as helping track illegal immigrants or giving doctors immediate access to patient`s medical records. Now the company is "in discussions" with the Pentagon, spokeswoman Nicole Philbin said. She added that Verichip wants to insert the chips under the skin of the right arms of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen. The idea is to be able to scan an arm and obtain that person`s identity and medical history. . . The company has political muscle in the form of Tommy Thompson. A former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Thompson is a partner at the lobbying law firm of Akin Gump and is a director of Verichip. Thompson said he`s sure that the chip is safe and that no one — not even military personnel, who are required by law to follow orders — will be forced to accept an implant against his or her will. He has also promised to have a chip implanted in himself. . . Liz McIntyre, author of a book critical of the chips, said that VeriChip is "a huge threat" to public privacy. "They`re circling like vultures for any opportunity to get into our flesh," McIntyre said. "They`ll start with people who can`t say no, like the elderly, sex offenders, immigrants and the military. Then they`ll come knocking on our doors."

PAUL KRUGMAN, NY TIMES - Since the 1920`s there have been four eras of American inequality: - The Great Compression, 1929-1947: The birth off middle-class America. The real wages of production workers in manufacturing rose 67 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent of Americans actually fell 17 percent. - The Postwar Boom, 1947-1973: An era of widely shared growth. Real wages rose 81 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent rose 38 percent. - Stagflation, 1973-1980: Everyone lost ground. Real wages fell 3 percent, and the income of the richest 1 percent fell 4 percent. - The New Gilded Age, 1980-?: Big gains at the very top, stagnation below. Between 1980 and 2004, real wages in manufacturing fell 1 percent, while the real income of the richest 1 percent - people with incomes of more than $277,000 in 2004 - rose 135 percent. What`s noticeable is that except during stagflation, when virtually all Americans were hurt by a tenfold increase in oil prices, what happened in each era was what the dominant political tendency of that era wanted to happen. Franklin Roosevelt favored the interests of workers while declaring of plutocrats who considered him a class traitor, "I welcome their hatred." Sure enough, under the New Deal wages surged while the rich lost ground. What followed was an era of bipartisanship and political moderation; Dwight Eisenhower said of those who wanted to roll back the New Deal, "Their number is negligible, and they are stupid." Sure enough, it was also an era of equable growth. Finally, since 1980 the U.S. political scene has been dominated by a conservative movement firmly committed to the view that what`s good for the rich is good for America. Sure enough, the rich have seen their incomes soar, while working Americans have seen few if any gains.

ELECTRONIC INTIFADA - Palestinian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education, Dr. Naser El-Deen El-Sha`er, [has been abducted] by Israeli Occupation Forces from his house in Ramallah. The abduction is a continuation of the campaign against Palestinian Government Ministers and members of the Palestinian Legislative Council from the pro-Hamas "Change and Reform List." PCHR`s preliminary investigation indicates that at approximately 01:00 on Saturday, 19 August 2006, an IOF contingent moved into Ramallah and surrounded the residence of Dr. Naser El-Deen El-Sha`er in the Maysoon Quarter. Through loudspeakers, IOF ordered Dr. El-Sha`er to surrender to them. Immediately afterwards, IOF troops stormed the residence and detained Dr. El-Sha`er with his wife and children looking on. IOF took him to an undisclosed location. Dr. El-Sha`er`s wife, Huda, stated that IOF conducted the arrest very quickly. She pointed that the whole siege and arrest operation lasted about 10 minutes. Dr. El-Sha`er, who is originally from the town of Sabsateyya, northwest of Nablus, is a Ph.D. holder in comparative religion. He was the dean of Shari`a School at El-Najah University. He was detained by IOF two times prior to this abduction. The last detention was last October, where he spent four months under administrative detention. On 6 August 2006, IOF detained Dr. Aziz Dweik, the PLC Speaker. And on 29 June 2006, IOF detained eight Cabinet Ministers and twenty-one PLC members from the pro-Hamas parliamentary bloc, as well as Hamas political leaders. And on 6 July 2006, IOF detained the second deputy speaker of the PLC, Dr. Hasan Khreisha. He was released on 30 July 2006 after posting a 10,000 New Israeli Shekel bail.

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, President Robert Heller, Chairman of the Board Union for Reform Judaism Dear Rabbi Yoffie and Chairman Heller, We, the college and youth leaders of the Reform Movement, urge the Union for Reform Judaism to take a stand for the Jewish values of peace and justice by declaring its support for a sustained bilateral ceasefire and peace negotiations in the Middle East. As the future leaders of the Reform Movement, we heed the call of Rabbi Hillel to "be from the students of Aaron, love peace and pursue peace." As we see events unfold around us, we look to fulfill our religious obligation by speaking out on the moral issues of our day. As Jews, we declare our commitment to protect our historic homeland, Israel, and to ensure the safety and well-being of its inhabitants. As Jews, we also believe that upholding the sanctity of all human life is of the utmost importance. In a month of war in Lebanon, over 700 civilians, both Lebanese and Israeli, were killed. During the same period of time, while the world was focused on Lebanon, over 150 Palestinian civilians were killed in the Gaza Strip as well. . . We applaud the Union for condemning Hezbollah`s and Hamas`s violent and terrifying rocket attacks on Israeli civilians, who have been put in grave danger by the ongoing conflict. . . We urge the Union to likewise condemn the Israeli Defense Force`s killing of unarmed Lebanese and Palestinian civilians, as well as its premeditated targeting of civilian infrastructure, which has put additional lives at risk and hampered relief efforts. As we recall, in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, God agrees to spare the cities if Abraham can find even ten innocent civilians. In light of this, we implore the Union to make clear that these actions violate our religious values, and are morally unacceptable responses to Hezbollah`s and Hamas`s provocations. . . We . . . call upon the Union for Reform Judaism to declare its support for a continued bilateral ceasefire and renewed peace negotiations in the Middle East. Only dialogue, diplomacy, and mutual understanding will bring a lasting peace and guarantee the security of all peoples. . . B`shalom, [A long list of students]

LES PAYNE, NEWSDAY - Who indeed are the black leaders these days? Two pretenders to the throne were to enlighten the National Association of Black Journalists last week in Indianapolis. The Rev. Jesse Jackson thought better of his appearance and left the defense to his erstwhile protege. Proving that he is as immune to irony as he is to shame, the Rev. Al Sharpton strutted onto the stage as a panelist for the annual W.E.B. DuBois Lecture. That most vital American scholar of the last century would likely have viewed the Rev. Al Sharpton as a noisy answer for which there is no known question. Luckily for the impressionable in the hall, a panel of journalists preceded Sharpton and broadened the beam of candidates. The clouds were salted with such names as Colin Powell, Harold Ford, Barak Obama, Corey Booker and even influential rappers. Rochelle Riley, a columnist for the Detroit Free Press, looked locally. She emphasized the need for daily leaders, especially among the young - and she dismissed the headline-grabbing methods of messieurs Jackson and Sharpton. . . No one disputes Sharpton`s skills as a talker, and he was in fine form, even as his own qualities as a black leader stood wanting and in sharp relief to the occasion of the DuBois Lecture. . . Journalists entertained by the Sharpton sideshow left the hall needing to enlighten themselves elsewhere on the question of black leadership. A good start would have been the 37-volume works of DuBois, edited by his friend and protege Herbert Aptheker. . . "History cannot ignore W.E.B. DuBois," King wrote, "because history has to reflect truth, and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths. His singular greatness lay in his quest for truth about his own people." It is not known what King would have made of Sharpton, but we know what the martyred civil rights leader thought of Sharpton`s mentor, Jesse Jackson. Not much.

THE NEWSPAPER - A federal appeals court ruled yesterday that if a motorist is carrying large sums of money, it is automatically subject to confiscation. In the case entitled, "United States of America v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency," the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit took that amount of cash away from Emiliano Gomez Gonzolez, a man with a "lack of significant criminal history" neither accused nor convicted of any crime. On May 28, 2003, a Nebraska state trooper signaled Gonzolez to pull over his rented Ford Taurus on Interstate 80. The trooper intended to issue a speeding ticket, but noticed the Gonzolez`s name was not on the rental contract. The trooper then proceeded to question Gonzolez -- who did not speak English well -- and search the car. The trooper found a cooler containing $124,700 in cash, which he confiscated. A trained drug sniffing dog barked at the rental car and the cash. For the police, this was all the evidence needed to establish a drug crime that allows the force to keep the seized money. Associates of Gonzolez testified in court that they had pooled their life savings to purchase a refrigerated truck to start a produce business. Gonzolez flew on a one-way ticket to Chicago to buy a truck, but it had sold by the time he had arrived. Without a credit card of his own, he had a third-party rent one for him. Gonzolez hid the money in a cooler to keep it from being noticed and stolen. He was scared when the troopers began questioning him about it. There was no evidence disputing Gonzolez`s story. Yesterday the Eighth Circuit summarily dismissed Gonzolez`s story. It overturned a lower court ruling that had found no evidence of drug activity, stating, "We respectfully disagree and reach a different conclusion... Possession of a large sum of cash is `strong evidence` of a connection to drug activity." Judge Donald Lay found the majority`s reasoning faulty and issued a strong dissent. "Notwithstanding the fact that claimants seemingly suspicious activities were reasoned away with plausible, and thus presumptively trustworthy, explanations which the government failed to contradict or rebut, I note that no drugs, drug paraphernalia, or drug records were recovered in connection with the seized money," Judge Lay wrote. "There is no evidence claimants were ever convicted of any drug-related crime, nor is there any indication the manner in which the currency was bundled was indicative of drug use or distribution." "Finally, the mere fact that the canine alerted officers to the presence of drug residue in a rental car, no doubt driven by dozens, perhaps scores, of patrons during the course of a given year, coupled with the fact that the alert came from the same location where the currency was discovered, does little to connect the money to a controlled substance offense," Judge Lay Concluded.

HOW STUFF WORKS - How much ice would I have to store up in the winter in order to air condition my house all summer?. . . This is a great question... . . . It certainly would be an easy system to build. All you need is a big insulated container (probably in the form of a hole in the ground) with some coiled tubes at the bottom. You would run a chilled water circuit from the container to a radiator inside the air conditioner (see How Air Conditioners Work for details). You would need a small pump to pump the water in the chilled water loop, but that`s it. [The math follows and then the conclusion] So we need: 130,000,000 BTU * 3.15 grams/BTU = 409,500,000 grams of ice That`s about 410,000 liters of ice, or 410,000 kilograms (902,000 pounds) of ice that you must store to cool your house all summer. That`s a cube measuring 740 centimeters (24.26 feet) on a side. Very roughly speaking, you would have to dig a hole as big as your house and insulate it well, and then in the winter you would have to shovel it full of nearly a million pounds of ice. But if you do that, you can cool your house for free.

JEFF HECHT, NEW SCIENTIST - A survey of 32 European countries, the US and Japan has revealed that only Turkey is less willing than the US to accept evolution as fact.Religious fundamentalism, bitter partisan politics and poor science education have all contributed to this denial of evolution in the US, says Jon Miller of Michigan State University in East Lansing, who conducted the survey with his colleagues. "The US is the only country in which [the teaching of evolution] has been politicized," he says. "Republicans have clearly adopted this as one of their wedge issues. In most of the world, this is a non-issue.". . . There is some cause for hope. Team member Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, finds solace in the finding that the percentage of adults overtly rejecting evolution has dropped from 48 to 39 in the same time. . . Meanwhile the fraction of Americans unsure about evolution has soared, from 7 per cent in 1985 to 21 per cent last year. . . The main opposition to evolution comes from fundamentalist Christians, who are much more abundant in the US than in Europe. While Catholics, European Protestants and so-called mainstream US Protestants consider the biblical account of creation as a metaphor, fundamentalists take the Bible literally, leading them to believe that the Earth and humans were created only 6000 years ago.

GUARDIAN, UK - It is already common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe, that Americans work too hard - just as it is well known on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America`s vigorous work ethic. But a new survey suggests that even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to the extent that 40% of workers questioned at the start of the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s. . . The survey by the Conference Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests an epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans. A quarter of people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers do not have to give paid holidays. The average American gets a little less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK - where the law requires a minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers - and 7.9 weeks for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in Britain who had just started their jobs. . . Even when they do take vacations, overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three find not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while the traumas of travel take their own toll. . . Left to themselves, Americans fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement - an annual national total of 574m unclaimed days.

HEIDI BENSON, SF CHRONICLE - As the 30th anniversary issue of Mother Jones hits the newsstands this month, the muckraking San Francisco magazine is struggling to retain a consistent senior staff and find its place amid seismic changes to the publishing industry. Editor in Chief Russ Rymer, who came to the job in 2005 with a prestigious background as a writer and editor, departed in late July. Longtime creative director Jane Palecek left just days later; soon after, five staff members were laid off. On Wednesday, Rymer cited "philosophical differences" as the reason for his departure. Though the impetus for the latest resignations and layoffs vary, they all are connected to the tight financial spot Mother Jones found itself in during the spring. "Early this year, the company was projecting a significant cash shortfall, which we have addressed by layoffs and other cost-cutting measures," said Jay Harris, who has been publisher of the magazine since 1991. (Further layoffs are not anticipated, he said.) "We`re going through the same struggles facing every print publication," Harris said. He cited current circulation at 230,000, down 6 percent from last year and reflecting a decline in both subscriptions and newsstand sales. . . In 1976, Mother Jones came out strong with Mark Dowie`s historic expose of the safety hazards of the Ford Pinto. In the `80s, the magazine brought in an unknown from an alternative weekly in Flint, Mich., for what was a brief stint as editor in chief. It was documentary filmmaker Michael Moore`s first national platform. Then in 2001, Mother Jones won the prestigious National Magazine Award for general excellence, while under the leadership of editor Roger Cohn.

`nbsp;Once crime was as solitary as a cry of protest; now it is as universal as science. Yesterday it was put on trial; today it determines the law. - Albert Camus, whom Bush professes to be reading this summer

POLITICS - Nebraska State Auditor Kate Witek switched parties Friday from the GOP to the Democrats, complaining to the Lincoln Star-Journal of a desire by the Republican leaders to have `quot;total control of everything ... [with] a good-old-boy handful of people making the decisions`quot; in the state to get elected rather than govern. Witek, a two-term State Auditor and former State Senator -- was Congressman Tom Osborne`s running mate for Lieutenant Governor in this year`s GOP primary. . . The conservative Witek was often at odds, however, with her statehouse GOP colleagues as she was unafraid to criticize Republicans and Democrats alike in her capacity as State Auditor. She was largely responsible for bringing down the GOP State Treasurer two years ago in an office funding scandal. IAN JAMES ASSOCIATED PRESS - President Hugo Chavez said Friday that Venezuela has caught four people spying for the U.S. government and has turned them over to the Americans. Speaking at a campaign rally, Chavez referred to the four after reading aloud a news report about the U.S. naming a `quot;mission manager`quot; for Cuba and Venezuela to oversee U.S. intelligence efforts for the two countries. WBAL, OH - The Girl Scouts are pursuing 12 court claims in Akron, Ohio, for uncollected cookie money ranging from $54 to $3,500. The claims total $9,000, according to court records. The scouts claim the deadbeats -- all adults -- picked up cookies and signed for them. One alleged deadbeat said most of the $3,500 debt involves cookies she gave to others to sell. She agreed to pay the debt in $100 monthly installments. The other alleged deadbeats could face judgments or have their wages seized. MORE BOOKS BEING PUBLISHED, HARDER TIMES FOR AUTHORS READ BOOKS TO ENJOY, NOT TO IMPROVE YOURSELF